Episode 286: Pete Enns - Pete Ruins Genesis (Part 4)
In this episode of The Bible for Normal People, Pete dives into the chaotic sibling soap opera of Jacob and Esau and all its trickery, questionable family dynamics, and divine wrestling matches. Pete explains how and why this ancient family drama was likely written and edited much later to make sense of Israel’s political squabbles. Join him as he explores the following questions:
What is the “Jacob cycle” in Genesis, and how does it compare to the Abraham cycle?
How does the Jacob story reflect Israel's political history and later conflicts?
What are the different sources (J, E, P) behind the Jacob story, and why do they matter?
Is the Jacob story historical, or is it a crafted narrative with deeper symbolism?
Why does the Jacob story seem inconsistent, as though “patched together”?
How does the Jacob and Esau story explain the relationship between Israel and Edom?
Did Esau and Jacob represent real individuals or personified nations, and why is this significant?
What is the significance of Jacob’s name change to “Israel”?
How do sibling rivalries and birthright struggles in Jacob’s family relate to Israel’s history?
What role do Jacob’s marriages and family dynamics play in his story and Israel’s origin?
Why is there so much trickery and deception in Jacob’s story?
What does Jacob’s dream of the stairway to heaven symbolize?
What is the significance of Jacob wrestling with a divine being, and how does it connect to Israel’s identity?
Why does the story end with Esau’s genealogy, and what does this reveal about Edom’s importance?
Quotables
Pithy, shareable, sometimes-less-than-280-character statements from the episode you can share.
“When you sew together a coat made from patches of material, you can see the seams where they were sewn together. With respect to the Bible, and the Jacob story here specifically, there are also seams which strongly suggest a sewer, an editor, a compiler artfully bringing these patches together to make a coat.” Pete Enns@theb4np
“Some have used the word legend to describe these stories in Genesis, and not without reason. At the end of the day, I think readers have to make up their own minds. I don't take issue with people who disagree with me on how much of this is historical, but for my money, the story of Jacob reads not like a thumbnail of a historical account, but as a crafted narrative that was composed intentionally by later Israelites who are all about explaining who they were and how they got there.” Pete Enns@theb4np
“Is Genesis a historical account of where all these nations, including Israel, came from? Or is Genesis telling an Israelite centered story written during the monarchic period and later—a story of their own beginnings, and the beginnings of some people that they really don't like very much? My money is on the latter.” Pete Enns@theb4np
“At any rate, the historicity of the Jacob story is problematic for modern historians, and seeing these stories as stories told for a reason rather than to provide a neutral historical account, that makes much more sense to me.” Pete Enns@theb4np
“When I read the story of Jacob, I do feel like I'm diving into a historical account of some sort, but a story written by people reflecting back on their origins long, long ago, and the origins of those around them.” Pete Enns@theb4np
“It is announced at the birth of these twins, by God, that they are nations and that the elder, Edom, will serve the younger, Israel. This will cause all sorts of conflicts. My sense of things is that these stories in Genesis—Jacob and Esau and the others—are not really stories of people who did this and that. They are rather commentaries on the ups and downs of the monarchic period. Those later conflicts are here staged in a story of warring brothers.” Pete Enns@theb4np
“What are we to think of Jacob here? He didn't hesitate to take Esau up on the offer. Is it because he knew his destiny and saw this as good a time as any to make his move? Perhaps he saw it as a divinely appointed time. Or was he just a scheming sort looking after his own interests? The fact that we don't know any of this, and we never will, makes this story wonderfully layered and complex. It's a story that just keeps on giving. It can be read from different angles.” Pete Enns@theb4np
“I still find myself reading the story and not quite sure how to interpret the backstory of who knew what. That makes me both suspicious of the characters while at the same time having sympathy for them. I think it's just a brilliant piece of editing and writing to make this story what it is.” Pete Enns@theb4np
“Here is the academic point: The story of Jacob and Esau and the blessings is a blending together of mainly two sources or two traditions. The editor or editors of the Pentateuch retained both stories for heaven knows, all sorts of reasons—but likely the main one is that they were both known. They give different takes and they're both preserved by mixing them together to appear as one big continuous story, which has enough holes in it, enough editorial seams. It has enough of those things just to raise questions of logical coherence and consistency. This is so common in the Pentateuch and elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible.” Pete Enns@theb4np
“Genesis is written from a later point of view, no earlier than the monarchy. And the author is drawing the geopolitical map of his people.” Pete Enns@theb4np
“This blessing of Isaac given to Esau reflects something we see so often in Genesis: a later political reality is written into the story of the deep past.”Pete Enns@theb4np
“Sibling strife and struggles over birthrights and blessings [are] all over Genesis and they reverberate all through the story of Israel and the Old Testament.” Pete Enns@theb4np
“Studying the Jacob story is a great introduction to source criticism.” Pete Enns@theb4np
“It's hard to explain these doublets, as they're called, these duplications of stories, as anything other than two different sources and having these stories brought together, stitched together.” Pete Enns@theb4np
“The scholarly consensus is that Genesis was written, edited, over several centuries during the first millennium BCE, not the second millennium, which is where these stories are set.”
Mentioned in This Episode
Class: November Class “Get a Grip on the Epistles: Understanding the New Testament Letters” with Jennifer Garcia Bashaw
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Pete: You're listening to the Bible for Normal People, the only God ordained podcast on the internet. I'm Pete Enns.
Jared: And I'm Jared Byas.
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Pete: All right, everybody. This is the last call to pay what you can for our November class, Get a Grip on the Epistles: Understanding the New Testament Letters taught by our very own, very smart nerd in residence, Dr. Jennifer Garcia Bashaw.
Jared: The epistles are among the most challenging genres in the New Testament for modern readers to understand. These letters are often fragments of larger discussions that we don't fully see, written with specific purposes and cultural context that can seem foreign or confusing to us today.
Pete: So in this class, Jennifer provides invaluable tools and insights to help us navigate these complexities and better grasp the meaning of the epistles in their original setting and their relevance for contemporary readers.
Jared: So the Pay What You Can window ends November 15th, then it's gonna cost you $25, but no matter when you purchase, you'll get access to watch the class right away, and it even comes with a study guide to help you follow along.
Pete: There's also a live Q&A on November 20th at 8 p.m. during which Jennifer will answer questions about all three of our fall classes.
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Pete: For more information and to sign up for this class, head to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/fall24.
Hey, I'm excited to announce that I have the chance to ruin even more stuff, and I wanted to invite you to join. I have a new segment on our Society of Normal People platform called, Drumroll “Pete Ruins More Stuff.” This new video series is going to take a deeper dive into the scholarly background of what I talk about on my Pete Ruins podcast episodes. And again, this regular video segment is going to be exclusive to members of our online community and will release the same day as my Pete Ruins episodes.
Think of it as an extended cut of the podcast on video. If you want access to Pete Ruins More Stuff plus other bonus podcast episodes, an all access pass to every single one of our classes, and a great community, become a member of the Society of Normal People today for as little as $12/month at thebiblefornormalpeople.com/join.
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to this series on Genesis. This is part four of five, and we spent the first two episodes just on the opening 11 chapters, because that's where a lot of the fun happens. And in the previous episode, we took a deep dive into the Abraham cycle. Now, I'm not sure if I used the word cycle to describe the Abraham story, but that's academic speak for a series of stories that are loosely related to each other. More like vignettes laced together than one continuous story. And the Joseph story, which will be our fifth and final episode of the Genesis series, is not a cycle, but reads like a short story. It's usually referred to in biblical scholarship as a novella, a small novel. The Jacob story, however, that's our topic for today, it's more like Abraham. It's more like a cycle. The Jacob story runs from chapter 25, verse 19, right in the middle of a chapter, through chapter 36. The story shifts to Joseph in chapter 37. Now, having said that, Jacob's presence is still felt long after chapter 36, and he hangs on to the end. He dies in chapter 49. And he's buried in chapter 50, which is the final chapter of Genesis.
So all in all, he gets about as much press as does Abraham, and why shouldn't he? He's a pivotal figure in Israel's story, namely by being named Israel in Chapter 32 for having, quote, wrestled with God. And also for having 13 named children, 12 boys and one girl. And the 12 boys, with some modification, become the 12 tribes of Israel.
[Teaser plays over music]
Pete: “The story of Jacob and Esau and the blessings is a blending together of mainly two sources or two traditions, the J source, and the other as the P source. For good reason, the scholarly consensus is that Genesis was written, edited, over several centuries during the first millennium BCE, not the second millennium, which is where these stories are set.”
[Ad break]
Pete: Okay. There are some recurring scholarly issues that come up with the story of Jacob. The first is the composite nature of the story. In other words, the Jacob story is composed of different traditions that were edited together. And this is once again, the academic issue of source criticism, which we've looked at a lot and which is alive and well in the Jacob story.
And I don't want to repeat all of what source criticism is about because, you know, we've done that already. But just, just to recap briefly, especially if this is your first episode in the Genesis series. But the three sources we see in the Jacob story are referred to as P, E, and J, capital letter P, E, and J.
J for Yahwist, for this author's preference to call God by God's name, Yahweh. Which, by the way, is spelled with a J in German, not a Y, which is where this theory took root. Hence, it's called the J Source. Then you have P for the Priestly Source, because this author's attention to priestly types of things is prominent throughout.
And the E Source. E for Elohist, because of that author's penchant for using the generic divine name Elohim, at least for now. That changes in the book of Exodus, and I've got a whole thing on that too you can listen to. Anyway, there are a couple of places where this theory of sources really helps explain why the story of Jacob looks so uneven and inconsistent.
And if you'll allow the metaphor, when you sew together a coat made from patches of material, you can see the seams where they were sewn together. With respect to the Bible, and the Jacob story here specifically, there are also seams which strongly suggest a sewer, an editor, a compiler artfully bringing these patches together to make a coat.
Another big issue with the Jacob story concerns historicity, namely, did all or any of this stuff actually happen? And folks, that is a valid question to ask. Remember folks, no one was sitting around taking notes. The book of Genesis was composed well into the monarchic period. So after the year 1000 BCE, relying on some various older written material and also oral tradition. Some have used the word legend to describe these stories in Genesis, and not without reason. At the end of the day, I think readers have to make up their own minds, and I don't take issue with people who disagree with me on how much of this is historical, but for my money, the story of Jacob reads not like a thumbnail of a historical account, but as a crafted narrative that was composed intentionally by later Israelites who are all about explaining who they were and how they got there.
Now on that point, remember from the last three episodes, we discussed how the writer of Genesis, who is actually more of an editor, probably a very intentional and thoughtful editor, but an editor nonetheless, but we discussed how this writer slash editor is laying out Israel's political geography.
Like the Canaanites, the Moabites, the Ammonites, and the Ishmaelites. Each of these nations are depicted in Genesis as individuals. Well, here we come to two more people who stand for nations. Jacob, who will later be renamed Israel, as if to make the point, and his fraternal twin Esau, who is Edom. Very explicit in the text, Esau stands for Edom, and Edom is another one of Israel's neighbors to the south and sort of east.
Now, Here is the issue then, which came first? This is a perennial issue for biblical scholars discussing almost anything, but which came first, the individuals or the nation, right? Now, in other words, are these stories of real people who then historically blossomed into nations generations later that bear their name, which is how Genesis describes it, or are the people in Genesis the individuals who are named Canaan, Moab, Ammon, Ishmael—are they literary characters created by the writer in order to tell a non-complementary story of where Israel's neighbors came from? That's really a fine point, and I hope I'm being clear, but let me put it with a little less nuance. Even though I would want to say it with even more nuance, but just to get the point across, here's the thing.
Is Genesis a historical account of where all these nations, including Israel, came from? Or is Genesis telling an Israelite centered story written during the monarchic period and later? A story of their own beginnings, and the beginnings of some people that they really don't like very much. My money is on the latter.
I don't think these stories are historical, even if there is ancient oral tradition that grounds some version of these stories in the way past. I don't deny that. In other words, there may be something very generally historical happening in these stories. For example, the importance of the town of Haran in the north for Israel's national identity.
This is the home up north where Abraham first settled after leaving Babylon, and to where Isaac and Jacob returned to get their wives. So maybe, and I think this is true, the Haran connection is simply deeply embedded in Israel's historical memory. And I think there's something very historical going on here. I have no problem thinking that could very well be true.
But the story itself is a narrative craft. It is a creation, and it includes what scholars refer to as the eponymous ancestors. These are fictional ancestors that have the same name as the nations. An example outside of the Bible is like Romulus being the founder and first king of Rome, or Helen, not Helen of Troy, but another Helen, is born of gods and is the eponymous progenitor of the Helennes, the Greeks. Right? That's where the word Hellenistic comes from.
At any rate, the historicity of the Jacob story is problematic for modern historians, and seeing these stories as stories told for a reason rather than to provide a neutral historical account, that makes much more sense to me. When I read the story of Jacob, I do feel like I'm diving into a historical account of some sort, but a story written by people reflecting back on their origins long, long ago, and the origins of those around them.
And with that, let's get into the story of Jacob itself. Here is a four point outline of the Jacob cycle. And as always, outlines are subjective, but I think also very helpful for organizing our thoughts. Just a quick overview here.
The first is Jacob in his parents house, and that starts in 25:19, and it goes into the first few verses of chapter 28, specifically through verse 9. Here we read of Jacob's birth, his brother Esau, we read about their parents, Isaac and Rebekah, and their deep family dysfunction. In this story, we also read of Isaac and Rebekah's journey to King Abimelech of the Philistines because of a famine. And while there, in an effort to save his own neck, he passed his wife off as his sister. And boy, I hope that sounds familiar. Abraham and Sarah had a similar situation in Egypt back in Genesis chapter 12.
Anyway, Isaac will appear again in the famous Blessing episode, and after that he is mentioned a few times, but doesn't do anything of note except die in chapter 35. Okay, that's part one. It's about Jacob and Esau in their parents’ house before they part ways.
The second part of the outline is Jacob's flight to the house of his uncle Laban in Haran, and that starts in chapter 28, verse 10, and goes through chapter 32, verse 2. And this is where Jacob has the dream of a stairway to heaven, or maybe it's a stairway from heaven, one or the other. And then in Haran, he marries his cousin Leah, and his other cousin Rachel, and their servant girls Bilhah and Zilpah. Well, he doesn't get married to them, but, um, he has children by them. And just a quick note here, Hebrew Bible scholar Wil Gafney reminds us that we should probably be calling these servant girls “womb slaves”, because that's what they're doing here in this story. So, by these four women, Jacob has 12 children born in Haran, and the last child, Benjamin, is not born until chapter 35 in the land of Canaan itself. And during his birth, Jacob's favorite wife, Rachel, dies.
Anyway, the third part goes from 32:3 through the end of chapter 34, and this short section concerns the reunion of Jacob and Esau. They didn't part on the best of terms twenty years earlier, and what happens here is quite surprising. It is in this section that Jacob has this famous scene of wrestling with a man, or is it God? the result of which is a name change for Jacob to Israel. Also, in this section, Jacob and his family arrive in Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan, where a truly horrible thing happens to one of Jacob's children, which will reverberate throughout the entire story of Israel by messing up the birth order of the sons of Jacob.
The fourth and final section is chapters 35 to 36, which, it seems to me, function as a transition to the Joseph story. Not just that, but that's one of its functions. Okay, let's look more closely at these four sections and I will highlight things that I think are interesting and that have attracted academic interest.
So part one, let's look at Jacob in his parents home. Right? And this, this part really is important. Like, like most beginnings of stories are, they set the stage for what happens later. So here, for one thing, Rebecca was barren. Isaac's wife Rebecca was barren, as was Sarah before her, and as will be Rachel after her. All three matriarchs are barren and conceive amid trying circumstances and after seeking divine intervention.
And as a side note here, I want to remind us of something I tried to emphasize in episode 1 of the series. The Garden of Eden and God's pronouncement to Eve that conceiving and bearing children will be sorrowful events. And that is certainly the case with Sarah. She was barren, then conceived Isaac, which caused great conflict with Hagar and Ishmael. Rebecca is barren, God opens her womb, and her fraternal twin sons will have great conflict. As we will see. And later, Jacob's wife, Rachel, will need her womb opened by God as well. Her firstborn is Joseph, who will be in great conflict with his brothers.
Anyway, back to the Jacob story. After granting Rebecca her prayer to have children, God tells her that in fact, two nations are in her womb, but they will be divided, and the elder will wind up serving the younger. Her two children, of course, are Jacob the younger and Esau the elder, who famously do not get along, which we're getting to.
Now, more to the point, these two children are nations, and I think here the writer is ringing a bell to get our attention. Esau, because of his penchant for red meat, is nicknamed Edom. The Hebrew word for red and the name of one of Israel's immediate neighbors to the south and southeast, the Edomites. And Jacob will later be renamed Israel.
This moment in the story is one big preview of coming attractions of the monarchic period. At that point, Israel will have a closer, different kind of political relationship to Edom than their other neighbors, but will also engage in something like sibling strife. We'll get to that a bit more in a few minutes. I don't want to jump ahead too quickly.
The point, though, is that it is announced at the birth of these twins by God that they are nations and that the elder, Edom, will serve the younger, Israel. This will cause all sorts of conflicts. And not to repeat myself unnecessarily, but my sense of things is that these stories in Genesis, Jacob and Esau and the others, are not really stories of people who did this and that. They are rather commentaries on the ups and downs of the monarchic period. Those later conflicts are here staged in a story of warring brothers. And again, I hope this rings a bell for some of you, especially if you've listened to the previous Genesis episodes. The monarchic era writer of Genesis is drawing Israel's geopolitical map.Genesis was written to place these later monarchic era conflicts into Israel's origin story. And those conflicts are here for all to see, announced already in the birth of the twins. They are two nations, and the younger Jacob will be supreme. He grabs his elder brother's heel as they come from the womb. The word Jacob is derived from the Hebrew word for heel.
And to top it all off, the twins couldn't be more different. Esau is a hunter, a brutish sort, who is controlled by his stomach, while Jacob is a quiet man who preferred the indoors. The birth of the twins will result in family tensions. Again, another echo of the pronouncement of God to Eve that the very presence of children will bring sorrow.
And it won't help things that each parent had their favorite. For Isaac, it was the firstborn, of course, Esau. For Rebecca, well, she put her money on Jacob. Of course, why'd she do that? Because Rebecca knew that her youngest was destined to come out on top. God told her at their birth. But here's the thing. Much of the storyline of the next couple of chapters, at least, are fueled by a frustrating ambiguity. Who else knows about this promise? Does Isaac? And, you know, he just went all default and cozied up to his firstborn. Can we blame him? Did he do this in defiance of the divine pronouncement? Or, I think more likely, did he not know about it at all? Maybe Rebecca kept the divine oracle a secret? And did she even tell Jacob? Did he grow up knowing he would be destined to rule over his elder brother? In the very next episode, chapter 25, Esau famously sold his birthright to Jacob in exchange for a hot meal after Esau returned from a hunting trip.
So, what are we to think of Jacob here? He didn't hesitate to take Esau up on the offer. Is it because he knew his destiny and saw this as, you know, as good a time as any to make his move? Perhaps he saw it as a divinely appointed time. Or, was he just a scheming sort looking after his own interests? The fact that we don't know any of this, and we never will, makes this story wonderfully layered and complex. It's a story that just keeps on giving. It can be read from different angles. And I still find myself reading the story and not quite sure how to interpret the backstory of who knew what. That makes me both suspicious of the characters while at the same time having sympathy for them. I think it's just a brilliant piece of editing and writing to make this story what it is.
[Ad break]
Okay, continuing here in part one. In chapter 26 is a story of Isaac and Abimelech. Now, he is the king of the Philistines. Just like his father Abraham, Isaac passes off his wife as his sister for fear of being killed because of her beauty. This story interrupts the flow, by the way. This whole chapter 6 business with Isaac and Abimelech, it just interrupts the flow of the story. See, after all, right, the twins were already born and grown up enough for Esau to sell his birthright. That's in the previous chapter. But here, where are the kids? This incident, meaning this incident of Isaac and Abimelech, is self evidently and intentionally and clearly out of place. It's almost like an interruption in the action to try to make a point.
Here we have Isaac and Rebekah, apparently pre-kids. And they sojourn to the Philistines because of a famine, and Isaac passes his wife off as his sister. An obvious replay of Abraham and Sarah going down to Egypt. And like that story, we shouldn't think too ill of Isaac, perhaps. If he is the child of promise, the chosen one to bring about the people of Israel, well, he needs to stay alive, which is what motivated Abraham as well.
So the purpose of this story seems to be to remind us that, well, Isaac is Abraham's son, the chosen child of promise, and that the divine line will continue through him to his son, whom Isaac no doubt thinks will be Esau, the elder, just like Abraham thought that Ishmael, the elder, would be his heir. Isaac is a mirror image of Abraham, his father.
Now, after this aside in chapter 26, we return to the action. We are told that Esau married two Hittite women. This sets up Esau as unfit to be the elder son. Later, Jacob will go to Abram's home country of Haran to get his wife from his own clan. Anyway, this gets interesting, so just hang with me here for a minute. This is one of these pivotal moments in biblical scholarship in the story of Jacob. Esau marrying the Hittite woman is at the end of chapter 26. Just, I know it's hard to do this if you don't have a Bible in front of you, but just hang with me. End of chapter 26, the last two verses, 34 and 35, this is where Esau marries Hittite women.
Next is chapter 27, and that's the famous story of how Jacob and Rebekah schemed together to have the old and visually impaired Isaac bless Jacob, thinking he was blessing Esau. Right? They tricked Isaac. But then, see, in the last verse of chapter 27, we move back to Esau and his Hittite wives. Rebekah says to Isaac, “I am weary of my life because of the Hittite women. If Jacob marries one of the Hittite women such as these, one of the women of the land, what good will my life be to me?” This is hugely important for understanding how this story was composed. The story of Jacob's stolen blessing, tricking Isaac in chapter 27, is inserted between these two other stories that are about Esau getting Hittite wives, much to the chagrin of his mother.
Now, hold a tight focus here. Do the best you can. We clearly have two sources at work here. The question we need to ask of the text is how did Esau lose his blessing as firstborn son? We have the Hittite wife issue at the end of chapter 26, which is then resumed at the end of chapter 27. In between, we have a story of how Esau lost his blessing as firstborn through trickery.
That story in chapter 27 is an explanation for how Jacob became the elder son, through trickery. However, Rebecca's complaint to Isaac about Esau having Hittite wives, that's again at the end of chapter 27, well, that's followed by another account of how Jacob, rather than Esau, came to receive his father's blessing.
In other words, we have two conflicting accounts of how and why Jacob received the blessing of the firstborn. In the better known story, that's in chapter 27, Jacob dresses up to look and feel and smell like Esau to fool his frail father Isaac Gain the blessing in the second story. The blessing to Jacob is a direct result, not of being fooled, but of Esau doing the very bad deed of marrying foreign women.
In the first story, Jacob is the scoundrel, along with Rebecca in the second story. Esau is a scoundrel. In the first story, we see a lot of family discord. Isaac finds out he's been duped, as does Esau. Esau clamors for a blessing of his own, but Isaac says, yeah, I'm fresh out of blessing, so he gives rather what can only be called an anti-blessing, not really a curse, but it's just not good.
Life will be hard, you'll be prone to violence, and you will serve your brother. By the way, um, that's verse 40, and here the promise of God given to Rebekah that the elder will serve the younger is now being realized. But, by the way, folks, this is like what we saw in an earlier episode where Noah says to Ham that Canaan will serve Shem. There are just, we could explore that, we're not going to, but there are so many interconnections in these stories in Genesis.
Anyway, so Esau finds out about it, and he really hates Jacob and wants to kill him, so Rebekah finds out about it and tells Jacob to flee to Haran. That story ends in chapter 27, toward the end in verse 45, and it's picked up again in 28:10, with Jacob leaving and heading for Haran. In between, we have the other story of Jacob being blessed because of Esau's Hittite wives. Here, Isaac blesses Jacob, who leaves Pharaon, without the slightest hint of anybody fleeing from anybody for fear of anything.
You know, I hope all this hasn't been too busy, especially, again, if you're driving or at the gym or something like that, but just in case you find it helpful, try this next time you're sitting down with the Bible. Read chapter 26 verses 34 to 35 and then skip to chapter 27 verse 46 and keep reading into chapter 28 verse 9. It reads like a complete story where Isaac decides to bless Jacob because of Esau's poor marital choices. And then Jacob leaves to get his wife from among his own people in Haran like a good boy.
Right, he's not going to get a wife like his, you know, like Esau did, he's going to get his wife from his own people. Okay, after you do that, then go back, circle back, and just read chapter 27, that famous story. Starts in verse 1, goes through verse 45. That's the story of Isaac being tricked into blessing Jacob instead of Esau and Jacob fleeing to Haran for safety.
So, with all that, I just find this so fascinating, folks, but with all that, here is the academic point. The story of Jacob and Esau and the blessings is a blending together of mainly two sources or two traditions. Again, usually referred to here as the J source, that's the Jacob tricked Isaac story, and the other as the P source. That's Esau married Hittite women version. The editor or editors of the Pentateuch retained both stories for heaven knows, all sorts of reasons, but likely the main one is that they were both known. They give different takes and they're both preserved by mixing them together to appear as one big continuous story, which has enough holes in it, enough editorial seams. It has enough of those things just to raise questions of logical coherence and consistency. This is so common in the Pentateuch and elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible.
And as an aside, seeing these layers, this melding of traditions, is one of the great insights of biblical scholarship over the last several hundred years.
Now, while we're on this part of the story, I want to focus on one verse, chapter 27 verse 40, because it illustrates something I've been saying throughout this Genesis series, including a couple of times already in this episode, namely that Genesis is written from a later point of view, no earlier than the monarchy. And the author is drawing the geopolitical map of his people. 27 verse 40 is a great example of this. And here's what it says. I'm going to push it back to verse 38. This is where Esau is just beside himself because his father doesn't have a blessing for him because he gave the blessing to Jacob through subterfuge.
Okay. So, here's what it says. “Esau said to his father, Have you only one blessing, Father? Bless me. Me also, Father. And Esau lifted up his voice and wept. Then his father Isaac answered him,” by the way, this is the only blessing he has left, right? “See, away from the fatness of the earth shall your home be, and away from the dew of heaven on high.”
Right, in other words, your land, Edom, will not be as lush as the land of Israel. “By your sword you shall live, and you shall serve your brother.” Later, Edom becomes Israel's vassal for a time. “But when you break loose,” this is how the verse ends, “but when you break loose, you shall break his yoke from your neck.” Edom will successfully revolt against Israel. See, it's that last part that's telling. Edom will be under Israel's thumb, but then rebel. We see in 1 Kings 22, verse 47, that at one point, Edom is without a king and under a governor. And in 2 Kings 3 verse 9, Edom was enlisted in the attack on Moab led by the combined forces of Judah and Israel.
So there's something going on there. There's a relationship between Edom and Israel or Judah. A little further along, however, we read in 2 Kings chapter 8 verses 20 to 22 that Edom, finally, revolted and set up a king of their own.
My point is that this blessing of Isaac given to Esau reflects something we see so often in Genesis. A later political reality is written into the story of the deep past. Edom's vassal status and then rebellion against Israel is written into Israel's origin story.
Okay, part two. Let's move on to the next part of the outline here. And this begins in 28:10 with Jacob's trek to Haran and ends with Jacob's departure with his two wives, two concubines, and children to head back to their home to Canaan. Some well known moments happen in this story.
First, on the way, Jacob stopped at a, quote, certain place. He grabs a stone for a pillow and falls asleep. In his dream, he has a vision of angels ascending and descending a ladder reaching to heaven. A, quite literally, stairway to heaven, as it were. Or maybe it's a ramp, but that doesn't matter.
This certainly indicates that the place is a holy place. And in this dream, the Lord himself stood either beside Jacob or above the ladder and announces to Jacob the divine promise given to Abraham and Isaac before him. This land he is now resting on is being given to him and to his uncountable offspring.
Jacob woke up and was quite taken by this dream and announced this place as a gate to heaven. And so he renamed the city of Luz, Beth El, which in Hebrew is Beit El, literally house of God. By the way, another Beit town in the Bible is Beit Lechem or Bethlehem, which means house of bread. And you can drive by synagogues today with names that have Beit in it, like Beth Or.
It's spelled Beth or, but it's, in Biblical Hebrew, it's usually, that TH is pronounced as a T. And in modern Hebrew, it's pronounced as a TH. But, so, the ancient pronunciation would be something like Bate or, House of Light. Or Beit Israel, Beth Israel, House of Israel. Or Beth Am, or Beit Am, House of the People. Or just one more, Beit, or Beth Shalom, House of Peace.
Anyway, when Jacob woke up, he took his rock pillow and set it up as a pillar. And archaeologists have found such pillars in various places in ancient Canaan, and they no doubt were regarded as sacred objects. He then made a vow, and a pretty curious, maybe even unexpected one at that.
He said that if God will be with him and take care of him, when he returns to his own home safely, and not before, then the God of Jacob's fathers will be his God too. It's just worth noting, it seems like he's asking God to prove himself, testing God, so to speak. Well, the rest of this section deals with Jacob's landing in his Uncle Laban's house.
As he approaches Haran, he stops at a well, where he finds out that he is on Laban's land. Then Rachel, one of Laban's daughters, shows up with her father's sheep. Jacob went right up to her, rolled the stone away so she could water her sheep, and then kissed her and wept. Now this scene might remind you of how Isaac and Rebekah met, and also how Moses would come to meet his wife Zipporah in the book of Exodus. There is clearly a meet your wife by a well theme in Genesis.
Anyway, Laban is very much excited to meet him, and Jacob vows to serve Laban for seven years to marry Laban's youngest daughter. Well, Laban agrees, only to turn around and trick Jacob by switching out Rachel on their wedding night for the elder sister Leah.
Now, before you go crying foul, Jacob gets everything he deserves. He's a trickster himself. He tricked his father into leapfrogging over his elder brother, and now he, in a way, is trying to make Rachel leapfrog over her elder sister. See, one of the funny things here, just as an aside, is whether all this leapfrogging of younger over elder is something that's divinely ordained or just a big problem.
And it, there seems to be hints of both of those attitudes in these stories. I just find that so fascinating. Anyway, Laban's move here is a trick of his own that, let's say, restores the balance in the scales. And I love this exchange in chapter 29, verses 25 and 26. “And Jacob said to Laban, what is this you have done to me? Did I not serve you for Rachel? Why then have you deceived me? Laban said, This is not done in our country. Giving the younger before the firstborn.” You know, it's like, Hey Jacob, I don't know how you do things in your part of the world, but in these here parts, we respect birth order. But it could be worse.
Well, after seven days, you know, that's the festival length, Laban gives Rachel to Jacob, which predictably causes a lot of envy, especially since Rachel is barren and Leah is not, so Leah gives Jacob four sons and barren Rachel gives her servant Bilhah to Jacob to have children through her. Again, very much a repeat of the Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar story.
And that resulted in two sons. Not to be outdone, Leah gives her servant, Zilpah, to Jacob, which produces two more sons. So now we have eight total. Next, and this is weird, as part of an exchange between the sisters, Rachel agrees to let Jacob sleep with Leah in exchange for some of Leah's mandrakes which were thought to increase fertility at the time. Remember, Rachel's barren, right? Leah said fine, and she bore two more sons to Jacob and a daughter by the name of Dinah. In Hebrew, it would be pronounced Dinah. But then God remembers Rachel, and she bore her first son, Joseph. Whatever the relationship is between eating the mandrakes and God remembering Rachel, it's sort of like maybe both causes are presumed.
There's, quote, a natural cause and also a divine cause, and honestly, that's a podcast all in itself to see how there are divine and human agencies sort of given credit for certain activities, certain events in the Bible. The same phrase, remembering, is also spoken about Sarah's miraculous birth, God remembered.
So at this point, we have 11 sons, and one daughter, and the youngest son is Joseph, and the 12th son, Benjamin, will be born much later, I mentioned this before, in Rachel's old age when they are back in Canaan. That's going to happen in chapter 35, verse 18. The other children are all born in Haran, and Rachel dies in childbirth.
Next, we have some scenes that set up Jacob's return home with wives and family in tow. First, you know, it's been years, and it's time for Jacob to move on. So, Laban agrees to let Jacob keep every speckled and spotted sheep and goat and every black lamb. Meh, so far so good, whatever. But Laban, hmm, tricky Laban, decides that night to remove all the spotted animals, clearly in an effort to reduce the likelihood of spotted and speckled being born to Jacob.
Laban then took off and put three day’s distance between him and Jacob. But Jacob had a counter trick. He knew what was going on. He's a trickster himself. You can't fool him that easily. He employed a curious breeding strategy whereby he took speckled and striped tree branches and placed them at the feeding troughs, which apparently resulted in speckled, striped, and spotted animals. So much trickery going on. My goodness. What is it with these people?
Anyway, Jacob, I'm sort of rooting for him at this point. He got to be quite rich as a result, which Laban's sons noticed, which led Jacob and his family to flee back home to Canaan. Laban, what does he do? Well, he gives chase, he catches up to him and confronts his trickery.
And he asked why he left so suddenly without even a chance to say goodbye to his daughters and grandchildren. I think this is a bit passive aggressive. He then accuses them of stealing his household gods, a reference to small figurines of deities that were used in worship. You know, apparently Laban having idols was not something worth dwelling on or even explaining. And neither is the fact that Rachel is the one who stole them. Why would she do that? Well, to take her gods with her, I guess.
But you know, Jacob, he didn't know anything about this and orders that whoever took them will not live. And the only reason Rachel escapes detection is because she hid the idols in her saddlebag. And Laban was not able to search the bag because Rachel could not get up to let him. As she said, the way of women is upon me. Now it's not clear to me from the story itself, but I suspect Rachel is getting into the trickster theme of this section of Genesis.
And long story short, they part ways in peace. Jacob and Laban make a covenant between them. The covenant involves a stone pillar, a heap of stones, a ceremonial meal, and a sacrifice. And this is how they made agreements back then. And so they all left and headed home. On the way back, angels meet Jacob, and the stage is set for the most potentially awkward reunion ever. Which brings us to part three, and begins with the reunion of Jacob and Esau, and ends with the heinous incident involving the sister.
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So, part three. This is a short section, it's only two chapters. So, Jacob and family are heading home, and as they get closer, it apparently dawns on Jacob, uh, that he and Esau did not depart on the best of terms. So, he sends messengers ahead to see where things stand, and possibly smooth over a potentially awkward situation.
They return with news that Esau, he's heading this way with 400 men, which sounds menacing and that is how Jacob took it. So Jacob goes into prayer mode and asks God to protect him. The next day he sends his messengers back with presents to appease Esau, namely a lot of goats, rams, ewes, camels, cows, bulls, donkeys, and the like.
They're to be presented to Esau not all at once, but in four waves, leaving enough time between them, enough distance between them that Esau doesn't know that the next one is coming. So, he gets this wave of gifts. The next night, while waiting to see how that would work, Jacob took his family and crossed the Jabbok River, which is one of the borders to Israelite territory.
So, he is now in Canaan. He's now back home. And Jacob went off alone and wound up wrestling with a man all night until daybreak, though it seems that this being is more than a man. In fact, Jacob calls the place Peniel, which means face of God, for I have seen the face of God and yet my life is preserved. That's in 32:30.
So, this is also where Jacob's name is changed to Israel, though there is a second version of this story in chapter 35, which I'll mention when we get to that. Anyway, see, the name Israel, here's what's going on. It sounds like the Hebrew phrase, the one who strives with God, or something similar to that.
But this is what scholars refer to as a folk etymology. What the word Israel actually means, and where the word came from, is something of a historical mystery, but the biblical writer here, what he's doing is he's tying the meaning of the name of his people. He's tying it to this wrestling match. This is how the writer understands the meaning of the word Israel.
See, if I can draw a really bad analogy, it's like being called Americans. Now, off the top of their heads, I imagine most Americans don't really know the historical origins of this term, though we can look it up pretty quickly. A folk etymology, however, could be something like this. And so they were called Americans, for a mere number of them had an I can do spirit that built this country. So you get it? American, uh, mere I can? You know, that's lame, but it makes my point. That this is not really an explanation of the term, it's using the term to make a theological point in the case of Israel.
But you know, for me, the bigger point is this, whatever its historical roots, the writer understands the name to refer to Israel's conflict with God and humans, which is, you have to admit, a pretty spot on description of Israel as this story is told in the Bible, not just here in Genesis, but throughout.
Also, the match led to Jacob coming away with a limp, which is said to explain why, quote, to this day, Israelites do not eat the thigh muscle on the hip socket. So, this story is an explanation of a later custom written into Israel's story at a later time. Hence the phrase, to this day. What day is that exactly? Well, the day when this stuff was written down, when was that? Well, it's a good question. We can safely say, and to cut to the chase, it means much later, probably during the time of the monarchy.
So, after this, Jacob sees Esau coming. Uh oh. And what does he do? He puts his wife and kids in front of him. And I assume not as a shield, but just to sort of play on Esau's sympathies. Hey, don't hurt me. I, I got a big family here, right? So he went on ahead and bowed to his brother Esau seven times, hoping he gets away with not being killed here. But lo and behold, see, it seems all that was not needed. Esau is deliriously happy to see his long lost brother. Jacob also presents him with a gift, which it's, to me, it's a little bit curious in the text.
It's not specified what the gift is, but it might be the animals sent to him by Jacob's servants. I don't know. It doesn't matter. But Esau accepts the gift, which in Hebrew is b'rakhah, which is the word used in chapter 27 to describe the blessing, b'rakhah, Jacob stole from Esau. Jacob stole the b'rakhah blessing and now he gives b'rakhah back.
Now, Esau doesn't leapfrog into first in line anymore, the eldest of Isaac and Rebekah's sons, but there is still a payback that has happened. See, we're all good now. Jacob has recompensed Esau for his trickery. Now, after all this, Jacob and family continue to the city of Shechem. Again, we're in Canaan now, right?
Now, while there, Jacob's daughter by Leah, Dinah, is walking about and catches the eye of a Shechem son of Hamor and a prince, and who then sexually assaults her. Dinah's brothers find out about it and are fit to be tied for, I'm quoting here chapter 34 verse 7, “He,” Shechem, “had committed an outrage in Israel by lying with Jacob's daughter, for such a thing ought not to be done.”
This is the kind of incidental detail that is easy to miss, but it might be of interest to notice that Israel here, in this verse, refers to a nation by that name, not Jacob, right? Let me read it again. “For he, Shechem, had committed an outrage in Israel by lying with Jacob's daughter, for such a thing ought not to be done.”
That's presuming the existence of an entity named Israel, which is the nation. And this is a very clear indication, in my point of view, that this story is being told from a later time, a later vantage point, when Israel was, well, Israel. In other words, during the monarchy. Anyway, the story continues with a treaty between the two peoples where Dinah is promised to Shechem for a wife.
The sons of Jacob only agree to this if the Shechemite men all agree to be circumcised. Which, rather amazingly, they do agree to. But it was a ruse. While the Shechemites were recovering, two of Jacob's sons, Simeon and Levi, put the men of Shechem to the sword. This is significant for a couple reasons, but the main reason I want to talk about here is that these two sons, Simeon and Levi, are, in that order, sons number two and number three in the birth order of Jacob's sons.
Now, we'll see this later in Genesis, but this act will cause them to lose their status as second and third born. The first born, Reuben, he will also be pushed aside, though for a very different reason, which we'll get to in the next episode. So, the point is that these are the first three sons of Jacob: Reuben, Simeon, and Levi, and they're all by Leah.
The first three have lost their elder born status. Who's the next one in line? Who leapfrogs over the brothers to become important, more important than his station allows? Well, it's none other than Judah. See, we have here another struggle involving who gets the privileges of the firstborn. Here again, we have a younger brother, Judah, leapfrogging not over just one, but three elder brothers.
Judah, of course, is very important later on in the story. He will be the tribe that gives us King David, who, true to form, is the youngest of his brothers who becomes king anyway. Judah will then become the southern nation of Judah, the tribe Judah, will become the southern nation of Judah after the monarchy divided. This is after Solomon's death, around 930 ish. And which alone they survived exile, right? The South came back, the North was exiled, they never came back. So, sibling strife and struggles over birthrights and blessings, they're all over Genesis and they reverberate all through the story of Israel and the Old Testament.
And just, you know, to be very clear, I think where all this is going, this leapfrogging of one son over another, is to show the supremacy of the tribe of Judah, and it's to show the favored status of the younger son, because that's the one that survived exile, the others didn't. He alone is left. And that reality of Judah's survival is, I believe, written into the story of Genesis here. Judah will eventually come out on top, and that's been the case for a very, very long time.
Okay, that's it for the first three parts. The fourth part, and this will be pretty brief, folks, I just want to note three things that happen in this final section of the story, and this is in chapters 35 and 36.
This is how chapter 35 begins. This is a reference back to chapter 28, where Jacob has a dream of angels ascending and descending to heaven, and he names the place Bethel, house of God, right? Jacob returns to Bethel. So, there he is, and he is to settle it and build an altar, quote, to the God who appeared to you when you fled from Esau.
In order to build this altar, Jacob's household had to put away their foreign gods. Remember, when they fled from Laban's house, chapter 31, Rachel had one of Laban's idols tucked away in her saddlebag, which she lied about? Now? Well. Now, it's time to get serious and put all of that away. From a scholarly viewpoint, something quite interesting about chapter 35, especially verses 9 to 15, is how it repeats information we already have.
Cut to the chase. We have here in this section, chapter 35, verses 9 to 15, the priestly version of Jacob's name change to Israel, which was already given in chapter 32, right? It happens during the wrestling match between Jacob and God at the Jabbok River. That, back in chapter 32, well, that's the Yahwist version, the J version.
Here in chapter 35, we have the priestly version, which ties the name change to Bethel. In fact, it is here, at this moment, that Jacob names his holy place Beth El, even though he had already done that thing in chapter 32, verse 28. Now, just as a quick aside here, folks, if any of you listening find this to be of any interest, as I do to myself, but I'm sort of weird, if you're interested in this idea of sources, studying the Jacob story is a great introduction to source criticism. There are many other places in Genesis, but I just find these to be so intriguing, and I think maybe in some respects very clear. So, if you've ever wondered why anyone would say something as just daft that Genesis is a book that's actually an editing of sources, not just a book, but an editor coming along and tying these sources together, if you've wondered about that, the Jacob story illustrates this question very clearly. And it's hard to explain these doublets, as they're called, these duplications of stories, as anything other than two different sources and having these stories brought together, stitched together.
Alright, moving along, they left Bethel, and Rachel gives birth to Benjamin, who will figure prominently in the Joseph story. This son is the only one, I mentioned this before, he's the only one of Jacob's children born in Canaan. And with Rachel's dying breath, she names him Ben Oni, son of my sorrow. But Jacob names him Ben Yamin, Benjamin, which means son of the right hand, which likely here means son of the south. But you have to picture yourself facing east. If you face east to the rising of the sun, your right hand is the southerly direction.
That's no idle detail, but there are a couple of moving parts we need to wrap our arms around. Let's try to do that here. Benjamin's birth is here indirectly, tantalizingly tied to the region around Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Now, later on, the territory of Benjamin will become disputed territory after the division of the monarchy into North and South. Again, that's after the death of Solomon around 930. This territory lay between those two kingdoms. It's also the birthplace of Saul, among a few other leaders in the period of the Judges.
And toward the end of the Book of Judges, there is an incident where a civil war almost brings the tribe of Benjamin to an end. This tribe will get some airtime, that's my point. And here's my bigger point. For a time, the tribe of Benjamin was part of the Northern Kingdom, but then got absorbed by the Southern Kingdom of Judah. That's after the North vanished because of the Assyrians in 721/722.
So this story in Genesis, what does it do? What's tying Benjamin to the South, to Bethlehem and Judah, both of which are in the territory of the tribe of Judah? See, in my opinion, the name change from Ben Oni to Benjamin in this story, is a subtle comment from the writer slash editor that Benjamin belongs to the South. He is absorbed into the tribe of Judah.
Now along with the death of Rachel, this section also records the death of Isaac, Jacob's father at the age of 180. And he was then buried by both sons, Jacob and Esau, which is, I think, a nice touch, right? Considering all of the family had gone through and all their conflicts. So they're on good terms, Jacob and Esau.
So the last chapter. Let's move to chapter 36. That's the final section of the Jacob story. And it's, what a downer way to end a story. It's a long list of Esau's descendants. Who cares? Anyway, it is, it's a long, it's one of Isaac's sons, right? So he gets some press. He should. Remember, Ishmael, one of Abraham's sons, he gets a genealogy too, and they're all still sort of part of the big family, but, you know, not the main characters, but they deserve some recognition.
So, we read here that Esau settled in the hill country of Seir, that's to the south. And Seir is elsewhere in the Old Testament explicitly identified as the land of Edom. In fact, here in chapter 36, verse 8, it says outright what we've been seeing and thinking all along. Quote, So Esau settled in the hill country of Seir. Esau is Edom. End quote. It's as if the writer just got tired of beating around the bush. Esau is Edom. The story of Esau is a coded story of the story of the Edomites.
The list of Esau's descendants in this rather long genealogy takes up most of this chapter. First, we read of Esau's immediate descendants, then we read of a list of tribal chiefs, and finally a list of Edomite kings. And it would be fair to ask why the writer is so interested in listing all of these Edomite names and it may have something to do again that we glimpsed earlier with the unique relationship between the later nation of Israel and the later nation of Edom.
Edom's rulers get mentioned as well. Who cares about the Ammonites and the Moabites because they weren't as close. They didn't have the same kind of political relationship to Israel as Edom does. For me, what I find most interesting about this list is how the kings are introduced, and this is in chapter 36, verse 31.
These are the kings who reigned in the land of Edom, before any king reigned over the Israelites. You know, that's an easy line to miss, folks. It's tucked away as it is in a long list of names that no one in their right mind reads, but this is a very revealing comment. Think about it. To give a list of Edomite kings and to mention that these are the kings who ruled before any king ruled over Israel, well, that suggests that this was written when Israel as a nation existed and had kings.
I mean, at this point in the story, we are talking about the family of Jacob, not a nation, just the family of Jacob. And here we have a comment that is only relevant for a later time. Now, I can imagine some arguing that this is a bit of predictive prophecy that one day Israel will have kings. And if that's your pleasure, by all means, you're welcome to it. But for my money, this is a clear sign that these stories in Genesis are written against the backdrop of Israel's kingship. It didn't have to be explained. No one had to say, these are the kings who ruled Edom before any Israelite king reigned, which God will one day do in his pleasure and bestow upon the people their own kingship, blah, blah, blah.
It just assumes kingship. It assumes Israel's kingship. That's the point. And I think this is a, big clue concerning when these stories were written. For good reason. The scholarly consensus is that Genesis was written, edited, over several centuries during the first millennium BCE, not the second millennium, which is where these stories are set.
Well, my friends, all this brings us to the story of Joseph, finally, which we'll get into in the next and final episode of this series. And until then, thank you for listening, and I hope you come back for part five.
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Outro: You've just made it through another episode of the Bible for Normal People! Don't forget you can catch our other show, Faith for Normal People, in the same feed wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by the Bible for Normal People team: Brittany Hodge, Stephen Henning, Wesley Duckworth, Savannah Locke, Tessa Stultz, Danny Wong, Natalie Weyand, Lauren O'Connell, Jessica Shao, and Naiomi Gonzalez.
