On Jacob and Esau and Psychopathy

I’ve been toying with the story of Jacob and Esau, really most of my life. I keep reading this story and every time I see something else. Sometimes I read it heroically—things make sense, align, God is provident. Sometimes I read it and it seems like every damn person is a villain. Jacob for stealing the inheritance, his mom for helping him, his dad for trying to give it to Esau against God’s will, Esau for trying to take what he traded to Jacob (even if Jacob was a real opportunistic jerk about it) ,and God himself for setting the whole situation up in the first place. 

I keep reading this story because it’s my namesake. It’s my middle name, Jacob, that I get from my mom and I get from the Bible. He’s the deceiver. He’s weirdly chosen and gifted, but deals in deception most of his life. It’s hard to figure out how this guy stays in God’s favor. Everything he does is a con, and he’s got the greatest ally you could ask for. 

And fair warning, I might be reading personal experience into theology. There’s a hell of a lot of projection that goes on in the theological world, particularly with bad theology (but even in good), and perhaps I’m trying to rationalize some belief set that makes sense of my family and my flaws. Or maybe the best we can do is read and interpret, to meditate on these stories over and over and dig into the core of who God is as best we can know him, given the cumulative sum of our own experiences. That seems to be how Paul approached scriptures, at least as far as I can tell.  

Regardless, this is what I have: my brain, my lens, my dysfunction applied to God. Sorry God. I’m doing my best. 

On to the matter at hand: there’s this really powerful theme in the story of favor and abandonment playing side by side. Particularly in the relationship between Jacob and his mom, Rebekah. Warning: hot button, completely biased zone for Patrick here. Buckle up. Jacob’s mother effectively destroyed Jacob’s relationship with his father and his twin, and really everything he knew. When she dressed him in goatskins and deception, Rebekah severed any paternal loyalty or brotherly affection that existed among Isaac, Jacob, and Esau. Those relationships became dead—and in doing so, Rebekah killed her own relationship with her favorite son. She would remain with Isaac, and send Jacob off (with God, but nothing else) into the desert. For the favor of a son, she removed everything that he had ever know, she destroyed stability, and she split a family. Guys, we teach this story to kids. There’s some awful, divisive, destructive stuff going on.  There’s no, “And Esau went to counseling for the rest of his life, because his mom really screwed him over on this one.” 

How do you even carry that weight as Jacob? It’s heavy. And honestly, if we want to take it a bit more extreme (why not, right?) let’s blame God, shall we? He’s the one who decreed that Jacob would have the inheritance. He’s the one who set the events in motion. He’s the one who broke up the family, so that his blessing could go on to the second son instead of the first. Jacob was complicit, yes. But he was a pawn in a plot of his mother to fulfill a prophecy by his god to give him everything—and to burn everything to the ground. Scorched earth theology. He lost the whole world, but I guess won his soul? 

So Jacob ends up fighting with God. They wrestle all night. And I’m not sure if it matters if it was really God or if it was Jesus or an angel, or if the whole thing is metaphor. Whether in act or in mind, Jacob was pissed, and Jacob was scared, and Jacob was swinging for the universe. He’s wrestling, I think, with his parents and—perhaps—himself. 

You see, what Jacob is about to face across the river is his brother Esau. But more than that, it’s his own complicit deception. And I wonder if what Jacob finds most offensive or daunting is the fact that he has to face his brother, whom he duped and abandoned, without saying that he’s sorry. Because I don’t think he is. Everything he has, if we believe the narrative, his flocks and his wives and his family, his great riches that drove him from his father-in-law’s lands, is because of that deception. What Jacob is wrestling, what Jacob is afraid of, is not just the confrontation. It is not just the presence of a God who seemed to bless deception, and at such cost. It is not his brother, waiting for him. What Jacob is wrestling is his own psychopathy. He’s not sorry. He wouldn’t take it back. He lied and he cheated and he took the greatest blessing he could find and at some point he has to acknowledge that he’s not a victim, but a willing accomplice. And he would do it all over again. 

So what do we do with that? According to the Bible, we fight. We get pissed and we wrestle and we refuse to be lost even though we feel irredeemable. And we take what blessings we've been given, even in the midst of chaos, and we hold to them until it breaks our hip.