shall suffer a lasting division.
One shall be stronger than the other;
the elder shall serve his younger brother.
And so it was that when the time came for Rebekah to be delivered, she gave birth to twin boys. The first one came out wrinkled and red and so hairy he seemed to be wearing a coat. And the second came immediately behind, clutching his brother’s heel.
So they named the first infant Esau. And the next they named Jacob, because already within the womb he was seizing his brother’s heel.
V
AS HE GREW into adulthood, Esau became a plainsman. Like his father he would go away by himself for months at a time, living off the land. Hunting. He had an accurate eye and an instinctive knowledge of his quarry: gazelle, oryx, ibex and all wild goats, mountain sheep—beasts of a gamier taste than fattened, domestic animals. A broad-chested, red-haired man, Esau lived by the strength of his arm. Even when he sat among the tents, he was not given to much talk.
Jacob, on the other hand, stayed continually in range of the household, the flocks, and fields and tents. He dearly loved a cunning conversation. Jacob’s face, like his mother’s, was smooth and mobile with intelligence. And he was a verbal fellow, more confident of his wit than of his arm.
Their father Isaac loved the game Esau brought home and cooked for him.
Their mother loved Jacob.
ONE WINTRY DAWN Esau returned from a long and unsuccessful hunt. He hadn’t eaten for several days, and he had just traveled an entire night afoot. He was starving.
As he approached the tents of his father he smelled a morning stew on the air. It tightened his stomach and made him mad for food. He followed the scent directly to the tent of his brother.
There sat Jacob, stirring a bubbling red pottage.
Esau could scarcely form the words. “Please,” he groaned, pointing toward the clay pot. “Please, Jacob, I am dying—”
Jacob said nothing for a moment. Then he looked up and smiled. “I think we can make a bargain,” he said.
Esau wiped a big hand across his mouth. “A bargain?”
Jacob grinned and uttered his next words with such swift articulation that Esau felt at first confused, then angry, and then just hungry, careless of anything else.
“Can a dead man inherit his father’s wealth,” Jacob said, “even if that man happens to be the elder of two brothers only? No, of course not. Dead men inherit nothing at all. If you die, brother, you’ve got nothing here and can get nothing hereafter. But if I give you food, I give you life now. In return for your life, then, you must give me that which, without your life, can mean nothing at all to you. Your birthright. So then here is the bargain, Esau: I give you life, you give me your birthright, and we are even.”
Jacob always talked like this, too fast for common folk to follow. Esau could only think of food. “Yes,” he said, reaching for the pot.
But Jacob pulled it back and with eyes suddenly steadfast said, “Swear it to me, Esau.”
Esau yelled, “I swear,” snatched the pot by main strength and carried it away in order to eat without the noise of his brother’s voice to annoy him.
IN THE DAYS of their youth, most children give more thought to present desires than to the future necessities. Though it may mean nothing to a young man then when his blood is high and his arm is strong and his father is healthy, a birthright is a terrible thing to lose. It is double the inheritance any other sibling will receive.
Rebekah knew that.
More than that, Rebekah knew of the peculiar blessing which had been handed from Abraham to his son, her husband.
For the Lord God had also appeared to Isaac in the night, saying, Fear nothing, Isaac. I am with you. I will bless you and multiply your descendants for the sake of Abraham my servant.
The very next day Isaac built an altar in that place, and worshiped the God of his father. Rebekah had watched the mystery of her husband’s behavior, and she had learned thereby both the faith and the prosperity of the family into which she had married.
VI
WHEN ISAAC HAD GROWN old and blind, he called Esau into his compartment and said, “I do not know the day of my death, except that it shall be soon. Now, then, Esau, take your bow and hunt game for me and prepare the savory food I love, that I may eat and bless you before I die.”
As soon as Esau left the tents for the fields, Rebekah called Jacob into her compartment and whispered, “Don’t talk, just listen. Just now your father sent Esau out to kill and cook meat for a very important meal. He plans to bless your brother before the Lord.” Rebekah took Jacob’s face between her hands and gazed sharply into his eyes. “There is no other blessing like the one he is about to bestow upon your brother,” she said. “It is the blessing his father gave to him, the blessing of God which promises children and land to him who is blessed with it!
“Therefore, go down to the goat herd and slaughter two kids. I will cook one the way your father likes it, savory, and you will carry the meat to him so that he blesses you first.”
Jacob whispered, “But Esau is hairy and I’m smooth. My father will feel the difference.”
“What’s hairier than a goat?” Rebekah said. “That’s why you will kill two kids, one for its pelt. We’ll cover your neck and arms with a good thick fur.”
“But what if my father discovers me? What if I get a curse instead of a blessing?”
“Keep your voice down,” said his mother. Then she hugged him briefly and said, “Upon me shall be the curse, my son. As for you, obey my word!”
So Jacob ran out and slaughtered two small goats with his own hand. Rebekah began to cook the one while Jacob skinned the other and scraped fat from the inside of the hide with the long edge of a knife. This fresh fur they tied to the backs of his hands, to his neck and shoulders—and over that they pulled one of the robes Esau used when hunting.
Rebekah placed a savory broiled meat into Jacob’s hand and whispered, “Go.”
So he entered his father’s compartment bearing food.
“My father,” said Jacob.
Isaac, sitting low upon his pallet, said, “Here I am. Who are you, son?”
Jacob said, “I am Esau. Your firstborn. I have done what you asked. Please sit up and eat that you might bless me—”
Isaac turned his blind face to the side. “Already?” he said. “How did you find game so quickly?”
“God gave me the speed.”
Isaac said, “Come here, son. Let me touch you.”
So Jacob drew near unto him, and Isaac stroked the goat hair. “The skin is Esau’s,” he murmured, “but the voice is Jacob’s. Are you truly Esau?”
Jacob said, “Yes. I am.”
Isaac said, “Let me kiss you.”
Jacob bent down and held very still while his father kissed his neck at the hem of the hunting robe.
Finally Isaac said, “Yes. It smells like Esau, yes. So let me eat of your game, my son, and I will bless you.”
When he had eaten, the old man spread his hands over the young man and, rocking to the rhythm of his language, chanted:
I smell the soil,
I smell the field the Lord has blessed!
May Heaven likewise
grant you fatness, grains and grapes,
both bread and wine abundantly.
May peoples serve you,
your mother’s sons bow down before you!
If any curse you
will be cursed,
and blessed be all who bless you, son,
forevermore.
And so it was done. Old Isaac subsided into weariness, and Jacob left the tent.
Almost immediately Esau returned from the hunt with a fine catch. He dressed and cooked the meat and brought it into Isaac’s compartment.
“Father,” he said, “arise, eat the meat you love so much, then bless me as you said.”
“Eat?” said Isaac, raising his head, blinking rapidly. “Eat? And what do you mean, ‘Bless you’? Wh
o is this? Who are you?”
“I am your son,” said Esau. “I am your firstborn son—”
“Esau?” Isaac widened his blind eyes.
“Yes, Esau. And I have obeyed your word—”
“Then who was here before you?” Isaac cried. “Whose food have I eaten—”
“What?” Esau whispered.
“—and who did I bless—”
“Father! What are you saying?”
“—yes, and he shall be blessed—”
“You blessed someone instead of me? O Father!”
Esau lifted his voice in a wild, bitter cry: “Father, Father, Father,” he wailed, “bless me also, O my father!”
Isaac said miserably, “Your brother has taken away your blessing, Esau.”
“Jacob!” cried Esau. “Oh, they were right to name you Jacob! Twice have you tripped me from my rightful place.”
“And I,” whispered Isaac, “I have given him lordship over you.”
Esau fell down to his knees and wept, “O Father, is there nothing left for me? Not one blessing left?”
The old man grew quiet. Finally he raised his hands above his elder son and spoke softly:
Far from fatness shall you live,
far from grain and grapes and wine;
and by the sword you must survive,
serving Jacob for a time.
But when you break the yoke of your brother,
it shall be broken, my son, forever!
So the second blessing, lesser than the first, was given.
And so Esau went forth from the tent of Isaac breathing threats against his younger brother: “I’ll wait until our father dies,” he said. “But then I will kill Jacob.”
IN THE EARLY dark hours of the following morning, Rebekah slipped into Jacob’s tent and woke him. “Get up,” she whispered, stroking his cheek and chin. “Jacob, get up. Your brother has taken an oath to murder you. Flee to my family in the old country, Haran. Run to your uncle Laban. When Esau’s anger has cooled, I will call you home again. But for now, go. Why should I lose two sons in a single day?”
So then Rebekah stood on a high rocky hill and watched the shadow of her dear one go. Softly he stole away as dawn began to touch the eastern sky.
REBEKAH NEVER SENT the message that Jacob could come home again. She died before she believed in his safety. She died without seeing her son again, and she was gathered to her husband’s people, to Abraham and Sarah in the cave of Machpelah.
THREE
Jacob
I
JACOB RAN a ridge road north by northeast. He kept to the spine of the hills which rose toward the oaks at Mamre, where his grandfather had so often sojourned. A stony road, it tore his sandals and cut his feet, but it didn’t hit high bluffs or drop into impassable gorges. He felt the breath of his brother’s threats upon his back. Jacob was outrunning his own death.
At noon he rested beneath an acacia tree—but grew too anxious to be still and then ran the rest of the afternoon without another pause. By evening the sun was low on his left, casting into darkness the treacherous descent toward the Salt Sea on his right.
Even into the night Jacob kept running, now tasting blood in his mouth, breathing hoarsely.
Then—in a barren place, suddenly—his legs failed him. He pitched face forward to the ground and lay still. He smelled the soil and the rock beneath his cheek. Above him the multitude of stars, the hosts of heaven, filled blackness with such tiny lights that the man felt diminished and solitary. His throat was raw. His muscles had seized like iron bands within him. The ground was cold. But he did not move. His head lay on a smooth rock. So then: that smooth rock would be his pillow. Jacob fell asleep.
And while he slept, he dreamed.
In his dream the night sky was completely empty, black, bereft of stars; but yet there was a falling and rising brightness near him. He looked and saw a broad staircase set with its foot on the earth and its head as high as the doors of heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending the staircase, coming and going, performing the myriad purposes of God.
He looked again, and there—standing above all, above the endless flight of stairs and the angels and the earth—he saw the Lord God himself.
And the Lord spoke to Jacob.
He said, I am the Lord, the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac. The land whereon you lie I will give to you and to your descendants. And your descendants shall be like the dust for multitude. And in you shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.
Behold, said the Lord, I am with you. I will keep you wherever you wander. And I will bring you back to this land. I will never leave you, never, until I have kept my promises—
Suddenly Jacob awoke from his dream, shaking with fear.
The night was visible again. The tiny stars had returned to their places, cold and distant. But nothing was the same. An acrid scent of the sacred lingered near the earth.
“Surely,” Jacob whispered, “the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it!” He rose to his knees. “Why, this is none other than the house of God! And this,” he said, gazing upward, “is the gate of heaven.”
Even as the sunrise began to enflame the eastern sky, Jacob took hold of his pillow-rock and heaved it from the ground. He set it on end as a pillar and poured oil over it to mark the holiness of the place.
“O Lord,” he cried, “if you will keep me and if you will bring me again to my father’s house in peace, then you shall be my God—and this standing stone shall be your house.”
So he named the place Beth-El, The House of God. And he went on his journey less lonely after that.
II
WHEN ABRAHAM HAD traveled this route a hundred years ago, he came with flocks and herds and a sizable household. The days of his journey were at least three times the days of Jacob’s. Even Abraham’s servant, when he rode ten camels back to Haran to find a wife for Isaac, took longer than Isaac’s son did.
Jacob was light on his feet, young and healthy and swift after all.
After twenty days he came into a wide, flat plain where one could see great distances unobstructed. There were sheep there. Jacob saw three flocks of sheep, all lying down at noonday—not grazing abroad, as he himself would have chosen if they had been his flocks.
Then he saw the shepherds. They, too, were lying down, their hands behind their heads. Beside them, unremoved, was a heavy stone upon the mouth of a cistern of water. So, then: not only were the flocks not grazing; neither were they drinking, though the water was there for them.
“My brothers!” Jacob called as he approached the shepherds. They turned their eyes toward him, but no one rose to greet him.
“Where am I?” he asked. “Where do you come from?”
A lean man said, “Haran.”
“Haran? Truly?” Jacob grinned. He could scarcely believe his good fortune. “Where? Which way to Haran?”
The same man pointed north. Jacob looked and saw a fourth flock coming slowly through the sunlight.
“Is it possible that you know Laban?” he asked. “Does anyone know Laban, the son of Bethuel?”
Another man nodded. “We know him.”
“Then I’m here!” cried Jacob. “This is exactly where I’m supposed to be.” Several shepherds cast wry glances at the young man. Jacob said, “How is Laban? Is it well with him?”
The same lean shepherd said, “Yes, of course. Why not? That one has sons and daughters enough to care for his stock. Look there. That’s one of his daughters coming now. Rachel.”
“Rachel,” Jacob said softly, glancing at the figure coming in her blowing robes.
Then with more vigor he said, “Why is everyone lying around? It’s noon. Why don’t you water your flocks and lead them off to pasture?”
Now, the lean shepherd squinted at Jacob as if to take his first true look at this foreigner, then turned over on his stomach. “It’s the rule,” he said. “No one waters his flock from this cistern till all the flocks are here
. Besides, it takes more than three men to move the stone.”
Rachel. As she came closer ahead of her flock, Jacob couldn’t help but stare at her. Rachel: her eyes were wide and shy, as moist as the eye of a ewe lamb, and as kind. She had a beautiful fall of dark hair. She was herself small, her bones delicate, but she moved with such an economy that she seemed strong withal.
Moreover, she didn’t have to utter a word. All she did was glance in Jacob’s direction, and immediately the young man leaped to serve her. By himself he hooked his hands beneath the cistern stone, lifted it, and rolled it aside. He rushed to her, took the jar she was carrying, and began with speed and splashing to descend and ascend the steps of the cistern, pouring water down troughs for the sake of her flock alone.
The shepherds who had so little energy before now came running with their own flocks and jars and cursings. Who did this fellow think he was, breaking the rules?
But this fellow had lost all interest in brother shepherds. His eyes were filled with this sister shepherd who stood quietly by and waited till her sheep were satisfied. Then she smiled and, in tones as musical as the turtledove’s, said, “Thank you, sir.”
The very sound of her voice released such a rush of lonely emotion that Jacob walked toward her with tears in his eyes.
“Rachel, daughter of Laban,” he whispered, “I am Jacob. I am the son of your father’s sister, Rebekah.”
“Jacob?” she said. “My father’s kinsman, Jacob?”
He nodded and smiled and kissed her. “Jacob.”
So Rachel ran north to Haran. And soon Laban himself came running back across the plain, a short, round, balding man, breathless from the run but full of compliments and attentions for his nephew. He threw his arms around Jacob and kissed him and led him by the elbow all the way back to his house.
The Book of God: The Bible as a Novel Page 4