Toldot - Genesis 25:19-28:9

We are told of the story of the birth of Jacob and Esau, Jacob's "issues" with his brother, the stealing of the blessing, and his running away from home (which would take place years later).

But when did all of this happen, and in what order was it?

Often, while growing up, people will hear sermons explaining things, telling us that Jacob was preparing a mourner's meal, that Esau held his father's legacy in disdain, and many other details that are nowhere in the story.

Adding details is often what teachers do. In many cases, it is their primary teaching tool.

But what about the timeline for this event?

The initial genealogy

Let's look at the Torah's genealogy up to this point, using the creation of the world as "Year-0":

0000 - Adam       (5:1)
0130 - Seth       (5:4)
0235 - Enosh      (5:7)
0325 - Kenan      (5:9)
0395 - Mahalalel  (5:12)
0460 - Jared      (5:15)
0622 - Enoch      (5:18)
0687 - Methuselah (5:21)
0874 - Lamech     (5:25)
1056 - Noah       (5:28)
1556 - Shem       (5:32)  

1658 - Arpachshad (11:11)
1693 - Shelah     (11:12)
1723 - Eber       (11:14)
1757 - Peleg      (11:16)
1787 - Reu        (11:18)
1819 - Serug      (11:20)
1849 - Nahor      (11:22)
1878 - Terach     (11:24)
1948 - Abraham    (11:26)
2048 - Isaac      (21:5)
2108 - Jacob      (25:26) 

Whoever wrote chapter 5 was very precise in how it listed the genealogy from Adam to Shem.

Whoever wrote chapter 11 was also very precise, with one exception. Verse 11:10 tells us that Shem had a son 2 years after the flood, when Shem was 100. But 5:32 told us that Shem was born when Noah was 500, and that the flood began when Noah was 600.

It is this distinction that shows that the authorship of chapter 5 and chapter 11 were very close, not not exactly the same.

About those lentils...

The rest of the Torah is usually not that specific. Normally, you have to work to get any information, and this parashah is no different.

Here is what we have:

Abraham dies at age 175 (25:7) - in the year 2123.

At that time, Jacob was 15 (see verse 25:26). Several verses later (25:30), we have the story of Esau giving up his first-born rights for some red food to Jacob.

These are unrelated stories, but the assumption is that they are in sequence and that they are happening in rapid succession.

Yet the verse tells us that Abraham dies, then it tells us that earlier Jacob was born, and then it tells us that later, there was Jacob preparing a meal of "red stuff".

The assumption by many is that Esau and Jacob were 15 years old when Jacob was preparing food, but the text doesn't tell us that.

So were they 15? The text doesn't say. They could have been much older.

Further, there are those who combine the earlier statement that Abraham died with the later text about the meal, and make a connection, telling us that it was a meal for mourners when, again, the text is silent about that as well.

One odd bit that should be noted is the price of the "red stuff" extorted by Jacob to his starving brother was his "bachor", his status as a "first born", having come out of the womb first.

After that even, nothing more is ever said about the "bachor". In fact, Isaac seems to be completely unaware of this odd transaction. I suggest that this little story is a stand-alone to tell us why Esau wll later be called "Edom" (red), and explain why there are Edomites in the land.

The magical blessing...

The next time we read of an age, Esau (and by extension, Jacob) was 40 years old (26:34). He married two woman that his mom and dad didn't approve of. Rebecca appeared to not like the match more than Isaac. In fact, Isaac still had a fondness for Esau, for whom he had a special blessing.

The next part of the story, we have Rebecca convincing Jacob to trick her husband into giving Jacob that magical blessing.

The entire blessing episode is very weird. The Sages debate whether Isaac was really ignorant of who was wearing those hairy arm pieces. It is reminiscent of Little Red Riding Hood, "My, what an odd voice you have."

Now, did this part happen before or after Esau got married? After all, Esau seems to be hanging around the house quite a bit, providing for the family. It is quite possible that the marriage part happened later and the deception happened before.

The text doesn't tell us, and the Torah will often jump backward and forward in time as different stories are stitched together.

And in verse 27:41, Esau is upset because the magical blessing was, for some reason, a one-shot magical spell, and so, he plots to kill Jacob.

(As an aside, the blessing that Isaac gives Esau seems to be representative of the relationship between Israel and the Edomites of a later period, and it could be that the author of those times was inserting a prophecy that was fulfilled in his days).

In verse 28:5, Jacob leaves his parents' house to get a wife. In verse 29:11, he sees and wants Rachael for his wife.

So how old was he?

The Yeshivah of Shem and Eber...

Whenever one of the characters need a gap of time to be inserted, the sages pulled the Yeshivah of Shem and Eber" card. The patriarchs seemed to like to spend time there.

Of course, Shem died in 2158 at the ripe old age of 600, when Jacob was 50. So they would like to have you believe that Jacob left home before he was 50, spent time in the local Yeshivah, and then went to Laban's house to look for a wife.

It is important to note that Rashi says that Jacob spent 14 years in the study halls of Shem and Eber.

How old was Jacob when he met Laban?

While the text doesn't tell us how old Jacob was when he arrived, we can us other verses to retroactively approximate it.

First, Jacob met Pharaoh when he was 130 years old (47:9). So this is the year 2238.

And we are told how long Joseph ruled (9 years - 45:6 and 41:53). And we are told that when Joseph got the job, he was 30 years old (41:46). So he was 39 years old when his father was 130.

So Joseph was born when Jacob was 91.

Some people mistakenly say that Jacob left Laban's house when he was 91 based on this, but they leave out his other travels and setting up camps (he really did NOT want to return home to his father who was still alive (he died in 2228 at the ripe old age of 180).

Now how long Jacob and his family traveled between the time he left Laban and settled in one place after another, he met Esau, his daughter was raped in Shechem, the sons of Jacob took over Shechem as their center of operations.

It should have been months. But it was likely a few years, due to the rape of Dinah and her age relationship with Joseph.

Since Joseph was born when Jacob was 91, this means that, in 2199, Jacob was still working for Laban when his son Joseph was born.

In 31:38, Jacob wants to leave Laban and tells him that he had been with him for 20 years.

It appears that Jacob left soon after the birth of Joseph. If that is so, then Jacob went into Laban's employ in 2179, or when Jacob was 71.

So that leaves us with 56 years, from age 15-71, that we cannot really pin down what happened, and when it did.

If you want to use Rashi's argument that Jacob went to learn for 14 years before going to Laban, then he left home at age 57.

And so, this is why you have some commentators say that Jacob's deception took place when he was in his teens (to connect the bachor to the blessing), and Esau was seething for decades, until he had enough, he was married at 40, was creating a legacy, and his parents still favored Jacob.

And if we hold that some of this is part of the story, then he held onto the grudge for 17 years.

Of course, that's all conjecture.

In reality, the Torah is silent when all of this happened.

Everything else is just Midrash.