Dr. Yitzhaq Hayut-Man. The main narrative of the entire Book of Genesis-Bereshit is the struggle between brothers over the blessing (which is also a curse) to become a leader for humankind. There are six such scenes in Genesis, roughly parallel with the six day pattern of chapter one.
This Parashah brings the fourth scene of struggle between brothers – and dramatically so. To the extent of similarity with Parashat Bereshit, there is some similarity here of the struggle between the two chief luminaries, the greater Sun and the lesser Moon of the fourth day (Gen. 1:16). The Midrash tells that these two were of similar size when they were created, and their function was to tell the times (thus allow evolutionary leadership). But because the Moon insisted on one being the leader, saying “no two kings can use one crown”, she was instructed to become smaller.
In this Parashah the two brothers are actually twins, though of different character. Much of their distinction is evident from their very names.
The name of Esau-ESaU has to do with “Making”. It is written exactly like ASU – “(they) made”, and about the same as ASUY – “Made Up”. Esau’s conduct is the more natural, animal-like. He comes ready for the struggle of life. Like the great Nimrod, he is a hunter (the Midrash associates them, as if Esau killed Nimrod in a hard fight) and “Man of the Field” (Ish Sadeh). In the first scene of struggle between brothers, of Qayin and Hevel, the killing was made “while they were in the field” (Gen. 4:8), where Qayin had the advantage. But this time the struggle is performed not in the field but inside, hidden in a tent.
The name of Jacob-YaAQoV means literally “(he) would follow” and also “(he who) would cheat”. So the first thing to note is that this proper noun is actually a verb in future tense. Jacob-YaAQoV does not come ready but has to develop. He follows his father Yitzhaq whose name is a future tense verb and would give birth to two leaders, Yehudah and Yoseph, whose names are also actions/verbs in future tense. The similarity in this semantic series is still deeper, as revealed by the Gematria of their names: the Gematria value for YiZHaQ is 208 = 26 X 8; the value for YaAQoV is 182 = 26 x 7, while for Joseph-YOSePh it is 156 = 26 x 6. 26 is the Gematria value of the Name of the Lord YHWH. So we can say that these three generations “have YHWH in them” (while the name of YeHUDaH has the letters of YHWH explicitly in it).
This name, Jacob-YaAQoV, must have been given due to his behavior right at birth (or the story of the birth came to explain the name) – he followed his brother out of the womb, but he held his brother’s Heel – AqeV – as if to catch up and overtake Esau. Jacob-YaAQoV is then characterized as Ish Tam yoshev Ohalim – “An innocent/simple (but also, eventually, “whole” – as we shall see in Gen. 33:18) dweller of tents”. As for his innocence, he soon loses it and has to struggle for decades to get a kind of paradoxical “acquired innocence”.
The Hebrew here for “Tents” is OHaLIM – a noun made of the same letters as ELoHIM – namely God. This is a subtle reference to the future, to the main object of the Book of Exodus-Shemot, where chapter after chapter detail the construction of a tent – the desert Tabernacle – and to the later exclamation of Bil’am “how goodly are thy tents, O, Yaaqov, and thy tabernacles, O Yisra’el” (Num. 24:5). A tent protects from the sun and provides inner space, but it is lightweight and does not stop sound. So that later Rivqah could hear what Yitzhaq was telling Esau, and hurried to foil their plan so that her favorite younger son would receive the Blessing – BeRaKhaH.
The word for Blessing – BeRaKhaH has the same root letters as BeKhoRaH – Seniority. It would have been the natural thing that Esau the firstborn – BeKhOR – should receive the Blessing – BeRaKhaH if it were not for Rivqah’s scheming.
The name RiVQaH is feminine of the root word RVQ (or RBQ)[1]. This three-letter word root (which is the general rule in Hebrew) is meaningful in all its six permutations. RVQ has to do with cattle pair; RQV with rot; QRV with nearness; QVR with burial (as what was the issue in the preceding Parashah); BQR with morning, as well as with cattle; and BRQ with lightening or shining. In each subsequent name in the list of the matriarch, the affinity with (Kosher) animals is more pronounced. SaRaH could just barely be associated with ShOR (Bull), RiVQaH, as we saw, has something to do with cattle, whereas RaHeL (Rachel) plainly means young female sheep.
My exegesis to the Torah (which presently covers the Book of Genesis fully and has excerpts from a few other Parashot) claims that the Torah is a prophecy book that was always aimed for these present times. We come now to an issue that has many ramifications at present, namely the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its possible resolution. In this Parashah we come to Yitzhaq’s dealings with the Philistines-PliShTIM. The name of the PliShTIM has already come up in the dealings of Abraham with Abimelekh King of the PliShTIM (Gen. 21:22-34). But whereas with Abraham it is only the land that is calles EReZ PliShTIM – “The Land of the Philistines, here with Yitzhaq the King Abimelekh is mentioned clearly as “King of the Plishtim” (26:1, 26:8), and Yitzhaq was envied by the Plishtim (26:14, 26:15, 26:18).
The name PliShTIM appears once before in the Torah (Gen. 10:14) as issuing from Mizrayim (Egypt), the son of Ham. The next time they are mentioned is at the Exodus, when God preferred not to lead Israel in the short straightway, which is through “The Philistines’ Land” (Exodus 3:17), because it was clear that the people who dwelt there will wage war with the Israelites, presumably with a better army. Later, in the Books of the Judges and of Samuel we would find some 144 references to the PliShTIM as the perpetual scourge and enemies of the Israelites.
The general view of contemporary researchers is that those PliShTIM were the refugees from Crete, “The Sea People”, who invaded the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean and even occupied Egypt for a period.[2] Their core settlement was at the Southern Coastal plain of the Land of Israel (or as many would call “Palestine”) as federation of five main cities. They had superior organization and arms – they had iron weapons, whereas the Cana’anites and Israelites first had only bronze weapons, and they had iron-clad war chariots that dominated the plains of the land. The Plishtim were finally conquered by King Hizqiyah of Judea and soon afterwards came the Assyrian King Shalman’eser conquered the Kingdom of Israel and exiled much of its population, and apparently made the same to the Philistines, who have not been known or mentioned again till the 2nd century C.E., when they were “resurrected” by the Roman Emperor Hadrian (see below).
According to the history research, the account in Genesis is anachronistic, because there were not yet Philistines in the land at the time of Abraham. They have come from the West shortly before, or even in parallel with, the Israelite exodus and conquest of the land from the East.
We can see, however, that the apparent anachronism of the Hebrew Bible is not a mistake, but an intentional move to include the issue of the Philistines with the ongoing story of the establishment of Israel – up to our own times. There is no doubt that nowadays, the problem with Plishtim-Palestinians is the gravest issue of the modern Israel, a matter of survival.
What are the current implications of the ancient Biblical story? It can be argued that the covenant with the Philistines made by the founders of the nation of Israel, both Abraham (21:27, 32) and Yitzhaq (26:28) are still valid to this day – that the historical region of the Southern Coastal Plain, namely the Gaza Strip, might be preserved as “Palestine” even in a larger Israelite confederation of regions and communities – see outline.[3]
What is especially significant for our semantic analysis of the Torah, is the power of names and their persistence, which is so much attested in the present story. The original Philistines, the Western invaders, were exiled from the land millennia ago and disappeared from history. But when the greatest and most learned Roman emperor, Hadrian, overcame the Bar Kokhvah Revolt around 130 C.E., he wanted to make sure that no Jewish Judea will ever remain. So he did three things: he rebuilt the ruined city of Jerusalem and renamed it “Ilya Capitolina”, where Jews were not allowed to dwell; he proceeded to replace the ruined Jewish Temple with shrines to the Roman Gods Jupiter and Hera; and – because he knew his history, that the ancient Philistines where the bitter opponents of Israel, he changed the name of the land of the former Judea to “Palestina”. Hadrian forbade the Jews to live in Palestina, so all the people of the land became “Palestinians”. According to studies by Tsevi Misinai and his associates, these new Palestinians were originally Jews who preferred not to go on exile but cling to their land (“Tsumud”) even in the price of changing identity.
Later, during the Byzantine Christian rule, Jews were again excluded from Jerusalem and still later, after Muslim conquest and its rule, more of the Jews of the land converted to Islam, whether to avoid exorbitant taxation or under force at the time of the Caliph el-Hakim. However, the new genetic research has revealed that the majority of Palestinians have genes otherwise unique to Jews. While the name Palestina got forgotten in the Middle East and no locals knew they were “Palestinians”, the name was still kept in Europe, the heir to the Roman culture. So when the last Western power, the British Empire, got hold of the land, they renamed it Palestine, and its inhabitants became “Palestinians”.[4]
Taking a broad historical perspective, which is what the Torah narrative is meant to foster, we can see that the identity of “Palestinian” and “Israeli” has changed around over the centuries. The original Philistines-PLiShTIM where invaders – PoLShIM – from the West drove the Israelites to the hills regions of (nowadays again) Judea and Samaria. It was the later Western colonialists who resurrected Palestine and the Palestinians against the Israelites. Nowadays these people are split, some (the Gaza Strip) in the original historical Philistia, some in the “West Bank”/Judea and Samaria who are driven there by the larger power of their Western invaders in the shape of the Israelis – and some in Diaspora, acquiring the historic fate of the Exiled Jews who dream to return to Zion.
“And it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although it was near (Exodus 13:17). The Hebrew translated as “it was near” (in past tense) is in the Hebrew original “ki karov hu” because it is near (in present tense). The nearness is not just geographical, but that the Philistines and Israelites were close to each other in character, and in destiny.
English blog: http://www.global-report.com/
[1] Note that we use here the two letters B and V for the one Hebrew letter of B’et.
[2] An intriguing account of the Sea People, the Exodus and Israelite history in the controversial book of Immanuel Velikovsky “Ages in Chaos” (1952).
[3] I first heard of this concept from Rabbi She’ar Yashuv Cohen (Chief Rabbi of Haifa). I also came across opinion that this covenant was made for only three generations.
[4] Note that in English, “Philistine” means hater of culture. It is also phonetically close to “Falsity”. It can be claimed that Palestinian-Filastin is a case of “False Identity”.
