Identity Crisis

When the boys grew up, Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the field, but Jacob was a peaceful man, living in tents.  Genesis 25:27  NASB

Was– Hebrew often communicates deep meaning through what is absent from the text.  Such is the case with this verse.  In the English translation, the copula is added in the second part of this verse so that the verse reads, “Jacob was a peaceful man.”  However, if we examine the Hebrew construction, we find that there is a verb in the first part of the verse (“Esau became a skillful hunter”), but in the second part of the verse there is no copula.  The verb is absent.  Literally, the verse reads, “Jacob a tām.” The word tām is from the root tāmam, “to be complete.”  The word probably shouldn’t be translated “peaceful.”  It might be better translated “complete,” in the sense of healthy, sound or upright.

Avivah Zornberg comments on a midrash on this verse:

“The midrash draws attention to the way in which Jacob, in particular, chooses to construct his identity.  (There is a subtle asymmetry in the verse: ‘And Esau was a skillful hunter . . . and Jacob a simple man.’  The lack of a verb in the description of Jacob suggests a less-then-satisfactory identity, hastily assumed for the purposes of differentiation.)  If Esau has chosen to be a hunter, a complex ‘disintegrated spirit,’ a Byronic sufferer of angst, then Jacob must assume the opposite role, the passive, limbless scholar, absorbed in the worlds of his father and grandfather.  If Esau is a hairy man, then he must be a smooth, sincere man, capable of periodic at-one-ment, unmenaced by ambiguity.”[1]

Notice that the midrash treats Jacob’s identification as a contrast to Esau.  In spite of the word tām, the midrash views Jacob’s character as a hasty reaction to Esau’s becoming.  Two interesting, and perhaps profound, ideas arise from this odd arrangement of the verb and no-verb.  First, notice that Esau is not a hunter, a man of the field.  Rather, he becomes a hunter.  His identity is gradually assumed over the course of some time.  “The field of Esau’s darkness, however, is a field of silence; the tension of ambush, the release of bloodshed provides the illusion of a vital heartbeat in emptiness.”[2] Esau becomes a man of death.  He learns not to value the eternal, the connections that extend beyond the end of a heartbeat.  Therefore, the birthright is worthless.  The promised covenant over the horizon is pointless.  What matters to him is stealth, cunning, entrapment and the kill. He becomes a man fixated by today.

Contrast this with the elegance of the second part of this verse.  yaʿăqōb tām.  Jacob does not become what he is.  He simply is.  Complete, whole, entire, without blemish.  Until he tries to be the becoming Esau.  God sees Jacob finished, ready to fulfill his role in the great drama God will unfold. But Jacob doesn’t see what God sees. Jacob sees that he is not becoming what he most desires, to be loved by his father, a father who loves the becoming Esau.  And so, Jacob, the complete, disassembles himself to become what he is not—someone else.

The summary of Jacob and Esau comes first.  Their essential characters are radically different.  They are supposed to be different.  But the rest of this story is about one son who tries desperately to be the other son—with disastrous results for the entire family—until one day, years later, Jacob tām realizes who he really is, and returns to his brother all that he has taken in order not to be who he is.

What is absent in this verse is not simply the verb. What is absent is Jacob’s recognition of his real identity.  And in that absence resides the rest of the story.  The missing verb raises one of life’s great questions for us: “Are you who you are, or are you trying to be someone else?”

Topical Index: tām, complete, Jacob, Esau, identity, Genesis 25:27

[1]Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis, p. 166.

[2]Ibid., p. 163.