SUNDAY 10 JULY 2005
Genesis 25: 19-34; Romans 8: 1-11
Last Sunday, I commented that the relations between men and women had changed more in the past thirty years than in the previous three thousand years. Why stop at three thousand? The relations between men and women have changed more in the past thirty years than in the previous 499,970 years if we are to take, say, 500,000 years ago as the time when homo sapiens emerged on planet earth. Of course the beginning of the human race cannot be stated precisely like that, but you get the picture.
Relationships between men and women have changed greatly and dramatically in the past thirty or forty years in comparison with everything that has gone before in human history. By and large most of us have adapted so readily to that, that we take for granted a situation our great or great great grandmothers would have found unrecognisable and incomprehensible. To have virtually every high office in the land ?± Governor General, Prime Minister, Chief Justice, and Speaker of Parliament ?± currently held by women, and to have that accepted as normal, effectively makes our great and great great grandmothers closer in reality to the women in the sagas of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs of Israel some four thousand years ago than they are to us a hundred or more years in the other direction.
Nineteenth century women in Western Europe and North America, the pioneer women of New Zealand and Australia included, with a few notable exceptions went where their husbands or fathers decided they would go, were disciplined by their husband or father as the male head of the household deemed appropriate, submitted to their husbands?? sexual desires when required, produced and raised as many children as possible as a result of that, and had as little formal say in community and national matters as did their biblical forebears. The minute books of our church meetings, for instance, were well into the third decade of the twentieth century before women were recognised more than only those times when a "hearty vote of thanks to the women" was proposed.
Our female forebears of not much more than a hundred years ago could, I suggest, have felt more identification with the women of ancient Israel than most New Zealand women today could feel. It would have included the recognition of a women??s conspiracy ?± knowing that in any formal sense they were powerless, but recognising the subtle power that could be wielded behind the scenes. Apart from the last 112 years since New Zealand women got the vote, and even then that was only at the time a limited equality with men, subtle behind-the-scenes actions have been the only way in which women could influence the course of events ?± recognising, of course, those relatively very few women in history who had effective power through the benefits of high birth, social status, and inherited (from a male) control over estates or money.
A hundred years ago very few people if any would have spoken about the patriarchs and matriarchs of Israel. It wouldn??t have occurred very often to anyone, especially to male preachers, that there was a need to mention anybody apart from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But these days, we can also pay attention to the wives, and to their not insignificant part in ancient Israel??s sacred history, as male-oriented as that history usually was. Today??s reading introduces us to one of these women ?± Rebekah, wife of Isaac, son of Abraham and Sarah.
One of the favourite narrative patterns found in the Bible is that of the trickster. The early Israelites tended to portray their ancestors and thereby to imagine themselves as underdogs, as people outside the establishment, who achieve success in roundabout, irregular ways. One of the ways marginalised people confront those in power and achieve their goals is through deception or trickery. In Genesis, tricksters are found among younger sons who would inherit, and among women. Rebekah is such a woman.
The scene is set by the story of the birth of her twin sons Esau and Jacob. Already in the womb and in the birthing, the narrative stated, their sibling rivalry was felt. Having jostled each other in the womb, Esau emerges first, with Jacob coming immediately after holding his brother??s heel. The very name, Jacob, is taken as a pun on the Hebrew word for ?´he takes by the heel??, meaning one who would supplant. The narrative moves quickly on from the birth to when the boys are older and have established quite different personas. Esau is a hunter, rough and rugged, while Jacob is a homeboy, a mother??s boy, "living in tents".
Rebekah doesn??t play a part in this next scene where Esau, famished after an unsuccessful hunt, trades his birthright ?± that is, his place as the first-born ?± for a plate of lentil stew that Jacob has been preparing. It is further on that the narrative recounts the event that made Jacob and not Esau the recipient of the patriarchal blessing which sealed him as the inheritor of the promise first given to Abraham of a land of their own, and of numerous descendants. It wasn??t part of today??s reading, and next Sunday??s lectionary reading picks up the story after the pivotal event, so I??ll need to outline what to many of us is a familiar story from Genesis chapter 27.
Isaac, now elderly and blind, tells his eldest and favourite son, Esau, that he might die at any time. He asks Esau, the hunter, to catch game and make him the kind of food that he loves, and he will bless Esau before he dies. Rebekah overhears this, and persuades her favourite son, Jacob, to bring her kids to be killed and cooked in the way Isaac loves. Jacob hesitates, not from any moral scruples ?± after all, he has already tricked Esau into selling his birthright for a plate of food. He hesitates because he might be found out and might receive a curse from his father, not a blessing. Rebekah boldly offers to take the curse upon herself should that happen ?± curses were as real as blessings. She prepares a disguise for Jacob, using Esau??s clothes which smell of the huntsman, and the woolly skin of the kids to cover his smooth hands and neck to feel like hairy Esau??s body to Isaac??s touch. The trickery works and Jacob receives the patriarchal blessing. Then Rebekah engineers Jacob??s safe escape from the vengeance of Esau when he discovers he has been cheated.
The whole thing is Rebekah??s doing. This morning??s reading told how Rebekah had already heard from God during her pregnancy that the younger son to be born would be Isaac??s heir. Does she love him more because of this information already received, or is it because he is more like her, the smooth son who lives in tents in contrast to the ruddy, hairy Esau? What is interesting is that clearly God loves Jacob too, and prefers him to Esau, and Rebekah acts to fulfil what she perceives to be God??s intention for Jacob.
The narrative is subtly subversive because the younger son inherits even though the pattern of custom and social structure would have it otherwise. Theologically, the passage subtly suggests that God??s choice, like love itself, is often serendipitous and inscrutable. The passage is subtly subversive because, as also in the case of Sarah and her son Isaac in relation to his older half-brother Ishmael, it is the mother not the father who knows which son is the chosen one. And why, in the case of Jacob and Rebekah, is the younger and preferred son the more womanish one of the two? The narrative is subtly subversive both because of the importance of the woman, Rebekah, in the fulfilment of God??s plan, and also in the implication that God??s preference for underdogs here extends to a woman and to a man who is more his mother??s son than his father??s.
Is it possible that, because of that subversive element, Israelite women would have taken special pleasure in hearing the story of Rebekah and Jacob? Even more, is it possible that women had some hand in shaping, preserving and transmitting such a story? One can only speculate, but certainly Rebekah??s role in furthering the career of Jacob who later literally becomes Israel when that name is given to him by God, gives an unusual prominence to a woman.
Nevertheless, this is not a prominence to which most modern women would aspire, for it is a prominence and a power circumscribed by being in a man??s world. It is one of the only kinds of power available to women down the ages ?± a vicarious power that achieves success for oneself through the success of one??s male children. It is a power that woman had through carrying a willingness to sacrifice oneself if necessary for the sake of the son, as in Rebekah offering to take on to herself any curse placed by Isaac on Jacob. Rebekah??s power is the power of the underdog, the power of those who are not in authority. In ancient Israelite literature, the woman who would succeed usually has to be a trickster, following the path typical of the marginalised.
Yet so clever is this trickster, so strong and sure, so completely superior in wit and wisdom to the men around her, that she might seem to be the creation of a woman story-teller, one who is part of a male-centred world and is not in open rebellion against it, but who nevertheless subverts its rules indirectly by making Rebekah a trickster heroine. This is women??s key real power in a completely man??s world, a power of mockery, humour, and deception.
This is the way it has been, with a few exceptions, for all but the last century or so of our 500,000 year history of humankind. It is the way it still is for the majority of women living today. In Africa, Asia, Latin America, even in some ?´western?? countries, and even if the law gives them a vote, women are still the marginalised, the underdog, and need to be the trickster, the manipulator, in order to exercise any influence let alone power. We do not know how much we live on another planet, as it were, to the majority of the world??s population in respect of the relationship between women and men.
But even then, self-congratulations must be muted, for in many subtle and not-so-subtle ways, it is still a man??s world even in our country. Despite women holding the four highest offices in the land, there are still glass ceilings which prevent women??s advancement in many areas of our life; there are still ingrained assumptions ?± in both men and women ?± of traditional roles and male headship; there are still vociferous minorities who advocate a return to the way it was when a man was head of the family and bread-winner, and the woman was the nurturer and caregiver and stayed at home
Rebekah was no Kate Sheppard, advocating women??s suffrage. She was no stereotypical rampant feminist. She was simply a woman, a mother, seeking the best for her son ?± the best that she believed God had in store for him. She derives her identity only by being the wife of Isaac and mother of Jacob. Nevertheless, in Israel??s sacred history, it is this woman who acts to allow something to happen that departed from what should have happened, and it is through this woman that the act is an act of God. Because the woman acted, the younger son inherited and became the great ancestor of the Hebrew people through his own twelve sons, the patriarchs of the twelve tribes of Israel.
We can hear the story of Rebekah and her power gained through trickery and deceit, and give thanks that in this land and in this church we have by and large moved on from such a world, a world which our not to distant grandmothers knew, a world which most women on earth still know. And we can, in memory of Rebekah the marginalised woman who took power in the only way she knew how, be vigilant to ensure that we do not regress as a society, and also strive for the realisation of women??s equality with men, and freedom for women from marginalisation throughout the world.