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Why Does Esau Get Rewarded?
In the story of the rival twins, Jacob and Esau, Jacob emerges as the winner, the inheritor of the mantle of his fathers, the blessings that his seed will inherit the land.
But Esau is not actually a loser in the text. On the contrary, the Torah goes to great lengths to tell us of Esau’s lineage, and the fact that the Jewish people have no claim whatsoever to the land of Esau, that we must respect Esau’s boundaries and sovereignty.
The obvious question of course, is: why? What does Esau do that merits this treatment?
And I think the answer, like all of these answers, is in the text. In summary:
Jacob deceives his father to steal his brother’s blessing. Esau is enraged and wants to kill Jacob. Jacob flees, and stays away for a few decades, making no contact at all with his parents or brother.
Then, Jacob comes back. When he does, he proactively sends messengers to his brother, bearing gifts of all kinds. When they meet in person, he bows down many times to Esau, calling him “my lord,”, and finally says “My blessing is yours.” In other words, Jacob clearly tries to undo what he had done. Jacob is giving back what he had stolen.
At this point, Esau has a choice. He traveled to meet Jacob with four hundred men, so he was ready for anything. When Jacob placates him, Esau chooses to accept the gift – and in full. He even offers to escort Jacob to their parents, traveling at whatever speed suited Jacob’s family and herds. Jacob declines, and something is made clear: the future of the Jewish legacy belongs to Jacob, and Esau is not invited. The rejection is polite and it is gentle, but it is firm: Jacob seeks to have no more relationship with Esau, none at all.
And Esau is given another choice: how does he handle the rejection? The answer is that he acts like a perfect gentleman, a mensch. Whatever his feelings may have been, his words and actions are perfectly in concord with civil and cordial acceptance.
This is, as with all things in the Torah, a lesson to us. We are used to learning from Jacob, but the Torah is setting Esau up to be an example to follow as well: accept apologies. Respect the wishes of others if they have no intention of harming us. Be a mensch, even – and especially – when you are being rejected. And if you manage to do those things, then G-d will respect and reward you in turn.
[an @iwe and @susanquinn production]
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Thanks. I always appreciate your Torah insights
That was interesting and I think Esau acted wisely in not starting a war. But going by your description above, Jacob actually doesn’t look too good.
He makes the theft of the blessing good in the end. That counts for a lot.
It is not clear that – at that point – there was a pathway for the brothers to unify as a family. Jacob’s rejection of Esau was probably the wise call.
Well, also Esau was totally cheated. I always thought the bigger question was why does G-d let Jacob keep the inheritance.
Jacob still kept the top job as head of the clan, as well as the majority of the property that goes along with that position. Esau got enough of the property to live really, really well, but he didn’t get his rightful place returned to him. I think the unspoken lesson is that all Esau ever wanted was the property rather than the responsibility of leadership, so he was content with the payment he got from Jacob. In other words, the story implies that Esau would have made a terrible leader, which is why G-d let Jacob get away with the deception.
This also puts paid to the Christian concept of “forgiveness”. If you have been done wrong to, you only forgive the wrongdoer when he accepts that he has done you wrong, and pays you back (repents) for the wrongdoing. Christians are taught to forgive wrongdoers, even when they do not repent of the wrongdoing, and I have always thought that was incorrect.
I have always seen this passage of the Scripture as another illustration of the sovereignty of God. We can speculate upon the right or wrong of each brother’s position, but God decides — and it’s often not how we would settle the matter.
He doesn’t. Jacob gives it all back.
The only inheritance that matters is the blessing of a relationship with G-d. The rest was just stuff.
How does G-d make a decision here?
Post-facto, G-d honors Esau. But in the moment? The players are owners of their own outcomes.
I make it a practice to not attempt to reason with God; I just make every effort to understand, and accept, His will for me.
The take I grew up with in my early Scripture studies with is that Jacob was good, having a heart for God while Esau was bad because he was carnal and had no interest in God’s call.
Over time I moved to a position where I don’t see Esau as bad. He was a capable man, a successful man, one that who achieved success in this world. When it came to spiritual things, he wasn’t necessarily bad. He was just blank. I can think of corporate executives or entrepreneurs who are made of the same stuff. In fact while I know many who are passionate about a God-filled life, I know just as many that are fine people but have zero interest in a religious life. They are spiritually blank and disinterested.
I suspect that when Isaac told the family the story of how God was bringing forth a people through their line or Abraham told of how he left the idol worshiping community to a place unknown, something in Jacob’s heart warmed. Esau instead was likely thinking about the knives he needed to sharpen or the new places he wanted to set traps or the new technique to try on the sheep.
One reading I heard faulted Jacob with the misdirected desire to be successful in the way Esau was. He wanted the blessing and preeminence of the first born. He dressed like Esau and sounded like Esau when pursuing the blessing of power. He strategized and work to multiply a flock but likely never really enjoyed doing that work. His reviews of his working life are negative and unhappy.
One teacher suggested that in the wrestling with the angel (of which interpretations likely abound), Jacob’s breakthrough was discovering that he never really wanted to overcome through success and worldly power as Esau. Instead, what he really sought was to humbly hang on for God to bless him. He wanted to be a spiritual man, a man of promise.
When Jacob met Esau, it was no longer the “the older shall serve the younger”. Rather it is Jacob telling Esau, “I’ve have enough, my brother”. Perhaps Esau worked to forgive the slights of his brother Jacob. But more likely, the fierce passion of youth dissipated and he forgot about it. It was twenty years later and they both grew into different people.
Esau was a good, successful man. He just wasn’t a spiritual man. He wasn’t a man of promise to be used by God to further God’s chosen people. That was Jacob.
This is one thing I love about Ricochet. Who’d’ve thought a political site would go into this sort of study? So much fun.
I think it is simpler than you suggest. He is blessed because he is a son of Isaac who had a covenant with God just as Ishmael was blessed because he was a son of Abraham. Even though neither inherited the covenant as did Isaac and Jacob; nevertheless, Esau and Ishmael got benefits through their fathers’ relationship with the Almighty.
I think most of us modern people can’t help but note that if you don’t start with some capital because someone made away with it, that restoring the sum later doesn’t quite balance out. The robbed person may have spent years in a relatively disadvantaged position, starting from a position “behind” where he should have been, and that time and opportunity lost is hard to be philosophic about (although there are the cases of a crooked road leading to some advantage that a smooth one would not have). In this case, we just don’t know but it seems “uneven,” and almost more virtuous of the (calmed down) Esau to forgive and remove the burden of guilt rather graciously that his brother may have labored under. Maybe the story needs more details for us, like assurances that Esau really did all right (other readers assume so). And that is another part of the story – that we don’t need to go for an eye for an eye because God works in mysterious ways and that we should grasp that because Esau didn’t try to take revenge on his own, but had turned his hand to more creative things, he was already blessed and compensated (parallel to the older brother in the Prodigal son story). So Esau was not all that shabby or a “blank” person, but had collected the rewards that God sent in his own direction, had overcome his own demons, and was at peace with it.
Oh, it is there all right. Oodles of verses on Esau and his descendants, and the future of the nation he founded, Edom.
Here are all the mentions of Edom in the text. Esau and his descendants did all right!