Fools Rush In?

 (Lectionary for July 16, 2017)

Today begins the tragi-comic tale of Jacob and his children that takes up fully half of the book Genesis. Frederick Buechner has a novel based on this story called Son of Laughter. I commend it to you, since Buechner is an extraordinarily fine writer with rich insights into this familiar material. One thing about the novel that is to me not so fine is its over-seriousness. Yes, this is the Bible, and it is of course to be taken with genuine seriousness, but Buechner, along with too many other commentators, simply refuses to play up the wonderful comedy that the text presents in nearly every scene. These Hebrew authors were completely incapable of telling a simple story, and equally incapable of telling the story without their tongues squarely in their cheeks.

The beginning is no exception to this near ironclad rule. The preceding tale of Abraham and Sarah was driven by the latter’s continuing and unrelenting barrenness, a reality stated quite directly in Gen.11:30. For the succeeding 13 chapters the founding couple of Israel waits, none too patiently, for the gift of a child. After a false start with Ishmael, and extreme old age, a child is born to Sarah, whom she immediately names Isaac, “laughter” in the language. Laughter too soon turns to horror, as Abraham is convinced that YHWH has demanded that he murder this boy as a sign of his faithfulness. Though the boy is reprieved by the fortuitous ram in the bushes, the terror of the tale is hardly vitiated.

Isaac then takes a wife, Rebekah, who herself is barren. Yet, after prayer to YHWH, and after Isaac has turned sixty years of age, Rebekah conceives twins. But after the joy of conception, the pregnancy is very difficult, so difficult that Rebekah is driven to despair, crying, “If it is to be like this, then why in hell am I” (Gen. 25:22)? (Though the NRSV rather inexplicably announces in a footnote that the Hebrew is “uncertain” here, I think it makes perfect sense; I have translated it quite literally, adding my usual treatment of the tiny particle zeh, an emphasizer in the language.) In other words, the pregnant one reacts as many pregnant women have reacted through the centuries; this bearing thing is no walk in the park. It is a genuine struggle, and twins hardly make it any easier.

With the children roiling within her, she heads off to “inquire of YHWH,” a technical term meaning that she goes to pray and worship, hoping to discover from God why things are so painful and difficult. Genesis 3 promised women “pain in childbearing,” and Rebekah is now learning how true that promise is. YHWH responds to her plea in a most unusual way:

“Two nations are in your womb (no wonder the thing is painful!)

and two peoples born from you shall be divided;

One shall be stronger than the other,
and the elder shall serve the younger” (Gen.25:23).

This is a most troubling oracle; it is nothing less than a thorough reversal of expectations in an ancient society. The elder child is by right of birth the heir to the name and property of the family, but YHWH’s oracle has announced to Rebekah that in the case of her twins that will not occur. The one may be the stronger, but that oldest one will not inherit, but will instead be slave to the younger and weaker. This ominous announcement will guide Rebekah’s actions throughout the story that follows.

And so the twin boys are born. The first boy emerges “red, all covered like a hairy cloak, so they named him Esau” (Gen.25:25). The name is a sound pun with the word for “hair,” so it is easy to think of Esau’s name as “Hairy.” The second boy quickly appears, but his tiny hand is somehow “grabbing Esau’s heel, so they named him, Jacob,” (Gen.25:26) or “Grabby” to employ the sound pun again. Thus the twins’ names should be remembered as Hairy and Grabby. Surely, the names are chosen for the sheer fun of it. Hairy is a large, lumbering man of the fields, a skillful hunter who is loved by his father, Isaac, for the rather trivial reason that “he was fond of wild game,” meat that could be provided regularly by his eldest and most manly son.

But his second son, Grabby, was rarely found in the fields, running in pursuit of game for the family table. Grabby was rather an “’ish tam,” a phrase translated rather oddly as “a quiet man” by NRSV, a boy “living in tents,” in other words staying close to mother Rebekah since he was her favorite. After all, YHWH had told her before their birth that it was Grabby who was to be the master, despite custom and appearances. The phrase “‘ish tam” would ordinarily be translated “righteous man,” since that is the very adjective used to describe the very pious Job twice in the beginning of his tale. Given the behavior of Grabby in subsequent scenes, “righteous” is hardly the adjective that springs to mind to describe his actions. Thus, tam here must mean something like the very opposite of what Hairy is; perhaps “domestic” or “homebody” would do.

However we are to read that descriptor, in the next scene, we find Grabby cooking a stew, the fumes of which waft into the desert, enticing the roaming Hairy into the tent of his brother. Hairy rudely demands, “Give me some of that red stuff; I’m starving” (Gen.25:30)! This play again on the Hebrew for “red” places in the reader’s mind the certainty that Hairy will be the ancestor of the Edomites, literally “the red people.” But more pertinent to our story is the fact that Hairy is nothing less than a hungry boor, calling his desired food only “red stuff,” not able to conjure up a correct name for what he desires. But instead of handing his famished brother a bowl of his stew, Grabby calmly and with apparent calculation announces, “First, sell me your birthright” (Gen.25:31). This is of course no small matter. It is nothing less than the rights of the first born, and Hairy absurdly shouts, “I am about to die (really?); a birthright means nothing to me” (Gen.25:32). Still, the wily Grabby is doubly careful, leading his ridiculous brother to hand over his most precious possession. “Swear to me first,” Grabby demands, and Hairy does just that. So, with the theft of the birthright complete, Grabby hands Hairy a bowl of “lentil stew” and adds a slice of bread to sop it up with. And without any further conversation, the stupid Hairy “ate, drank, got up, and left. Thus Hairy jeered at his birthright” (Gen.25:34).

What a dolt! Hairy sold his birthright for a “bowl of pottage,” as the older translations had it, thus fixing the phrase in our language to describe any transaction where one person takes full advantage of another. It is a fun story, is it not? Clever boy takes foolish and slow-witted brother. What a lark! Grabby is well named, is he not? He grabs for all the gusto he wants, and seems to win at everything he tries, no matter how sordid or devious he is. The fact that it is Grabby who will be Israel makes the nature of the people of YHWH complex to say the least. And Hairy? What are we to make of him? He appears the very definition of the dupe, the schlemiel in Yiddish, the one taken full advantage of. He is the sort of character that we can easily dismiss as a foil to the hero of the tale, the clever and resourceful Grabby, the epitome of the people of God.

But not so fast, my friends! Before we write old Hairy off, we need to remember that wonderful later story when Grabby is alone, terrified of the wrath of that nearly forgotten brother, desperate for some sort of salvation against that brother’s justified ire for the scene we have just witnessed. But instead of rage and fury and annihilation, what Grabby receives from old doltish Hairy is full forgiveness without question or comment. Who ever would have imagined that foolish Hairy would be named as “the face of God” by his too-clever brother, Grabby? (Read Gen.33) Are we too quick to judge and categorize those who we claim are not our equals, who are our dupes, our foils, our schlemiels? We call them fools, but fail to see that the real fools may be found in our mirrors.

But we are ahead of ourselves! Let us wait until succeeding weeks give us the opportunity to see in more rich detail how this great story leads us in ways we least expect. And so it is with our Bible. We may laugh at the actions of the characters we know so well, but we soon discover that our laughter is misdirected; the real object is ourselves.

(Images from Wikimedia Commons)