Jacob and Esau

The biblical parable of twin brothers Jacob and Esau, found in the Book of Genesis, is the story of humankind’s transition from the independence of nomadic life to the restrictions of civilization. Beginning 6,000 years ago, we traded the risks and hardships of the nomad tribe for the security and safety of the city dwelling laborer. Through those six millennia many have tried to escape Jacob’s village and join Esau’s tribe, but at this moment in history we are virtually all captured in the thrall of civilization, that complex society characterized by the empowerment of the state, social stratification and constraints, work specialization, urbanization, and depictive forms of communication.

From a 21st century point of view we have made a good trade, but for the previous 4,000 years of civilization, and perhaps for the next thousand, the bargain was a bad one. Yes, those of us presently living in developed nations have gained many comforts and privileges, material possessions, the opportunity to travel, to enjoy the arts, to expand our understanding of our universe through science and exploration. But in exchange, we have lost our individuality, versatility, adaptability, manual and mental dexterity, and our freedom of thought and action. We have been plagued by the diseases and malignancies caused by the crowding and contamination of urban living. Worst of all, we have lost almost all connection with the natural world and the gifts of imagination, wonder, and spiritual ecstasy it inspires.

Esau the nomadic hunter-gatherer-herder wandering the world, and Jacob the settled farmer-builder-storehouser confined in his walled city. Esau’s tribe, and Jacob’s civilization. The moral of this biblical fable – Jacob outwitting a hungry Esau by offering him a bowl of lentil stew in exchange for his birthright to claim patriarchy of the clan – is usually interpreted by biblical scholars as the triumph of calculated forethought over the mercurial passion of the moment, a lesson that teaches us reasoned intellect will prevail over impulsive instinct. Jacob’s virtue is his understanding of the concept of delayed reward; Esau’s failing is his desire to have immediate gratification.

The Jacob and Esau parable can also be seen as a cautionary tale, a warning that our compulsive desires can make us victims of a manipulative person’s cunning and greed. Jacob is not quite a scoundrel, but neither is he completely honest and forthright in his dealings with his brother. Esau is no fool, but he is trusting and naïve in regard to the workings of wealth and power within both family and community.

Incongruously, the Bible, touted as the code of moral and ethical behavior for men and nations, tells us that a clever but devious person who is sometimes less than honest is preferable as a leader over a person who is straightforward and candid but sometimes impetuous. In short, a politician over a statesman. A warning for us to beware those who advocate government based on religious principles?

Although the interpreters and scholars may be on target regarding the moral and sociological messages of the Jacob and Esau fable, they miss the greater story, it seems to me. Esau and Jacob represent that dramatic and world-changing evolution of humankind from the wandering nomadic tribe to the settled agricultural village. More than 14,000 years ago neolithic humans chose to plant, harvest and store Jacob’s “lentils” and ceased to hunt, gather, and feast on Esau’s “venison.”

We chose the cultivated field over the untamed wilderness, the city over the camp, forethought over impulse, and civilization’s security and safety over the freedom of the wild with its uncertainty, chance, and randomness. We chose to be settled farmers who planned and prepared, not nomadic herders who lived spontaneously. An unfortunate result of that decision was a decline in our well-being for 4,000 years: smaller and weaker bodies, diminishing brain size, decreased life span, diseases, malnutrition, subjugation by elites, mind-numbing labor, divorce from the natural world,

The end of humankind’s nomadic life was not sharp and sudden; it ebbed slowly around the world through the millennia, ending with the extermination of the North American Plains Indians tribes in the late 19th century. But its demise was inevitable when the first Natufian cultures began to plant, not just harvest, the wild grains that grew in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East. Soon there were fields of crops, grain storehouses, livestock, organization and division of labor, specialized craftsmen, machines, barter, systems of exchange, money, writing and records, government, taxes – all the necessary evils of civilization. The price of security is endless toil, drudgery, and bureaucracy.

Our genetic desire for the merits and joys of tribal life proved to be strong, and so the struggle between settled and wild cultures was long and brutal. Nomadic people overran the agricultural people hundreds of times. The raiders included the Scythia, Xiongnu, Huns, Gokturks, Dzungars, Mongols, Seljuks, Kalmuks, Kazakhs, Cossacks, Vandals – dozens more. They all had their day of conquest and pillage of nascent civilizations.

In the end, the farmers always prevailed because they had the means to sustain their way of life, and the nomadic tribes did not. Even the sweeping plains of Eurasia could not provide, year after year and century after century, the resources the nomadic cultures needed to survive. When the dust settled after each invasion and conquest, the agriculture-based society arose again from the ashes because the raiders themselves settled and became farmers.

Jacob offered Esau a bowl of lentils (settled civilization based on farming) in exchange for Esau’s birthright (nomadic civilization based on hunting), and Esau took it. He really had no choice; he was ravenously hungry, and Jacob had seemingly unlimited means to provide food – and shelter, clothing, metal, fuel, and all those material benefits that nomadic cultures can acquire though trade or theft but cannot produce themselves.

Although we are all settled agriculturalists now, that same genetic force within us still craves the nomadic tribal life. Even in the industrialized nations this innate drive to hunt and gather was apparent well into the 20th century in the form of market hunters and others who made their living by reaping the bounty of the fast-shrinking wild places. There are still parts of the Third World where the hunter can subsist by taking “bush meat” for sustenance and trade, but that is a miniscule part of a global population of 7.5 billion humans who have depleted virtually every wild animal and plant from the face of the Earth. We have even destroyed all the world’s once-great fisheries (a peril that we have not yet begun to realize but which will have disastrous effects on mankind’s ability to survive in the next 50 years).

The only vestige of the nomadic life in the wild is primitive camping and sport hunting, a purely symbolic act that feeds our hunger for Esau’s tribe’s life of impulse, randomness, insecurity, chance, and wildness. When we camp or hunt we engage in a neolithic reenactment, going afield to gather food for the tribe, pursuing a deer or collecting a bag of mushrooms or wild plums. This fleeting contact with the natural world soothes our primal longing but stirs our subconscious doubts: did we make the right decision 14,000 years ago? Was the gain of our settled comforts of civilization worth the loss of our nomadic freedom?

We live in Jacob’s village, but we yearn to wander with Esau’s tribe. We cling to our material comforts in the city, but we mourn the loss of our million-year birthright to live free in the wild.

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Enjoy reading this Jacob and Esau essay? You may also enjoy my most recent novel: Sighted - A History of Homo Sapiens Extinction.