Shabbat Vayishlach

Written by Rabbi Professor Jonathan Magonet Wednesday, 14 December 2005

Vayishlach Gen 32:4-36:43

Because we read the same Biblical stories year after year on Shabbat morning they become a part of our personal lives. They offer us lessons in how to behave and, more often, in how not to behave. Because of this familiarity, we know from the very beginning of each story what will happen to the characters. But just when we think we have learned all there is to know about them, something changes our perspective and we discover a new dimension.

This week we read about the dramatic moment when Jacob finally confronts his twin brother Esau. Twenty years earlier, Jacob had stolen the birthright that belonged to his brother. Out of fear of Esau’s hatred, and on the excuse of going to find himself a wife, Jacob had left his family home and country to go into exile, to the homeland of his mother’s family. After much success but also bitter hardships, Jacob was now returning. He had God’s promise of protection, but before him stood the figure of Esau, coming to meet him with four hundred men. For Jacob this could only mean the possibility of conflict as his brother took revenge for Jacob’s crime of all those years ago. He took all the possible steps to appease his brother, sending gifts on ahead. But he also took precautions to protect his family in case it came to a fight. In the night before the encounter Jacob had another fight, with a man who wrestled with him till dawn. This unknown man, elsewhere called a ‘mal’ach’, the Hebrew word used for a divine messenger, might have really been someone sent by God. But he could also represent an inner struggle within Jacob himself as he wrestled with his fear and guilt about the past. But after all these events and preparations, the stage is set for the meeting of the two brothers and the conflict we anticipate.

To our surprise, and certainly to Jacob’s, Esau greets him with a hug and a kiss. It is as if the past about which Jacob must have felt so much guilt, had never happened. Esau had simply accepted it and gone on to lead his own successful life. He was even prepared to greet his long-lost twin brother with affection and joy. What Jacob felt at that moment is not recounted. We only know that he took precautions to keep the two families, their possessions and their retainers, apart for the long term. Perhaps he did not trust Esau’s friendliness, or felt that it might not last as old memories came back. Perhaps Jacob, a complex character, could never understand someone like Esau who may have been as open and generous as his response to Jacob suggests.

But there is another factor that must have stood in the way of Jacob’s ability to understand his brother. For the twenty years of his exile he had retained in his mind the memory of his brother’s anger and despair. This image of Esau, the powerful hunter, had grown in his mind to almost overwhelming proportions. Jacob’s guilt made it impossible to see his brother as he was. Esau had put aside the burden of his anger, Jacob was still carrying the burden of his guilt.

The rabbinic tradition was suspicious of Esau’s apparent forgiveness and generosity of spirit. In part they based this on a far later historical situation. When living under Roman occupation the Jews needed a kind of code language through which to express their feelings about the regime. They used the figure of Esau for this purpose, reading into the details of the references to him in the Bible hidden allusions to the misdeeds of the Romans. When the Roman Empire became Christian and Jews found themselves persecuted by the new regime, Esau could continue to stand for this power as well.

Nevertheless however much the rabbis may have been justified in using the name of Esau for this purpose, we must note a problem with it, at least in terms of the Biblical narrative itself. Making Esau somehow the villain of the story is a serious displacement of Jacob’s responsibility for what happened. Today we are more aware of the danger of such displacement, whereby the victims are made to seem responsible for their fate, as if that somehow exonerated the perpetrator. The rabbis argued that the Biblical text never loses its plain meaning, however much later tradition may read into it. In this case Esau’s innocence is a key to the story itself. That is the particular perspective that I want to bring to the familiar story this time.

Long before the rabbinic interpretation, the story of the conflict between Jacob and Esau had further echoes within the Hebrew Bible itself. When Esau learnt that Jacob had cheated him out of his birthright he let out a loud, bitter cry — vayitz’aq tz’aqah g’dolah oomarah! The exact same words reappear only once in the Hebrew Bible, this time in the Book of Esther. When Mordechai, the hero of the book, learns that Haman, the villain, plans to exterminate the Jews, he walks about the city crying out with the identical loud, bitter cry — vayiz’aq z’aqah g’dolah oomarah! For the Biblical author of the Book of Esther, Esau’s suffering needed to be matched by that of Jacob’s descendants, as if to balance out the misdeed of the past and thus finally cancel it. But the linkage between the two passages is even stronger, due to one of those underground connections that run through the Bible.

We learn from one of the genealogies in the Book of Genesis (Gen 36:16), that one of the grandsons of Esau is called Amalek. When the Israelites are wandering in the wilderness, the weak and the older people who are at the rear of the encampment are attacked by a people called the Amalekites. For this unacceptable act of violence Amalek will be portrayed as an enemy of God and of Israel. Generations later King Saul will fail to destroy them after a battle, sparing their King, Agag. For this Saul forfeits the throne. But to return to the Book of Esther, the Haman who wishes to exterminate the Jews is called an Agagite, a descendant of King Agag of the Amalekites. That ancient battle is refought in the pages of the Book of Esther. It is as if a family dispute that began in the distant past has never entirely disappeared. Indeed history is littered with family feuds that may lay dormant for generations only to spring to life when some change of historical circumstances triggers violence once again. These stories offer little comfort, but they do present us with certain unpalatable truths about human conflict.

But all of this is in the Biblical future. We are poised now at the moment when Jacob meets Esau. As readers we have followed until now the detailed story of Jacob, because he will be the direct ancestor of the nation. Moreover the Bible is interested in exploring the complexity of our relationship with God and the ways in which an individual changes and grows over time. Jacob’s journeys and struggles give us much to consider. But the focus on Jacob should not blind us to the significance of Esau. For it is Esau who manages to transform his justifiable anger into something else; to make a successful life for himself and even, twenty years later, to be able to accept with generosity, and maybe even with love, the brother who had wronged him. As is so often the case in the Hebrew Bible, it is the secondary characters, the ones who appear to provide a mere background to the main events, who help us understand the significance of the story before us. Jacob may be the focus of our attention, but it is Esau who offers the hope that despite conflicts and betrayals of the past, forgiveness and reconciliation between people are always possible.
Rabbi Professor Jonathan Magonet