Hebrew Myths (29 page)

As for the faithful Eliezer, who had been near death because of a suspected crime, God took him alive into Paradise.
²⁹⁹

***

1
. Abraham refused to let Isaac marry a Canaanite wife (
Genesis
11. 24) by the ancient matrilocal law which insists that a husband must leave home and live with his wife’s kinsfolk. Instead, he chose him a wife from among his patrilocal cousins at Harran. (Doubtless he would have preferred a daughter of his ally and nephew Lot, but both had made themselves ineligible by their precipitate acts of incest.) Later, Isaac and Rebekah similarly refused to let their son Jacob marry a Canaanite or Hittite maiden (
Genesis
XXVII. 46; XXVIII. 1—see 45). Matrilocal marriage was also the rule in Mycenaean Greece, and the first woman said to have made a patrilocal marriage, despite parental opposition, was Odysseus’s wife Penelope; who veiled her face, when headed for Ithaca, in a manner reminiscent of Rebekah.

2
. Midrashic embroideries on the Rebekah myth incorporate various ancient traditions. Hebrew patriarchs demanded virginity from brides, and in several Near and Middle Eastern countries the bride’s maidenhead is still tested on her wedding night by the bridegroom’s finger. Canaanite women, however, were promiscuous before marriage, as was customary among all matrilineal societies of the Eastern Mediterranean.

A legend that Isaac came to meet Rebekah walking upside down, after a stay in Paradise (see 11. 6), is an example of rabbinical humour, explaining her startled question: ‘Who is this that comes walking?’

3
. That Bethuel’s wife and son are left to settle the marriage contract with Eliezer on his behalf; and that Laban, not Bethuel, blesses Rebekah, is unusual enough to call for an explanation: this the midrash supplies by presuming his sudden death. Perhaps the chronicler emphasizes Laban’s part at Bethuel’s expense because Laban’s daughters Leah and Rachel subsequently married Isaac’s son Jacob (see 44).

4
. The
jus primae noctis
of many primitive tribes (see 18.
8
) is exercised sometimes by a girl’s father, sometimes by a chieftain. Herodotus reports it among the Adyrmachidae, a Libyan people settled between the Canopic mouth of the Nile and Apis, about whose customs the midrashic commentator may have heard. Laban’s use of the word
asor
suggests that the
Genesis
account is based on an Egypto-Hebraic source—‘asor’ being an Egyptian ten-day week.

5
. Nahor’s twelve sons show him to have ruled a twelve-tribe confederacy, like those of Israel, Ishmael, Etruria and the Amphictyonic League of Greece—twelve in honour of the Zodiac. His capital seems to have been Padan-Aram, or Harran (see 23. 1 and 24. 10). Some of Nahor’s eight sons by Milcah (‘Queen’) later migrated from the neighbouring desert to Northern Arabia. Three of Reumah’s four sons are recorded by place-names in Southern Syria and Northern Transjordan, which proves a West-Semitic tribal federation of Nahor to have existed before the Aramaean conquest.

6
. The leading character in
Genesis
XXIV, first described as Abraham’s ‘chief-steward’, is afterwards termed either ‘the servant’, ‘Abraham’s servant’, or ‘the man’. He even withholds his own name when introducing himself to Bethuel and Laban. Yet all Biblical commentators assume him to have been Eliezer of Damascus, whom Abraham, while still childless, regretfully mentions as his prospective heir (
Genesis
XV—see 28.
a
). The chronicler clearly wished to emphasize that Eliezer had been no more than Abraham’s slave and God’s instrument.

7
. When Abraham orders Eliezer ‘Put your hand under my thigh!’, this was a euphemism for ‘touch my sexual organ’, a most solemn form of oath, which served to remind him of the circumcision rite that bound Abraham and all his household in God’s service. Jacob used the same oath when he made Joseph swear to bury him in the Cave of Machpelah (
Genesis
XLVII. 29—see 60.
a
). Rwala Bedouin of the Syrian Desert still preserve this custom. A. Musil has written lately:

The belt which is laid aside for intercourse, signifies a man’s wife; the sexual organ, children; and ‘all that lie down to sleep’, his herds.

(
a
) Isaac made ready to visit Egypt because of a famine in his own land; but since God forbade him, while renewing the benediction bestowed on Abraham, he went to Gerar as a guest of Abimelech, King of the Philistines. There, guided by Abraham’s example, he passed the lovely Rebekah off as his sister. One day the King happened to look out of a palace window and saw Isaac and Rebekah making marital love. He reproached Isaac, saying: ‘Why have you deceived me? Some courtier of mine might have secretly enjoyed your wife, and thought no harm of it.’ Isaac said: ‘I would rather thus be dishonoured, than murdered by a jealous man!’

Isaac was given land in Gerar, and for every grain sown he reaped a hundredfold. The Philistines so envied his flocks, herds and riches that, soon after the famine ended, Abimelech asked him to leave the city.
³⁰⁰

***

1
. This is the third instance of the same borrowing from the Egyptian
Tale of the Two Brothers
(see 26 and 30); but here the King, having made no attempt to seduce his guest’s wife, does not need to compensate him; and Isaac deliberately lies, rather than telling a half-truth like Abraham. Midrashic commentators identify the Abimelech whom Isaac deceived with Benmelech, son of Abraham’s host Abimelech, who adopted his royal title (Mid. Leqah Tobh Gen. 126; Sepher Hayashar 84).

2
. This myth bridges the gap between Isaac’s youth and old age; justifies the use of deception when Israelites are in danger abroad; and demonstrates God’s care for their ancestor. One midrash enlarges on Isaac’s wealth by quoting a proverb: ‘Rather the dung of his mules, than all Abimelech’s gold and silver!’ Another records that as soon as Isaac left Gerar, the prosperity that he had brought vanished with him: bandits sacked the royal treasure-house, Abimelech became a leper, wells dried up, crops failed (Gen. Rab. 707, 709; Mid. Leqah Tobh Gen. 126; Targ. Yer. ad Gen. XXVI. 20, 28).

(
a
) When Isaac prayed that God would lift the twenty-year curse of barrenness from Rebekah, she at once conceived twins. Soon they began struggling with each other in her womb, so violently that she longed for death; but God reassured Rebekah, saying:

Esau, Rebekah’s first-born, was covered with red,
shaggy hair;
and, because the other came out
clutching his heel
, she named him Jacob. Esau grew up to be a cunning hunter, a man of the rocky wilderness; whereas Jacob lived quietly at home, guarding his flocks and herds.
³⁰¹

(
b
) Some say that the colour of Esau’s hair signified murderous inclinations; and that Jacob was conceived before him, since if two pearls are placed in a narrow phial, the first to enter emerges last.
³⁰²

(
c
) Whenever Rebekah passed a Canaanite shrine during her pregnancy, Esau struggled to get out; whenever she passed a house of righteous prayer, Jacob did likewise. For he had addressed Esau in the womb: ‘The world of flesh, my brother, is not the world of spirit. Here is eating and drinking, marriage and procreation; there, none of these are found. Let us divide the worlds between us. Take which you prefer!’ Esau hastily chose the world of flesh.
³⁰³

(
d
) Others say that Samael helped Esau in this pre-natal struggle; and Michael, Jacob; but that God intervened on Jacob’s behalf, saving him from death. Nevertheless, Esau so cruelly tore Rebekah’s womb that she could never conceive again. Otherwise Isaac might have been blessed with as many sons as Jacob.
³⁰⁴

(
e
) Jacob was born circumcised—as were only twelve other saints, namely Adam, Seth, Enoch, Noah, Shem, Terah, Joseph, Moses, Samuel, David, Isaiah and Jeremiah; though some add Job, Balaam and Zerubbabel. Isaac circumcised Esau at the age of eight days; but
in later years, he subjected himself to a painful operation which made him look as though he had never been circumcised.
³⁰⁵

(
f
) At first the difference between the twins was no more than that between a myrtle-shoot and a shoot of thorn. Afterwards, however, while Jacob piously studied the Law, Esau began to frequent Canaanite shrines and do acts of violence. Before the age of twenty, he had committed murder, rape, robbery and sodomy. God therefore blinded Isaac: which preserved him from the neighbours’ silent reproaches.
³⁰⁶

***

1
. Like Sarah, Rebekah gave birth only once, after years of barrenness. So did Samuel’s mother, Hannah the Levite (1
Samuel
I). Rachel was long barren before bearing Joseph, and waited many years more until she conceived Benjamin and died in childbirth. None of these women had daughters, and in each case the son was peculiarly blessed by God. Does this perhaps record a tradition of childlessness required from a
naditum
priestess (see 29. 2) over a certain term of years—as from the Vestal Virgins at Rome—and of a peculiar sanctity enjoyed by any son born afterwards?

2
. Another pre-natal struggle between twins occurs in the myth of Perez and Zerah (
Genesis
XXXVIII. 27–30), whom Judah fathered on his daughter-in-law Tamar; but whose post-natal wars have not been recorded. These two Hebrew instances are paralleled in Greek myth by the struggle between Proetus and Acrisius in the womb of Queen Aglaia (‘Bright’), which portended a bitter rivalry for the Argive throne. When their father died, they agreed to reign alternately; yet Proetus, having seduced Acrisius’s daughter Danae, was banished from the kingdom and fled overseas. There he married the Lydian King’s daughter and returned to Argolis at the head of a large army. After a bloody but indecisive battle, the twins agreed to divide the kingdom and each rule half. Acrisius, who claimed descent from Belus (Baal), twin-brother of Agenor (Canaan), was not only grandfather to Perseus, whose exploits in Palestine have enriched the night sky with five constellations—Andromeda, Cassiopeia, Cepheus, Draco and Perseus—he was also an ancestor of the Achaean Kings Menelaus and Ascalus (see 35.
6
). The Achaeans who came to Syria and are referred to in the Bible
as Hivites (see 30.
4
) may have brought a myth with them of a pre-natal fight between twins, which was applied to the division of Abraham’s patrimony between Israel (Jacob) and Edom (Esau); the same motive may have been used again in a lost myth about Perez and Zerah to account for an early partition of Judah. Esau probably begins as the shaggy Hunter-god Usöus of Usu (Old Tyre), mentioned in Sanchuniathon’s
Phoenician History
as brother to Samemroumus (see 16.
5
). But his
hairiness
foreshadows the Edomite occupation of Mount Seir, which means ‘shaggy’—that is to say ‘covered with trees’—and he had red hair because
Edom
was popularly construed as meaning
adorn
or
admoni
, ‘tawny red’.

3
. The Edomites, or Idumaeans—at one time tributaries to Israel, though earlier arrivals in Palestine—seized part of Southern Judaea after Nebuchadrezzar’s capture of Jerusalem (
Ezekiel
XXXVI. 5) including Hebron. However, in the second century
B.C.
, Judah the Maccabee destroyed Hebron and the villages surrounding it (1
Maccabees
V. 65), and subsequently the Idumaeans were defeated and forcibly converted to Judaism by John Hyrcanus. Two generations later, Herod the Edomite became King of the Jews, murdered the last Maccabean prince, and was confirmed in power by the Romans. Though officially respecting the Mosaic Law, and rebuilding God’s Temple at Jerusalem, he raised several shrines to pagan deities. The midrashic Esau is thus a combined portrait of Herod and his Romanized sons Archelaus, Herod Antipas and Herod Philip. Esau’s uncircumcised appearance refers to these ‘sons of Edom’ and their associates who had the operation known as
epispasm
performed on themselves, so that they could participate without embarrassment in Hellenistic sports, which required complete nakedness. The view of Esau as an evil-doer is midrashic, however, not Biblical.

4
. The Law given Moses on Mount Sinai was held to have been in existence before Creation and taught in Pharisaic style by Noah’s son Shem,
alias
Melchizedek (see 27.
d
). Three further names added to the twelve saints born circumcised brings their number to fifteen, probably celebrating the fifteen holy steps of Ascent in the Temple.

5
. John Hyrcanus’s conversion of Edom was Sadducaic: that is to say, it did not include a belief in the resurrection of the dead. Thus Esau’s grasping at this world, rather than the world beyond, distinguishes him from Jacob the Pharisee.

6
. The Biblical explanation of the name Jacob as ‘one who takes by the heel’ or ‘supplants’ (
Genesis
XXV. 26; XXVII. 36) is popular etymology, or perhaps a pun on the name, as are Jeremiah’s words (IX. 3): ‘Every brother deceives (
Ya‘qobh
)’. Its original meaning was theophoric, and the full form,
Ya‘qob-el
, meant ‘God protects’. Numerous variants of this name are known both from Jewish sources (
Ya‘qobha, ‘Aqabhya, ‘Aqibha
or
Akiba
, etc.), and from neighbouring countries (
Ya‘qob-har, ‘Aqab-elaha
, etc.).