The book of Genesis records an instance in which Jacob deceives his father, Isaac, by pretending to be his brother.
He does this so that he can inherit his father's blessing.
All of this seems to happen in fulfillment of God's plan for Israel.
Does that make it right?
Here's the story . . .
Jacob and Esau
NOTE: This post is part of a series on the "dark passages" in the Bible. Click here to see all of the posts in the series.
Here is how the book of Genesis describes the birth and early life of Jacob and his twin brother, Esau:
Genesis 25
[22] The children struggled together within [Rebekah]; and she said, "If it is thus, why do I live?" So she went to inquire of the LORD.
[23] And the LORD said to her, "Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples, born of you, shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the younger."
[27] When the boys grew up, Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man, dwelling in tents.
[28] Isaac loved Esau, because he ate of his game; but Rebekah loved Jacob.
The Prophecy
Note the prophecy about the two children: "the elder [Esau] shall serve the younger [Jacob]."
This will ultimately be fulfilled by God using the line of Jacob to give rise to the people of Israel (in fact, "Israel" is an alternate name that Jacob will later acquire), but how will this take place?
At the moment, there seem to be two obstacles:
- First, as the older child, Esau has the birthright.
- Second, as Isaac favors Esau, he is likely to give him his dying, prophetic blessing.
The first obstacles is overcome when a famished Esau foolishly sells his birthright to Jacob (Gen 25:29-34).
That leaves us with the second problem . . .
Isaac Prepares to Bless Esau
Genesis 27 records that when Isaac was old and blind, he prepared to bless Esau.
But Rebekah overheard the plan.
She knows the prophecy about her two sons and fears that this will deprive her favored son, Jacob, of what God has promised him.
Rather than leave this to God to sort out, Rebekah initiates a plan of deception.
While Esau is out hunting game for his father, Rebekah tells Jacob to get two kids (young goats) so she can make the food Isaac is expecting.
Rebekah also adds another layer to the deception, to prevent Isaac from recognizing Jacob by touch or smell: She puts Esau's best clothes on Jacob, so he will smell like him, and she covers his hands and neck with the skins of the young goats, so that he will seem hairy to the touch, like Esau.
The Act of Deception
Jacob then goes in to his father's room, deceives his father, and receives his blessing (ch 27:18-29).
It isn't easy.
Isaac seemingly recognizes Jacob's voice, and he repeatedly expresses doubt about who is before him.
But he allows his doubts to be assuaged by the feel of his son's hands (augmented by the goat skins to make them seem hairy) and by the recognizable smell of Esau (from the clothes Jacob is wearing).
Jacob thus obtains the blessing, which includes the prophesied gift: "Be lord over your brothers."
Both barriers to the initial prophecy have been removed, and God's plan is on track for the line of promise to extend through Jacob's descendants rather than Esau's.
This leaves us with an important question . . .
Was This Right?
Lying is contrary to the Ten Commandments, and people in every culture have had a sense that it is wrong.
But what about lying to serve God's cause?
Whatever one may think about other "hard case" situations (e.g., Nazis asking if you have Jews in your attic), it's clear that Scripture does not regard this as a situation in which lying was "okay."
Both Rebekah and Jacob will suffer because of their lie.
Things Fall Apart
After Isaac has blessed Jacob, Esau comes back and discovers what has happened.
He is so angry, in fact, that he decides to kill Jacob as soon as their father is dead.
Rebekah learns of this, and tells Jacob, to flee until his brother's wrath dies down. Then she will send for him to come back.
But that day never comes.
She never sends for him. He stays away for twenty years, and she apparently dies in the meantime, because when he comes back, she is not there to greet him.
In fact--unlike the other principal wives of the patriarchs--she has no death notice. She is written out of the story and dies in silence--without her favored son, Jacob, at her side.
Her plot thus cost her the rest of the time she would have had with him.
And Jacob's participation in the plot hurts him as well . . .
The Deceiver Is Deceived
While Jacob is away, he takes a wife. He works seven years for her. But then, on the night of the marriage ceremony, his father in law pulls the same kind of switcheroo that he pulled on Isaac: Instead of giving him the promised bride--Rachel--he substitutes her older sister, Leah.
Jacob then has to work seven more years in exchange for the bride he wanted.
And this isn't the only time Jacob is deceived.
He will later be lied to--by his own sons--regarding a matter of utter horror . . .
The Death of the Beloved Son
Genesis 37 indicates that Joseph was Jacob's favorite son, and he made him a special garment (the famed "coat of many colors").
But the favoritism did not go down well with the other brothers, and they resented Joseph, who got them in trouble with their father and also related grand dreams about them bowing down to him.
So they sold him into slavery.
To cover up his absence, they kill a goat, dip Joseph's robe in the blood, and present it to his father, who naturally concludes that Joseph is dead.
[34] Then Jacob rent his garments, and put sackcloth upon his loins, and mourned for his son many days. [35] All his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted, and said, "No, I shall go down to Sheol to my son, mourning." Thus his father wept for him.
As Ye Sow, So Ye Shall Reap
Notice that the means of deception are the same in both cases:
- A slain goat (the two kids Rebekah used/the goat the brothers killed)
- A distinctive garment (Esau's clothes, which carry his smell/Joseph's ornate robe).
This makes it unmistakable that Jacob is suffering the consequences of his own act of deception. He deceived his father, and now as a father, he is being deceived by his sons.
Without saying it explicitly, the author of Genesis has put it all there for us:
Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap [Gal. 6:7].
What If . . . ?
We cannot know what would have happened if Rebekah and Jacob had not taken it into their hands to deceive Isaac.
Presumably, the promise would have ended up being fulfilled in some other way.
And a way better than the one with all the suffering that came in the wake of this event.
So while God bring about his purposes despite our evil actions, that does not make them right.
We cannot "do evil that good may come," and we cannot know what other, better things would have happened if we had done what we should have.
Fortunately, there is still mercy for us when we fail.
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Awesome post Jimmy, keep up the good work in 2013!
Thanks for this post. We’re expecting our 4th child in a couple of months, and my husband likes Jacob, which was his great-grandfather’s name. I’ve been having trouble with it precisely because I can’t get passed Jacob being a liar. I’m still not entirely comfortable with the name, but this puts it in context.
THUS SPEAKS JIMMY AKIN. AMEN
Was it OK for Lot to offer his daughters to the mob? Was it OK for said daughters to have incest with Lot?
Laban explains his deceit of Jacob with a veiled reference to Jacob’s own trickery. When Jacob asks “[NABRE Gen 29:25 ... ] Why did you deceive me?” [26] Laban replied, “It is not the custom in our country to give the younger daughter before the firstborn.” That is, “That may be how *you* act, but we know better.”
I liked the essay but Western man post Aquinas and Augustine has insufficiently faced St. Jerome’ s claim that dissimulation is sometimes necessary wherein Jerome gives the example of Jehu to whom God in 2 Kings 10:30 says, ” Because you have done well what I deem right, and have treated the house of Ahab as I desire, your sons to the fourth generation shall sit upon the throne of Israel.”. Lying was pivotal to Jehu’s destruction of those people..2 Kings 10:17-19:
” When he arrived in Samaria, Jehu slew all who remained there of Ahab’s line, doing away with them completely and thus fulfilling the prophecy which the LORD had spoken to Elijah.
18
Jehu gathered all the people together and said to them: “Ahab served Baal to some extent, but Jehu will serve him yet more.
19
Now summon for me all Baal’s prophets, all his worshipers, and all his priests. See that no one is absent, for I have a great sacrifice for Baal. Whoever is absent shall not live.” This Jehu did as a ruse, so that he might destroy the worshipers of Baal.”
The catechism takes the Aquinas/ Augustine position that lying is always wrong but Catholicism has moral theology tomes that a minority read that are not so simplistic and encompass Jerome’s point and get into questions of mental reservation, deception in war etc. etc.
You have to be a lawyer to not notice that Christ is using a ruse in the below passage just as Solomon used a ruse when he told his soldier to cut the infant in two and thereafter revealed the true mother of the baby:
Matthew 15:22
And behold, a Canaanite woman of that district came and called out, “Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a demon.”
23
But he did not say a word in answer to her. His disciples came and asked him, “Send her away, for she keeps calling out after us.”
24
10 He said in reply, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
25
But the woman came and did him homage, saying, “Lord, help me.”
26
He said in reply, “It is not right to take the food of the children 11 and throw it to the dogs.”
27
She said, “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.”
28
Then Jesus said to her in reply, “O woman, great is your faith! 12 Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed from that hour.”
He was not sent only to the lost house of Israel in a perfectly exclusive way since He helped the centurion and the Samaritan woman with no such comment…. and no such hesitation.
Thanks Jimmy. It is always refreshing to hear prominent Catholics condemn consequentialism, especially since far too many of us accept it as a practice.
On a related note, you’re going to have to explain how Jephtha’s apparent killing of his daughter in Judges could be praised by the author of Hebrews.
So you are a consequentialist, Jimmy? The suffering and compounded deceptions make the initial deception more wrong than Essau’s blessing would have been? You ask an ethics question but offer a non-sequiteur and a tautology; you haven’t explained why your answer is true. You instead imply a very dangerous conclusion that less overall consequential suffering is a de facto better situation than situations which are difficult. Since nobody wants to call the Sandy Hook teacher a sinner, we are left with what I interperet CCC2485 to actually say: lying is sinful to the degree that it injures justice and charity. This exonnorates the Sandy Hook teacher, and implicates Jacob, since it was unjust to usurp the inheritence laws of his community.
Would the consequences that followed Rebekah and Jacob’s deception be an example of the “temporal” punishment of sin? (similar to the death of David’s son following his affair with Bathseba).
Thanks so much for this insight. I never had read this answer before. Excellent!
We are generally better off obeying the Commandments, and not trying to “guess” whether God’s purposes would be better served by us lying.
Re the “hard case” - Gestapo officer asking whether we are harboring Jews in Hitler’s Reich - I seem to recall from 60 or so years ago in Catholic School the idea of mental reservation: “Is your sister at home?” (from someone she already told me that she DID NOT want to see); and that I could answer “She is not home (TO YOU).
If you hold that the Gestapo person has no right to ask about Jews in your house, then you can use the same answer: “There are none here! (To you.)”
Jimmy, how do you stand on this concept of “Mental Reservation”? I haven’t thought about it much in the last sixty years. I don’t lie well anyway, just as I can’t bluff at poker. My face gives me away.
TeaPot562
Henry Bowers: I would think that any lie that is malicious in nature to be a true lie. That’s the reason why lies to protect others and white lies aren’t truly lies. This doesn’t help Jacob though since his lie (Malicious in that it was deceptive to Isaac) was to fulfill prophecy. You can’t use evil to promote good. You mock God in that way. Overall, this article shows me that God’s plan cannot be stopped and that hope can’t die.
@ Louis: I don’t understand what “malicious in nature” means. I could intend to mislead someone even with true information. If every lie is automatically at least a venial sin, then it seems even submitting wrong answers on a math test would be a venial sin: for I intend to convey a proposition about being, for someone else’s intellect, which I am only hoping to be true. We cannot say that the consequentialist result of false information is the problem, for then even my own study of math and my limited intellect’s ability to form right answers would result in a venially sinful condition. Thus, the sinfulness resides not in intent to deceive per se (since mental reservation has the same intent), but in injuries to justice and charity. We need to be virtue ethicists on this issue: not deontologists, and not consequentialists.
Someone once said that the Jews were the “Chosen People”, not the perfect people.Much of the Old Testament illustrates that.But they did a whole lot better than the surrounding population.
John H: Done!
http://www.ncregister.com/blog/jimmy-akin/the-biblical-hero-who-.-.-.-killed-his-daughter/
Hi, Jimmy—I really like this exegesis of the Jacob story! You wrote:
***Whatever one may think about other “hard case” situations (e.g., Nazis asking if you have Jews in your attic), it’s clear that Scripture does not regard this as a situation in which lying was “okay.”***
I think you are correct about the Jacob story—and much like John H above with Jephthah, I’d wonder how you would approach the deception of Raphael in Tobit? Maybe a post on that soon?
This question of what constitutes the “sin” of lying has been, for me, a subject of much study. Among the aspects that I wish more Catholics were aware of is the fact that the CCC’s teaching on lying originates not with “magisterial” teaching but is actually the “common teaching of Catholic theologians” (particularly coming from Aquinas/Augustine) and, as such, Catholics are permitted to form their consciences either according to this more rigorous “common teaching” as found in the CCC or according to the less rigorous theological view that not all spoken falsehoods intended to deceive constitute sinful lying.
I think that if more Catholics knew that it’s okay to differ on this issue, we’d be better able to discuss, compare, and contrast views without falling into the error of thinking that the rigorous view is somehow “magisterial” and the less rigorous view therefore represents a view that effectively is “dissent” from the “magisterial” view (an unnecessarily divisive position I’ve seen taken on this subject before).
This is also why the Raphael/Tobit story seems very worthwhile, as it seems to me to involve angelic “spoken falsehood with intention to deceive”...maybe you could examine this in future?
God bless you,
Deacon JR
Hi, Jimmy—apologies if this duplicates another post that may eventually appear—my first comment attempt elicited an error message flagging it as potential spam requiring review. In any case, thanks for your exegesis of this passage, which I think is first-rate. I wonder whether in future you might take on the Raphael/Tobit story and the use of “spoken falsehood with intention to deceive” by the angelic Raphael? It seems to me to be a very intriguing aspect of the story and has something to tell us about the nature of lying. As this has been, for me, a subject of much study, I continue wishing that more Catholics were aware of the fact that the teaching on lying contained in the CCC originates not with the Magisterium but rather as the “common teaching of Catholic theologians”, which means that Catholics can in good conscience either form conscience according to this more rigorous theological opinion or according to the less rigorous theological view regarding what constitutes “sinful” lying, since both such views have been debated by theologians throughout the life of the Church. I think this is important, since it is a point over which some division has occurred (folks claiming the common teaching on lying repeated in the CCC was “magisterial” and that those taking the less rigorous view were therefore manifesting “dissent” against magisterial teaching). I hope more and more Catholics realize more than one view (particularly on special cases) is permitted. God bless! Deacon JR
Thanks for a great discussion on one of my favorite biblical topics.
As is often the case when a difficult passage in Scripture seems to resolve into two opposed camps (What Jacob did was good! and What Jacob did was bad!) there is a way to understand that the text is operating on (at least) two levels which shows that BOTH things are going on—Jacob IS the chosen one of God and is in the process of becoming holy AND that he was culpable for what he did (and thoroughly repayed in kind). A link to my 2007 dissertation on the topic is below.
http://www.amazon.com/Wrestling-God-ebook/dp/B005HQKN1S
Jesus Christ calls satan a liar and a murderer from the begining. But some of God’s elect did alot of lieing and murdering in their life yet God stil stood by them. Any way very Good explanation i have Got a wee bit of peace and relief reading your post. I stil hav a big issue! How do I trust God’s Justice when reading passages like these. I mean can i trust that G-d will bring the souls of the 1.5 million victims of the Armenian Genocide to rest and their murderous the Ottoman muslim Turks to condemnation? I realy lose sleep because of this!
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