Of all the Old Testament patriarchs, Jacob has always been the hardest one for me to like.

Although Jacob was renamed Isra-el or Prince of God by Jahweh himself, he has never appealed to me.

But there must be something wrong in my response, for Jesus honored the same deity who honored Jacob. So can Jacob be as bad as he seems to be?

Not that the other Patriarchs haven’t caused me problems.

Take Abraham. Abraham advertised his wife (and half-sister) Sara as his sister, hoping that this deception would stop the Egyptians from murdering him him, should they desire her.

As it turns out, the Egyptians were far more decent than he thought. They were actually aghast at Abraham’s lie, which might have made adulterers out of them unwittingly.

Then there’s King David, whom I actually like, much against my better judgment.

True, it was fairly standard in those days for kings to grab any good-looking woman in the vicinity for themselves.

But David not only grabbed Bathsheba (then in her teens) but sent her husband, poor Uriah the Hittite, to his death. Why did he need to do that?

I haven’t found a good enough excuse for David yet.

Perhaps, by killing Uriah he was protecting Bathsheba from being cast off by society.

That’s a  possibility.

But surely murder is a bit worse than dishonor, especially dishonor justly earned.

Yet, David’s sins don’t bother me half as much as Jacob’s.

Jacob was the son of Isaac and the father of the 12 tribes of Israel. Jacob is the man who is supposed to have wrestled with God.

I say “supposed to,” because I’ve always understood from the Bible that no one can see the face of Jahweh and live.

But Jacob did. So how could he have wrestled with God?

Then again, it was night when Jacob wrestled with the “angel” and maybe Jacob never really saw his celestial antagonist’s face.

Be that as it may, it’s not this encounter that bothers me about the Patriarch.

It’s Jacob’s infamous theft of his older brother Esau’s birthright and blessing.

Everyone knows the story.

Esau comes home exhausted and hungry from hunting and Jacob cleverly makes use of the moment to entice him to sell his birthright (as the oldest son) for a “mess of pottage.”

So says Genesis.

Later, Jacob’s mother Rebecca conspires with her favorite son to deceive the aging and blind Isaac into giving his blessing mistakenly to the younger son.

No amount of white-washing of this episode has ever been able to make me think well of Jacob.

How on earth could he have been chosen as the father of the elect priesthood of people into whom Jesus Christ, the “light of the world,” would be born?

Was I missing some crucial element?

This summer, after thumbing through Genesis repeatedly, I found the answer.

Jacob was not a common cheat by any means.
Esau was not blameless.

To understand the full story, you need to pay close attention to the Biblical text, as well as to what is written about the two in other parts of the Bible and outside the Bible.

This is no ordinary religious story, after all. It pays to think about it deeply, if we intend to understand all the passions and preconceptions at work in the Middle East, the heart of the world’s problems.

Jacob/Israel is the ancestor of Jesus Christ, who is accepted as Divinity Incarnate by billions of Christians all over the world.

Over the identity of Jacob/Israel and his descendants rivers of blood have been shed in this century and through the ages.

The greatest revanchist claim for land was staked on the basis of promises made to Jacob/Israel.

Surely we need to know why this man was chosen for such a momentous place in history.

Surely he was not the confidence man he seems to be in the Genesis story.

(To be continued)