Isaac's Preference for Esau and Rebekah's for Jacob

Isaac's preference for Esau is unusual. Isaac is a prayerful man. He meditated in the field when he saw Rebekah riding in on the camels (Gen 24:63). He is a faithful man. He allowed himself to be bound by Abraham, as commanded by God (Gen 22). He was aggrieved when Esau took Hittite women for wives. Esau was nothing like Isaac, but Isaac had a preference for him anyway (Gen 25:28). Was Esau's gamey stew that good (Gen 27:3-4), or Jacob's lentil stew so bad that you would eat it only if you are dying of hunger (Gen 25:30)?

Isaac's preference for Esau started at the time of binding, from a psychological point of view. Facing the imminent, realistic and possible end of one's own life changes a person. At the moment of the binding, the anxiety over death by a violent act has entered Isaac's mind. Now, there are two tendencies in Isaac. One is a faithful and prayerful person, and the other is a person acquainted with violence and death.

Some would spend some pious thoughts about how Isaac dealt with the binding, assuming he cooperated willingly, or he had been able to forgive his dad and forget, or, even better, he integrated it into his faith. And, maybe they are right. But here is the crux of the problem: he must not have done so perfectly, otherwise, Christ would not have been necessary. He pushed some parts of it down, like anybody you know. We "repress" our anxiety about death and impulses for violence. And, maybe it is healthy, as we do not want to be morbid all the time, do we?

Thus, the two tendencies in Isaac have become Esau and Jacob in Rebekah's womb. What a reassurance Esau would have been for Jacob. He was strong and sporty. He was capable of violence as a skilled hunter, and why wouldn't God's promise for Jacob be realised in Esau, who might at least be capable of safeguarding it? Not to mention the gamey stew. Yet, Rebekah fell in love with a contemplative man, who was meditating in the field when she first saw him. She knew Isaac's true self lay in his gentle side. It is scary sometimes our wives know us better than we do ourselves.

Rebekah even protected that part of Isaac, when he was a chip off the old block and presented his wife as his sister to avoid risks of death by a beautiful wife.

At another space and time, a renowned paediatric psychiatrist, Donald Winnicott, at the time of violence and death in World War II, pondered how fathers in their absence, fighting wars, influence their children. He postulated that the influence was passed down to the children through their mothers. The mothers passed on to their children the men they loved. They shaped their children by their fathers' image; the men lived in their hearts, dead or alive.

The man in Rebekah's heart is more like Jacob than Esau, so she decided the legacy lives on through Jacob, not Esau. The true blessing from Life itself lives on. Some pious may be troubled by Rebekah's trickery, but was it not women's curse to bear the pain of creating life? Was not Mary misunderstood, even by Joseph, before the angel Gabriel intervened?

Alas, was not Israel's historical struggles in the Old Testament permeated by the choices between faithful reliance on God or Self-assuring violence? Was it also the differences between Jesus and "the Jews"?