Deception of Yitzchak

I want to talk about the famous story in the Torah where Jacob “tricks” his father into giving him the blessing meant for Esau.

If you recall, the story goes something like this… Yitzchak was getting old and wanted to bless his two children. He favoured Esau and wanted to give an extra blessing to him, but Rebecca favoured Jacob and wanted him to get the extra blessing. Yitzchak send Esau out to hunt some dinner so Yitzchak can eat before giving Esau his blessing. Rebecca hears this and tells Jacob to go into the yard and bring a goat so she can prepare some food for Yitzchak. Then tells Jacob to dress in Esau’s clothes and place the goat’s hair on his arms and neck (since Jacob was smooth skinned and Esau was hairy) and go to his father pretending to be Esau, thus tricking Yitzchak into giving Jacob the extra blessing. When Jacob comes before his father in Esau’s clothes, Yitzchak doesn’t believe it is Esau (since their voices were different) so asks to feel his arms. He feels the goat hair and says “The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau”. Yitzchak seems to buy the trick and Jacob gets the extra blessing.

The simple reading seems to be a child trying to pull a fast one on his elderly, poor sighted, father. As usual there is much more going on here.

To explain what’s going on here, we need to first need to understand why Yitzchak wanted to give Esau the extra blessing (and why Rebecca knew it had to go to Jacob). Yitzchak knew that his children would have to carry on the mission of Abraham. Doing this required spirituality, since it’s a spiritual mission, but the mission involves changing the world and that required someone with an aggressive personality. Jacob was clearly the spiritual one and Yitzchak knew he would be the one to take the message forward. But Yitzchak felt the Jacob was to passive, so his plan was to give the spiritual blessing to Jacob and a physical one to Esau, and they would work together to carry out Abraham’s mission. Rebecca knew that as long as Jacob was dependant on Esau, the mission would never be carried out.

When Yitzchak says: “The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau”, he’s not speaking literally. He knows the person in front of him is Jacob (this is Yitzchak we’re talking about), so how do we interpret that saying?

The voice represents the power of intellect, and the hands represent the power of action. Yitzchak is saying that the person before him has the intellect of Jacob and the action of Esau. He then knew that Jacob would be able to carry out the mission himself, and gave him both the physical and spiritual blessings.

Of course when Esau finds out what happened, he’s not very happy and asks for some sort of blessing. Yitzchak gives the following blessing to him: “Behold, your dwelling place shall be the fat places of the earth and of the dew of the heaven from above. And you shall live by your sword, and you shall serve your brother, and it will be, when you grieve, that you will break his yoke off your neck." Remember that Esau is the father of Rome (and thus the Christians), keep that in mind when you evaluate the accuracy and meaning of this blessing.

Shabbat Shalom