The Turnabout Twins (Genesis 25:19-34)

     When we last looked in on All My Hebrew Children, Abraham had trudged to the mountain to sacrifice Isaac, his son, his only son—unless you count his other son Ismael—but at the last moment God had provided him a ram for the ritual, which was good for Isaac but for the ram, not so much.  And we talked about the limits of historicity in scripture, and how we need to remember that it is a product of its time, written by folks who didn’t think like you and me, and for whom the notion of child abuse, for instance, would produce foreheads wrinkled in honest confusion.  And we saw that though the scripture doesn’t bring Sarah into it at all, that might not have been the whole truth, and that we could explore those notions using that particularly Jewish form of interpretation called Midrash.  Of which I have no doubt Erica Kane would approve.

And now, as we pick up the story, Isaac is married to Rebekah, and—darn those Abrahamic genes—she is having trouble getting pregnant, and Isaac prays to God to unlock her womb, and though Rebekah undoubtedly prays too, the scripture says that it is Isaac’s prayer that does the trick.  And before you get all “what, God doesn’t hear the prayers of women, this is another example of patriarchal writing,” let me say that it’s probably a valid complaint, but the Talmud has another take: it says that it’s because Rebekah’s parents were foreigners that her prayers aren’t as powerful as Isaac who, after all, is a child of the promise.  You can take your pick of explanations, but my money’s on the patriarchy angle.

What I do know is that this is yet another barren woman, and that means yet another threat to the promise, which God takes care of by opening Rebekah’s womb, and this time the narrator doesn’t make a big deal out of it, he’s all “ho-hum, another womb-opening, another womb with a view” not at all like the angst that accompanied the production of Ishmael and Isaac.  Just “the LORD granted Isaac’s prayer, and his wife Rebekah conceived.”

This time, the focus begins with the pregnancy itself, and what a pregnancy it is.  Twins: two for the price of one, and it’s a hard trip down maternity lane for Rebekah, whose pregnancy isn’t very easy.  In fact, it’s so tough that she begins to wish that the curse of childlessness had not been removed.  Now, you and I might say well, what do you expect?  Times were hard enough for pregnant women in those days: food was often scarce, women worked hard for long hours, and it was hard enough for women carrying a single child, much less twins . . .

But the interpretation our narrator gives is that the children are fighting together  in the womb, and, further, that it’s continuous with the struggles they will have after birth, and even further, that it is a precursor to the struggles that the nations that arise from them—Israel and Edom—will have in the future.  In fact, Midrash tells us, they try to kill each other, even in the womb.

But the basic narrative says none of that, and Rebekah complains to God—"If it is to be this way, why do I live?"—and God responds, in typical God fashion, with an oracle “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples born of you shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the younger.”  And she thinks, ironically, “Two nations?  No wonder it hurts in there,” and maybe she titters just a little bit—like her mother in law did—at that “elder serving the younger” business, because that was almost as likely a notion as a 90-year-old conceiving.  The rules of primogeniture—and every other geniture—were as immovable as bed-rock, and decreed that the elder would inherit 2/3 of the father’s stuff, not to mention the right to rule his father’s household.  Rebekah just couldn’t see it happening.

But this is God we’re talking about here, not some Temple flunky, and everybody knows that God can do anything God wants, and Rebekah—like Sarah before her—would’ve done well to remember that.  And in due season, Rebekah gives birth to twins, and one is ruddy and red and has hair all over his body, already, so they named him Esau, which means “hairy” or “rough.”  The other child looks like . . . well, Genesis doesn’t say what the other one looks like, he’s not described physically at all . . . all it says is that he is grasping—fiercely, we assume—the heel of his hirsuit older brother.  So, in a flash of inspiration, his parents name him Jacob, which means “heel-holder.”

And by now, you can probably sense a trend . . . Jacob and Esau are being set up as opposites, and their differences at birth presage differences as they grew up.  “Esau,” we’re told, “was a skillful hunter, a man of the field,” which is typical Genesis understatement: in actuality, he was a man’s man, an outdoorsman . . . he was Davy Crockett in animal skins, Daniel Boone with a spear.  He could take down a bear in 3 seconds flat, skin a deer with two flicks of his knife, and there wasn’t a furry creature within a hundred miles who didn’t quake in their paws at the mention of his name.

Jacob, on the other hand, wasn’t like that.  Again with characteristic understatement, our narrator says “Jacob was a quiet man, a man of the tents,” which in spite of his brevity, was more than enough, thank you very much: tents were where the women stayed, where they did stuff like cooking and sewing and gossiping, and, and, well . . . women’s stuff.  Esau was a man of the field, a skillful hunter and provider, but Jacob was a quiet man, a soft man, who hung around the tents like a woman.

Is it any wonder that Isaac loves Esau best?  Is it any wonder that he is head-over-heels-crazy about him?  He’s the very model of a major Hebrew gentleman, a perfect heir, not only in Isaac’s eyes, but in the eyes of all society as well. His neighbors were all grooming their daughters, each hoping that little Dorcas or Penelope would be the lucky one, and his coming of age ball was a great success, even though Esau spent more time bragging about his pick-up truck than he did dancing with the young ladies.  He was the perfect heir, and would make the perfect head of a household one of these days . . .  and Isaac thanks his lucky stars every day that Esau had come out first.

By the same token, is it really any wonder that Rebekah loved Jacob best?  He wasn’t a typical overbearing Hebrew male: he paid attention to what women did, he valued what they did, he even learned to do it himself—he cooked that red stew for his field-weary brother and he’d go on to sew a coat of many colors for his favorite son, and these were things that no loutish Hebrew male like Esau would be caught dead doing.

So as the boys grow up, the stage is set for what is to follow, and there’s more than a little patriarchal flavor to the whole thing . . . Jacob is a man of the tents, a woman-like man, in some respects, and look what happens: he tricks his brother out of first his birthright and, second, his father’s blessing, and you know how those women are, they’re tricky, not straightforward at all, they use subterfuge to get what they want . . . just look at Eve, for God’s sake, who started out this whole mess, tempting poor, old Adam to disobey the Lord.

But those who blame Rebekah forget that Isaac played favorites also, and there are hints that the author of Genesis wasn’t too thrilled with him, either.  We’re told that the reason Isaac loved Esau best was that he loved meat, which at the very least, makes Isaac look like a shallow jerk, and at the most, is a not-so-subtle parody of Hebrew manliness..

.But no matter what Genesis thinks about the whole thing—and despite what some would say, the text is ambiguous—the fact remains that Jacob does become Israel, the father of the Jewish people, not Esau.  The quiet man, the man from the tents, the one who knows how to cook dinner for his brother and sew outfits for his children, that is the one God chooses to head up the whole shebang.  God chooses the outsider, the man who doesn’t fit society’s definition of “male” to be the patriarch of God’s people.

And what I find remarkable is that today, it hasn’t changed all that much, at least here in the U.S. of A.  We always choose the “manly” leaders, we always choose those who are tough on crime, who talk loudly and carry a big stick, who shoot first and ask questions later.  It doesn’t do to be seen as waffling, as not taking a decisive stand, of looking weak to foreign powers.  We value progress, thrusting ahead, a very masculine thing.  Of all the Western nations, we’re one of the last who haven’t elected a woman president yet, and the one we may hire next go-round out-machoed the most macho secretaries of state on the foreign policy front. 

Back in the early seventies, when the feminist movement began gather steam, women in business found that they had to dress and behave as much as they could like men if they wanted to get ahead.  They had to suppress the qualities that had been associated with women—emotions, caring, creativity, nurturing—to get ahead in a man’s world.  The thing is, men have traditionally had to suppress those qualities as well.  Psychologist Carl Jung found that all human beings, whether biologically female or male, have significant feminine elements in their psyches.  He believed that a major problem in Western cultures—those that, like ours, evolved from ancient Greece—is the suppression of qualities—nurturing, empathy, caring, creativity—that derive from these elements in our single-minded pursuit of progress.  The pursuit of science and technological innovation requires a cold, analytical approach that eschews emotion and lack of objectivity.  Increasingly, our educational system has made science and engineering the “star” curricula, and demoted the arts to secondary status as “enrichment.” rather than the vital components that they are.  Couple this with historic patriarchal systems of male dominance over women, and what you get is a society that not only suppresses the feminine, but actively denies it and considers it of little worth.

This of course has had a very bad effect upon women, whose contributions have been seen largely within those pursuits labeled feminine, which are causing them to have low self-esteem and little regard for their own worth.  After life-times of being told that the qualities most associated with their gender are tangential to the progress of society, they have internalized the message and come to believe it, causing no end of psychic pain.

But it has had a bad effect on men as well . . . it has left them emotionally stunted, bottled up inside . . . the suppression of all that nourishes a bond—empathy, caring, emotion, vulnerability—has made it difficult to maintain healthy relationships, leading to the over-fifty-percent divorce rate we are blessed with today.  Families are disintegrating, and society in general has lost the healthy, balanced spirituality that characterized earlier times.

This is why the choosing of Jacob is so indicative, so instructive of the nature of God.  In the midst of a terribly patriarchal culture—and the Hebrew society was that, as much as our own Greek precursors, at least—in the midst of the terribly patriarchal culture, which had savagely suppressed women and all the feminine, God chose the man of the tents.  God chose the man with the integrated personality, who was a man—nobody could doubt that, after all he was the father of twelve tribes—but who was one who respected women, who loved women, who integrated the feminine into his person.

To produce Israel—and that is what he came to be called, Israel—God chose a whole human being, and one who was not afraid to show this wholeness in what he said and did.  In our society, which still shies away from any hint of effeminacy in men, which still laughs at and denigrates and calls unfit for public service anybody who shows emotion in public—look what they did to John Boehner when he cried—the fact that God chose a man of the tents should make us think.  Amen.

Midrash Behavior (Genesis 22:1-14)

This story is traditionally called "the binding of Isaac," and sometimes the sacrifice of Isaac, although those who call it that must not have read it that closely because--spoiler alert!--Isaac isn't sacrificed.  Come to think of it, perhaps that isn't such a bad title after all, because if Isaac's life is not sacrificed, his innocence certainly is.  As one commentator wrote, this story captures that growing realization we all face as children that (a) we and our parents are separate beings, (b) we are totally dependent upon them and (c) there is no guarantee that we will get what we need or be protected from evil in the world. All of this dawning terror is packed into one line, as Isaac begins to realize just who the sacrifice is intended to be: "The fire and the wood are here,” he says to Abraham, “but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?"  Can you imagine the sense of betrayal, of being alone in the world,  of absolute terror that a child would feel faced with this?

I don’t think that was the author’s point, I don’t think it was intended to elicit sympathy for Isaac, to strike terror in every parent’s heart.  It is a set-up for Abraham’s reply, which is surely one of the points of the story: “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering.”  It has been left to modern interpreters to point this out, accusing God of child abuse for putting Isaac through that emotional hell, which will at the least produce a big, fat case of post-traumatic shock syndrome in later life, along with extreme narcissism and repeated psychotic breaks.

Now, I don't want to belittle these musings, I think they have value, especially in this time of increasing awareness of child abuse and domestic violence in our congregations.  What I don't agree with is the inclination of some preachers to avoid this passage like the plague, arguing that it is an abusive text and has no place being inflicted upon modern congregations. 

This is certainly their right, it is a bedrock principle of Presbyterian polity that nobody can dictate what a pastor preaches, and far be it from me to advocate anything else. But I think it overlooks a rich opportunity to think about the nature of God, scripture, faith and a whole lot of other things, only a fraction of which we'll get to today.

So, I'm going to tackle it, and the first thing I want to say is this: I do not believe God ordered Abraham to sacrifice his son, his only son  (And what does that make Ishmael, anyway?  Chopped liver?  Last time I looked, Ishmael was Abraham’s son as well . . . and he was set to become the ancestor of a great nation, just like Isaac)  But once again: I do not believe that God ordered Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, I do not believe that the God of love would do that to anyone, much less a child, and before you walk out griping about my lack of taking the Bible seriously -- those if you who didn't walk out at the thought of God the child abuser, that is -- answer me this: how many of you believe that The Lord created the earth in seven 24-hour days?  That it really is an abomination to wear two kinds of cloth together, or eat bacon?  How many believe that God blesses people who rejoice when babies' heads are bashed against rocks, as is claimed by Psalm 137?   If you’re going to take the Bible literally, you have to deal with those things, and much more.  However, if you agree that the Bible is a product of its time and place, and in that time and place, nobody had ever heard of PTS-whatsit and only a thousand years later would Narcissus be a twinkle in Ovid's eye, you can get past all of that and see this passage for what it is.

As a matter of fact, it is unlikely that the original audience of this story-- Hebrew tribes-people a thousand years before the common era--would take it as historically accurate. It is only in the last hundred years or so that a certain segment of Christianity has insisted that the bible is literally and historically true.  The original audience of the Old Testament understood that the Bible is symbolic in nature, and that only in broad strokes can it be considered to be historically accurate.

Personally, I consider this story a parable, and like Jesus' parables they are told to make a point, and whether a parable describes an historical situation is beside that point.  When Jesus said “there was this rich young ruler,” his disciples and whoever else was listening knew that although there certainly were rich young rulers, the one Jesus was talking about was just a talking point.  The value in the story is what it tells us—or doesn’t tell us—about God. 

In the case of this scripture, perhaps it’s more of the latter, perhaps its more in the way of “doesn’t tell us” about God.  Rabbi Rachel Barenblat, in her wonderful blog “the Velveteen Rabbi,” reminds us that while some scripture answers questions, others, not so much, and that this is clearly of the latter variety.  Not only does it answer no questions, but it leads us to ask many more: Why would God ask this thing? Does God ask it, or is it a story made up for a particular point?  Maybe it really did happen, and Abraham is listening to the wrong voices?  Why doesn’t Abraham say anything?  Why doesn't he explain anything to Isaac? Why doesn't Isaac cry out when he's bound to the altar? What goes through Abraham and Isaac's heads during this traumatic scene? Why is Sarah absent?

The first line of the passage says that God put Abraham to the test. If the test was the binding, and potential sacrifice, of Isaac, did Abraham pass?   Was he supposed to be willing to go through with it, or w as he supposed to resist? What was he supposed to do, when was he supposed to do it, and what are we supposed to learn from it?

A particularly Rabbinic form of biblical interpretation, with which Rabbi Barenblat would be well familiar, seeks to answer these kind of questions.  It’s called Midrash, and though Rabbinic interpretation is every bit as complex as Christian, it can be said  that midrash "fills in the blanks" of a story in scripture, it reads between the lines, wondering about that which has been left unsaid.  It acknowledges that there might be more to the story than has actually been written down.  Which makes sense, when you think about it: surely we don't imagine that what is recorded in even the most meticulous history is the whole story?  We don't think that historical accounts of, say, writing the emancipation proclamation tell all there is to tell, do we?  I'm sure there was a fair amount of "Mr. President, are you sure you want to do that?" from his friends, or "you sure that's honest, Abe?" going on, and maybe even some "Abraham, put down that quill and come to supper.” There's always more happening than meets the historical eye, and Midrash is a way of performing controlled speculation on what that might be.

So.  With all that in mind, let's do some midrash.  Let's take one of the many questions about this passage and try to use midrashic interpretation to examine it.  And one that comes up almost immediately is "why is Abraham silent?  Why doesn't he say anything when all of a sudden, God tells him to kill his son, the one out of Sarah, upon whom depends the future of the Jewish people.  And one way of answering this is to say "well, what if he did say something?" 

And in fact, in one of the delightful volumes of midrash collected by Lewis Ginzberg at the beginning of the last century there is such a midrash, and it begins like this:  "The Lord decided to test Abraham and Isaac ... And He said to Abraham, "Take now your son." And Abraham said "I have two sons, and I do not know which of them you mean for me to take." So God said "Your only son,"  and Abraham replied "The one is the only son of his mother, and the other is the only son of his mother."  God said, gritting the divine molars, "You are to take the one you love," but Abraham said "Eh ... I love this one and I love that one."  Finally, God is forced to be particular: "Take Isaac," he said.

And it's interesting to note that this one midrashic fragment, this one, simple riff on a single question -- why doesn't Abraham talk back -- addresses a bunch of considerations.  It acknowledges that it is odd that the angel would call Isaac Abraham's only son, when everyone knows he has another named Ishmael.  It inserts Sarah into the story, where she wasn't before, and makes room for her concerns (and in fact spins them out in a later portion).  But most of all, it humanizes Abraham, allowing him to show concern through his bargaining.

And speaking of bargaining, this is not the first time have we’ve seen Abraham doing that.  Remember?  He bargained with God for the city of Sodom, weaselling God down from destroying the whole town to promising that if there is only one righteous person in all the city, it will be spared, and though it didn't work out so well for Sodom, it illustrates one of the major points about midrash: it doesn't just make stuff up.  It builds on other scriptures, using other passages to justify and shore up its interpretations.  As I said earlier, it’s controlled speculation

So.  Let's do some more.  It's clear that Abraham is stalling:  he argues with God, he pretends not to get it, then he uses the oldest dodge in the world: like Moses and Isaiah after him, he argues that he's not suitable for the task, and  "Am I fit to perform the sacrifice?" he asks, "Am I a priest?"  Then, again in time-honored tradition—see Adam—he tries to pass the buck: "Get Shem to do it, after all, he is high priest."  And God says "when you get to that place, I'll consecrate you and you'll be a priest.  Happy?"

Of course, Abraham isn't.  Happy, that is.  He is deeply troubled over what he is being told to do, and not just for himself:  "how shall I separate my son Isaac from Sarah, his mother?"  But, he's always obeyed the Lord, and he's never regretted it, God had always gotten him out of a jam -- that whole telling Pharaoh Sarah was his sister episode, for instance, and so he saddles up his donkey  . . . Slowly . . .  and calls two of his men in from the back forty and tells them they're going on a little trip, but that they have time to go say goodbye to their wives, all the time in the world, and he goes to Sarah and tells her they're going to get religious instruction for Isaac -- he doesn't have the heart (or is it the guts?) to tell her the truth,   And he tells the same thing to Isaac . . .

So they travel for three days, toward the land of Moriah, and they take the scenic route, stopping to take pictures along the way -- a smiling Isaac standing in front of the donkey, one of his servants pretending to fall into a well, that sort of thing -- and on the fourth day, though Moriah is still a long way off, he tells the servants to wait for them where they were, and Isaac and his father trudge on.

And in this midrash, Abraham is hardly complacent, but tries instead to walk a middle line ... while not disobeying God, he does all he can to delay until God, . . . what? Comes to his senses?  Finds another sacrifice?  What?  And the cool thing about this form of story-telling, of question-exploring is that we all can do it, it doesn’t take a degree in biblical studies, or ordination as a Presbyterian preacher or rabbi, though it helps to have a knowledge of the Bible.  We can all practice this imaginative form of interpretation, we can use it as a form of daily meditation, if we like, or daily bible study.

And maybe that’s actually part of the point of passages like these.  Maybe they’re there in part to get us asking those questions, to get us to think about the answers, and to understand that God is big enough to countenance them.  As Rabbi Barenblat puts it, maybe this and other passages are ambiguous and difficult for a reason: because the process of studying them, of asking the hard questions, is itself a way of learning about God, of learning to see God in difficult places.  Amen.