Who is Jacob, Yaakov? Christian commentators major on Jacob as deceiver, Jewish commentators make him out to be an otherworldly tzaddik. For me, he is a human being, a wonderful picture of what it means to be human, full of fears and desires, struggling with G-d and with men, and overcoming.
A cursory look at commentaries on this week’s parsha reveals a striking difference in perspective: For example, in Genesis 33:4, where Esau ran to meet Jacob and embraced him, threw his arms around his neck and kissed him.” The NIV Study Bible notes, “Esau’s generous and loving response, ‘my brother,’ was in contrast to Jacob’s cautious and fearful ‘my Lord’”. But in Talmud, we read “Said R. Yannai to him: Why then is the word pointed above? But we must understand that he came not to kiss him (nashko) but to bite him (Noshkho). Whereupon the Patriarch Jacob's neck turned to marble, setting that wicked man's teeth on edge. What then is the implication of the phrase: "And they wept.” This one wept on his neck and the other, on (account of) his teeth). Esau sought to bite him but his neck turned to marble.”
Or take Genesis 33:14, where Jacob says to Esau, “So let my Lord go on ahead of his servant… until I come to my Lord is Seir.” The NIV Study Bible notes, “But Jacob, still the deceiver, had no intention of following Esau all the way to Seir.” Many a Christian commentary maintain that Yaakov’s name means deceiver. Actually, Yaakov literally means “he grasps the heel,” because coming out of the womb he grasped the heel of his twin brother Esav. But later, in Genesis 27:36, “Esau said, "Isn't he rightly named Jacob? He has deceived me these two times: He took my birthright, and now he's taken my blessing!"” In Hebrew, “sh’mo Yaakov v’ya’ak’veeney” meaning “His name Jacob and he has deceived me.” The footnotes say that Yaakov figuratively means “deceiver,” as if that’s what his name meant from birth; in fact it was a word play given by Esau after he had been tricked.
But, truthfully, had Esav been deceived two times? Hadn’t Esau knowingly sold his birthright for a pot of stew? And why doesn’t he blame his mother Rebecca who had concocted the scheme? For centuries, anti-Semitic Gentiles have laid this charge against Jacob and his descendants: Jacob and the Jews are deceivers, connivers, conspirers, seeking power through chicanery. From the Pharoah who said, “we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies” (so who was dealing shrewdly here?) to Haman, from Shakespeare’s Shylock to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion—a forgery invented by the Czar’s secret police around 1897, alleging secret plans of Jewish leaders seeking to attain world domination, and later popularized by Henry Ford and by many an Arab dictator—the myth of the evil, deceptive Jew has been repeated.
Ladies and gentlemen, the deceiver’s name is not Jacob or Yaakov. Will the real deceiver and conspirer seeking world domination please stand up? His name is HaSatan—the accuser and adversary of Jacob/Israel and of every human being!
Rabbi Zelig Plizkin, on the other hand, comments on the message Jacob sends to Esau in Gen 32:4: “I have lived with Laban”: “According to Rashi, the father of all Biblical commentators, it was an implied warning to Esau not to start up with Jacob. How was it a warning? Rashi tells us that the word "garti" (Hebrew for "I have lived with") has the numerical value of 613, the same number as the number of commandments in the Torah. Hence, Jacob was telling Esau, "I dwelt with Laban and still kept the commandments; I did not learn from his evil ways." The simplest understanding is that even someone on the high spiritual level of Jacob could have been influenced negatively by living in such close proximity to an evil person; it was a great accomplishment not to have been influenced by his environment.”
So which is it, was Jacob the tzaddik (a super-righteous one) who lives only at a high spiritual level, or was he just an unreformed, base deceiver? IMHO (in my humble opinion), he is neither. Yaakov is a full-blooded human being, struggling to fulfill his destiny. He is neither beneath us nor far above us: he is someone you and I can identify with. Like most of us, when confronted with potential danger, he experienced great fear and distress. The Rabbis puzzle over this, since HaShem had already informed their hero that he would protect him. And indeed, in Gen 32:1, we read that the angels of God met him, so that he knew he was in the camp of God, and needn’t be afraid. Yet he was, as he admitted in his prayer to God, in 32:11, the second verse of my portion: “Save me, I pray, from the hand of my brother Esau, for I am afraid he will come and attack me.” How many of you have been afraid on the eve of a crucial interview? Even Yeshua felt some of this, when he prayed in the garden of Gethsemane . So great was his distress, he sweated blood. Yeshua also was a full-blooded human being, struggling to fulfill his destiny. Like Yeshua, in the midst of his distress, Yaakov prayed. How many of you pray when you are in distress? In Genesis 32:9 he begins by remembering the God of his fathers: “Then Jacob prayed, "O God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, O LORD.” When you are distress, remember this pattern: He is the God of our fathers, Eloheynu avotaynu. For me, there is great comfort and reassurance in remembering that he is the God of Avraham and Yitz’kak, the God of Moshe and the prophets, the God of Yeshua and the apostles, the God of Eddie Santoro and Lura Maiman and Ken Wikkerink and Carol Ann Fields. Amen?
Then Jacob remembers God’s promises, Who “said to me, 'Go back to your country and your relatives, and I will make you prosper.'” It was God who called Yaakov back home to the land he had promised his fathers. How many of you have heard God calling you? I remember when an elder who had came all the way from Minneapolis , prophesied my calling: that God would create a community through me. That was years before Beit Simcha. When I need to, I remember that. It is so important you remember that that he called you.
Then in Genesis 32:10, Yaakov raises God’s lovingkindness and faithfulness. “I am unworthy of all the kindnesses and faithfulness you have shown your servant.” The word for kindnesses is hachasadim, from chesed: kindnesses, lovingkindness, mercies. The word for faithfulness is ha-emet, which usually means truth: his faithfulness is his truth. “God is not a man that he should lie, nor a son of man that he should change his mind.” In the next verse, he confesses his fear. “ Save me, I pray, from the hand of my brother Esau, for I am afraid he will come and attack me.” And in the next verse, he confesses his faith in God’s promise, “But you have said, 'I will surely make you prosper and will make your descendants like the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted.' "” Isn’t it completely human to confess fear and doubt in one breath, and faith in the next? Can you relate to that? Have you ever prayed that way? I have! I don’t think God has a problem with that. Just come and pray, openly and honestly. This is the pattern of many of David’s psalms, such as Psalm 22:
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent.
Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the praise of Israel .
In you our fathers put their trust; they trusted and you delivered them…
But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by men and despised by the people.”
And there are many other Psalms like this, but this one is special, because Yeshua prayed this one on the day of his agony on the cross. Hebrews 2:14-18 explains why the Messiah shared in our humanity “because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”
Because he identifies with us, he understands our struggles, and is also able to help us overcome
That is what he did for Yaakov that night before Esau came with his 400 men. He snuck up on Yaakov and wrestled with him all night, until daybreak. Then he gave Yaakov a new name, “"Your name will no longer be Yaakov, but Israel , because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome."”
God does not disdain the struggle to trust Him in the midst of his trials; rather he joins in the struggle: the struggle to know God and to trust him, like a caterpillar struggling to emerge from a cocoon, like a child struggling to emerge from a womb. Well I remember the struggle to know God, for years and months and weeks and days and hours, crying out to know him in a basement in Brussels , Belgium ….
Then came the joy, when he poured his Spirit into my soul. For Yaakov, then came the limp, where God had touched the socket of his hip. God made sure Jacob would never forget that night.
But “Yaakov called the place Peniel [which means face of God] saying, "It is because I saw God face to face.” It is all worth it in the end, if at the end of struggle we have overcome, our fears and doubts, and put our trust completely in Him. Amen? Then came the next day, when Jacob had to face Esau.
And what did Esau do? He embraced his brother and kissed him on the neck. (I think the biting is a bit of a stretch.) Especially when you consider what Jacob said to his brother. Genesis 33:10, “"No, please!" said Jacob. "If I have found favor in your eyes, accept this gift from me. For to see your face is like seeing the face of God, now that you have received me favorably.” To see you face is like seeing the face of God… p’nee eloheem.” None of the commentaries said anything about this verse, but it really struck me.
Maybe the Christian commentator is still obsessing over Jacob’s obsequiousness, and the Jewish commentator still cannot trust Esau. But IMHO, at this moment, Yaakov connects the face of his brother with the face of God. Do you see the connection with the night before, when Yaakov had called his wrestling mat Peniel, and the morning after, when he says to his brother, your face is like p’nee eloheem? For even as God has overcome Yaakov’s heart, so he had overcome Esau’s heart, and that morning they were brothers again, embracing and weeping over other. How many of you think Esau’s embrace was just because of Yaakov’s gifts?
Esau’s reaction was “why all these gifts? … I already have plenty.” God had blessed Esau, too. Much has been made about what God said centuries later, in Malachi 1:2-4, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” Commentators Jewish and Christian tend to infer that God also had it in for Esau.
Rabbis during the Talmudic period associated Esau with Rome , the oppressors who persecuted the children of Jacob—but God would destroy them yet! Two quick observations about this: Malachi was not talking about the two brothers, but their descendants. This is clear in the following verse, Malachi 1:4, “ Edom may say, "Though we have been crushed, we will rebuild the ruins." But this is what the LORD Almighty says: "They may build, but I will demolish.” Edom , the descendants of Esau, had sinned by conspiring against Israel out of jealousy. Second, as Paul explains in Romans 9:10-16, when God says, “Jacob I loved but Esau I hated,” he is speaking of his election or choice, which is not because God is partial, let alone mean and nasty, but because of his mercy. So Paul in Romans 9:16 quotes Torah (Exodus 33:19): “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”
Indeed, God can and will have mercy on anyone he chooses! Even though he cursed all Moab , he had mercy on Ruth the Moabitess. Even though he chose Isaac and not Ishamel, he blessed Ishmael, and will he show mercy to any of his descendants who call upon his name. He shows mercy to anyone who responds to his compassion through Yeshua. God desires that none should perish. As Yeshua said in John 3:16-17: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” If you have struggled with God, have you also experienced his mercy? “For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.” Psalm 30:5
If any of you have been struggling with God, I pray that you would also pray as Yaakov prayed, remembering his promises to our fathers in the faith, and to each of us, remembering his faithfulness even as we struggle with our fears and doubts. And He will meet you there, and you will experience rejoicing again.
This was Jacob’s faith. We see it again in an episode near the end of this week’s parsha, in Genesis 35:18. Rachel his beloved wife dies in childbirth. “As she breathed her last-for she was dying-she named her son Ben-Oni. But his father named him Benjamin.” What an amazing verse! In one verse, a mother and beloved wife dies, a child is born, the mother gives him a name meaning son of my sorrows but the father gives him the name meaning son at my right hand. It is supremely human through suffering.
This very week Joe Kricks told me a woman who died in childbirth. How much Jacob loved Rachel, toiling for her for 14 years, and now she was gone! How easily he could have accepted the name she had given their son: son of my sorrows. But he chose a different name, because even in his great distress, he had learned to overcome. Now consider what these two names tell us about how God identifies with us in our sorrows and our victories. For Messiah Yeshua is also the son of sorrows, identifying with the worm of Psalm 22. He became the suffering servant of Isaiah 53:3, “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.” Yet he is also the son at my right hand, raised up from the dead to the right hand of God the father! The right hand speaks of God’s authority and power to save. Psalm 89:13, “Your arm is endued with power; your hand is strong, your right hand exalted. He shares this authority and power with the Messiah his Son, As it is written in Psalm 110:1, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.”
Yeshua was fond of quoting this verse to his adversaries! And finally, in Mark 16:19 , “ After the Lord Yeshua had spoken to [his disciples], he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God.
So Jacob proclaimed his hope even in his sorrow. This is our hope in Messiah. For “we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
Amen?
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