Genesis 27:1-27 (abridged 1,2,4-6,8-27): When Isaac was old and his eyes were dim so that he could not see, he called his elder son Esau and said to him, “My son”; and he answered, “Here I am.” He said, “See, I am old; I do not know the day of my death…prepare for me savory food, such as I like, and bring it to me to eat, so that I may bless you before I die.”
Now Rebekah was listening when Isaac spoke to his son Esau. So when Esau went to the field to hunt for game and bring it, Rebekah said to her son Jacob, “I heard your father [speaking] to your brother Esau…Now therefore, my son, obey my word as I command you…you shall take [savory food] to your father to eat, so that he may bless you before he dies.” But Jacob said to his mother Rebekah, “Look, my brother Esau is a hairy man, and I am a man of smooth skin. Perhaps my father will feel me, and I shall seem to be mocking him, and bring a curse on myself and not a blessing.” His mother said to him, “Let your curse be on me, my son; only obey my word”…and his mother prepared savory food, such as his father loved. Then Rebekah took the best garments of her elder son Esau, which were with her in the house, and put them on her younger son Jacob; and she put the skins of the kids on his hands and on the smooth part of his neck. Then she handed the savory food, and the bread that she had prepared, to her son Jacob.
So he went in to his father, and said, “My father”; and he said, “Here I am; who are you, my son?” Jacob said to his father, “I am Esau your firstborn. I have done as you told me; now sit up and eat of my game, so that you may bless me.” But Isaac said to his son, “How is it that you have found it so quickly, my son?” He answered, “Because the Lord your God granted me success.” Then Isaac said to Jacob, “Come near, that I may feel you, my son, to know whether you are really my son Esau or not.” So Jacob went up to his father Isaac, who felt him and said, “The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.” He did not recognize him, because his hands were hairy like his brother Esau’s hands; so he blessed him. He said, “Are you really my son Esau?” He answered, “I am.” Then he said, “Bring it to me, that I may eat of my son’s game and bless you.” So he brought it to him, and he ate; and he brought him wine, and he drank. Then his father Isaac said to him, “Come near and kiss me, my son.” So he came near and kissed him; and he smelled the smell of his garments, and blessed him, and said, “Ah, the smell of my son is like the smell of a field that the Lord has blessed…
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Jacob, following the commands of his mother Rebekah, tricks his blind father Isaac and steals his elder brother Esau’s blessing. Isaac is not fooled by Jacob’s voice, but Isaac’s senses of touch and smell betray him. Feeling Jacob’s hands covered in goat-fur gloves, Isaac thinks he is touching Esau’s hairy hands. When Jacob kisses his blind, dying father after lying repeatedly to him, the father Isaac smells Esau’s clothes and is fully convinced that he is giving his blessing to Esau. Isaac is deceived on his deathbed and the Abrahamic religion continues from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob.
“The Bible reflects, with an astonishing realism, the existence of man as a creature living in the realm of time and space…and this makes [the Bible] curiously relevant to human life, in its complexity, as we have to live it,” writes the Biblical scholar C. H. Dodd in 1947. In the 1970s, a Tibetan Buddhist teacher says, “The challenge of [spiritual] warriorship is to live fully in this world as it is…with all its paradoxes.” Much of what we tend to critique in the Bible is that which we rightly critique in the world: senseless murders, vengeance, arrogance, supremacist views, hate, even the rivalries, tensions, and deceptions within families or among siblings.
Oftentimes, we turn to sacred texts to give us refuge, inspiration, a perspective on humanity and the world that is visionary, articulating what we humans can be and what this world will be, if we will only envision and embrace such a higher plane. At such times, sacred writings are resources for holy work, opening us to pathways of vastness for our better selves. The Bible often serves us as this guide on the right path, but both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament invite something else, something more. As we read stories such as the tale of Jacob stealing Esau’s blessing, we are invited to open ourselves into the work of holy tension. A depth of tension exists between our higher, better selves and our self-serving tendencies, including our capacity for duplicity. How shall we respond?
As Dodd notes, the Bible holds curious relevancy to our lived lives; its realism is astonishing. Do you know of people who have committed great wrongs to loved ones in order to maximize their own inheritances? Are you aware of people who have lied and successfully made false claims around someone’s death, compounding the pain of death with deceit and cunning? Have you ever been deceitful out of self-interest? The Bible plunges us into stories that are, as Dodd says, “of the same stuff as our individual experience of day-to-day happenings.” How lovely for those of us who hold the Bible as sacred! Rather than simply parading forth grandiloquent virtues and telling us to uphold them, the Bible tells nitty-gritty tales that make us wince, that even sometimes make us wince at ourselves.
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The Bible speaks truths about humanity that were present thousands of years ago and are present today. The Bible asks much of us : It asks us to read these tales, to hold the tensions of these stories, and, with all this, to continue to reach toward the sacred in ourselves, in our fellow humans, and in the world. Yes!
(Music: Courtesy of Adrian Von Ziegler, “Circle of Life.” )