the age of the patriarchs

Chapter 2 of Testament deals with some troubling events in Genesis, most of them involving Jacob and his family. First, and throughout the narrative, there’s Jacob’s unsatisfactory relationship with his elder twin, Esau. Then there’s the story of his polygamy, first marrying Laban’s eldest daughter Leah (though he seems to have been tricked into it), and finally marrying his love, the younger daughter Rachel, while still retaining Leah. Another mysterious one is his trickery with Laban’s sheep – hard to work out what, physically, is going on there. Finally there’s the awful story of the rape of Dinah, and the retribution it engenders (which reads like one of those horror stories about honour and killing we still hear about out of Afghanistan or certain African countries).

According to the story, the rivalry of Jacob and Esau was fore-ordained (Genesis 25:23), and it prefigures the rivalry between the Israelites (Jacob’s descendants) and the Edomites (from Esau). In reading of the relationship, I tend to forget that and observe only Jacob’s wiliness and dishonesty in his dealings with his well-meaning but apparently dull-witted brother. As one commentator has noted, Jacob’s fore-ordained success – ‘the elder will serve the younger’ – should render his devious tricks unnecessary. I suppose, though, that these tricks might also be fore-ordained to achieve the desired result. It’s also noteworthy that Jacob’s mum, Rebecca, favoured Jacob over Esau (whereas Isaac favoured Esau), abetted him in his trickery, and helped to spirit him off to the land of Laban, her brother, to avoid Esau’ wrath. There seems to be lots of standard family drama and tension here. There’s an amusing sceptical analysis of the family values that crop up in Jacob’s life here.

Jacob’s polygamy is also a highly diverting source of contention among godbotherers, from those who claim god’s total disapproval of arrangements, to those who want to use it to argue polygamy’s okay. There’s also the question of whether he had two wives or four. As to the weird stuff about the poles and the streaked sheep (or goats, or cattle) (Gen 30: 37-39), the SAB comments:

Jacob displays his (and God's) knowledge of biology by having goats copulate while looking at streaked rods. The result is streaked baby goats.

A believer’s commentary goes like this:

Jacob followed an ancient superstition (Genesis 30:37-39), which by Jacob's own admission, only "worked" because of God's direct intervention (Genesis 31:9).

A much funnier commentary, though, begins with this:

A close analysis of the passage results in scientific accuracy as well as an indication of god's sovereignty in all matters.

It goes on for several pages of pseudo-scientific analysis re Mendelian genetics and tries to argue that Jacob was really onto something with his streaked rods in water troughs:

Exactly what it is that determines the actual characteristics a particular individual [or animal] may have, out of all the potential characteristics that are theoretically available in the gene pool, is not yet known in any significant degree. It may be that Jacob had learned certain things about these animals which modern biologists have not yet even approached.

All of this from half a dozen lines in the Bible. Such is the Will to Believe, and such is the great human gift of rationalisation.

For the sordid events around the rape of Dinah, Genesis 34, you just have to look around you. I’m told that Calabrian brothers ‘look after’ their sisters in much the same way today – they’re only less violent because they can’t get away with it.