Isaac Tries to Give an Agricultural Blessing to Esau the Hunter

In theory, the final phrase can be translated “the oldest the youngest shall serve” – giving it a Delphic ambiguity.

The final part overlaps with Abraham’s blessing:

^{בראשית יב:ב} וְאֶעֶשְׂךָ לְגוֹי גָּדוֹל וַאֲבָרֶכְךָ וַאֲגַדְּלָה שְׁמֶךָ וֶהְיֵה בְּרָכָה. ^יב:ג וַאֲבָרֲכָה מְבָרְכֶיךָ וּמְקַלֶּלְךָ אָאֹר וְנִבְרְכוּ בְךָ כֹּל מִשְׁפְּחֹת הָאֲדָמָה.

^{Gen 12:2} I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you shall be a blessing. ^12:3 I will bless those who bless you and curse him that curses you; and all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you.”

Editor’s note: For biblical attitudes to hunting and the reception in Judaism, see Marcus Mordecai Schwartz, “Hunting: How It Became Un-Jewish,” TheTorah (2020).

Think of the farmers and cowmen in the musical Oklahoma!

Editor’s note: For another discussion of the symbiotic vs. competitive relationship theme, see Samuel Z. Glaser, “The Evolution of Civilization: The Biblical Story,” TheTorah (2015).

Nomadic peoples often conduct destructive raids on sedentary peoples, but actual conquest of territory is less common. Even in the exceptions noted above, Tamerlane quickly urbanized as did Ghengis’ son. Ancient Near Eastern history is replete with peoples from the periphery of civilizations (including Libyans, Elamites, and the earliest Arabs) raiding the settled lands. They can cause quite a bit of damage, but they do not gain sovereignty. When first Akkadians and then Amorite-speaking peoples take over Mesopotamian cities, it is only after they had settled there for some time first and then take over from the inside.

See the chapter on extraction economies in Roland Boer, The Sacred Economy of Ancient Israel, (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2015), 110–145.

The number of times that Isaac needs to ask to confirm his son’s identity certainly calls this into question.

The only consolation is that he will break free from his brother’s control. Indeed, this is often the case for nomadic populations dominated by sedentary ones. If fortunes change, and agricultural produce no longer provides such surpluses, that community’s strength will ebb and they will not be able to maintain that control. When conditions lead to a shortage of resources even in the non-cultivated lands, hunters might seek game from the herds of the settled people or otherwise attack their resources.

See also the commentaries of Ramban and Shadal ad loc.

Nevertheless, they offer the translation I followed above in a footnote.

Also, he will be able to escape his brother when serving him becomes too much.

Hoffmann does not give names, but one such example is Hermann Gunkel, Genesis, trans. Mark E. Biddle, Mercer Library of Biblical Studies (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1997), 306; translation of the 9^th printing (1977)/3^rd edition (1910) of Genesis (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1901):

The blessing on Esau, the high point of the scene, is in verse as is the blessing on Jacob… Moved by love and compassion, Isaac would like to bless. But the world has been given away. Nothing remains for Esau other than—curse. Ingeniously, the narrative contrasts this curse with the blessing on Jacob by employing the same words both times but in a contrasting sense: מִשְׁמַנֵּי הָאָרֶץ “from the fat of the earth” (v 28), “far from the fat of the earth” (v 39), similarly מִטַּל הַשָּׁמַיִם.

Here Hoffmann expands a bit:

אך מלבד העובדה שארץ אדום צויינה עוד בזמן העתיק כארץ שוממה וצחיחה בדרך כלל, הרי שקשה לבאר את המי״ם כאן בהוראה זו במלה ״ומטל״.

Nevertheless, putting aside how the land of Edom already in ancient times, is generally noted to be a wasteland or wilderness, it is difficult to understand the mem here in the word mi-tal with this meaning.

This point was made above.

The rabbis use variants of the phrase מעשה אבות סימן לבנים “The deeds of the ancestors are a prefigurement for the children” as an umbrella concept for narratives that are meant to prefigure events in historical time. Sometimes, this is suggested allegorically, but with Jacob and Esau it is more explicit from the beginning as illustrated in the divine oracle. See discussion in, Christoph Levin, “Abraham and Sarah in Egypt: A Story Composed to Prefigure the Exodus,” TheTorah (2020); Marvin A. Sweeney, “Israel’s History as a Family Narrative,” TheTorah (2015); Yigal Levin, “A Tale of Twelve Brothers,” TheTorah (2014).

See Barry Dov Walfish, “The Denigration of Esau,” TheTorah (2020), for how Jewish readings of this text about Esau have led to an amplification of the negatives. For more on Edomite religious culture and the Bible’s attempt to ignore it, see Juan Manuel Tebes, “Why the Bible Is Mute about Qos, the Edomite God,” TheTorah (2022).

Even within Israel, the Bible focuses only on a small subset of Israel. Many within Israel are Other. Recently, several novels have explored that other person’s narrative, including The Red Tent by Anita Diamant and The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks.