GENESIS XXV:19-XXVIII:9

RIVALRY AS A SPUR

The events that accompanied the lives of the three patriarchs demonstrate their individuality and allow us to study the contrast between their personalities. Although Avraham(Abraham), the first of them, was the great iconoclast, renewer, and promoter of faith in one God, each of these fathers of the Jewish nation contributed with his own characteristics and through his experiences.

While Avraham and Yaakov (Jacob) had more than one wife, the middle patriarch, Yitzḥak (Isaac), married only Rivkah(Rebecca). Thus, the rivalry that later existed between their twin sons Esav (Esau) and Yaakov did not have the additional ingredient of a possible rivalry between their respective mothers: it was a consequence of the diversity of their personalities.

Three matriarchs had difficulty conceiving: Sarah, Rivkah, and Raḥel (Rachel). The only one who did not openly protest this condition was Rebecca: she only asked Yitzḥak to  implore God so that she could leave in state.

The birth of the matriarchs’ children was accompanied by joy and an explanation of the meaning of their respective names. In Rivka’s case, the pregnancy presented difficulties. Even in the mother’s womb, the twins caused distress to the mother-to-be. The future conflict was foreseen, because the confrontation began in the womb. The initial rivalry between the brothers will result in a struggle between the two nations that would emerge from these twins.

Esav and Yaakov represent two lifestyles, two opposing philosophies, with their respective

values and appreciations about the destiny of man. Considering that rivalry between twins begins before their birth, how can Esau be singled out or blamed  for his behavior? There are genetic factors that have determined this in advance.

Perhaps the Torah wishes to prove that conflict and rivalry are not in and of themselves negative. On the contrary, the confrontation between ideas and the possibility of choosing between alternatives are the leaven that stimulates growth.

Because of his natural shyness and because he had been the “object” of the Akedah, at which point, with or without his consent, he would be offered on an altar, Yitzḥak admired his son Esav‘s courage, his skill in hunting, his apparent bravery, and his physical strength. To Isaac, with his basically passive and thoughtful personality, Esav represented initiative and vigor, qualities that he obviously lacked. 

The characteristics of Esau had to be contrasted with the qualities of Yaakov, the studious and respectful young man, but who, however, when the time came to obtain the father’s blessing, participated directly in the artifice that was staged to deceive the father. 

In order for Yitzḥak to recognize Rivka’s intuitive wisdom, he had to learn to differentiate

and discern between the personalities of their two children. Yaakov and Esau do not represent two totally different personalities. It should not be forgotten that they shared the parents and the social environment, in addition to the mother’s placenta.

They had many common characteristics, because Esau also demonstrated, on several occasions, paternal respect. We are facing a situation of emphasis: a hierarchy of priorities that eventually concludes in a transition from the quantitative to the qualitative and that, therefore, draws the character of the person. Esau becomes the hunter par excellence, cultivating the notion that the will is imposed through force, while Yaakovdevelops and fine-tunes the art of discussion and argument. Tolerates and understands individual differences among their children. 

Even after learning of the terrible event of the “sale” into slavery of his favorite son Yosef, he does not disinherit the brothers, but rather attracts them and brings them closer, perhaps recognizing the ingredient of his own guilt in the process of the “sale”: having demonstrated an affective preference for one of the sons, for Yosef.

Each of the patriarchs contributes, with his personality, a paradigm and example. Jealousy and rivalries within their families produce confrontations and crises that have the potential to turn into hatreds that will be transmitted from generation to generation, but that can also have the opposite effect: to bring together and cement human relationships that have experienced empty and meaningless alternatives.