Jacob needs Esav to accept his guilt payment so as to wipe his past slate clean. On a surface level, it’s a tale about reparations. But in the end, his acceptance of Jacob’s mincha means that Jacob has won his chen, his favor. Take the blessing back! Is it too good to be true. But in contrast to an earlier moment in their relationship, in which Jacob tricks Esav out of his birthright or steals his blessing, this time Jacob insists that Esav take what is his. “I’m doing this,” he says, “to gain your favor.” Does Jacob really believe this? In the culminating moment, Jacob and Esav haggle over a gift. Jacob’s answer is deeply ambiguous, as is this entire scene. “What is all of this?” We sense that Esav senses that Jacob is up to something. Jacob’s craftiness is layered.īut this time, Esav doesn’t fall for it. His gifts are a power move, a gambit of realpolitik.
Both the camp and the gift allow Jacob to mediate his relationship. He sends gifts ahead to Esav to create a sense of distance, a sense of importance. Afraid of his brother, he seeks to flex a sense of strength in his numerical mass, in his posse. Jacob hides in his machaneh, be it real or affected. According to rabbinic interpretation, the meeting between Jacob and Esau is a world-historical encounter, a compressed sign of all that is to come in the conflict between Jerusalem and Rome. But fundamentally, it’s an ontological category. Camp, in the later books, connotes a topographical site. A camp conjures a sense of military might, a categorical leap from a cluster of folks or a cohesive band to a proto-nation. In Genesis 50, Joseph’s extended family are described as a machane when they descend to Egypt, settling in the land of Goshen. The word will become more familiar as we head into the Torah’s remaining four books, especially that of Leviticus and Numbers.
But it is in this week’s parasha that machane/camp first appears. Cain offers a (rejected) sacrifice, a gift-offering to God. The first time mincha appears in the Torah is in Genesis 4:3. Whatever we make of these connections, the words and sounds guide us to a realization that hiding and meeting, conflict and reconciliation, turn on the issues of grace and favor, gift and offering, company and troop. The Hebrew word shal cheni contains our leitwort, chen, in it. “send me away”), says the angel, as day begins to break. Soundplay also suffuses the scene in which Jacob wrestles with an unnamed angel in the evening interval between his preparation to meet Esav and his actual encounter. The intense wordplay and sonic similitude provide us with a sense of action and allure as Jacob confronts his estranged twin brother, Esav. A third, smaller word, formed from two of their letters, chen, meaning grace or favor, is also recurrent.
32:4-36:43), are anagrams of one another: mincha, meaning gift, offering, or sacrifice, and machane, meaning camp, company, or troop. The two most common words in this week’s parasha, Vayishlach (Gen. (Genesis 32:22)Īnd asked, “What do you mean by all this company which I have met?” answered, “To gain my lord’s favor ( chen ).” Esau said, “I have enough, my brother let what you have remain yours.” But Jacob said, “No, I pray you if I have found favor ( chen ) with you, accept from me this gift ( minchati )…” (Gen. And so the gift ( mincha ) went on ahead, while remained in the camp ( machaneh ) that night.