Hebrew Myths (32 page)

(
b
) Jacob and Esau were sixty-three years old at the time. Some say that Rebekah, while complaining of Esau’s wives, did not mention them by name, but blew her nose in a bitter rage and flung the snot from her fingers to the ground. Also, that when Jacob fled, Esau sent out his son Eliphaz with orders to kill and despoil him. Eliphaz, a famous archer, led ten of his maternal uncles in pursuit and overtook Jacob at Shechem. Jacob pleaded: ‘Take all that I have, only spare my life—and God will reckon your plunder as a righteous deed.’ Eliphaz accordingly stripped him naked and brought the spoils home; but this show of mercy enraged Esau.
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(
c
) Fearing pursuit by Esau himself, Jacob turned aside from the road to Shechem, and neared Luz at sunset. Because of his nakedness he did not enter the city gates; and for want of a saddle-bag used a stone as his pillow. That night he dreamed of a ladder, its foot set on earth, its top touching Heaven, and angels going up and down the
rungs. A voice said: ‘I, the God of your father Isaac, and of his father Abraham, award this land to you and your children! Numerous as grains of dust, they shall spread to all four quarters of Earth, and bestow a blessing wherever they go. I will protect you, both now and on your return journey, never forsaking My chosen son.’

Jacob awoke, and cried in terror: ‘God is surely here, and I did not know! This place of dread must be His house, and the gateway to Heaven!’ Next morning, he rose early, set up the stone as a pillar and anointed it with oil, vowing: ‘If God indeed protects me on my journey—giving me bread to eat and garments to wear—and fetches me safely home, I will serve no other God, and pay Him tithes of all my riches! This pillar shall be His abode.’ Thereafter the place was called Bethel, or ‘The House of God’.
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(
d
) Some say that Luz stood below the shoulder of Mount Moriah, on the summit of which Jacob was granted his vision. Also, that his pillow had been the twelve separate stones of an altar raised by Adam, and rebuilt by Abraham; but that, as Jacob chose one of them, they all cried out together in rivalry: ‘Lay your righteous head upon me!’, and were miraculously united. God said: ‘This is a sign that the twelve pious sons whom I give you shall form a single nation! Are there not twelve signs of the Zodiac, twelve hours in the day, twelve hours in the night, and twelve months in the year? So, surely, there shall also be twelve tribes in Israel!’
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(
e
) Others say that when God first created angels, they cried: ‘Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from eternity to eternity!’; and that, when Adam was created, they asked: ‘Lord, is this the man for whom we should give praise?’ God answered: ‘No, this one is a thief; he will eat forbidden fruit.’ When Noah was born, they asked again: ‘Is this he?’ God answered: ‘No, this one is a drunkard.’ When Abraham was born, they asked once more: ‘Is this he?’, but God answered: ‘No, this one is a proselyte, not circumcised in infancy.’ When Isaac was born, they asked: ‘Is this he?’ God answered: ‘No, this one loves an elder son who hates Me.’ But when Jacob was born, and they once more asked the question, God cried: ‘This is he indeed! His name shall be changed from Jacob to Israel, and all his sons shall praise him!’

Jacob was chosen as a model for the man-faced angel of God’s chariot, which Ezekiel saw in a vision; and his mild and hairless visage is also imprinted on the Moon.
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(
f
) Others say that the angels of Jacob’s dream were princely guardians of four oppressive nations. The Prince of Babylon ascended
seventy rungs and then came down; that of Media ascended fifty-two rungs and then came down; that of Greece ascended one hundred and eighty rungs and then came down; but the Prince of Edom went higher and higher, out of Jacob’s sight. He cried in dismay: ‘Will this one never descend?’ God comforted him, saying: ‘Fear not, my servant Jacob! Even if he should reach the topmost rung and seat himself at My side, I would yet cast him down again. Come, Jacob, mount the ladder yourself! For you at least will never be called upon to descend.’ Jacob, however, was timid, and thus doomed Israel to subjection by the four kingdoms of this world.
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(
g
) When Jacob anointed his pillar with oil which had dripped from Heaven, God trod it so deep into the earth that it is now called the Foundation Stone: namely, the world’s navel, upon which stands Solomon’s Temple.
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***

1
. Bethel, which had been a Canaanite shrine long before the Hebrew patriarchal age, lies ten miles north of Jerusalem and about a mile east of Luz. Its name is preserved by the Arab village of Betin. Archaeological evidence shows almost continuous settlement of this area from the twenty-first century
B.C.
until the first century
A.D.
The holiness of Bethel was confirmed by the myth of Abraham’s having sacrificed, both on his way to Egypt (see 26.
a
) and on his return, at a place between Bethel and Ai (see 27.
a
). In the semi-historic days of the Judges, God’s Tent of Assembly containing the Ark was kept there (
Judges
XX. 18, 26–27; XXI. 2–4). Bethel’s religious importance remained supreme until the reign of Saul (1
Samuel
X. 3 and XIII. 4) and, though declining somewhat after Solomon built the Temple at Jerusalem, revived when Rehoboam and Jeroboam divided his empire between them and the Northern Kingdom chose Bethel as its central sanctuary (1
Kings
XII. 29–33).

2
. The Ladder myth, establishing Bethel as the ‘Gate of Heaven’ revealed by God to the founder of Israel, authorizing the anointment of a famous local
massebah
, or sacred pillar, and sanctifying the payment of tithes (see 27.
5
), dates from the days of the Judges. But the version identifying Bethel with Mount Moriah, and Jacob’s stone-pillow with the rocky
summit on which Solomon built his Temple, must post-date King Josiah’s destruction or desecration (628
B.C.
) of all the ‘high places’ sacred to the Canaanite goddesses Anath and Asherah, and his reformation of Temple worship at Jerusalem. Only then could the scene of Jacob’s vision be arbitrarily transferred to Jerusalem from the well-known shrine of Bethel.

3
. God’s blessing is unconditional, but Jacob feels impelled to promise Him thank-offerings: namely, honoured residence in the pillar and a tithe of all riches won by divine favour. His plea for food, clothes and a safe journey underlies the midrashic story of how Eliphaz robbed him.

4
. The rungs up which the guardian angels climbed represent years of their nations’ rule over Israel: namely, seventy years of Babylonian exile—from the fall of the First Temple (586
B.C.
) to the completion of the Second (516
B.C.
or, more precisely, 515
B.C.
); the subsequent fifty-two (in fact, fifty-eight) years of dependence on the Medes, which closed with Ezra’s leading back his group of exiles in the reign of Cyrus (457
B.C.
); and one hundred and eighty years of Hellenistic rule—from the conquest of Palestine by Alexander the Great (333
B.C.
) to the re-establishment of an independent Jewish kingdom by the Maccabees (153
B.C.
). Edom’s unbroken ascent (see 40.
4
and 41.
3
) shows that this particular midrash dates from the period of Roman control over Palestine, which began with Pompey’s capture of Jerusalem in 63
B.C.
and continued until the Persian invasion of 614–629
A.D.

5
. The Greek word
baetylos
signified a cone-shaped pillar, periodically anointed with oil, wine or blood, in which a god resided, and which was often said to have fallen from heaven—like the thunder-stone sacred to the God Terminus at Rome, or the Palladium of Troy. Since the Greeks personified ‘Baetylus’ as a son of the Sky-god Uranus and the Earth-mother Gaea; and since, according to Sanchuniathon, El (identified by Philo of Byblus with Cronus) had the same nativity,
baetylos
is likely to be a borrowing from the Phoenician or Hebrew
Beth-El
, meaning ‘the House of the God El’. Hesychius also records that the stone substituted for the infant Zeus, which Uranus swallowed and afterwards disgorged, was shown at Delphi and called ‘Baetylus’; priests oiled it every day and, according to Pausanias, covered it with raw wool on solemn occasions. Photius, the ninth-century Byzantine scholar, mentions several ‘baetyls’ on Mount Lebanon, about which marvellous tales were told. The word could be applied to female deities also: thus in the Temple accounts from the late-fifth-century
B.C.
Jewish colony at Elephantine, a goddess is named ‘Anath-baetyl’.

6
. That the twelve patriarchs were pious men flatly contradicts
Genesis.
All except Reuben and the infant Benjamin conspired to murder their brother Joseph, then sold him into slavery and gave out that he had been killed by a wild beast. Reuben cuckolded Jacob, and earned his dying curse (
Genesis
XXXV. 22 and XLIX. 4—see 50.
a
). Levi and Simeon were similarly
cursed for their treacherous massacre at Shechem (
Genesis
XXXIV. 25–31; XLIX. 5–7—see 49.
d
); and Benjamin was promised a successful life wholly devoted to pillage (
Genesis
XLIX. 27—see 60.
e
). Yet the apocryphal
Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
presents every one of them as a fountain of piety and wisdom. Jesus quotes the
Testament of Joseph
(XVIII. 2) in
Matthew
V. 44; and the
Testament of Levi
(XIII. 5) in
Matthew
VI. 19.

(
a
) Continuing his journey to Padan-Aram, Jacob saw three flocks lying around a well near the city. The shepherds whom he questioned, answered that they knew Laban son of Nahor—‘And look, here comes his daughter Rachel with the sheep!’

‘Why do you not water your flocks?’ he asked.

‘We are awaiting the other shepherds. They will help us to roll back yonder huge stone from the well-head.’

When Rachel arrived, leading Laban’s flock, Jacob rolled away the stone single-handed and watered the sheep for her—some say that the waters thereupon rose miraculously and maintained the same level throughout his stay.
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He then revealed himself to Rachel as her cousin, kissed her, and wept. Some say he wept because, many years before, Eliezer had brought rich gifts from Abraham to this very spot, when proposing Rebekah’s marriage with Isaac; but he, their son, now stood here destitute. Others say it was because the shepherds whispered jealously among themselves when he gave Rachel his cousinly kiss.
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(
b
) Rachel went home to announce Jacob’s arrival, and soon Laban hurried to the well, embraced him, and invited him to the house. Laban hoped for even more valuable gifts than those brought by Eliezer and, though Jacob had come on foot without even a bundle, suspected that he kept gold in a belt beneath his garment. While they embraced, Laban searched but found no belt; then kissed him on his mouth to see whether it contained pearls. Jacob said plainly: ‘Uncle, you will find no wealth hidden on me: I bring only greetings, having been robbed on the way by Eliphaz, son of my twin-brother Esau.’
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(
c
) Laban thought: ‘He comes empty-handed, expecting to eat and drink at our table for a full month, or perhaps even a year!’ Angrily he went to consult his teraphim.

Now, when making an oracular idol of this sort, the Aramaeans of Harran would murder a first-born male and preserve his head in brine,
oil, and spices. Then they would chant spells, place underneath the tongue a golden disk engraved with a demonic name, mortar the head into a wall, light lamps, prostrate themselves, and ask questions to which it whispered replies. They had another sort of teraphim, also: idols of gold and silver, fashioned piece by piece at certain calculated hours, and empowered by the stars to foretell the future—Laban, a famous astrologer, had such in his possession. He now bowed down before them and inquired: ‘This guest who lodges in my house, eating bread without payment—how shall I treat him?’ They whispered back: ‘Beware of antagonizing a man whose stars are in so marvellous a conjunction! For his sake, God will bless whatever you do in house or field.’ Laban pondered: ‘What if I should ask Jacob to enter my service, and he demands high wages?’ The teraphim, reading his thoughts, whispered again: ‘Let his pay be a woman. He will demand only women. Whenever Jacob threatens to return home, offer him one more, and he will stay.’
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(
d
) After a month had passed, Laban asked Jacob: ‘What shall your wages be?’ Jacob replied: ‘Let me serve seven years for your daughter Rachel.’ Laban cried: ‘I should rather have you as her husband than any other man in the world!’ So the bargain was struck.
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(
e
) Some say that, at first, Rachel and her elder twin, Leah, were equally beautiful; but that, when Leah heard people say ‘Rebekah’s twin sons are bound to marry Laban’s twin daughters; the elder taking the elder, and the younger, the younger,’ she asked: ‘What is known of Rebekah’s son Esau?’ They answered: ‘His ways are evil, and his trade banditry.’ ‘And what is known of Jacob?’ They answered: ‘He is a righteous one, who dutifully minds his father’s flocks.’ Leah began to weep, sobbing: ‘Alas! May God keep me from marriage with that wretch Esau!’ Constant weeping deformed her eyes; whereas Rachel, who heard nothing but good of Jacob, grew more lovely still.
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(
f
) Jacob, though aware that elder daughters should be married before their sisters, thought: ‘Esau already hates me because I tricked him out of birthright and blessing; now, if I take her, he may come and murder me. I dare sue only for Rachel.’
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