This sheet on Genesis 25 was written by Elliot Rabin for 929 and can also be found here
At first glance, the contrast between the brothers seems simple: Jacob is the spindly trickster, Esau the outtricked rugged outdoorsman. Rabbinic tradition, however, considers the true situation in reverse: Esau is the real deceiver, winning his father’s favor through feigned piety, while Jacob’s tricks are merely the steps needed to entrap the trapper in his own snare. Although the rabbis’ desire to salvage Jacob as the clear and unadulterated hero is transparent, nonetheless there is license to regard Esau as a trickster like his brother. Tricksters are famous for their enormous appetites, for food and sex. They are hunters who can never be satisfied no matter how much they eat. In many stories, the trickster’s voracious appetite is his own Achilles heel, enabling his opponents to vanquish him, at least until the next story; In other tales, the trickster succeeds in suppressing his appetite, allowing him to outsmart his opponent.
Esau fits perfectly into this archetype of the trickster hunter undone by his appetite. As the literary scholar Lewis Hyde (Trickster Makes This World) observes, “[A] trickster is at once culture hero and fool, clever predator and stupid prey. Hungry, [a] trickster sometimes devises stratagems to catch his meal; hungry, he sometimes loses his wits altogether.” The biblical narrator calls Esau “a skillful hunter, a man of the field,” and yet, the moment he returns from the field, Esau feels tired, consumed by hunger: “I am at the point of death, so of what use is my birthright to me?” (Gen. 25:32). Note that the text does not say whether or not Esau succeeds in his hunt. If he is such a great hunter, why does he return so ravenous? Why the dramatic exaggeration, “I am at the point of death”? One possibility is to align Esau with this pattern of tricksters who are depleted by their own appetite. The more he eats—the more there is “game in his mouth”—the more he needs to eat. He will give up anything to supply his craving.
Jacob is the opposite: the trickster who suppresses his appetite. By relinquishing his food, Jacob gains the upper hand over his brother. Jacob’s self-mastery over his appetite enables his triumph as a trickster: to deceive and not be deceived. In fact, Jacob is never seen eating, unlike Abraham (Gen. 21:8) and Isaac (26:30); even on the road he seems unencumbered by appetite. In this reading, the twin brothers are two sides of the same character, acting out different plots in the widespread narrative of the trickster and his gargantuan appetite.
Excerpted from The Biblical Hero: Portraits in Nobility and Fallibility by Elliott Rabin by permission of the Jewish Publication Society. ©2020 by Elliott Rabin.
Elliott Rabin is Director of Thought Leadership at Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools.
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