Lecture

In this lecture, number ten, we turn to the approximate third quarter of Genesis, chapters 26 to 36, which deal with the lives of Isaac and Jacob. We don’t know too much about Isaac, as a matter of fact. He married late in life at the age of forty, and then he had no children for twenty years; and then the twins, Jacob and Esau, were born. He kept sheep if Albright is correct that Abraham had caravans. I think we have no evidence at all that Isaac did anything like that. Isaac was purely a shepherd. He had some difficulty, therefore, with other sheepherders, especially the Philistines of Gerar. Abraham had had some dealings with the Philistines of Gerar, too, we remember. Indeed, there was the same situation. When Isaac went down to the King of Gerar, he called his wife, Rebekah, his sister.

It is rather curious that the Abraham story, which speaks of Abraham denying his wife on two occasions—Genesis 12 and Genesis 20—these two stories are assigned to different documents because they are duplicates of the same legend, according to the critics. And yet the experience of Isaac, which so closely duplicates the experience of Abraham, is assigned to the same document as the story of Abraham in Genesis 12. It is a little strange that they don’t try to subdivide, and indeed some do subdivide the J story into J¹, J², and the E story into subordinate divisions too; but that, of course, means that we have a kind of a fragmentation, rather than four main documents, which is the situation alleged by critics usually. Well, we can say the same thing about his denial of his wife, that it was not an evil thing for Isaac to do, and it did not work in the Philistine territory, but God in His providence preserved Isaac and Rebekah nonetheless.

There is a problem about the Philistines. We know that the Philistines came into Palestine at a later time. Indeed, the Philistines brought the Iron Age into Palestine at about 1200; and, of course, this is much too early for the Iron Age. What were Philistines doing here? Is this a mistake in the book of Genesis? I don’t think we need to suppose that at all. If we analyze the Philistines in Genesis, we certainly notice that they are not the same as the Philistines in the books of Samuel and in the late Judges. The books of Samuel speak of the Philistines as a warlike group of people, a rather large group of people, and they’re settled in five cities. These five cities are led by five men who probably have a Greek name, seren in the Hebrew, probably related to the Greek word for “tyrant.”

The situation of the Philistines, their government and everything, is quite different from the Philistines here. Apparently, Abimelech, the king of the Philistines, and Phicol, his captain—and there may have been more than one Abimelech—were just a few Philistines that had wandered into the land, very much like Abraham. We know that the Israelites came into Palestine also at a later date. The conquest would have been around 1400 BC, according to the early date of the Exodus, which we shall speak of later. But before the Israelite invasion, here we have the patriarchs.

Abraham was a pre-Israelite Hebrew, and Abimelech would presumably have been a pre-Philistine Philistine. So as far as I can see, there is no real problem in context between Isaac and Abimelech at the early time. The problem, of course, was that Isaac needed water for his sheep, and so did Abimelech. Sources of water apparently were scarce, and so there were difficulties; but Isaac, rather magnanimously, as Abraham had been magnanimous with his nephew Lot, acted magnanimously and withdrew and did not fight the Philistines.

The next thing of consequence that we know of about Isaac is the birth of the twins. Rebekah knew that she was having trouble in her pregnancy, and we don’t know any details, but she went to inquire of the Lord about what was happening to her. She was told that she would have twins, and it says in Genesis 25:23 that these twins would become two nations, two manner of people. “And the one people shall be stronger than the other, and the elder shall serve the younger.” There have been some who have argued that this prophecy was somewhat double tongued, like the Delphic Oracles, because in Hebrew you can read it either way. In a Hebrew sentence, sometimes the subject comes before the object—in fact, it usually does—but sometimes you have this order reversed for emphasis or something. Hebrew does not have an accusative case, and so it is possible that this could be read the other way, that the younger shall serve the elder.

Therefore, some have said that prophecy really is not expected to be history in advance, and there’s a downgrading of prophecy because of some examples like this. I personally think that that’s not the right attitude. Here we should remember that in the early Hebrew there were case endings and that, although this might seem ambiguous to us, it would not have seemed ambiguous to her at that time. And we know that this is what was intended, that the elder should serve the younger. I would remark also that it is curious that in this prophecy there is one thing that is not double tongued, and that is the prophecy that there would be twins. Normally Rebekah would not have known that, but she had the twins and, as we remember, when they were born, the first one, Edom, came out, and he grabbed his brother by the heel. The name Jacob is given to him because it says he grabbed his brother by the heel. He took hold on Esau’s heel, and the name was called Jacob.

Actually, I think we should say a word about these names that are explained this way. The name Jacob is known from people outside the Bible. There is a name, I believe, in Amarna times—the times of the Tell el-Amarna tablets, about 1400—Ya’aqov’el. And the word `aqeb, from which you get the word heel, also means to deceive or to supplant. And so this is used as a play on words. Esau later on says, “Is it not true that he was properly named Jacob because he has supplanted me?” And so the word is not always given to a child because the name means exactly what the explanation is, but it is rather a play on the word. The name sounds like a particular word. The name Jacob was a well-known name, but it sounds like the word heel, and so attention is drawn to this odd situation in the birth of the twins.

It’s the same way with the name Moses. The name Moses is said to be given to him because he was drawn out of the water. It seems more likely that Moses is an Egyptian name. We find it in the names of the great kings of Egypt; Thutmose, for instance, and Ramoses. This is an Egyptian word that means a son of the god Ra or the god Thoth or something like this. And Moses is probably just a short form of the name. Maybe his name was Ramoses or Thutmoses or Amenmoses or something like this, and he shortened it, certainly dropping off the Egyptian deity that was used in the name given him by the queen. His name is not exactly etymologized, but the name actually is simply equated to the Hebrew word that sounds very much like it.

Another example is given in the early chapters of Genesis; the word “Babel” in the Genesis 11 story of the confounding of the languages. There it says that “the place is called Babel because there God confounded the languages.” And the word is balal. Now balal isn’t exactly the same as Babel. It sounds somewhat like it, but the word Babel does not actually come from balal. Indeed, it has an Akkadian etymology. It comes from the word Bab-ilu meaning “gate of God.”

So in a number of these names given to places and names given to people, we should not try to force this meaning on the place, nor think that the place is named this for the first time. For instance, there are two separate accounts of the naming of Beersheba. These are not duplicate legends. The name Beersheba was known doubtless before these two events, but in the one event it is called Beersheba because there were seven lambs sacrificed. The word seven is the word sheva in Hebrew. At the other place they took an oath, and the word shavua is the word for oath in Hebrew. So in each case the name probably long known—Beersheba—is reinforced in the Hebrew memory by an equation to a similar sounding name. And so the name Jacob is not applicable only to a person who took his brother by the heel. The name Jacob is a well-known name, apparently, in ancient times; but it has a similarity with the word “heel,” and therefore the nurse or mother or the family pointed out this association, and it helped to remember the situation. I believe these remarks can be used for the children of Jacob who are named in later chapters.

So the twins were born, and we know nothing about their early days, but they grew. Esau became a skillful hunter, and Jacob was a man who dwelt in tents and raised cattle. The next time that we see these boys is in chapter 27. Not much is said about Isaac in the meantime. The Lord had confirmed his covenant to Isaac in chapter 26:4. “I will multiply thy seed to the stars of heaven, and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” The Abrahamic blessing with all the implications was given now to Isaac.

In Genesis 27:1 it says, “When Isaac was old and his eyes were dim so that he could not see, he called Esau, and Esau came.” And he said in verse 2, “Behold now I am old. I know not the day of my death,” and he urges him to go out and get him some venison, and he would eat it and give him his blessing before he died. There has been some question raised about this incident because, after all, Isaac did not die for a long time. It was forty-plus years after this, in Genesis 35, that Isaac actually died. Jacob had gone to Paddan-Aram and had come back with a large family before Isaac died. So some people have made fun of it and said, This is, after all, the longest deathbed scene on record. Others, of course, have taken the usual critical view and have divided it up into two documents. This would be the J document here and another document over in Genesis 35. They would say it would be two different legendary accounts of the same event, and even the event probably did not happen. The critical view, of course, has been in the past that the patriarchs were not real people at all, but these are only stories that were told in later times. As I have said, the archeological support for the historicity of the patriarchal narratives has changed that opinion in much more recent literature.

But there is something that we can say about this blessing of Isaac in chapter 27. He said, “Behold now I am old. I know not the day of my death.” This is the name of an article that Dr. Speiser, of whom I’ve spoken before, wrote in his collected writings in Oriental studies. On page 89 he has an article reprinted there entitled, “I Know Not the Day of My Death.” The point is that he has found in Nuzi material in Mesopotamia an equivalent to this same phrase and shows that it is a legal phrase and that what Isaac was really saying was, “I am preparing now to make my will.” It is used in Nuzi to refer to a will. A will is made, of course, not when a man is necessarily on his deathbed. Something happens that makes him think. Perhaps he is not feeling well, or perhaps he has gotten more money recently than otherwise, or perhaps he worries about his son or something, and he begins to make his will. Well, we call a lawyer, and we often use legal phraseology. In the old days, all wills began: “In the name of God, Amen.” Modern wills are perhaps less formal that way, but there are these legal phrases that are used. It is quite striking to see preserved here in Genesis these detailed expressions, unknown through the years, unfamiliar to the scribes who copied them down, and misunderstood by modern critics; yet now they are supported by the Mesopotamian parallels that have been dug up and studied there from the Nuzi tablets.

So here we can say that, again, the history is validated, and I think it’s worth noting that the history is validated in small detail. It is not simply that the general customs of the families are supported by archeology. But here is a little detail in the narrative which—if it were simply told in general terms through the years without any attempt at faithfulness— would doubtless be lost by people who didn’t understand it. But, no, this detail is kept, and this shows something about the age of the stories. It also shows something about the accuracy of those who have transmitted those stories down to us.

Well, we remember the story. Esau went forth to his catch in the woods or in the field, and while Isaac was in his tent, Rebekah heard him. She sent Jacob to the flock and prepared something of a domestic animal, a sheep, and made it into what she called venison and sent Jacob in with it. Jacob was afraid that his father would recognize him, and so he put on some of [Esau’s] clothes and also fixed up some skins on his wrists and on the back of his neck because Esau was a hairy man.

I heard a lecture some time ago by a lady from the National Institute of Fabrics and Textiles in Washington. She remarked that the skins that would have been used would not be the heavy, fleecy sheep and goats that we have, but the short-haired goats of the Persian highlands which they had in those days. It was not as very hairy as we perhaps would first imagine when we read this chapter. Well, the details we may not know for sure, but at least it deceived the old man, and Isaac thought that he was indeed [Esau]. We have the pathetic statement when he said that “the voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.” And so he blessed him.

He blessed him, and we remember that this blessing was in a sense Jacob’s due. Jacob had got this blessing because of the purchase of the birthright, but it was also his due because of the prophecy that the elder should serve the younger. Really, Isaac does not come off so well in this story when you stop to think about it. By divine prophecy, the blessing should have been to the younger child. Rebekah was acting on this principle, and Isaac evidently had forgotten about the divine promise. So, in a sense, Isaac was wrong in trying to give the blessing to Esau. And, of course, secondly, Esau had sold the birthright. Why Esau had sold the birthright is not entirely clear, but it is interesting to notice that, in the Nuzi documents, birthrights could be sold. There is a record of a man who sold a birthright for three sheep. Jacob had bought the birthright of Esau somewhat cheaper. Exactly why Esau had sold the birthright is not clear, but it is clear why Jacob wanted it. Jacob wanted the birthright because it involved the Abrahamic blessing.

The birthright, of course, had monetary advantage. It was a double share of the estate. Because Esau sold it at such a small figure, it seems as if Esau either didn’t care about his father’s estate. Or, quite possibly by this time, Abraham’s considerable wealth had been lost. We don’t know how. It might have been a series of famines in the land, or bad pasture, disease in the sheep or something. Isaac may very well have been a poor man. We notice that when Abraham sent to get a bride for Isaac, he sent ten camel loads of gifts to go with him and gold bracelets, earrings, and whatnot. But when Jacob went to Paddan-Aram, he went with nothing but his stick. Now we might think that Isaac was rich and did not provide him with anything because he didn’t like him very well. But Rebekah could have gotten him something surely. But evidently Jacob left penniless. So it seems possible, at least, that Isaac by this time did not have much of an estate, and Esau despised the birthright because it wasn’t worth much cash.

Jacob wanted the birthright and wanted it because of the spiritual associations of the birthright. If this be the case, we must notice that Esau was indeed the type of a materialistic man. And Jacob, though it is customary to downgrade Jacob because of trickery and whatnot, he nonetheless did have his heart set on spiritual things. So I think that we might see here that Jacob actually—though he did it by trickery—was getting what had been promised to him by the Lord and what he had wanted and purchased in his birthright deal with Esau. Well, he got the birthright, and he got the blessing, but he also got Esau’s hatred. His mother was afraid because she heard Esau say that, “One of these days my father will die, and when my father dies, then I’ll take it out on my brother Jacob.” And she said to him, “Why should I be deprived of both a husband and son at the same time? You go to Haran, to Laban my brother, and stay with him a while until Esau’s fury dies down.”

So Isaac called Jacob—by that time they were somewhat reconciled—and charged him and said, “Go to Paddan-Aram. Don’t take a wife of the daughters of Canaan.” This is what Esau had done, and it says that this marriage with the daughters of the land was a grief to Isaac and Rebekah. Sure enough, it should have been. The New Testament tells Christians to marry only in the Lord, and the Old Testament is quite strict. It says that the Jews were to marry only those who love the Lord. Here Esau had taken wives of the population of Canaan, the Hittites, and they were indeed a grief of spirit. So they sent Jacob back to Paddan-Aram in northern Mesopotamia on one of the tributaries of the Euphrates River. Paddan-Aram means “field of Aram,” as paddanū Aram is an Akkadian word. Laban, Rebekah’s brother, the Aramean, had a farm of sheep, and Jacob went to see him. When Jacob went there, providentially, the first one that he met was his cousin, Rachel.

But as he left, under these strange and hard circumstances, he traveled through Bethel and spent the night there. There he had the memorable dream of a ladder with its head in heaven, and the angels going up and down on the ladder, and the Lord above the ladder saying, “I am the LORD God of Abraham, thy father, and the God of Isaac.” And again, the Abrahamic blessing is repeated to Jacob. It is repeated to Jacob because Jacob, after all, in spite of his weakness and wickedness, was God’s man.

In the New Testament, Christ probably refers to this when He says in the gospel of John the first chapter and the last verse, “Hereafter you shall see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” Someone made the remark that this probably was not a ladder. We do know that they used ladders before this, and I guess it could have been a ladder; but some say, rather, that it was stairs going up to heaven They likened the structure of the pyramids in Egypt and the ziggurats or temple towers in Mesopotamia, which did have stairs going up to the temple at the top of the ziggurat. That, of course, is a detail, and it doesn’t greatly concern us, I suppose.

Jacob arrived in Laban’s household, and the first one he met was Rachel, his cousin, and determined that she was his cousin. She ran and told her father about this meeting, and Laban must have thought of the days when they had gotten word from Abraham and when Eliezar had come to take Rebekah away. So when he told him who he was, Laban said, “You must abide with me.” Then after a little while, it seemed necessary to do something, so they made a deal. Jacob was in love with Leah, but Jacob had no money to purchase a wife. Wives were given only on considerable exchange of cash, and Jacob had nothing, so what should he do? It seems probable that here Jacob did what the poor people did in Nuzi. They would have themselves adopted, and Jacob apparently was adopted by Laban. He was adopted as a son on the basis of seven years of work, and included in the arrangement was the price of the bride. So it is not entirely clear, but it seems probable that there was an adoption here, because it seems that later on Laban’s other sons objected to Jacob and their sisters, saying that they were taking up the inheritance. But the sisters felt that they had a right to the inheritance, apparently, because Jacob himself was also a son of Laban.

We know the story, how he loved Rachel but was given Leah. And Jacob, who had deceived his brother, now was deceived himself. Laban said, Well, it’s not right for us to give the younger sister first, and you can have Rachel also for seven more years of work. So he married both Leah and Rachel, but Rachel was barren. Although Jacob loved Rachel, the first children were born to Leah. So Rachel finally adopted the Nuzi expedient that Sarah had done, and she had children by her handmaid. Eventually, Leah also had children by her handmaid. One by one, eleven children were born to Jacob there in Paddan-Aram.

The names of these children are given. Rachel said, “God hath judged me and hath heard my voice and hath given me a son. Therefore she called his name Dan.” This is when Bilhah conceived. Notice the son, though it is Bilhah’s son, is taken by Rachel as her own, and Rachel gave the name Dan. Then Bilhah, Rachel’s maid, conceived again and bore Jacob a second son. And Rachel said, “With great wrestling have I wrestled,” and there is a play on the word “wrestling,” so the name Naphtali, just as there was a play on the word “judge,” and so the name Dan. Dan means judge in Hebrew. So these names are given, with each one a play on a word, not necessarily the exact meaning, and these names should not be considered as exclusively used in such circumstances as these.

We might remark that while Jacob lived there in Paddan-Aram, he probably learned Aramaic, if he did not already know it. The earliest word of the Aramaic language that we know is Laban’s name for the Hebrew witness that he set up with Jacob, Jegar Sahadutha in Genesis 31:47. There seems to be a relation that we do not know the details of between the Arameans and the Amorites, of whom we spoke earlier. The tablets found at the ancient town of Mari from the days of Hammurabi give us some information on the Amorites. Interestingly, one of the Amorite names is Benjamin. Jacob, when Rachel died in childbirth—later remembered Rachel named the boy Benoni, “son of sorrow”—and Jacob named him Benjamin, “son of his right hand,” to signify that he was his chosen son. This is also a play on words, however, for in the Mari tablets we have the name of Benjamin applied to a tribe of Amorites. Apparently the name Benjamin originally means “the son of the south, southland.”

But at least the general relationship of the Hebrews, the Amorites, and the Arameans is of special interest, and we are reminded of the verse in Deuteronomy 26, where it says: “Thou shalt speak and say before the LORD thy God, a Syrian (or an Aramean) ready to perish was my father, and he went down to Egypt, and sojourned there with a few, and became a nation great, mighty, and populous.” So Jacob came back to Palestine and, in the providence of God, was led eventually down to Egypt where the Israelites became a prosperous nation.