Torah Posting: וישלח
Ya’akov pulled off a remarkable feat of reconciliation last parashah, but as he returns home, he’s got an even deeper relational rift to cross: the one with his brother, ’Esav, whose birthright Ya’akov stole.
Ya’akov sends messengers before him to the country of Edom (red), that color so intimately associated with the wild hunter ’Esav. Ya’akov instructs the messengers to inform his brother that he has been made wealthy by his sojourn in the homeland of Lavan (white). ’Esav responds that he is coming to meet Ya’akov, and he is bringing 400 men with him.
In response to this threat, Ya’akov divides his holdings into two camps to reduce the risk of all-out destruction. Then he prays to God.
Ya’akov’s prayer here repeats a form he innovated in the previous parashah, where he makes his devotion conditional upon his deliverance. He reminds God of God’s promises to make his lineage great.
Just in case the divine protection isn’t enough, Ya’akov also prepares a large gift of livestock for his brother. He sends the gift herds out with his servants, so they will reach ’Esav well ahead of him to soften the encounter. He sends his family last, and then he remains alone for the night.
Then comes this lineage’s most consequential encounter between the Human and the Divine. You could argue for many more, but this is the one from which the entire people of this book draws its name. Our name.
While alone, Ya’akov wrestles with a being until sunrise. The text calls the being an איש (man), but we have already seen how many “men” who appear mysteriously to the men of this lineage are Divine Messengers, what the overculture has come to call “angels.”
When the being sees that he will not defeat Ya’akov, he merely touches Ya’akov’s thigh, and it dislocates his hip, echoing the way Ya’akov came out of the womb clutching his brother’s heel (’akev), from which his birth name was derived. Still, Ya’akov will not let go. The being pleads to be released, as day is breaking — what effect this will have on the being, we are left to imagine. Ya’akov refuses to let go without the being’s blessing. In the Torah so far, few personal missions have been more tenacious than that of Ya’akov to extract the blessings he feels he deserves.
The being asks, “מה–שמך” — “What is your name?” Ya’akov states his name. The being responds that this shall no longer be his name but rather ישראל — Yisra’el — for Ya’akov struggles with both God and mortals and prevails. Yisra’el — Israel, if that’s not obvious — means “struggles with God,” and that is the name our forefather is given to be transmitted to all of his descendants as our lineage.
Always demanding reciprocity, Ya’akov asks the being to share its name. The being responds, “למה זה תשאל לשמי” — “Why is it that you ask for my name?”, and we will find that this sort of elliptical aversion to being named is a hallmark signature of encountering the Divine in the world. The being does then grant Ya’akov — the name the text continues using for now — a blessing.
Ya’akov names the place פניאל — I Faced God. He seems surprised to have survived. As the Sun rises, Ya’akov limps away.
Here the Torah gives its first affirmative dietary law incumbent upon “בני–ישראל” — “the children of Yisra’el” — who are instructed not to eat the sinews of the vein upon the hollow of the thigh, for this is where the Divine Being touched Ya’akov and inflicted the physical toll of confronting God face to face.
Then Ya’akov lifts up his eyes and sees, and behold, ’Esav and his 400 men are coming.
Ya’akov divides up the children and their mothers further in his last-ditch effort to protect them, and as ’Esav approaches, Ya’akov bows to the ground.
But rather than violence, ’Esav meets his brother with loving emotion. Then he asks who all these women and children are, and Ya’akov expresses his gratitude to God for the blessings of this large family. They all bow before ’Esav as well.
’Esav asks Ya’akov what the meaning was behind all those advance parties bearing gifts, and Ya’akov explains it was to find favor with him. ’Esav says, “I have enough, my brother. Keep what you have.” Ya’akov refuses fawningly, comparing this encounter to one with the face of God, which hits a little harder given what just happened. At Ya’akov’s insistence, ’Esav accepts the gifts. But the brothers continue to bicker a little about the order of their departure; the trust is perhaps not fully restored.
They part ways for now, and Ya’akov takes his family into the land of Kena’an, buying a piece of land from the children of Hamor and pitching his tent there.
Now the story turns to Dinah, daughter of Le’ah, the first of Ya’akov’s children to have a story of her own. It is, however, not a pleasant one. She goes out to visit the locals, and a son of Hamor named Shkhem rapes her. He falls in love with her, and he asks his father to “take [him] this girl for a wife.”
Here I will reiterate my comment on the previous parashah about misogyny as the reality of the place and time of this story. You, like me, may feel some anger at this scene, and I submit that this is the reaction the story intends. For the lesson, we look to how the family at the center of the story responds to this outrage.
Ya’akov hears about it, but he holds his peace until Hamor comes. This matter is to be hashed out between the patriarchs. But Ya’akov’s sons, outraged on their sister’s behalf, come in from the fields and stand with their father. Hamor addresses them all, practically begging them to let his son take Dinah to marry, thereby joining their families. Shkhem attempts to join in the begging and grandstanding and offers of monetary compensation for the girl he wishes to possess.
The sons of Ya’akov take after their father in the use of cleverness and trickery in the guise of pious acts in order to bring about just results. They respond that they cannot give their sister to a man who is not circumcised, as this is an affront to their traditions. If these locals are willing to circumcise all of their men, the tribes can be joined, but if not, the tribe of Ya’akov will depart with Dinah in tow. And the locals — in a development that I feel is meant to seem comically foolish — agree to this.
On the third day, with all the local men in debilitating pain, Shim’on and Levi — Dinah’s brothers — roll up on the city, put all of the men to the sword including Hamor and Shkhem, and rescue Dinah. They go ahead and plunder the city on their way out as recompense. The drama strings you along masterfully, with each gratuitous step feeling well deserved, until suddenly… they’re taking their children?? They’re taking their wives, really? So this is not justice after all, it’s just revenge.
And this is Ya’akov’s conclusion. He is angry with his sons for escalating this situation with such barbarity. The sons object, asking, “We should let him treat our sister this way?” And the question is left open.
Ya’akov — who has apparently only been given a preview of his new name — still has to make it official with God. God sounds pretty serious this time. Ya’akov tells his family they need to put away their strange gods, make themselves clean, and change their clothes, and then they will all go to Bet-El together, so he can build an altar there. They comply, giving all the idols to him, as well as their jewelry, and Ya’akov hides them under an oak tree before they leave.
God protects them fearsomely on their way, so no one dares come out to attack them. They arrive, he builds an altar, and before the climactic event, Rivkah’s nurse, Devorah, dies, and so she is buried under another oak tree.
Then God appears to Ya’akov and renames him again, Yisra’el — Struggles with God — and God formalizes the descent of nations and kings from his line, and God declares that the land given to his fathers, Avraham and Yitzhaq, will be the land of his lineage. Yisra’el, who is still called Ya’akov here, sets up a pillar of stone and makes offerings.
The tribe departs, and Ya’akov’s first beloved, Rahel, goes into labor, and it is a difficult one. The midwife reassures her that she will have this son. She delivers, and she names this son Ben-Oni — Son of My Strength — but then she dies. Ya’akov decides to call him Binyamin — literally Son of the Right, as in the right hand, a similar name, but one where the strength is still with him, rather than reminding him forever of Rahel’s death. And Ya’akov places a memorial pillar for Rahel that the text says remains “to this day.”
And here the text begins to refer to him as Yisra’el, as he tries to move on from the loss of his beloved Rahel. But the drama of the family does not leave him alone for long; his firstborn son, Re’uvein, lays with Bilhah, the handmaid with whom Yisra’el (then Ya’akov) has fathered children, and Yisra’el hears of it.
This is all the parashah gives us of this. It then goes into a long list of generations and families and holdings and references to minor stories like we haven’t had in a while, an exhaustive account of the relations of ’Esav. It’s as if to say, there is no end to the drama. No neat and tidy story arcs, no moral clarity. Not where family — particularly extended family — is concerned. It just drags on and gets more complicated, and the people living through it all just have to keep at it.
One may wish to extract clear morals from Biblical stories. It seems as though some universalistic, philosophically minded overculture has decided for everyone in recent history that this is actually the function of sacred text — all of it, from all peoples — and so the Torah must ipso facto contain such extractible lessons for all people. But no. That’s not what this is, and it should be clear to anyone who can read it.
This is the messy story of one lineage’s struggles with God.
🤼♂️
