Adam Kissel
Social Thought 339
Human Beginnings: Genesis II
Mr. Leon Kass

March 16, 1998

Modern sociology may suffer from its neglect of the Bible. When sociologists consider assimilation, for instance, they tend to focus on a specific culture in contact with another, empirically. But are the Biblical narratives, as most sociologists would have it, just another set of culturally-specific tales? Or, in Genesis and Exodus in particular, when assimilation of the Israelite "New Way" to a land of false gods becomes the dominant concern, do the tales illuminate a more fundamental human story of what happens when divergent cultures meet? Would Isaac Berkson's classic Theories of Americanization: A Critical Study with Special Reference to the Jewish Group (1920),¹ or any of the two dozen books specifically on Jewish assimilation in the United States, or any of the two thousand books on Jews in America, have profited from a grounding in Biblical narrative?²

Some writers such as René Girard are renewing an interest in seeking the general applicability of Biblical narrative. James G. Williams builds on Girard's attention to the pattern of the scapegoat in Biblical literature (perhaps first identified in general in Frazer's The Golden Bough in 1922) in Williams's recent The Bible, Violence, and the Sacred (1991).³ In this book Williams shows that Genesis and Exodus are particularly relevant for understanding victimization, scapegoating, and exile in the context of cultural formation. His chapter "Enemy Brothers," for example, sheds new light on the problem and meaning of fratricide, with a notable emphasis on Jacob's "exile" from his family upon stealing his brother's blessing in Genesis.

Jacob's exile in Haran indeed looks like a fruitful place to begin to examine assimilation in a land of false gods.⁴ David Daube agrees that this part of Genesis is especially helpful for understanding Exodus; in The Exodus Pattern in the Bible (1963)⁵ he adduces the longstanding Rabbinic identification of Jacob-Laban with Israel-Pharaoh. Also, Daube and Berkson each remind us that time is important to their separate but similar projects. Berkson, a prescient Zionist of the 1920s, claims that a hope in a future return to Palestine is, at root, what motivates Jews to maintain a separate culture. Daube, in close readings of Genesis and Exodus, likewise implies that assimilation anxiety is related to the feeling of being a sojourner, a temporary resident of a foreign place.⁶ I would add that Jacob's twenty years in Haran are directly related to Israel's four hundred years in Egypt (twenty squared equals four hundred); Jacob's experience in Haran can be seen as a "one-dimensional" foreshadowing of a "two-dimensional" cultural experience in Egypt. For these reasons, an examination of time and assimilation in the life of Jacob, emphasizing the Jacob-Laban narrative, seems to deserve prolonged attention.

Recent international studies by the Institute for Global Ethics show that across cultures, genders, and even religions, all people share certain fundamental ethical values and identify the same ethical dilemmas. Most pertinent here is "loyalty or truth"-when, if ever, is it permissible to lie in order to protect one's friend or to keep a family together?⁷ This dilemma pervades Genesis.⁸ Jacob, for instance, is caught in this very dilemma when Rebekah asks him to deceive Isaac in order to receive Isaac's blessing (27:6-10). Should he hearken to his mother's voice (27:8) and lie? Is the blessing worth it?

In fact Jacob is caught between competing loyalties. Once Rachel has forced the issue, Jacob cannot maintain loyalty both to his father and to his mother. This problem is particularly difficult for Jacob, who so far has dwelled rather peaceably in the tents of his family (25:27). With loyalty not providing a ready solution, and reminding his mother that he has a duty also to "my father," Jacob at first opts for truth, telling his mother that deception may lead to a curse (27:11-12). But Rebekah repeats to Jacob that in this situation, loyalty takes precedence, and that his loyalty to his mother must outweigh his loyalty to his father. Loyalty is emphasized by the narrator and by Rebekah in her speech in 27:13 with several possessive and pronominal suffixes and family references: in the original syntax, "and she said to him, his mother, upon me be your curse, my son; just listen to my voice and go, take [them] for me." Just listen to your mother, Rebekah says, not your father, not your own conscience, not truth.⁹

Jacob obeys his mother and deceives Isaac.¹⁰ In putting loyalty over truth, Jacob has perpetuated and exacerbated the imbalance in his family, because now Esau is preparing to kill him. From this angle, the narrative seems to suggest that sometimes family loyalty is served best by a seemingly disloyal act.¹¹ Temporary exile shall be both Jacob's penalty and his preservation.¹²

It is important to note, however, that Jacob is not to be exiled from the family completely; he is to go to his uncle Laban's place, Haran. Isaac's reason for Jacob's leaving, in fact, is not exile but for the purpose of finding a suitable wife. Isaac stresses the family ties in 28:2: Bethuel is the father of Jacob's mother, and Laban is the brother of Jacob's mother. Likewise verses 29:10-14, as Jacob draws near Laban's house, reiterate the kinship of Jacob and Laban six times: three times the relation is mentioned by the narrator; Jacob tells Rachel that he is related to her both through Laban and through Rebekah; and Laban tells Jacob that "You are indeed my bone and my flesh."

But do these familial ties represent anything more than a blood line, a connection which becomes more tenuous with each passing generation? Isaac had never set foot in Haran, at the command of his father Abraham. Laban had never met Isaac when he sent Rebekah to be Isaac's wife. Abraham's servant had spent only one day in Haran, and Rebekah had volunteered to leave Haran as soon as possible (24:54-58). Laban and Jacob met in the more neutral territory outside Laban's house, where Jacob could challenge the flock-watering practices of the other men from Haran (29:4-9). Scarcely any time has passed by the time Laban tells Jacob that they are of one bone and flesh. At this point it is unclear whether family loyalty in Laban's house will mean much of anything to Jacob, who has so recently deceived his father and made an enemy of his own brother. How will Jacob be able to dwell among the false gods of his kin?

Acculturation can happen quickly. Perhaps this is part of the reason why Rebekah had been so willing to leave Haran right away, and why Abraham's servant had insisted to Laban and Bethuel that "at least ten days" was too long for him to sojourn there (24:55-56). Had the servant become acculturated to Haran, it would not be clear that Rebekah would be giving herself to a distinct family. Perhaps this is also why, if we take Rebekah's words in 27:44 at face value, Rebekah would have hoped that Jacob's stay in Haran would be short.

Laban and his father, at that early point, had showed themselves to be assimilative (in this reading). Once Jacob has been in Haran three times as many days (29:14) as the servant had been requested to stay in Haran, then, Laban makes his first move. Dissatisfied with the informality of his relationship with Jacob thus far, Laban aims to establish a formal relationship of wages in exchange for service (29:15). With this bond Laban seems to seek only Jacob's cultural assimilation, in that he wants Jacob to continue to yield the fruits of his labors to Laban, rather than Jacob's racial assimilation¹³ (either because Jacob is already of Laban's bone and flesh, or because the subject of a wife has not yet arisen). Further, it is not clear that Laban seeks any religious assimilation at this point, because a generation earlier, Laban had shown respect on two occasions for the God of Abraham (24:31, 24:50). Time is particularly important here, because Laban is setting up an open-ended contract as though Jacob will remain in Haran forever.

But when Jacob sets the terms as seven years' labor for Rachel (29:18), setting up a closed contract, Jacob's cultural assimilation is no longer a good prospect. Even so, Laban might believe that seven years are more than sufficient for assimilation. If Jacob could become assimilated, then Laban would scarcely be losing Rachel after all. Jacob's seven years, with assimilation at the end, would be a good set of reasons for Laban to say that Jacob would be better than another man, who might give only a single payment, as a husband for Rachel. Thus Laban adds, "Stay with me" (29:19).¹⁴ If seven years is sufficient for Jacob's cultural assimilation, then the addition of Rachel to the contract adds a prospect for racial assimilation; but if the seven years are not (as they are not), Laban may have to (as he does) find a plan specifically regarding racial assimilation.

Laban's plan indeed turns out not to assimilate Jacob, for Jacob sees the seven years as only a few days (29:20), barely one third of the ten-day minimum proposed for Abraham's servant. Jacob's love for Rachel has given him the single-mindedness-in another context, such unmitigated love of the beautiful might be called closed-mindedness-to prevent assimilation into the culture of Haran. After the seven years, Jacob has accomplished what he set out to do. He has escaped the wrath of his brother, as his mother hoped, by sojourning "a few days" in Haran. Furthermore, he is about to satisfy his father's wish by marrying a woman in their family line. Jacob must be expecting to take Rachel as his wife and then to return to his parents. The racial assimilation will be Rachel's into Isaac's family, not Jacob's into Laban's.

As expected, this resolution is dissatisfying to Laban, for not only has Jacob remained unassimilated, but Leah has not yet been married. Laban now makes his move regarding racial assimilation, expecting to fix both problems at once by forcing Jacob's hand. In other words he tricks Jacob into marrying Leah, then appeals to the cultural norms of Haran-"It is not customary to do this way in our place . . ."¹⁵-and finally offers Rachel in exchange for another seven years' service. Perhaps the fourteen years, plus two wives and two handmaids from Haran, will bring Jacob to assimilate to Haran.

A few words about Leah are appropriate here. It is plausible to assume that Laban presumed Leah would get married within the seven years. But if Rachel was already a shepherdess seven years earlier, Leah already should have been well into marriageable age. Seven years later, and still no suitors? If Leah is really a better woman than Rachel is, has no man of Haran seen past her dull eyes into her soul? Supposing that she had other suitors, and given that Laban knew that Jacob might try to leave after the seven years, it is possible that Laban withheld her all these years in order to accomplish the switch. But it is more likely that Laban, knowing or coming to know that Leah is unloved, acted out of a combination of assimilative hopes and compassion for Leah, whether or not the cultural norms Laban appealed to were true. If Leah had been married by the time of the feast, we can conjecture that Laban would have used a different woman for the switch, and a different excuse for the explanation.

Before moving forward, we might also ask what Rachel is doing while Jacob is being tricked. It is hard to imagine a scenario in which Rachel is unaware that the expressed purpose of the feast is to set up her marriage to Jacob. It is likewise hard to imagine a scenario in which Rachel does not know the switch is taking place. It is slightly more plausible to imagine that she is restrained from exposing the switch during the night. But it is most likely that Rachel knew she would marry Jacob after all, merely a week later than was announced (29:28), and that this knowledge was sufficient to win her compliance. Her compliance in becoming a second wife, though, if it was easily won, must make one suspect something unpalatable in her character.

Returning to Jacob, in the second set of seven years, the time seems to go more slowly, though not much more slowly. The two wives and two concubines barely have enough time to birth their twelve children before the seven years have passed.¹⁶ Nevertheless Jacob is eagerly awaiting the birth of Joseph at the end of the seventh year or the beginning of the eighth, so that he can remind Laban that Jacob's terms of servitude have finally ended. Jacob tells Laban to send him to "my place" and "my country," emphasizing both through repetition and his use of pronominal suffixes that Jacob has not forgotten his homeland (30:25). After fourteen years, Jacob has remained culturally unassimilated. Similarly, Jacob also seems to be racially unassimilated even though he has had twelve children by four women of Haran. He refers to the family as "my wives" and "my children," de-emphasizing their ties to Laban (30:26). He makes a sharp distinction between the service to and the blessing of Laban's house, on the one hand, and "my own house" on the other (30:29-30), adding "you" (attah) and "I" (anoki) in the appropriate places for emphasis. (In Hebrew these pronouns are usually not necessary and are added primarily for accentuation.) Finally, Laban is prohibited from attempting religious assimilation, for Laban's divinations seem to tell him that God is the one blessing him due to Jacob (30:27). In fact, if any assimilation is going on, the house of Laban is becoming more spiritually and racially assimilated to the house of Jacob.¹⁷

In this narrative it is becoming clear that time can be both a friend of assimilation and its foe. Although time can acculturate a weak-willed person to a place, time also permits a strong-willed person to grow in numbers and strength until the place can no longer hold him and his family and property. At this point we see a strong-willed Jacob sojourning with Laban, who evidently thinks Jacob is weak-willed. Following his earlier pattern, Laban, now cognizant that he needs Jacob in order to continue to benefit from God's blessing, again aims to prolong Jacob's stay by setting up an open-ended contract for wages. But again, Jacob prepares to use time to his advantage, rejecting a contract for wages and this formal tie to Laban, instead defining his wages as the number of speckled animals which he himself would produce (30:31-33). Although Laban may think he is buying more time, Jacob has produced an arrangement that forces Laban and his flocks to remain separate from Jacob and the flocks Jacob is tending. Furthermore, time will only accentuate the separation of the two men, just as the children of Shem become ever more distant from the children of Ham, just as in every generation where the siblings are separated.

Jacob also has chosen a fitting symbol, for the un-speckled animals represent whitewashed assimilation and the speckled animals represent distinction. The strong animals produce speckled offspring, in sympathetic vibration with the speckled staffs, while the weak animals produce un-speckled offspring which go to Laban (30:37-42). Robert Sacks also points out the large number of "foreign" or rare words in this passage, in order to claim that they underscore Jacob's magical skills, as though Jacob is assimilating to the magic of Haran.¹⁸ But these words, while they do show that something unusual is going on, might be read sufficiently as an allusion to the real distinction between what is happening in Jacob's flocks and what is happening in Laban's.

The distinction between Jacob and Laban reaches its height when God ceases to bless Laban and only blesses Jacob.¹⁹ Jacob recognizes this fact in 31:9, and Laban's sons likewise speak in all-or-nothing terms as though Jacob now has "all" that used to belong to Laban (31:1). Rachel and Leah follow suit, saying that all the wealth which used to be Laban's now belongs "to us and to our children" (31:16). The diction of God and of Jacob continues to accentuate the distinction. God tells Jacob to return not only to the land of his fathers, but also of his relatives (31:3); Jacob repeats the distinction between "this land" and "the land of your birth" when he recounts the words of the angel of God (31:13). Jacob also contrasts "the God of my father" with "your father" in speaking to his wives (31:5-6), and he pits "your father" against God (31:7-9). Even Laban, once God reminds him of His power (alluding to Laban's first experience of God in the Rebekah narrative in 24:50), agrees that the "god of my hand" is weaker than "the God of your father" (31:29). Jacob's wives agree with Jacob and with God that it is now time for them to leave the area of Haran for good (31:16). Six years of animal breeding have not brought assimilation; on the contrary, they have grown for Jacob most of the roots of the twelve tribes of Israel.

During Jacob's return from Haran, when Laban charges him with stealing Laban's gods, Jacob has an opportunity to separate himself entirely from Laban. Laban has just told him that God has warned Laban against harming Jacob, so Jacob does not need to fear Laban's power. Everything Jacob has, except Laban's gods (stolen by Rachel, not known to Jacob), he has earned on his own. In the neutral territory of the hills of Gilead, Jacob makes his last (in the Jacob-Laban narrative) anti-assimilative moves. Although Jacob first appeals to the judgment of "our brothers" (31:32), he later implies that the same people are actually two different sets of brethren, when he distinguishes between "my brothers" and "your brothers" (31:37). Jacob calls upon all the brethren who are present to make a decision "between us two" (31:37), thus initiating the final separation and setting the stage for his testimony regarding his twenty years of service.

Jacob's testimony shows that he has learned that a long time of service does not necessarily lead to assimilation, when the will remains strong (31:38-42). Jacob mentions his years of service four times, twice in sum and twice in distinguishing the first fourteen years from the latter six years. Yet through the whole twenty years, Jacob says that he has withstood the financial loss of animals as well as, physically, the loss of sleep and the extremes of heat and cold. He makes a point of referring to God as "the God of my father," repeating that God is the God of Abraham and of Isaac. Jacob knows who his God is, who his parents are, and what he owns from his own hard work.

Also noteworthy in Jacob's testimony is the abundance of pronouns and pronominal suffixes that distinguish between "I" and "you" (and, again, he uses anoki twice). This language gets appropriated by Laban toward, it turns out, the same end. Laban claims everything, family and property alike, for himself (31:43). Knowing that he is powerless to stop the separation, he at least hopes for a friendly covenant to formalize it.²⁰ This covenant is to stress anoki and attah, "I" and "you," and it will serve as a witness "between me and you" (31:44). God Himself is to witness and enforce this separation "between me and you" (31:49-50). Both Laban and Jacob continue to use this diction as they interpret the meaning of their agreement (31:47-53). This covenant is to be open-ended, just as Laban had hoped when he thought of setting wages for Jacob, but now what is to be established here is not a perpetual servitude but a perpetual separation, maybe even an equal friendship (cf. 31:54). Perhaps Jacob finally has taught Laban what Jacob himself has come to learn about time and assimilation and the strong-willed man.

In this context it is interesting to think of Esau as a weak-willed man who can become habituated,²¹ even while Esau is about to meet Jacob with the physical strength of four hundred men. Jacob is rightfully afraid of Esau's physical strength, but Jacob's cleverness prevails. Jacob's winning plan is to habituate and acclimate Esau to an association of brotherliness with generosity, sending drove after drove of animals to be gifts for Esau. Each time a servant leading a drove meets Esau, the servant is to bring the message that the animals are a gift and that Jacob is right behind (32:16-21).²² But when the next servant arrives, what appears is not Jacob but more gifts. In this way Jacob can habituate Esau to the association.²³ Jacob's method gives Esau a new (or renewed) ability to be generous and, especially, merciful with his brother, a quality of which Esau then makes use in forgiving his brother and in offering his services to his brother (33:4, 9, 12, 15).

What remains is to consider Jacob's role in the narrative of Shechem, a tale which also concerns assimilation.²⁴ When Jacob learns that his daughter Dinah has been raped, he remains silent in order to consider his options as he waits for his sons to come in from the field (34:5). It is likely that Jacob continues to remain silent, waiting for his sons, even when Shechem's father Hamor goes out to out to speak with him. Jacob is in a difficult situation, for he does not have the physical strength, even with his sons, to rescue Dinah. We also can surmise that Jacob does not have enough material resources with which to buy her, or if he does, he realizes that such a transaction will not be a long-term solution. Truthful conversation with Hamor and Shechem, as Jacob finds out, only makes matters worse, for they propose a rather thorough assimilation of Jacob's family to the rapacious ways of the Shechemites (34:8-12). Jacob seems to be left with no good options.

Jacob and his sons seem to be faced with the same general problem that Jacob faced when Rebekah told him to lie to Isaac: is it justifiable to put family loyalty above the truth; specifically, is it right to deceive the Shechemites in order to rescue Dinah? Jacob's sons, following in their father's footsteps a generation earlier, answer affirmatively. Putting filial piety above the truth, they concoct a scheme of perfect poetic justice, pretending that mutual assimilation is acceptable but in reality plotting to kill all the men of Shechem (34:13-17).

But is such massive killing justified, even if no other long-term solution seems to be suitable? Jacob remains silent while his sons lie to Shechem and Hamor; we may assume that Jacob is complicit with his sons' deception. A generation earlier, Jacob's putting loyalty above truth had some troubling consequences, but the story worked out in the end. This is not to say, however, that Jacob is willing to go so far as to kill the Shechemites, because it is clear that Jacob later disapproves of the murders (34:30). Thus when Jacob's sons Simeon and Levi go through with their murderous plan anyway, motivated by their disgust over the rape of Dinah, Jacob shows some anger (34:25-26, 30-31). If lying for the sake of family loyalty had its problems, Jacob seems to be saying, murder for the sake of loyalty is potentially deadly; Jacob's whole household could be destroyed because of his sons' actions. In fact it is only God who prevents this destruction from occurring (35:5; cf. 28:15).

It is more likely that Jacob expected his sons to rescue Dinah and leave the men in pain, and then flee the area entirely. This "exile" is what happened to Jacob a generation earlier, with fair enough results; if this was Jacob's idea, it certainly must have seemed reasonable to him. This may have been God's solution also. Directly after Jacob's conversation with his sons, God reminds Jacob to return to Bethel, recalling the fact that Bethel was the first place Jacob stopped when he was fleeing Esau (35:1-2). We might assume that God was planning this return even if Jacob's sons had not gone so far as to kill the Shechemites.

In any case, now that the murders have taken place, Jacob interprets God's commands, at least in part, as calling for a general cleansing of his household (35:2-4). The gods which Rachel stole, the Shechemite booty, any other foreign gods, the bloody clothes, and all signs of Shechem are to be cast away. Any assimilation to foreign gods is to be reversed. Furthermore, all remaining signs of Mesopotamia are about to fall away with the deaths of Deborah and Rachel.²⁵ In the renaming of Jacob as Israel (for the second time), combined with the birth of Benjamin and the death of Isaac (35:10, 18, 29), God effects a fairly clean break with the past. Assimilation stands at zero; time stands at zero. All that remains of import are God's covenants and laws, twelve sons, and Jacob's strong will and memory. These assets will prove essential to Jacob in Egypt.

1. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1920; reprinted, New York, APS Press, 1972.

2. Of the two dozen books specifically on Jewish assimilation in America, only one makes a serious effort to ground part of its argument on Scripture: Jerold S. Auerbach, Rabbis and Lawyers: The Journey from Torah to Constitution (1990). (A few books were not accessible for examination at the time of writing.)

3. New York: HarperCollins.

4. One might attempt to begin, as does Williams on his own topic, with Cain's expulsion after the fratricide, but there are not many details to work with. One might also consider the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden, during which Milton has Eve say, "How shall I part, and whither wander down/Into a lower world . . . how shall we breathe in other air/Less pure, accustomed to immortal fruits?" (Paradise Lost XI.282-85). The angel Michael replies, "Where [thy husband] abides, think there thy native soil" (XI.291-92), asserting that familial piety trumps cultural or geographical anxiety.

5. London: Faber and Faber, p. 71.

6. Daube, however, also grounds his analysis specifically in the ancient social regulations regarding the release of a captive slave and the transfer of property during the release, for example Exodus 21:2. While Daube's analysis is compelling, the present paper seeks a broader application of the interplay of time and assimilation.

7. The other three categories of dilemmas are justice versus mercy, short-term versus long-term goods, and individual versus community goods (Rushworth Kidder, Director of the Institute for Global Ethics, lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in New York, summer 1997).

8. One could begin with Genesis 3:12, when Adam passes on an opportunity to lie to God in order to protect Eve.

9. The following verse continues this pattern, mentioning "his mother" twice but "his father" once.

10. It is clear that Jacob intends to deceive his father, despite the fact that when Esau spurned his birthright, Jacob in one sense "became" Esau.

11. Similarly, the more loyal act for Shem and Japheth is to cover over the truth of their father's nakedness, not to persist in their brother Canaan's error out of loyalty to Canaan. In both stories, too, filial piety is placed above fraternal piety.

12. It is important to add at this point that Jacob's preservation also is to come at God's hand, as God tells Jacob in Luz/Bethel in 28:15.

13. "Racial" is not quite the right word here, though it is the correct sociological term for the idea that intermarriage and bicultural children are evidence of assimilation.

14. The verb here, sh'bah, has the three letters of the root for "to take captive"--Laban is in this sense saying, "Be captive with me." But later Jacob turns this around, saying that God would not let Laban "do evil with me" (31:7).

15. 29:26, New World Translation (1984), hereafter NWT.

16. On the quickest schedule, Reuben is born in the first year; Simeon in the second; Levi at the beginning of the third; Judah at the end of the third; Dan and Gad in the fourth; Naphtali and Asher in the fifth; Issachar at the beginning of the sixth; Zebulun at the end of the sixth; Dinah in the seventh; and Joseph at the very end of the seventh.

17. For an analysis of Rachel's and Leah's interpretations of the God of Jacob, see Leon Kass, "Is Love Good for Piety?: The Case of Jacob," unpub. MS, presented at The University of Chicago, February 16, 1997.

18. "The Lion and the Ass," Interpretation 10:2/3 (1982), 315-16.

19. The editors of the NWT suggest that 31:2 is related to 30:27; in other words, they suggest that Laban is no longer content with Jacob because God is no longer blessing Laban through Jacob. Kass also sees the upcoming separation between Jacob and Laban as both personal and cultural (p. 24).

20. Sacks explains that this covenant establishes the Syria-Israel border, and then relates the continuing relationship between the two peoples. "The Lion and the Ass," Interpretation 11:1 (1983), 94 ff.

21. This interpretation would bring further evidence that Esau is not fit to be a patriarch; too easily assimilated, Esau would not be able to keep God's way distinct in Egypt. Esau had already shown himself to be easily assimilated and then unassimilated, by choosing first Canaanite and then Ishmaelite wives.

22. Again, the language of the passage includes many repeated words and phrases to emphasize the pattern. Much more is occurring here, perhaps most significantly Jacob's symbolic return of the stolen blessing, but only Jacob's habituation of Esau is relevant to the present discussion.

23. Habit comes from Latin habere = to have/possess; to habituate someone is to give him a new attribute.

24. Again I limit myself only to Jacob's part in the narrative. The roles of other characters are more interesting here; if a strong-willed man like Jacob can remain unassimilated for twenty years, and a weak-willed man like Esau will change his heart over some herds of cattle, where do Jacob's sons and the men of Shechem fall along this spectrum?

25. 35:8, 19. Class notes, February 1998.