Was Jacob right to take the blessings and to do so in disguise? Was he right to deceive his father?

And to take from his brother Asaf the blessing Isaac sought to give him was Rivka right

in conceiving the plan in the first place and encouraging Jacob to carry it out?

These are fundamental questions. What's at stake? It's not just

biblical interpretation, but the moral life itself. How we read a text shapes the kind of person we

become. Here is one way of reading the narrative. Rivka was right to propose what she did,

and Jacob was right to do it.

Rivka knew that it would be Jacob, not Esau, who would continue the covenant, and carry the mission

of Abraham into the future. She knew this on two separate grounds. First, she'd heard it from God

himself. In the oracle she received before the twins were born.

Schneegoyimbevitech, two nations are in your womb.

Two peoples will be separated from within you.

One will be stronger than the other and the elder will serve the younger.

Varov Yavud Zahir.

Esau was the elder, Jacob the younger, therefore it was Jacob who would emerge with greater strength, Jacob, who was chosen by God.

Secondly, she'd watched the twins grow up. She knew that Esau was a hunter, a man of violence. She'd seen that he was impetuous, mercurial, a man of impulse, not calm reflection.

She'd seen him sell his birthright for a bowl of soup.

She'd watched while he ate, drank, rose, and left.

So Esau despised his birthright.

No one who despises his birthright can be the trusted guardian

of a covenant intended for eternity.

Third, in any case, just before the episode of the blessing,

...