Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet
man, living in tents. Genesis 25:19-34
Gold-digger, leech, user, usurper, manipulator, con artist.
All synonyms the Urban Dictionary lists for ‘opportunist.’
Put those skills on your résumé and, unless you’re
gunning for a job as future governor of New Jersey, chances are you’re
not going to get very far … except in the Bible.
Proof? Jacob, the barely younger of the non-identical twin team
of Jacob and Esau.
Now, Esau. He’s the blunt-hunter-butch-biker type. Jacob,
not so much. More the tech-savvy, artsy sort, with a hint of gender ambiguity.
Esau. Hairy, red hair actually. That’s how he got
his name, Esau (“Red,” in Hebrew). Peakèd Jacob? Skin as soft as a baby’s behind.
And yet, Jacob: gold-digger, leech, user, usurper, manipulator,
con artist? “You gotta love this guy!” … according to Hebrew tradition, anyway.
Admired, approved, and adored on earth, as in heaven. Even God, the prophet
Malachi suggests, has a positive opinion about Jacob: “I
have loved Jacob, but Esau have I hated.” Strong language.
Jacob, who cheats his own brother out of his inheritance
… whose checkered career launches with the two duking it out in their mother
Rebekah’s womb to the point that come birth-time ─ when Esau is first out of the gate ─ Jacob refuses to throw in the towel. He digs his tiny, talon-grip-fingers
into Esau’s heel in one last stab at yanking his brother back into the womb.
What’s in his sights? A clear shot at the gold. First-born
in the pecking order and all the first-class perks that go with it: a father’s attention,
a father’s love, a father’s wallet … and majority-shareholder status when the
Old Man finally shoves off this mortal coil.
What’s at stake? Isaac, having inherited his own
father Abraham’s vast holdings, is rumored to be at the top of the prequel to
the Forbes Billionaire List. And that means for the first-born heir-apparent in
the family: “ca-ching!”
But we’ve got a problem. Jacob is ─ hands-down ─ a distasteful
guy. And yet, we hold him up as a hero.
How is it he’s taken in so many people?
Answer: Jacob is a trickster, a stock character in
stories told by people since time immemorial. Tricksters are so clever, so
audacious, so outrageous and roguish, you gotta love them ─ sometimes begrudgingly, at other times enviously,
as in “Gosh, I wish I could get away
with that!”
Tricksters break all the rules. They’re even known
to do a little gender-bending now and again. Yes, drag is in their bag of
tricks, like Stewie on Family Guy …
and a bit like Jacob, when, as their father ─ their legally-blind
father ─ is
on his death-bed, Jacob slathers on the testosterone in an attempt to pass himself off as Esau. All to get the father’s unique, once-for-all-time,
as-I-lay-dying blessing traditionally bestowed on the first-born.
A nice gesture? A quaint custom? No. Means even more perks after the funeral. In that
era ─
before tabernacle or temple ─
more or less like being the family High Priest or your very own home-grown pope.
The trickster, then, master of deception and disguise.
But above all clever, quick-witted. And actually, a bit of fun.
Think here, in the African-American tradition, Br’er
Rabbit, who ─
conspicuously absent brawn ─ more
than makes up for it in wits. Or Tom Sawyer when he tricks his friends into
enjoying the “privilege” of whitewashing that expansive fence on his chore list. Tom
Sawyer: the model for Bart Simpson, quintessential trickster.
In the storyteller’s world, all geared to entertainment.
All heirs of fellow-trickster Jacob, the sort of fellow who puts the “fun” into
family dysfunction.
How? Picture this: The twins Esau and Jacob ─ more fratricidal than fraternal ─ are now adults. Having lost
the “who’s-on-first” battle, Jacob has been playing catch-up from the get-go.
According to legend ─ this isn’t in the Bible ─ their grandfather Abraham has just died, and
master-chef Jacob is whipping up comfort food for father Isaac in-mourning:
a hearty red lentil stew, customary post-funeral fare. Really, comfort food.
All out of the kindness of his heart or cynically trying to
score points? You decide. But it’s convenient for Jacob that Esau is AWOL ─ the wild son off to the wild parts where the wild
things are. He misses Abraham’s funeral altogether. Jacob, for once, gets to
play the “good” son.
No sooner does Jacob announce, “Soup’s on!” who should
come gate-crashing in? Esau, wouldn’t-you-know. With his usual understatement ─ not! ─ he claims
he’s going to die if
he doesn’t get some of “that red stuff” pronto.
“You mean,” Jacob drips with withering condescension, “Giada’s Zuppa di Lenticchie Rosse, you Philistine?”
Palm to forehead: “‘Red stuff.’ Honestly, why do I even try?’” And then ─ recomposed ─
“Well, brother dear, it’s going to cost you. What if I were to tell you it’s going to cost you your
inheritance”?
Esau tosses off a what-do-I-care “Whatever.” And
the brothers make a deal: stew for stupefying wealth.
But where’s the trick? Well, you could say that the
trick is getting Esau to do the trade. In that case, what you have here is more
a joke ─ a play on words ─
than a trick: red “stuff” for
the red brother.
If, however, you want to work the trick angle, it
could be that Jacob catches Esau in his surly brother’s own histrionics. That
is, if he doesn’t get the “red stuff,” Esau is going to expire right there at
Jacob’s feet. And, if he’s dead, Esau reasons out loud, well, you can’t take it
with you!
But the trick is: Esau is good at shooting off his
mouth. Not so good at thinking things through. Meaning: Stuffed with Jacob’s stew,
he’s going to die another day, but live without his inheritance ─ and quite possibly, at the mercy of
deep-pocketed-by-then Jacob.
Either Esau fails to make the connection or else he thinks Jacob won’t hold him to the
bargain. I mean, it’s ridiculous. It’s preposterous. It’s outrageous! But if Esau
thinks Jacob is going to cancel the deal, he doesn’t know his own brother ─ his brother, the trickster.
Not so different from the greatest trickster of
them all in the Jewish tradition ─ at
least, since Jacob. And that is Herschel of Ostropol (in Ukraine). Like other
trickster-folk heroes, he’s pretty elusive, so we don’t have specific dates for
him, but he might have pulled off his shenanigans about 300 years ago.
What did they look like? Suspiciously like Jacob’s.
For example:
One day, Hershel and a friend scrounge enough money
between them to buy two loaves of bread. Hershel picks up both loaves, examines
them with much fanfare, and tosses the lighter loaf to his friend, keeping the larger
one for himself.
“Well, that’s not very nice,” the friend protests.
“And if you were in my shoes,” Hershel asks, “what would you have done?”
The friend: “I would’ve given you the larger loaf
and kept the smaller one for myself.”
Hershel’s response? “Well, now you’ve got the smaller one! What are you complaining
about?!”
Sure, we can laugh at Hershel, Br’er Rabbit, Bart
Simpson, and all the other iconic tricksters like Jacob. And we can envy their chutzpah.
But do we really have to like them? Do
we really have to be like them?
In Jacob’s case, no ─ at least not in his trickiest phases. That is, later in life, he’s wanted dead-or-alive by his brother. That
triggers a crisis in which he’s forced to take a good, long, hard look at
himself. What does he see? Not just a “despicable-me” person (you can laugh at
everyone else’s expense for only so long), but a fatally-flawed agent for
working out God’s will: doing his part ─
as his father before him, and his father before him have done ─ to create a “people of God,” God’s Chosen People.
Boil it all down to a blunt truth: Jacob may be chosen, but he’s far from “choice.”
That’s because Jacob realizes he has opted for opportunism over opportunity. And there’s nothing funny or even entertaining about
that.
Meaning: Long before his come-lately makeover ─ in bargaining with his “red brother” over the “red stuff” ─ Jacob has increased the
chances that Esau will always be in the red because he let his ginned-up, winner-take-all metabolism go into over-drive.
The result? A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to break up the family dysfunction
─ to
be open-handedly generous ─ to
do the right, fair, decent thing? Lost forever.
Bottomline: In this episode, Jacob chose the short-term. He chose not
to be the developing, neighbor-loving, neighbor-connected person God
believed he could become. And in so doing, he diminished the chances that he could
ever achieve God’s dream for himself or his family and descendants.
And that’s the trick Jacob unwittingly ends up playing on himself
─ for
years and years ─ until
he hits rock-bottom and chooses to write-over his hard drive by dealing with unfinished
business: re-connecting and reconciling with his twin, his brother Esau.
Like Jacob, each and every day ─ all the time ─ we’re
presented with chances to be both God’s Chosen and “choice” … chances to choose opportunity over immediate, what’s-in-it-for-me
opportunism.
Opportunity, on the other hand: the real-time,
real-life chances God gives us to become the people God is convinced we can
become, people who do the right, fair, and decent thing over and over again …
and becoming better and better at it. Becoming better and better people while
we’re at it.
How? Well, there’s a real knack to it. It takes
practice. It takes discipline. It takes doing. It takes time to train a fearless and dreaming ─ a playful! ─ heart
to choose opportunity, to imagine the people we can be, to imagine the place God
believes we can occupy tomorrow, next week, next year … still striving, pushing
ahead. It is possible. Our challenge
is to make it likely.
Just ask Jacob. He'll tell you, “Choosing
opportunity over opportunism? There’s a knack
to it. But no trick. Honest!”
Amen.
