Durn it. I clicked the wrong button and lost everything I had just typed. No biggie, since I hadn’t gone too far with it. I am going on a retreat this weekend with the youth of our church and won’t be able to blog the readings for Saturday or Sunday.
Genesis 26:17-27:46
After Abraham’s death, Isaac moved away and re-established himself in Gerar. He re-opened wells that the Philistines had filled in and met with some grief about it. He named the wells Esek, Sitnah, and Rehoboth, or Dispute, Opposition, and Room to Breath. Guess which well remained in his possession? I love to have literal (or approximate) translations of places’ names; it makes the story so much more vibrant.
Isaac was also growing old and wanted to give his blessing to his first born son, who had already sold his birthright to his brother for a bowl of chowder. I wonder if Isaac knew this? Maybe the blessing was not dependent on that? Not sure..
Anyway, Rebekah overhears Isaac’s plans and takes matters into her own hands. She tells Jacob to go get choice animals from the flock and she will prepare them. Isaac had told Esau to go get wild game; surely, the taste must have been different and I wonder if Rebekah was aware of that and had a plan to cover for it. She certainly had a plan to cover Jacob to make him feel like his brother.
We all know the rest of that story; it is reinterpreted in later years as the Matriarch Rebekah’s intention to keep the covenant with Abraham ensconced in a righteous individual. Apparently, Esau was a fighter and had married local women and was proving himself to be unfit to perpetuate the promise. I suppose if I had been raised in a tradition that had these alternate interpretations, I would be less inclined to see Rebekah and Jacob’s actions as deception. I tend to take Esau’s point of view — he is incensed at what his younger brother has done and I can see his point.
Now the question is: which interpretation is correct? The one that seems to come with the plain meaning of the text, to whit Rebekah and Jacob colluded against Esau and Isaac, OR Rebekah understood the significance of God’s promise to Abraham better than her menfolk and took roundabout means to ensure a more apt fulfillment of it through a more thoughtful son?
Does one of them have to take precedence? They look opposed to one another because the basic underlying character of each role is changed. Esau is still a bruiser and he either gets shafted or what he deserves. Jacob is either a co-conspirator with his mother or a more appropriate candidate for blessing. Rebekah is either a scheming overprotective mother or a wise, far-seeing prophetess who makes a truly tough decision. Isaac just comes off looking old and sentimental, either way.
I like the second interpretation because it redeems Rebekah from the traditional, Western imaging of women as essentially evil and not to be trusted. Initially, I didn’t like it because it seems to push the plain reading of the text beyond what is on the page. But since when have I been one to aquiesce to tradition?
Yet, it is still a bit difficult to totally go with that interpretation because Rebekah seems surprised and worried about Esau’s reaction to Jacob. She takes Jacob aside and tells thim to flee to her brother Laban’s house and then goes to Isaac and cooks up a story about the Hittite women not being suitable wives for their second son. Overall, the two interpretations may best be like two colors of Playdough combined in a way where some spots are totally blended and make a new color but where other spots still have dominant hues that don’t eliminate all evidence of either.
