VAYETSE_GENESIS XXVIII:10-XXXII:3

The account of the different aspects of the life of the patriarchs also documents the development of the history of the Hebrew people. An additional reason why, in the central prayer, the Amidah, the Chachamim insisted on separating the individual notion of Divinity from each of these patriarchs. Instead of stating the God of Avraham, Yitschak, and Yaacov, the text reads:  the God of Avraham, the God of Yitschak, and the God of Yaacov, because each of the patriarchs had different experiences and their relationship with the Creator was individual.    

Genesis relates that God was always at Avraham’s side to direct his activities and protect him when necessary. From the first instruction to leave the parental home, Avraham becomes a traveler whom God never abandons and protects from all dangers. Even the severe test of tying his son Yitschak to an altar to turn him into a human offering has a happy ending. At the critical moment, the Creator sends an angel to prevent the sacrifice and thus announces to humanity that the one God did not desire human sacrifice. 

Moreover, God’s revelation to humanity will have the opposite purpose: to promote life and understanding among human beings. God protects Avraham from the designs of Pharaoh who wants to seduce Sara and does the same in the case of King Avimelech. God sends an angel to save Lot and his family. He cures Avraham of the circumcision surgery and causes Sara to miraculously become pregnant at the age of ninety, to ensure the biological continuity of the patriarch.

The case of Yitschak is different because he is not proactive, he does not travel, and he never leaves the land of Israel. Just as Avraham allows Yishmael, son of the concubine Hagar, to be banished, Yitschak allows Yaacov to receive the spiritual inheritance, even though he was not the firstborn son. In both cases, their respective wives Sara and Rivka become the decisive factor in deciding the future development of events.

The Jewish people are called B’nai Israel, because the third patriarch Yaacov (Israel is the name he receives as a result of the struggle he had with the protective angel of Esav), becomes the mold that will serve as a model for their descendants, the Hebrew people. 

Where is God during the drama unfolding among the sons of Yaacov that resulted in Egyptian slavery? God never informs Yaacov – during his long years of grief over the disappearance of his favorite son – what his fate had been. The life of the third patriarch begins a partial withdrawal from God’s intervention so that human beings take direct responsibility for their actions.

The narrative of the Hebrew people parallels God’s progressive absence from History. On Mount Sinai the people receive the fundamental document for coexistence, the Tora, as the manifest will of God. It contains the “secret” of life, what kinds of behavior lead to possible harmony and understanding, emotional development, and spiritual growth.

While Avraham and Yitschak allowed children to be excluded from the spiritual heritage, Yaacov recognized the sons of concubines as authentic parents of tribes that would make up the Hebrew people. Notwithstanding, the quarrels, grudges, hatred, and envy between the brothers, the story concludes with the understanding between the rivals when the goal is defined, and the purpose is clarified: the construction of a people that will raise the message of monotheism for the rest of Humanity. 

While God orders the transfer of Avraham and the residence of Yitschak, the case of Yaacov is one of constant confrontation. It is about the vicissitudes of family life, and the struggle against a hostile environment. It should come as no surprise that more than half of Bereshit is related to Yaacov’s life, his experiences, and the responses he gave to different situations, to the adversity to which he was subjected. In an imperfect world, he had to use half-truths in some cases, without ever losing the horizon: the construction of a people that must house the diversity represented by the individual character of its children, who must be united in their fundamental task: the propagation of the notion of the unity of God, father of all humanity.