A Smooth Man

My dad always liked the story of Jacob and Esau. Maybe it reminded him of his brothers, who could be as wily and mischievous as Jacob. They resembled one another in appearance, and once my grandfather on my mother’s side mistook one Horn brother for another, who played the part so well that my grandfather never caught on.

Dad’s favorite statement of Jacob’s was “my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man” (Genesis 27:11). It always made him laugh. I don’t know why. He was indeed a smooth man; his thin hairless legs gave him the nickname “Birdlegs” when he ran track in college.

Maybe the attraction of Jacob and Esau was how true to life the stories are. Even in the womb they struggled so much that their mother, Rebekah, said out loud, “If it is to be this way, why do I live?” Surely my dad saw the exasperation on his own mother’s face as she struggled to raise eight children. And that wonderful image of Jacob coming out of the womb with his hand firmly gripping his brother’s heel. This was not going to be a peaceful household!

It didn’t help that Rebekah loved Jacob and Isaac loved Esau. Later she would help Jacob cheat his brother out of their father’s blessing. Last Sunday’s passage is a preview of this, and shows Esau as a man with more belly than brains. It isn’t as easy to find game as it is to cook up some lentils, so when Esau drags in at the end of a fruitless hunt, he readily does whatever Jacob asks just to get some dinner. Unfortunately for the slow-witted Esau, what he trades are his rights as first-born – which, admittedly, aren’t very filling when you’re hungry.

These stories aren’t intended to be historical biography, of course. They explain why the children of Jacob (Israel) didn’t get along with their distant kin, the children of Esau (Edom). Some also see them as part of the age-old conflict between nomadic hunters and settled farmers. For me, though, and probably for my dad, they show how well the biblical writers understood human nature, and how little that nature has changed over thousands of years.

That’s really what makes the Bible come alive for me. These aren’t ancient myths told by pre-scientific primitives. They are keen insights into how the world works, especially how people work. Genesis, in particular, is breathtaking in its description of how God enters into history, using someone as scheming as Jacob to create a promise that will one day be fulfilled in Jesus Christ. If these stories weren’t true to life, they wouldn’t have much meaning for me.

As far as I know, the Horn brothers never took advantage of one another except perhaps in jest, as with my maternal grandfather. In that sense, the resemblance to Jacob and Esau isn’t that strong. Yet families still have conflict, people still wheel and deal, and some make poor choices. In spite of all our human failings, God works with us and makes out of us something more than we can ask or imagine. Through God we become a blessing to others. And that’s true whether we are hairy or smooth.

[Pentecost 4: Genesis 25:19-24. I'm now back from vacation, so this is posted a bit late.]