Biblical Hebrew Forum

[JimStinehart AT aol.com]

Gentlemen:
 
Let’s start with the proposition that Jacob/“Israel” is not likely telling 
outright lies to Esau, after Esau has tried to reconcile with Jacob.  The 
text never says that Jacob lied to Esau.  Jacob says that Esau himself can 
see that if Jacob drove the flock any farther at this point, the flock would 
die.  That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but I see it as basically being a 
true statement.  That means that after Esau leaves Jacob, Jacob will have 
time on his hands to re-think everything.  More controversially, I think that 
Jacob is not lying when he says that he will take the flock to Seir and see 
Esau at Seir.  That in fact had been Jacob’s plan when he sent messengers “
before” him.  Karl was unable to cite a single example in the Bible where 
such wording did not mean that Jacob himself would in due course be expected 
to follow the path taken by his messengers.  But after saying that 
truthfully to Esau, and after Esau had left, Jacob then reconsidered things.  
Why 
should Jacob go to Seir, where he would be subject to Esau’s hospitality, and 
the full brotherly reconciliation that Esau obviously wanted would seem 
inevitable?  Jacob did not really want a full reconciliation like that, 
because 
it was still wrong that their father Isaac had improperly favored Esau over 
Jacob.  And speaking of Isaac, Jacob had apparently been planning to go visit 
his father at the Patriarchs’ Hebron.  But on reconsideration, did that 
really make sense?  Jacob would be the governing Patriarch in Canaan upon his 
return to beloved Canaan, with his elderly father being incapacitated.  
Shouldn’t Jacob be his own man, instead of living in his father’s house?  Why 
not sojourn near Shechem, which was the first place in Canaan where Jacob’s 
grandfather Abraham had worshipped YHWH?  And after thinking about it, why 
not 
wait to visit Isaac, who had unfairly favored his firstborn son Esau, until 
Isaac was on his death bed?  I see Jacob/“Israel” as speaking truthfully 
to Esau about the condition of Jacob’s flock and as to Jacob’s plans at that 
time to go to Seir, where Esau lived.  But then Jacob changed his mind, that
’s all, and for good reasons.  The entire story makes perfect sense, on all 
levels, if the Seir in chapters 31-33 of Genesis and at Genesis 14: 6 is 
located in southern Gilead.  At no point did Esau ever think that Jacob would 
drive his flock around the southern end of the Dead Sea and enter beloved 
Canaan from the south.  If we can just get the underlying geography right, 
the 
Patriarchal narratives make perfect sense.
 
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois