Two Sons, Two Ways of Life

Parashat Toldot, Genesis 25:19–28:9

Daniel Nessim, Kehillath Tsion, Vancouver, BC

Do you ever feel as if your life is a conflict between good and evil?

Rebekah, Isaac’s wife, was pregnant with twins, but the twins struggled within her, causing her great distress. When she inquired of the Lord, he answered her, “There are two nations in your womb. From birth they will be two rival peoples. One of these peoples will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger” (Gen 25:23, CJB).

In fact, these two children of hers would not only be rivals in terms of their relationship to the God of Abraham and Isaac; their lives would take completely different trajectories.

One would go east. One would make the Land of Promise his home.

One would take wives of the sons of Heth, the other would take his wives from his own God-fearing family.

One would be a hunter accustomed to killing wildlife for food, the other would be a pure, quiet man, living in the family encampment.

One would despise the birthright, the other would crave it.

One would be hated by God, the other would be beloved.

One was on the path of wickedness, the other of righteousness.

The two would have very different destinies, but paradoxically their destinies would always be intertwined. While the two kingdoms of Esau and Jacob were to be completely separate, they would yet have a lot to do with one another. Like it or not, their destinies were entwined, just as our present existence is intertwined with evil. It is telling that the biblical account never tells us whether they met up again after their father’s burial (Gen 35:29). Their ongoing relationship is left untold.

This is a recurring pattern in the Torah. It had already occurred with Jacob’s grandfather, Abraham, who had parted ways with his nephew Lot. Abraham would hold on to the promise and remain in the Promised Land. Lot would go east, back in the direction of the land which his family had been called from. No good could come of that. Abraham and Lot’s descendants would thereafter have a conflictual relationship. Their destinies were entwined.

So often in life, we find ourselves entwined with the evil prevalent in our world. Perhaps we are employed in a company that has some unethical practices going on. Perhaps we are governed by unethical rulers, to whom we pay our taxes. Perhaps we find that there are things in our very own lives that we are unable to free ourselves from.

We might wish that we could live entirely on a different plane. We might wish that we could be completely done with the wickedness of the world. After all, we have heard Moses’ call to Israel in Deut 30:19: “I have presented you with life and death, the blessing and the curse. Therefore, choose life, so that you will live, you and your descendants.” We have presumably made the choice for life, to live within our covenantal relationship with God, and everything that implies, including accepting his Anointed One. But somehow we find that we are unable to live that “pure and spotless” life that we have chosen.

The fact is that we live our lives in a world that is frightfully damaged by Esau, an Esau that we cannot completely disengage from. Nor would we want to, because Esau is indeed our flesh and blood and we love him. Because we care for Esau, we endure pain. Perhaps the greatest example of this is our Messiah himself, who was described as a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief (Isa 53:3). We see that Yeshua, too, was not unaffected by the evils of our world.

Can we free ourselves from the entanglement of evil?

The key is all in the choice that we have made, and the trajectory that we have chosen.

Some have chosen a trajectory that leads eastwards, towards the lands of idolatry. There is no hint that either Esau or Lot had to make the choices that they did. When Esau chose to sell his birthright, and then in false outrage threatened to kill his brother who went to claim it, he made choices. When he chose to marry women from the children of Heth rather than from a godly family, he made choices. When he chose to move eastward, his ongoing choices were actually signs of the trajectory that he had chosen. The same goes for Lot.

We certainly have a choice. It is a choice mandated to us in the words of Moses: “choose life, so that you will live.” We are in fact commanded to make the choice for life. It is a choice that is stark. A choice between two polar opposites. As Moses put it, a choice between blessing and curse, between life and death.

It was not just in Moses’ era. Sometime in the fist century CE, Jewish disciples of the Apostles wrote a letter to the gentile groups and congregations springing up all over the region. This discipleship manual, the Didache, says right at the beginning, “the difference is great between the two ways.” The difference is indeed great. It is the difference between light and darkness, as others would put it.

What makes the difference between the two ways is where they each lead. They begin as a choice, a choice at the crossroads if you will. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be problems along the way. After Israel made the choice for life the Hebrew Bible contains a remarkable catalogue of both successes and failures. Entanglements with idolatry, entanglements with greed at the expense of the poor, for example. Following the days of Yeshua, the New Covenant also contains a striking picture of communities in some ways commendable but in other ways subject to appalling shortcomings. Strife, division, idolatry, and immorality are common issues the writers had to address.

So where does our choice of the way of life lead to? It does indeed increasingly remove us from the entanglements of the way of death.

How does this happen? How can we be sure of our destination?

Israel provides a helpful example, despite Israel’s failings to consistently follow through on the choice made before Moses.

In Jeremiah 31:35 the prophet makes a remarkable statement. It is based in part on Moses’ proclamation to Israel in Deuteronomy when he commanded them to make the choice of life, with heaven and earth standing as witnesses. In Jeremiah 31:35 the Lord speaks as the one who made the heavens and the earth. He is the one who “gives the sun as light for the day, who ordained the laws for the moon and stars to provide light for the night.” He also speaks as the one who made the earth. So, we are told that he is the one “who stirs up the sea until its waves roar.” Before these same witnesses of the heavens and the earth, it is the Lord who ensures that his covenant relationship with Israel is upheld. It should be no surprise that the New Covenant carries this theme forward for all who have made the choice to worship the God of Israel in the name of his Son.

It is thus that ultimately the faithfulness of the Lord is what gives us hope. We have made our choice for life. None of us have been completely consistent in following through. But there will come a time when we will be freed from those entanglements that would seek to drag us onto the way of death.

In Ein Yaakov, commenting on b. Avodah Zarah 1.17, there is the saying, “It is customary with a human king that while he is within the palace his servants guard him from without. With the Holy One, praised be he! it is the contrary. His servants are inside, and he guards them from without.” Thus is borne out the Scriptural message that it is not we alone who can free ourselves from the entanglements of the world, even by making that choice for life. Ultimately, it is the Kadosh, Baruch Hu, the Holy One, blessed be he.