To his surprise his grandfather’s face lit up with delight. He smiled and looked over at Jacob with growing pleasure. Jacob remembered his saying that curiosity about the right things was a sign of teachableness and intelligence.
“To answer properly will take some time, but leaving Ur was the start of everything,” Abraham said. And then he was off, weaving an amazing story of the family history.
In the days that followed, Jacob learned many things, but most of all he developed a growing understanding of the importance of the birthright and the blessing. He didn’t tell his grandfather that his mother insisted that Elohim had told her that he, not Esau, was the one to receive the blessing.
Gradually the questions he asked his grandfather were about the meaning of the birthright and the blessing. The birthright was easy; it had to do with inheritance. But the blessing was something both wonderful and mysterious. A man with such a blessing would never feel inferior. He could not help but succeed at anything he attempted. Without his even trying, things would bend in his favor.
The more he thought about it, the more he wanted it. It became the thing he thought about in the daytime and dreamed of at night. It seemed to hang in the very air before him, elusive and yet somehow promised to him if he could believe his mother.
He was bright enough to realize that he could not just go to his father and reason with him. If his mother hadn’t succeeded in convincing him, nothing would. His father never deviated from the rules. It was traditional for the firstborn to receive both the birthright and the blessing, and so Isaac never questioned the rightness of it.
Esau would have to die or renounce the whole thing before it could logically come to him. That Esau would die was impossible. He could even wrestle wild animals and never get a scratch. To imagine that he would willingly give up such a prize was unthinkable.
* * *
It was near the end of the summer that Abraham grew so weak he had to be carried to the door of his tent to greet the many dignitaries who came to visit. News had spread that he was not going to be with them much longer, and they wanted to see him, talk to him, get some last words of advice and wisdom. He welcomed everyone and patiently listened to their stories, but at the last it was Isaac he wanted to see. “I will not be here much longer,” he said. “I’ve taught Jacob much that is important of our God and our people but Esau …”
Isaac nodded. “Esau is not like us. He doesn’t spend time pondering the nature of our world or why we are here. He takes everything for granted. He’s the practical one; he isn’t disturbed by the things that disturb us. I’ve always admired this in him.”
Abraham was silent and Isaac felt disapproval in his silence. When he spoke it was with a tinge of sadness in his voice. “I leave you, my son, to teach him all that he must know of our people and our God. If he is not taught, he will have to start all over again learning the truth about our God and what He wants from His people. He will find it easy to blend in with the people around him. It will be easier to join in the lewd rites of fertility with their sacrifices of sons and daughters to appease the gods of the rain. He will bow down out of fear to the snake and the bull.”
Isaac shifted uneasily. He realized that Esau had little time for learning their family heritage and the ways of his father’s God. He felt remiss in not teaching him all that his father had taught him. Time had gone so fast. He had not realized the boys were so old or that his father could actually be leaving them. “I will start this very day to teach him all that you have taught me,” he said with a catch in his voice.
It was not as easy as he had imagined. Esau was much more interested in the ways of the quail in the spring and the gazelle at the salt licks. He eagerly listened to the rough shepherds as they sat around their fires in the evening discussing old superstitions and charms to fend off the evil eye. He seemed more a part of the earth than of the airy realm of debate and introspection. I will have to find a way to interest him in more serious things, Isaac thought with a twinge of alarm.
* * *
Abraham lived through the cold winter months with the chilling rain and dark skies, but when spring came he took a turn for the worse and on a bright sunny day in the month of Nisan he died. His death was peaceful. One moment he was holding the morning’s gourd of honeyed camel’s milk and the next his hand had relaxed. The gourd fell to the mat and the white mixture spread out over the bright folds of his robe. He slumped back. For a moment his face had a look of pleasure. His hand upraised briefly as though in greeting and then he was gone.
Isaac had just come into the tent. He knelt beside his father, and frantically called his name, rubbed his limp hand, and tried to get some response. Jacob stood beside him, stunned and afraid. “Go,” his father ordered, “get Eleazar, find your mother. Esau must be found and told.”