The Fairness Doctrine [jessi]

I’ve been told I have an overdeveloped sense of black-and-white fairness, and the character of Esau strikes me as particularly pitiable. Never have more heart-rending words been written about a man than “I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated.” God doesn’t even say “Moses I have loved but Pharaoh I have hated,” or “John the Baptist I loved but Herod I hated”—he doesn’t say it about any of the usual suspects.

I think it especially sucks because God seems to have it out for Esau from the beginning, and frankly it’s not a Cain and Able sort of situation where one brother is all awesome and so God clearly likes him best. Jacob is a jerk. He seems to lack all the qualities God esteems—he’s stubborn, he takes advantage of weaknesses, and he’s a sneak-thief. He’s blatantly unrepentant for the wrongs he commits and the people he hurts. He lies to his family—to a blind man on his death bed! That act alone should land him in the category of Bible villains instead of heroes. And there isn’t a Prodigal Son-type-turn around for Jacob either—he pretty much does jerky, horrible things for the rest of his life. Later in the story, when Jacob’s prospective father-in-law pulls the old bait and switch on our intrepid hero, passing off the wrong daughter in marriage, I can’t help but feel like Jacob deserves it a little bit. He’s finally run into someone who matches his capacity for shrewdness.

All of this, and God still chooses Jacob. I don’t like it. It offends my sense of justice. Wise and knowing people will tell me that I’ve got things backward—that I should be grateful that God chooses undeserving people, because we are all undeserving, but the truth is that sometimes I feel more like Esau than Jacob. Unlike Jacob, I am not into stealing from my siblings or wrestling with the Angel of the Lord. However, like Esau, I may be willing to bend my moral scruples a little should someone waft a hot, tasty In-N-Out burger under my nose while I am really, really hungry.

Anyway, it’s hard not to be pissed off on Esau’s behalf. It’s like God is saying, “Sorry, Esau, you’re not any worse than your loser brother, but I’m picking him to be the father of my chosen people. His descendents are going to wipe yours out, and he’s basically going to be wealthier, better looking, and a bigger hit with the ladies. Not only that, but rather than just awarding him all of this goodness from my stash of magically delicious rainbow-unicorn-blessings, I’m going to make sure he gets it by stealing from you.”

It’s not like God was just walking down the street and he picked up this extra blessing like a crumpled five dollar bill that you find in the supermarket parking lot, belonging to no one, and he looks around and arbitrarily picks Jacob. This blessing was Esau’s—with signed, notarized and triplicate copies of it. Here is the blessing that Isaac gave:

May God give you of heaven’s dew and of earth’s richness—an abundance of grain and new wine. May nations serve you and peoples bow down to you. Be lord over your brothers, and may the sons of your mother bow down to you. May those who curse you be cursed, and those who bless you be blessed.

Jacob steals from his brother, and yet God says, “I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated.”

One of the most moving pieces of scripture is the moment that Esau realizes what he’s lost to his brother: “When Esau heard his father’s words, he burst out with a loud and bitter cry and said to his father, ‘Bless me—me too, my father…Haven’t you reserved any blessing for me?’” This big, bearded giant is probably impossibly angry with his younger brother. The father trembling, weak and emotional responds, “I have made him lord over you, and have made all his relatives his servants, and I have sustained him with grain and new wine. So what can I possibly do for you?” Esau begs a third time, “Do you have only one blessing, my father? Bless me too, my father!”

And then Esau weeps.

And it isn’t fair.

It isn’t fair that God chooses to redeem Jacob when he doesn’t deserve it while Esau, doing no less than his brother, is rejected. I am aware that because God makes the story, God gets to decide what is fair, but it’s important to me that Esau ends up with just a little something. Even a smallish sort of blessing would be taken gratefully, because I’m very afraid that instead of being God’s chosen favorite liar, I’m God’s rejected Esau. That I’ll never feel God’s favor, that my name never changes, and my blessing is taken away.