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Context No. 108 of 4322 · Genesis

Context · Reflection

Genesis 27:11-17: in context

11Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, “Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man. 12What if my father touches me? I will seem to him as a deceiver, and I would bring a curse on myself, and not a blessing.” 13His mother said to him, “Let your curse be on me, my son. Only obey my voice, and go get them for me.” 14He went, and got them, and brought them to his mother. His mother made savory food, such as his father loved. 15Rebekah took the good clothes of Esau, her elder son, which were with her in the house, and put them on Jacob, her younger son. 16She put the skins of the young goats on his hands, and on the smooth of his neck. 17She gave the savory food and the bread, which she had prepared, into the hand of her son Jacob.

Isaac is old and nearly blind, and has sent his elder son Esau out to hunt game and prepare the meal that will precede his blessing. Rebekah has overheard, and this passage is her instructing Jacob, her younger and favored son, to take the blessing instead.

Jacob's objection is not moral. My brother is hairy and I am smooth, he says, and if my father touches me I will seem to be mocking him and bring a curse on myself instead of a blessing. He is worried about being caught, not about the deceit. Rebekah answers that too, and it is one of the strangest lines in Genesis: let your curse be on me, my son, only obey my voice. She offers to take the penalty in advance.

Then she assembles the disguise with a mother's competence. She cooks the food Isaac loves, dresses Jacob in Esau's best clothes, which she keeps in the house, and puts goatskins on his hands and neck. It works. It also costs her everything, since Jacob flees for his life and there is no record that she sees him again. Every person in this family is running an angle on someone they love. What have I set up so carefully that I never stopped to ask what it would cost the people involved?

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