The Genesis of Justice (19 page)

but he did not recognize him, for his hands were like the hands of

Esav his brother, hairy
.

Now he was about to bless

him, when he said:

Are you he, my son Esav?

He said:

I am
.

G
ENESIS
27:1-24

Now Lavan had two daughters: the name of the elder was Lea, the name of the younger was Rahel [Rachel in English]
.

Lea’s eyes were delicate, but Rahel was fair of form and fair to look at
.

And Yaakov fell in love with Rahel
.

He said:

I will serve you seven years for Rahel, your younger Daughter. …

So Yaakov served seven years for Rahel,

yet they were in his eyes as but a few days, because of his love for her. … Now …

he took Lea his daughter and brought her to him
,

and he came in to her.

Lavan also gave her Zilpa his maid
,

for Lea his daughter as a maid
.

Now in the morning:

here, she was Lea!

He said to Lavan:

What is this that you have done to me!

Was it not for Rahel that I served you?

Why have you deceived me?

Lavan said:

Such is not done in our place, giving away the younger before the firstborn;

just fill out the bridal-week for this one, then we shall give you that one also
,

for the service which you will serve me for yet another seven years
.

Yaakov did so—he fulfilled the bridal-week for this one,

and then he gave him Rahel his daughter as a wife.

Lavan also gave Rahel his daughter Bilha his maid,

for her as a maid.

So he came in to Rahel also,

and he loved Rahel also,

more than Lea
.

Then he served him for yet another seven years.

[Rachel eventually gives birth to Joseph, to whom Jacob gives a coat of many colors.]

G
ENESIS
29:16-30

So it was, when Yosef [Joseph in English] came to his brothers
,

that they stripped Yosef of his coat,

the ornamented coat that he had on,

and took him and cast him into the pit.
…

Meanwhile, some Midyanite men, merchants, passed by;

they hauled up Yosef from the pit

and sold Yosef to the Yishmaelites, for twenty pieces-of-silver
.

They brought Yosef to Egypt
.

But they took Yosef’s coat
,

they slew a hairy goat

and dipped the coat in the blood
.

They had the ornamented coat sent out

and had it brought to their father and said:

We found this;

pray recognize

whether it is your son’s coat or not!

He recognized it

and said:

My son’s coat!

An ill-tempered beast has devoured him!

Yosef is torn, torn-to-pieces!

G
ENESIS
37:23-33

J
acob, one of the most complex and interesting of the patriarchs of Genesis, lived a life of greatness and devotion to God,
but also one of deceit and guile. His children seemed to follow in his footsteps. Yet God blesses Jacob repeatedly, bestowing
on his male children the honor of tribal leadership. Why is such checkered conduct so highly rewarded?

A passing glance into Jacob’s personal history shows us a man who cheated his twin brother, Esau, twice. The first time, the
young Jacob withheld food from his fainting brother until Esau “sold” him his birthright. The second time, the mature Jacob—at
the behest of his calculating mother—tricked his blind, dying father into giving him the blessing reserved for his brother.
According to a midrash, Jacob had even tried to emerge first from the womb by grabbing hold of Esau’s heel. The midrash justifies
the actions of the patriarch-to-be by speculating that Jacob “had been conceived first.”
¹
The evidence offered in support of this speculation seems more metaphoric than scientific. “The first drop was Jacob’s .
. . for consider: if you place two diamonds in a tube, does not the one put in first, come out last?”
²

Some commentators go to great lengths in their efforts to justify Jacob’s trickery, arguing that since he was far more suited
to the work of leadership, and since God had prophesied to their mother that “the elder shall be servant to the younger,”
he was carrying out God’s will.
³
Church fathers, like the rabbis, excused the ruse. Jerome called it a laudable lie, and Aquinas and Augustine defended the
deception.
⁴
Some commentators argue that Isaac was not actually deceived, since he suspected that it was Jacob who was obtaining the
blessing. But even if all of that is true, it is also true that Jacob employed means—extortion and deception—that are unacceptable
in a just society. What then are the lessons to be learned from Jacob’s acts of deception?

Let me offer an interpretation from the perspective of a teacher of law. The entire Book of Genesis is about the early development
of justice in human society. Jacob is born into a world with few rules and many inconsistent precedents regarding deception.
His father and grandfather, Isaac and Abraham, pretended their wives were their sisters in order to save their own lives.
Moreover, his God is inconsistent in carrying out threats and promises. The result is a violent and lawless world. Remember
too that the world of Genesis is without a hereafter in which virtue on earth is rewarded in heaven and vice on earth is punished
in hell. All reward and punishment, both divine and earthly, are given in this world, where all can see the workings of justice.
⁵
All too often the inhabitants of Jacob’s world saw virtue punished and vice rewarded—at least in the short run.

Along comes Jacob, whose entire life appears to offer proof that in the long run people reap what they sow. He who lives by
deceit shall himself be deceived. The biblical narrative goes out of its way to show that Jacob’s deceptions against others
are turned back against him—over and over again. Moreover the deceptions inflicted upon Jacob are strikingly symmetrical with
those he inflicted upon his brother and father.

First he is deceived by his father-in-law, Lavan, who plays bait and switch with his daughters. After working seven years
for the hand of Lavan’s younger daughter, Rachel, Jacob wakes up to discover that he has married the older daughter, Leah.
Lavan’s explanation of the deception brings home the symmetry: “Such is not done in our place, giving away the younger before
the firstborn.” After learning of Jacob’s prior deceptions, Lavan describes his son-in-law as “my bone and flesh,” which some
have interpreted as soul mates in deception. Jacob had to understand the not-so-subtle moral of the story: Just as Jacob deceived
in order to undo the natural order of birth, he was deceived to restore it.
⁶
Just as Jacob deceived his dim-sighted father, so too was he deceived in the darkness of his wedding tent.
⁷

A midrash elaborates on Jacob’s poetic justice. When he awakes on the morning after his wedding night and sees that he has
slept with Leah, he reproaches her, saying: “O thou deceiver, daughter of a deceiver, why didst thou answer me when I called
Rachel’s name?” Leah responds: “Is there a teacher without a pupil? I but profited by thy instruction. When thy father called
thee Esau, didst thou not say, here am I?
⁸
So did you call me and I answered you.”
⁹

After marrying Lavan’s daughters (and their handmaids) and having children by them, Jacob deceives Lavan by sneaking away
with his entire family and cattle, while his father-in-law was shearing sheep.
¹⁰
He persuades his wives to join him with “great rhetorical cunning.”
¹¹
His wife Rachel also deceives her own father by stealing his idols and then covering up her theft. (A midrash says that Rachel
stole her father’s idols so “that her father might not learn about their [Jacob and family] flight
from his Teraphim
” [emphasis added]. This suggests that Rachel actually believed the idols had power of communication!)
¹²

Later in life Jacob is deceived by his own children. Considering their lineage and training, it should not be surprising that
they seem deceptive by nature. In the Dina story, which we consider in the next chapter, “The sons of Jacob answered Shechem
and Hamor his father with guile [
b’mirma
].” They tricked all the men of the clan of Hamor into circumcising themselves, and then, while the Hamorites were weak, Simeon
and Levi slaughtered them all.

Jacob was also tricked into believing that his youngest son, Joseph, had been eaten by a wild beast. The means employed to
deceive
Jacob were strikingly similar to the means Jacob had employed to
deceive
his father. Just as Jacob masqueraded beneath the fur of a goatskin, Jacob’s sons killed a “hairy goat” and dipped Joseph’s
coat in its blood. What goes around comes around.

I have repeatedly observed the consequences of deception in the cases I teach and work on. One striking example was a prosecution
against a restaurant owner whose establishment was burned to the ground. An inspection of his books revealed that the restaurant
was overinsured: It had been valued far in excess of its meager income. For that reason, the owner was indicted for insurance
fraud and arson. Eventually he confided to his lawyer that he had been cheating on his taxes by keeping false books understating
his income. In fact, the restaurant was making a fortune—in cash—and was underinsured. A rival, understanding the catch-22,
torched the restaurant. The case was eventually plea-bargained. As Sir Walter Scott was to put it centuries earlier: “Oh, what a
tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!”

If we are to read Jacob’s life as a cautionary tale warning against the wages of deception, why then did the wily Jacob find
so much favor in God’s eyes? Why did God select this family to lead His chosen people? To understand God’s seemingly unwarranted
fondness for both father and sons one must appreciate that they were acting in a state of nature. In such a state, guile and
deception are valuable traits, especially as alternatives to violence. There is no recourse to a legal system in the world
of Genesis—no lawsuits, no injunctions, no penal sanctions. In order to succeed and not be victimized, an individual must
rely on either violence or guile. Another ambitious man who believed that he was entitled to his older brother’s birthright
might have killed his competitor, as so many siblings have done in history and literature. Jacob simply outsmarted Esau, thus
following in the family tradition established by his father and grandfather, both of whom had outwitted kings, rather than
his ancestor Cain, who had resorted to fratricide. Like Odysseus in Greek literature, Jacob is praised as a wily man, ready
and able to employ guile and deception to navigate the dangerous waters of life. In his interactions with other humans, Jacob
eschews the violence of his more physical twin, Esau, preferring brain to brawn.
¹³

Guile is the great leveler between the physically unequal. Jacob understands that he is no match for his stronger brother
in the arena of physical combat. Nor is his clan a match for the far more numerous and warlike tribes. Accordingly, he must
rely on his wit. It is interesting to note that the one attribute that is equally characteristic of biblical man and woman
is guile. Although women are presented as physically, spiritually, and economically weaker than their male counterparts, they
are equally adept at using trickery to level the playing field. Eve, Lot’s daughters, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, Tamar,
and Potaphar’s wife all rely on their feminine wiles. Jacob, by favoring guile over the brute force of his stronger brother,
can be said to be reflecting the feminine as well as the Jewish aspect of Rebecca’s twins. Jews as a people and the women
of Genesis share a common need to resort to guile in order to achieve the equality denied them in physical strength.

Jacob’s actions toward his fellow man are often more tactical than principled. In the Dina story discussed in the next chapter
we will see Jacob condemn the violence of his sons Simeon and Levi not because it is wrong, but because it will make him look
bad in the eyes of his neighbors and subject him to possible retaliation. It is noteworthy that he does not condemn their
deceptiveness in misusing circumcision, only their violence. For Jacob, noble ends justify ignoble means, as long as the benefits
outweigh the costs. Because his family is weak in number but strong in intellect, he prefers the weapon of wit over sword.
He chooses the battlefield on which he can win. In a world without law, what better qualification for leadership could there
be?

Jacob extorts and tricks his brother into surrendering the benefits of his primogeniture, because he knows that he will be
a more suitable leader. He is right. His mother knows he is right. Even his blind father suspects he may be right. And God
knows he is right. Perhaps having Jacob born after his stronger brother was a test of his leadership skills: Can a second-born
child depose his older brother from his “natural” status as leader? He passes the test with flying colors, though not without
paying a heavy moral and psychological price.

For all of his trickery, Jacob never tries to deceive God. He bargains with Him, even wrestles with Him, but he is always
straight with God. The result is that God blesses Jacob with leadership, but makes him understand that the wages of deception
are deception. He who lives by guile will suffer from guile. In a world where deception is often rewarded in the short run,
the life of Jacob demonstrates that over time we reap what we sow. Viewed backward—as all history is viewed—we see that Jacob
pays a high personal price for the qualities that make him a good leader in a world before formal law. He tells Pharaoh: “Fear
and evil have been the days of the years of my life.”
¹⁴
Clearly, although Jacob was a great leader who left a wonderful legacy, the constant deceptions took an enormous toll on
his personal life. This is a trade-off that will be repeated throughout history, especially in the lives of great leaders.