Hebrew Myths (36 page)

9
. The prime enemy to be faced by Jacob upon crossing the Jabbok was his twin Esau, from whose just anger he had fled twenty years before. In fact, one midrash presents Esau as Jacob’s unknown adversary at Peniel, an identification based on his likening Esau’s countenance to God’s (
Genesis
XXXIII. 10). The midrashic statement that Rachel was afraid of being married to Esau (see 45.
a
) hints at an added motive for the twins’ struggle: the rivalry for a beautiful woman, which already had occasioned, according to one version, the first fratricidal combat between Cain and Abel (see 16.
d
). But more than the love of a mortal woman may have been at stake. If Rachel stands for the Rachel tribes that were to be, then the fight between the twins is a mythical struggle for supremacy over tribal territories. Jacob won and sealed his victory by rich expiatory gifts to Esau, who thereupon vacated the land and withdrew to Seir (
Genesis
XXXVI. 6–8).

10
. The
Exodus
account of Moses, the only other Israelite hero with whom God wrestled, curiously resembles Jacob’s. Moses flees from Egypt in disgrace, serves Jethro the Midianite as a herdsman for the hand of his daughter Zipporah, whom he has treated courteously at a well and, returning home accompanied by his wife and sons, after a fiery vision of God—is suddenly attacked on the way by a supernatural being. Zipporah thereupon circumcises him—circumcision being, as the context shows, part of the marriage ceremony—and he later rules a Midianite-Israelite federation.

11
. Nevertheless, struggles in nightmares caused by an unquiet conscience provide a common enough metaphor for struggles with God who, according to
Hosea
XIII. 7, became to the sinful people ‘as a lion, as a leopard which watches on the way’. Nor could God’s hand be readily distinguished from Satan’s. Thus the plague punishing David’s sin was sent by God in one version (2
Samuel
XXIV. 1), but by Satan in another (1
Chronicles
XXI. 1); which justifies the midrash’s identification of Jacob’s adversary with Samael. The adversary’s refusal to give his name does not necessarily make him God, although God later refuses to disclose His to Moses (
Exodus
III. 14), or to Manoah, Samuel’s father (
Judges
XIII. 17–18); because all deities were chary of revealing their names lest these might be used for improper purposes—which is the original sense of ‘blasphemy’. Witches and sorcerers, throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, used long lists of divine names to strengthen their spells. The Romans had a habit of discovering the secret names of enemy gods by bribery or torture, and then enticing them to desert their cities: a technique known as
elicio.
Jesus, when expelling a devil from the madman at Gerasa, first demands his name (
Mark
V. 9).

12
. Thigh-bones were sacred to the gods in Greece as well as Palestine and constituted the royal portion among the Hebrews (1
Samuel
IX. 24). The practice of the Central African Bagiushu tribe—as reported by Mgr. Terhoorst, a Roman Catholic missionary—supports the anthropological rule ‘No taboo without its particular relaxation.’ The Bagiushu, though otherwise not cannibalistic, eat the flesh-covered thigh-bones of their dead chieftain, or of an enemy chieftain killed in battle, to inherit his courage; and leave all other parts of the body untouched. It cannot be proved that this practice prevailed in Biblical Canaan, but Samuel’s dismemberment of the sacred King Agag ‘before the Lord’ is read by some scholars as a eucharistic human sacrifice akin to the Arabic
naqi‘a
.

(
a
) Jacob saw Esau approach with four hundred men. He divided his household into two camps: Bilhah, Zilpah and their children were in the advance camp; Rachel, Leah and their children in the other. But Jacob found courage to go ahead of them all and prostrate himself seven times as he neared Esau.

Esau ran towards his brother, embraced and kissed him; both of them weeping for joy. Then he inquired: ‘Whose are yonder children?’ Jacob answered: ‘God in His mercy has given them to your slave; and these, my lord, are their mothers.’ They all came forward in turn and bowed low before Esau, who asked: ‘And yonder herds and droves, Brother, were they truly your gift to me?’ Jacob replied: ‘I trust that they will please my lord.’ Esau thanked him kindly, but said: ‘No, Brother, already I have more than enough livestock for my needs. Keep what is yours!’ Jacob insisted: ‘In token of your favour, my lord, pray deign to accept these poor gifts. I have seen my lord’s countenance shine like God’s. Indulge me this once, and take all, with your slave’s blessing; for God in His mercy has greatly enriched me.’

To set Jacob’s mind at ease, Esau accepted them, and said: ‘Come, ride with me to my city in Seir!’ Jacob answered: ‘My lord knows that I cannot travel so fast as he. Let him go ahead of his slave, who rides at a pace to suit the lambs, kids, calves, foals and little children. It will be weeks before we can reach my lord’s city.’

Esau said: ‘May I at least leave men to escort you?’

‘Pray do not trouble, my lord!’ Jacob cried.

So Esau rode home, while Jacob proceeded to Succoth and there built himself a house, and
shelters
for his flocks and herds.
³⁵⁸

(
b
) Some say that Jacob’s message to Esau was: ‘Thus speaks your slave Jacob: let my lord not think that the stolen blessing has stood me in good stead! Laban, during the twenty years of my service to him, deceived me time after time, grudging my wages, although I laboured faithfully. Yet God in His mercy at last bestowed oxen, asses, flocks, slaves, and bondmaids on your servant. I am now come
to Canaan, hoping for my lord’s pardon when he hears this humble and truthful account.’

Esau is said to have answered the messengers contemptuously: ‘Laban’s sons have told me of your master Jacob’s ingratitude: that he stole flocks and herds by sorcery, then fled without notice, abducting my cousins Leah and Rachel as though they were prisoners of war. The report does not astonish me: for this was how your master treated me too, long ago. I suffered in silence then; but now I shall ride out with an armed company and punish him as he deserves.’
³⁵⁹

(
c
) Some say that when the brothers met they were moved by true affection; that Esau forgave Jacob as they kissed and embraced; and that equal loving-kindness was shown between the many cousins, their children. Others, however, say that when Esau fell upon Jacob’s neck, he tried to bite through his jugular vein, but the neck became hard as ivory, blunting Esau’s teeth, which he therefore gnashed in futile rage.
³⁶⁰

(
d
) God reproved Jacob for calling Esau ‘my lord’, and himself ‘your slave’. He also said: ‘By likening Esau’s countenance to Mine, you have profaned what is holy!’ Jacob answered: ‘Lord of the Universe, pardon the fault! For the sake of peace I flattered the Wicked One, so that he should not kill me and my people.’ God cried: ‘Then, by your life, I will confirm what you have said: henceforth, Israel shall be Edom’s slave in this world, though his master in the next. And, because you called Esau “my lord” eight times, I shall cause eight kings to reign in Edom before any rise to rule over Israel!’ And so it came about. The eight kings of Edom were Bela, son of Beor; Jobab, son of Zerah; Husham; Hadad, son of Bedad; Samlah; Saul; Baal-Hanan, son of Achbor; and Hadar.
³⁶¹

(
e
) Jacob gave Esau pearls and precious stones, as well as flocks and herds, knowing that no virtue lies in treasure got abroad, and that these gifts would return to his descendants. What was left over, he sold; and, heaping the gold together, asked Esau: ‘Will you sell me your share of Machpelah for this heap of gold?’ Esau agreed, and Jacob set himself to acquire more wealth in the blessed Land of Israel.
³⁶²

(
f
) Jacob also prophesied: ‘Edom shall oppress Israel for centuries; but at last all the nations of the world will rise, taking from him land after land, city after city until, thrown back upon Beth Gubrin, he finds the Messiah of Israel lying in wait. Fleeing thence to Bozrah, Edom will cry: “Have You not set Bozrah aside, O Lord, as a city of refuge?” God shall seize Edom by his locks and answer:
“The avenger of blood must destroy this murderer!”, whereupon Elijah will slaughter him, spattering God’s garment with Edom’s blood.’
³⁶³

***

1
. The
Genesis
account consistently favours Esau at Jacob’s expense: not only by modem ethical standards, but by those of ancient Palestine. Esau refrains from vengeance and fratricide, remains dutiful to his parents, worships Isaac’s God and, no longer a wild and improvident hunter, succeeds so well as a pastoralist that he can afford to refuse a large gift of livestock in compensation for the theft of his blessing. Moreover, instead of repudiating the sale of the birthright, forced on him while he was starving, he peaceably evacuates the Canaanite pastures to which the agreement entitled Jacob, calls the cowardly wretch ‘brother’, weeps with pleasure at his return and, though Jacob’s guilty conscience prompts him to shameful obsequiousness, forgives wholeheartedly. Then he rides back to prepare a royal welcome on Mount Seir—an invitation studiously neglected by Jacob.

It was a Jewish commonplace that the worst day in Israel’s history had not been when Sennacherib led the Northern tribes into captivity, nor when Solomon’s temple was destroyed by Nebuchadrezzar; but when seventy scholars translated the Scriptures into Greek at the command of Ptolemy II (285–246
B.C.
). These Scriptures, which contained records of evil deeds done by their ancestors and reminders of God’s punishment for continual backsliding, should never, it was thought, have been divulged to Israel’s enemies. The Jacob-Esau myth must have embarrassed Jews of the Dispersal more than any other, since Jacob was Israel incarnate and they were heirs to his faults as well as his merits. Nor could midrashic glosses on the
Genesis
account—denigrating Esau and excusing Jacob—alter the scholarly text of the ‘Septuagint’.

2
. Again the puzzling question arises: how did the Israelites come to libel their eponymous ancestor in favour of their national enemy? The sole acceptable answer can be that the myth originated in Edom, and was brought to Jerusalem by Calebite and Kenazite clansmen early incorporated into Judah (see 42.
4
). Judah was a son of Leah, traditionally opposed both to Benjamin—the Rachel tribe whose royal dynasty he overthrew, and whose territory he swallowed—and to the other four Rachel tribes, Ephraim, Manasseh, Gad, and Naphtali, which formed the hard core of the Northern Kingdom. Leah’s hatred of Rachel is admitted in
Genesis;
and
the tradition of ‘Israel’ as originally consisting of Rachel tribes, with whom the Leah tribes made an uncomfortable alliance, will have encouraged the Edomite aristocracy of Judah—Caleb held Hebron and the ancestral shrine of Machpelah—to glorify their ancestor Esau at Israel’s expense. Moreover, by the time that
Genesis
was committed to writing, the Southern Kingdom of Judaea had temporarily lost its martial pride; and Jacob’s art of patient survival by bending yet never breaking, by using subterfuge instead of force, and by never accepting any but the Mosaic Law, passed as the height of wisdom.

3
. First-century
A.D.
Pharisees discouraged Jews from permanent residence abroad by decreeing Italy and other parts of the Roman world ‘unclean’, and by demanding purification ceremonies when they came home. That Jacob gave Esau all his wealth refers, perhaps, to the enormous sums raised by foreign Jews for the Edomite King Herod’s beautification of the Temple.

4
. The prophecy of Edom’s disaster at Bozrah—‘Edom’ means ‘Rome’—has been borrowed from a blood-thirsty Messianic prophecy in
Isaiah
LXIII, beginning: ‘Who is he that cometh from Edom, in reddened garments from Bozrah?’; and another, in
Jeremiah
XLIX. 13, prophesying Bozrah’s perpetual desolation. But Isaiah’s ‘Bozrah’ was either Bozrah in the Hauran, or Basra in the Persian Gulf, not the Edomite ‘little Bozrah’; and Jeremiah’s ‘Bozrah’ was Bezer, a Levitical city conquered by Moab, which appears as a city of refuge in
Deuteronomy
IV. 43. ‘Beth Gubrin’ is the Hebrew name of Eleutheropolis in Southern Judaea.

5
. Only the last four of the eight Edomite kings listed in
Genesis
are certainly historical.

(
a
) When Leah, after giving birth to six sons, conceived a seventh time, she pitied her barren sister Rachel, and prayed: ‘O Lord, let this child be a girl, lest my sister Rachel should again grow jealous!’ God then changed Leah’s child from male to female, and told her: ‘Because you pitied your sister Rachel, I will grant her a son.’ Thus Dinah was born to Leah; and Joseph to Rachel.
³⁶⁴

(
b
) Jacob feared that Esau would demand marriage with Dinah, as was his avuncular right; and therefore kept her hidden in a chest during the reunion at Mahanaim. God reproached Jacob for this, saying: ‘Since you have acted uncharitably towards your brother Esau, Dinah shall bear children to Job the Uzzite, no kinsman of yours! Moreover, since you rebuffed a circumcised son of Abraham, she shall yield her maidenhead to an uncircumcised Canaanite; and since you denied her lawful wedlock, she shall be taken unlawfully!’
³⁶⁵

(
c
) Dinah was modest and dutiful, never leaving Leah’s tent without permission. One day, however, while Jacob pastured his flocks near Mount Ephraim, a prince named Shechem, the first-born son of Hamor the Hivite, brought girls to dance and beat drums near the Israelite camp. Dinah stood watching and, overcome by love, he lured her to his house in the city of Shechem, and there lay with her. Jacob learned of Dinah’s disgrace during his sons’ absence, and did nothing until they returned. That Shechem had treated Dinah like a harlot incensed them beyond measure. Yet the brothers cloaked their rage when Hamor came, on Shechem’s behalf, asking Dinah’s hand in marriage and saying: ‘Come, my lords, live and trade among us! Since Shechem is set upon making Dinah his lawful wife, I will pay whatever bride-price you may demand; and it would make me happier yet if our two royal houses were allied by other unions also.’