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  • From: JimStinehart AT aol.com
  • To: kwrandolph AT gmail.com, b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Seir
  • Date: Thu, 20 May 2010 12:40:06 EDT


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




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