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| Isaac Blessing Jacob - Govert Flinck, c. 1638 |
With his son Isaac married off,
the old widower Abraham figured he might as well get around to getting himself
married again. This was easy to do,
since Abraham had a lot of property and was very old, which is a combination
that a certain kind of woman finds very appealing. Keturah was one such woman.
She and Abraham had six kids together.
They lived to see their grandchildren and great-grandchildren be
born. Well, we know Abraham did. After the mention of her bearing six
children, Keturah disappears from the narrative, and there’s no telling what
happened to her. Abraham himself lived
to be 175. Odds are Abraham treated his
second wife well, in light of the fact that he had been decent enough to set up
the sons of his concubines with nice little nest eggs and sent them off to the
east to get their lives going. Anything
Abraham had that didn’t go to his concubines’ sons (and, possibly, his widow,)
was left to Isaac.
As Abraham died, his family
gathered around him. All living
relations seem to have shown up—even Ishmael, whom Abraham sent off into the
desert when he was still a boy, along with his mother. It was a harsh, cold thing to do, but
Ishmael and his siblings held no grudge: all of them turned up for the funeral,
too! There were probably some awkward
conversations about who made whose mother strike out into the desert with only
her young son in tow. Bygones were
bygones. And soon Ishmael was gone,
too. Unlike his long-lived father,
Ishmael lived to the slight age of 137.
Isaac, set up well for life,
wanted to have children, but that wasn’t working out. Nothing gets a woman to conceive better than prayer, so he tried
that, and lo, Rebekah was pregnant—with twins!
The couple was happy until later in the pregnancy when the two fetuses
starting pushing and shoving each other.
It made her miserable so it was Rebekah’s turn to pray. “Why, o Lord, are my twins fighting each
other before they’re even born?” God,
ever charming, replied with a little poem:
“You’ve got two nations in your
womb,
Between which future conflicts
loom.
One will dominate the other,
And the elder’s going to serve
his brother.”
The first of the twins to emerge
from her womb was hairy and reddish-colored.
This one they called Esau. Jacob
arrived right on his brother Esau’s heels—literally he was born holding Esau’s
heel. As they grew up, Esau became a
hunter, while Jacob preferred to hang around the tent. Isaac had a preference for Esau’s
temperament, while Rebekah liked Jacob more.
One night the boys’ destinies
were sealed. Esau came to the tent,
exhausted from a long day of hunting.
He asked Jacob for some of the stew he had made. “I’m dying from hunger,” Esau said. “At least a mouthful, please.”
Jacob considered this. “It’s yours, brother—for your
birthright.” (This pattern of
negotiation has been observed in numerous other pairs of siblings.)
“Jacob, I’m literally dying
here. Just gimme some of that lentil
stew.”
“’Literally’?”
“Yes. Now feed me.”
“Birthright.”
“I’m dying! What good is a birthright if I die?”
It was obvious to Jacob that his
brother wasn’t really dying, but he knew a sure thing when he saw one. “Oath first. Then I’ll give you some lentils.”
“Fine.”
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