the lentil-stew incident

[cellio]

Some of us were discussing this week's parsha yesterday morning, specifically the incident where Esav sells Yaakov his birthright in exchange for some stew. The question is: was Yaakov behaving evilly, or was this ok (if un-brotherly)?

The plain reading (p'shat) provides the following facts: Esav the hunter came in from the field famished, found Yaakov cooking stew, and said "give me some of that stuff please". Yaakov said "sell me your birthright". Esav said "I'm about to die here; what good is it to me anyway?". They completed the transaction, Esav ate, and he went away.

Ok, let's dissect that a bit. Esav seems prone to drama -- he's about to die from hunger when he just came in from the field? Really? It's impossible to determine tone from this; I read the text as "gimme" from a bullying older brother, possibly influenced by the rabbis who see Esav in a negative light (equating him with Rome), while a fellow congregant saw him as asking nicely and being taken advantage of by the scheming brother who started trying to displace him at birth. Both possibilities are valid, I think. The plain text just doesn't tell us whether the request is sincere or a demand dressed up in a "please", or what anyone's motivations really are. To my surprise, the only midrash on this point in Sefer Ha-Aggadah is one that has Esav opening his mouth and saying "shovel it in" and eating like a camel. Nothing about events preceding that point.

Regardless of whether it was a request or a demand, Yaakov named a ridiculous price. After Esav took the deal the text tells us he "despised" his birthright, presumably because he sold it for a mere bowl of stew (and some bread that Yaakov added in). Surely Esav had options; he could have gone elsewhere for food or cooked his own stew. Yaakov is not his servant or his mother; it is not his job to cook for his brother. On the other hand, we learn from Kayin and Hevel that the answer to "am I my brother's keeper?" is "yes, actually, sometimes". I think if Esav were really about to die then it would be absolutely incumbent upon Yaakov to take care of him, but I don't think mere discomfort (possibly due to Esav's own bad planning) counts. So we're back to whether he was really at death's door, or just catastrophizing.

We also don't know whether Yaakov had cooked for just himself and giving food to his brother meant he wouldn't eat (or eat as much). In that case he might name a ridiculous price that he didn't expect his brother to actually pay. One is not generally compelled to give (or sell) one's property just because someone else wants it, though in Esav's defense, the rabbis do settle on a requirement for fair pricing if you do sell. So under halacha (which post-dates this incident, but still), Yaakov could have said "no" or sold at a fair price but couldn't do what he did.

To my mind, Yaakov took advantage but wasn't evil. The situation was not entirely under his control -- Esav could have walked out easily enough. This is different from, say, predatory lending where the only loan the guy with lousy credit can get is usurous. Contrast the stew incident with the later blessing incident, where I do think Yaakov was being unambiguously evil in tricking his father to steal his brother's blessing. (While I don't understand the apparent value of the blessing, that's a separate matter. It was valuable to all involved and Yaakov stole it through treachery.) Perhaps the later incident causes some to see the earlier incident in the same bad light, but that feels like a questionable reading to me, saying that, essentially, once a thief always a thief (projecting back in time). I find the Yaakov story more interesting as an arc, descending from sibling rivalry to theft to running for his life to then getting some of what he dished out at the hands of Laban to finally reconciling with his brother. But an interesting reading isn't automatically a correct one.

What say you?

Comments

Re: Thoughts From The Goyim Gallery, Looking In:

[talvinamarich.livejournal.com]

Cain and Abel. Esau and Jacob. What other stories follow the theme of "Brother against brother, leading to one group of people parting ways with the main group"?

Re: Thoughts From The Goyim Gallery, Looking In:

[kmelion.livejournal.com]

Well for a while it's Joseph against his 9 older siblings.

Then later, IIRC, when the kingship splits the tribe of Judah stands alone against the other tribes...