Mixed Messages

As the patriarch Jacob came to the end of his 147 years on this earth, we may be excused for wondering if he was slipping in and out of reality, as many very ancient folks tend to do. When we read the final chapters of Genesis, it may seem like Jacob was sending mixed messages to the world about his lifetime of up-close and personal dealings with God.

Hey, at Jacob’s age, a little emotional incontinence was perfectly understandable. How we assess our experiences often depends on the day.

The stories we tell ourselves and others about our lives depend on several variables, including the extent to which we can discern purpose and meaning in our circumstances, and our general attitude to life, whether it is one of bitter resignation or optimistic gratitude. There are also intrusive elements we can’t control and which can affect our emotional state, like the death of loved ones, our health, the actions of others toward us, and so on.

Let’s play back a couple of statements Jacob made in the final years of his life and see if we can’t reconcile the two stories he is telling about himself.

Few and Evil

First, in Genesis 47, Jacob meets Pharaoh, his host in Egypt. Pharaoh inquires about Jacob’s age, and the patriarch replies, “Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their sojourning.”

Jacob was 130 years old at the time, and his statement was certainly bang on with respect to the numbers. Jacob’s father Isaac lived to 180, and his grandfather Abraham to 175. So the “few” was accurate, at least comparatively speaking. The characterization of his days as “evil” is interesting, and used to trouble my father, who thought this a terrible way to describe a life in which God was very active, and often greatly blessing. The Hebrew word Jacob used for “evil” means “disagreeable”, “unpleasant” or “injurious”. It can also carry the meaning of moral evil, as it does earlier in Genesis when it appears in the phrase “the knowledge of good and evil”.

Now, there are plenty of things Jacob could have been thinking about when he described his days as “evil”. He may have been recalling his manipulation of his brother and his father, by which he obtained a birthright and a blessing to which he was not originally entitled. It may have been a sort of confession. He may have been recalling the bumpy road by which he became a rich man, constantly manipulated by his uncle and estranged from his beloved mother until the day of her death. He may have been thinking of living in fear of his brother Esau’s wrath. He may have been thinking of the constant tensions and drama within his family, as his wives and their servants bore him more than a dozen children, all amidst an atmosphere of strife and competition that ended with the deceiver himself bitterly deceived. He may have been thinking of the early death of his favorite wife, of his son Reuben’s defilement of his marriage bed, or the mendacity and violence of some of his children. Truly, whatever evil things Jacob did, they all came back to him in spades. At age 130, he had only just found out Joseph was alive, and had perhaps not yet entered fully into all the joys and benefits of that reunion.

Jacob wrestled with God not just one night, but his entire life. If he sustained some emotional injuries in the process, it should hardly surprise us. His description of his days as “few and evil” is not without some solid evidence to back it up.

Blessings Mighty Beyond

Time passes. After seventeen years of being cared for superbly by his beloved son in Egypt, Jacob now lies on his deathbed, and he’s blessing his children and grandchildren as his father once blessed him. Here, as he blesses Joseph, Jacob paints a picture of his life that may be interpreted a little differently than the one he presented to Pharaoh. He says:

“The blessings of your father are mighty beyond the blessings of my parents, up to the bounties of the everlasting hills. May they be on the head of Joseph, and on the brow of him who was set apart from his brothers.”

The bold text above is an enigmatic declaration that merits some meditation. Translators have struggled mightily to understand what the patriarch was actually saying. What did Jacob mean by comparing his own blessings to the blessings of others? That’s rarely a useful exercise.

In fact, some translators find it so difficult to reconcile this statement to the realities of Jacob’s history that they abandon the effort entirely. A whole swath of Bible versions opt out of this historical comparison that Jacob seems to be drawing, going with something like “Your father’s blessings are greater than the blessings of the ancient mountains, than the bounty of the age-old hills.” That has a nice literary flow, but it’s a very non-literal translation, and deliberately so. To me, it’s the translation equivalent of punting on third down, avoiding a potentially difficult decision by simply refusing to deal with the problem at all.

Parents, Progenitors and Ancestors

The translation teams that tried to reflect the actual words used in the Hebrew text (which is the majority) found themselves flummoxed by this phrase “the blessings of my parents” (ESV). The Hebrew word translated “parents” is literally “conceivers”.

I find “parents” the least-satisfactory quasi-literal rendering for a few reasons. (1) In its literal sense, the act of conceiving is ordinarily reserved to women, as the biblical usage of the word elsewhere confirms. (2) The Hebrew is plural and therefore cannot refer exclusively to Rebekah. (3) Even if it does, Rebekah gave no blessing to Jacob, unless you count the one she helped steal from her husband for him. (4) Out of all the English options available, the ESV stands alone in rendering this word “parents”.

I therefore agree with the majority, which found “parents” too specific, and went with a variety of options like “ancestors”, “progenitors”, “fathers” or “forefathers” that might allow the reader to interpret Jacob’s construction for himself. Of these options, I prefer “progenitors”, which comes closest to the idea of conceiving, over “fathers” or “forefathers”, which have a specifically male connotation foreign to the underlying Hebrew. Presumably, these translators thought Jacob was comparing his blessings to those of Abraham and Isaac. That’s certainly a possibility, but it’s not easily reconciled with the writer’s word choice.

Another Ambiguity

There’s a second ambiguity here, and translators have been reluctant to take a strong position on it. The word “blessings” may refer either to blessings received or to blessings given. There’s no way to tell from the word itself, and one can readily see that there is a clear distinction to be drawn between the blessings Jacob received from God in his life and those he heaped on his children and grandchildren, and likewise for his progenitors. We cannot say with certainty whether Jacob is comparing the blessings he is passing on to Joseph with the blessings he received from Isaac, or whether he is comparing the blessings he received from Isaac with the blessings Isaac received from Abraham.

So then, there’s lots we can’t say with 100% certainty about this verse, peering back indistinctly as we sometimes do through thousands of years into another language and culture. Sometimes scripture is like that. The lack of clarity in our generation does not bother me much. After all, we were not the primary recipients of the message. Doubtless, those who needed to understand these things did so throughout Israel’s history and benefited from them.

We can say a few things with confidence regardless of how we elect to interpret the verse: (1) Any package of blessings that looks forward with greater specificity to Messiah, as the blessings Jacob was able to give his sons certainly do, is a generation closer to the realization of the promise. (2) Blessings that one is able to apprehend, enumerate and appreciate more fully are preferable to those received with less-than-complete understanding. (3) Jacob, who characterized his own days as “few and evil” only seventeen years earlier, was an immensely grateful man who expected his children to have even greater reasons to praise God.

Things We Know and Things We Don’t

So then, what does the passage teach us about the blessings of God? Let’s consider:

• Blessings are unequal. The blessings of one man are not the same as the blessings to another. Jacob could look back through his family’s history and say, in effect, “God’s blessings to us are greater now than they were then, and they will be greater still in days to come.” This may trouble our modern, egalitarian sensibilities, but it shouldn’t. The great lesson Joseph’s brothers needed to learn was not to envy others. Our generation needs to learn this lesson desperately. Our maniacal obsession with “equality” is a sickness than prevents us from enjoying what God has freely given us and from joyously occupying the place in history, society and domestic life to which he has called us. In the end, Jacob’s enthusiasm was for the legacy he was passing on, not for himself. May we live in that spirit.
• Blessings accumulate over generations. Blessings build on other blessings. The things our parents and/or predecessors in the faith learned and enjoyed from scripture during their lifetimes became our starting point in our walk with God without any effort on our part. But blessings can also be lost if we don’t recognize and appreciate them. Our obligation is to cling to the blessings of God passionately and not fritter them away as Esau did. If you can say one thing for Jacob, it would be this: he never let a blessing pass by him without grabbing onto it with both hands.
• Being blessed and benefiting from the blessings are two different operations. I think both statements Jacob made about his life were absolutely true and non-contradictory. Jacob’s self-awareness increased with age. I believe he saw himself as greatly blessed and looked back with gratitude, as this passage certainly makes it appear. In looking back, he surely also realized how unnecessary all the striving and contriving that had characterized his walk with God really were. Likewise, I don’t think Jacob was in a bad mood or having a senior moment when he described his days to Pharaoh as “few and evil”. One verse describes what God did for Jacob. The other describes what Jacob did with it.

So then, a man can be greatly blessed without fully benefiting from those blessings. That’s a lesson worth learning and applying.