Human Agency and Divine Will: The Book of Genesis (Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Biblical Criticism) 9781848935907, 9780367809133, 1848935900

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Human Agency and Divine Will

This book explores the conjuncture of human agency and divine volition in the biblical narrative—sometimes referred to as “double causality.” A commonly held view has it that the biblical narrative shows human action to be determined by divine will. Yet, when reading the biblical narrative, we are inclined to hold the actors accountable for their deeds. The book, then, challenges the common assumptions about the sweeping nature of divine causality in the biblical narrative and seeks to do justice to the roles played by the human actors in the drama. God’s causing a person to act in a particular way, as He does when He hardens Pharaoh’s heart, is the exception rather than the rule. Overall, the biblical heroes act on their own; their personal initiatives and strivings are what move the story forward. How does it happen, then, that events, remarkably, conspire to realize God’s plan? The study enlists concepts and theories developed within the framework of contemporary analytic philosophy, featured against the background of classical and contemporary biblical commentary. In addressing the biblical narrative through these perspectives, this book holds appeal for scholars of a variety of disciplines—bible studies, philosophy, religion, and philosophical theology—as well as for those who simply delight in reading the Bible. Charlotte Katzoff is Senior Lecturer (Retired), Department of Philosophy, and Adjunct (Ret.) in the Gender Studies Program, Bar Ilan University, Israel.

Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Biblical Criticism

Gender-Play in the Hebrew Bible The Ways the Bible Challenges Its Gender Norms Amy Kalmanofsky Paul and Death A Question of Psychological Coping Linda Joelsson Biblical Narratives of Israelites and their Neighbors Strangers at the Gate Adriane Leveen Cain, Abel, and the Politics of God An Agambenian reading of Genesis 4:1–16 Julián Andrés González Holguín Epistemology and Biblical Theology From the Pentateuch to Mark’s Gospel Dru Johnson Thinking Sex with the Great Whore Deviant Sexualities and Empire in the Book of Revelation Luis Menéndez-Antuña A Philosophical Theology of the Old Testament A historical, experimental, comparative and analytic perspective Jaco Gericke Human Agency and Divine Will The Book of Genesis Charlotte Katzoff For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Interdisciplinary-Perspectives-on-Biblical-Criticism/book-series/ RIPBC

Human Agency and Divine Will The Book of Genesis

Charlotte Katzoff

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Charlotte Katzoff The right of Charlotte Katzoff to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-848-93590-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-80913-3 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Dedicated to the Memory of My Parents Benjamin and Helen Pearlberg And to the Memory of My Grandson Yonatan Adler

Contents

Preface Introduction

viii 1

1

Temptation in the garden

25

2

Matriarchal knowledge

50

3

Abraham: a God-fearing man

70

4

Isaac: a tale of deception and self-deception

93

5

Jacob seeks atonement

119

6

Who sold Joseph into Egypt?

150

7

Changes of heart

169

Bibliography Index

182 191

Preface

The Book of Genesis—the accounts of creation, the patriarchal saga, the story of Joseph—is rich with drama and tension, heartbreak and fulfillment, triumph and reversal. The heroes are towering figures who perform outstanding acts of faith and courage that evoke our admiration and awe and reveal flaws of character and shortness of vision, which evoke our empathy and compassion and sometimes provoke our disaffection. These heroes have accompanied me since my childhood. In the more recent years, in composing this work, I have delighted in the opportunity to get to know them better. For the impetus to write this book I am indebted to my colleague David Widerker. It was he who, when I shared with him some of my philosophical ruminations about these narratives, encouraged me to develop them further. For this, and for his support in many other of my philosophical endeavors, I thank him. I also give special thanks to Jerome (Yehuda) Gellman, Ira Schnall, and Susan Weingarten for reading large portions of this book and commenting generously on them. My gratitude goes also to the editors of the series in which this book appears for their valuable and constructive criticism; and at a later stage, to the copyeditors for their careful attention to the text. This book has been long in the making. I thank the many friends and colleagues who have read parts of it or discussed it with me over the years and enriched my work. Among them are Baruch Alster, Anat Assiag, Ori Beck, Joshua Berman, Stuart Cohen, Tova Cohen, Ruti Feuchtwanger, Lyat Friedman, Channa Kasher, Rimon Kasher, Shmuel Klitsner, Avi Sagi, David Shatz, Yael Shemesh, Ellen Spolsky, Eleonore Stump, Richard Swinburne, Howard Wettstein, and Noam Zohar. My thanks to the philosophy department at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, for hosting me during a sabbatical year, and to George Mavrodes for his hospitality. My thanks also to the philosophy department at Yale University for hosting me, and to Nicholas Wolterstorff for the many engrossing conversations we had about the patriarchs and matriarchs and for his encouragement for my project. This work received support from the Israel Science Foundation, for which I express my appreciation.1

Preface

ix

To all those mentioned I must add that this project would not be what it is were it not for the ongoing enthusiasm of my friends and family— companions at my Sabbath table who rehearsed with me the weekly portions of the Torah reading over the years and charged them each time with new meanings. The writing of this book was completed under the shadow cast by the death of my grandson Yonatan, whose participation enlivened these Sabbath encounters. And finally, my thanks to my husband, Ranon Katzoff, for his devoted support for me and my project and for his generous and sound counsel and technical assistance in the preparation of this work. Jerusalem, 2019

Note 1 Translations of biblical texts, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary (New York: Norton, 2004).

Introduction

In the Book of Genesis, God’s plan for humanity and for His chosen people gets under way. The plan is conceived and directed by God and proceeds by way of His initiatives and by way of the desires, intentions, and actions of the heroes of the story. This study focuses on the modes of interplay between the divine plan and human action in several narrative episodes in the Book of Genesis and one in the Book of Exodus. It opens with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden eating from the Tree of Knowledge and concludes with the Children of Israel leaving Egypt and crossing the Red Sea. Reading these narratives, and tracing the unfolding of the plan, I examine some of the philosophical assumptions and literary features of the narrative which sustain human freedom within the context of God’s design.

Philosophy and biblical interpretation The biblical text because it is so poignant and moving because it is sparse in detail, and especially because of its singular religious and cultural importance throughout the ages, has garnered a wealth of commentary, both classical and modern.1 Philosophers have been active participants in this enterprise. One philosophical school after another has engaged the biblical text on issues that concern it, bringing to the encounter the presuppositions, concepts, and tools characteristic of its tradition. Philosophers have sought to understand the biblical view of creation, free will, morality, divine providence, and more. The entire corpus of biblical literature has been explored to this end, including the narratives I examine. Seen from the perspectives of the various traditions, these texts often present philosophical quandaries. Some of them seem to have troubled readers in all times, from all quarters—for example, Jacob’s lying to his father in order to secure the blessing intended for his brother. Others are perplexing within the context of a set of presuppositions, such as Joseph’s exonerating his brothers for having sold him into Egypt. Different methodological choices open up different possibilities for solutions. For purposes of this study I read the narrative as a literary work. I grapple with the intricacies of the plot and attend to its literary features. In each of

2

Introduction

the episodes I seek to trace coherent storylines. Although each of the episodes is read as a narrative unity, I also look to render each of them continuous with the larger Genesis narrative. Philosophical analysis serves me as a key to unlocking these challenging narratives, and this, of course, shapes my reading of the stories, the questions I raise, and the answers I propose. My efforts are not directed towards uncovering large-scale biblical ideas or teachings. Such a project would call for a much wider investigation than I am undertaking. It might look to constructing continuous and consistent philosophical positions discernible in many biblical texts or in extended portions of the biblical readings. I confine my study almost exclusively to the narratives in Genesis, and my investigations are directed to grappling with a particular text or episode rather than to forging an overall theory. Even though I do not search for large philosophical ideas, however, the efforts to penetrate these texts lead to speculation as to their philosophical underpinnings. The narrative presents a picture of a world created by God with distinctive features, a world for which He has a long-range plan. This plan calls for the emergence of a chosen people who will embrace God’s commandments and teachings and carry forth His word into the world. The narratives I focus on in this study recount the early stages of this process, the coming into being of a family, and ultimately a people, who will become the Chosen People. More than many biblical narratives, the ones I study here portray the interplay between individual human beings and their God-given destinies. The subtle details of the picture and the intricacies of the scenes suggest the complexities of the human-divine drama. We see the heroes in these stories acting, not only as future leaders of nations, but as fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters. Because the characters of the narratives I examine are in many respects life-like individuals, familiar, commonplace notions, and theories—of self-deception, moral responsibility, guilt and regret, luck, temptation, virtue, knowledge and the like—serve me in my analysis. Many of the concepts and theories I appeal to figure prominently in philosophical discussion today. The theories are not laid out in anything like a systematic way in the texts I study, nor are the concepts, by and large, explicit in it. The philosophical ideas I introduce, however, as I shall try to show, may be intuitively discerned in the narratives. I propose that invoking them adds new dimensions to the narratives and helps answer questions which they raise, sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly. I engage the narrative primarily from the perspective of the contemporary analytic tradition in philosophy. By the “analytic tradition,” I mean the style of philosophy that developed during the latter half of the twentieth century and is practiced widely today by the Anglo-American school of philosophy. This style is characterized by exact definition of terms, well-marked distinctions between concepts, rigorous logical arguments, and frequent appeal to example and counter-example. To compensate for analytic philosophy’s narrowness of focus, the philosopher Eleonore Stump recommends that we “marry it to the study of narrative.”2

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3

I also draw on the rich reservoir of classical Bible commentary and on contemporary biblical studies. As mentioned earlier, these texts have been the subject of intense study and analysis over many, many generations, and my study engages only a small part of the rich interpretive canon which has flourished over the centuries and is still expanding. The readings I am presenting will reflect, adapt, appeal to, and embrace some of these interpretations; they will be antithetical to others. They are attempts to open one more window on to these immortal texts.

Philosophy and narrative The Bible displays a variety of literary styles—legal tracts, poetic compositions, as well as narrative episodes. In focusing on the narrative portions, I am raising philosophical questions about texts which are not, in themselves, philosophical tracts. Narrative is a genre poorly suited for extracting clear, precise notions or abstract principles. Drama, in contrast to doctrine, is not geared towards resolving dilemmas and quandaries. I will not be looking for formal demonstrations or rigorous arguments in these texts.3 Rather, in the words of Stump, in narrative “the bones of thought lie beneath the surface.”4 The texts I address are given to interpretation rather than systematization. I may recommend my reading of a text and argue for it, but in the end, as Stump cautions, I cannot compel it. Narrative, by its nature, describes particular events. It paints portraits of determinate, singular individuals performing concrete acts within contingent states of affairs, from motivations that are often conflicted or inchoate. Martha Nussbaum, one of the early champions of narrative as a source of philosophical insight, points to these features as especially suited for conveying the irreducible complexities of real-life situations and the tangled webs of circumstances in which human agency is embedded.5 While literary analysis makes the text more available, philosophical analysis incorporates philosophical concerns into the literary investigation, asking questions, for example, about the ethical principles or religious and epistemological assumptions underlying the characters’ behavior and bearing upon its consequences. My explorations of the Genesis narrative benefit specifically from two parallel developments in the study of the Bible which took place in the latter part of the twentieth century and the fruits of which are now staples of Bible interpretation. One is the application of techniques of literary analysis to the biblical narrative.6 Pioneers in this field, Meir Sternberg and Robert Alter, highlighted narrative structures, type-scenes, word-patterns, character depiction, and the like, showing how close attention to these features reveals new insights into the text. These features give us access to the thoughts, emotions, and motivations of the characters which are rarely explicit in the accounts.7 Speculations about them, we see, can lead to unlocking some of the philosophical content of the biblical drama. This approach has spawned

4

Introduction

an outpouring of literary investigations of the biblical text in the last decades. Most recently Jonathan Grossman has published several volumes of rich literary commentary on biblical narratives, particularly in the Book of Genesis, as well as a systematic survey of the use of various literary techniques in the biblical writings.8 On the side of philosophy, beginning with the last few decades of the twentieth century, there has been a flourishing of philosophical theology.9 Philosophers bring the tools of their trade to analyze such topics as divine providence and human freedom, the nature of God’s knowledge and His power, and the problem of evil. As an offshoot of this project, philosophers have trained their sights on the Bible, exploring broad philosophical themes such as the Bible’s ethical and political teachings, as well as specific episodes such as the Garden of Eden and the Binding of Isaac.10 David Shatz has addressed some of the theoretical issues raised by the attempt to impose modern-day conceptual schemes on an ancient narrative text. Shatz pointed to the dubiousness of using some “favored, cutting-edge philosophical theory” to explain a text that is so general that one can find support in it for almost any philosophical reading.11 Shatz indeed observed, however, that sometimes the text is indeed sufficiently specific to favor a particular interpretation, especially if one approaches it having already formulated the philosophical questions which motivate the interpretation. Shatz subjected several narrative episodes to sustained analysis in the light of both classical commentary and contemporary philosophical theory.12 The philosophical import of the biblical narrative is notably featured in the works of Eleonore Stump. She has analyzed the notions of sanctification and hardening of the heart in terms of the classical philosophical issues of free will and determinism, relating these notions further to questions of divine justice and sovereignty.13 In her monumental work, Wandering in Darkness, Stump explores the problem of evil and suffering as part of her larger project in this book, which is the construction of a theodicy. She draws on contemporary philosophical analysis to elaborate on Aquinas’s views of what people care about. In the course of this project, Stump offers readings of some particularly stirring narrative accounts of suffering in the Bible. In addition to bringing a general analytic approach to the biblical texts, some philosophers have brought specific philosophical disciplines to bear upon them. George Mavrodes examined the biblical representation of divine action and revelation in the light of analytic theory of action and knowledge.14 Harry Frankfurt applied insights from modern-day philosophy of action to elucidating the creation story in Genesis. With the aid of modern speech-act theory, Nicholas Wolterstorff investigated the notion of divine speech, and in particular the claim that God speaks through Scripture.15 Howard Wettstein studies biblical works, employing ideas from contemporary philosophy of language to elaborate his view of biblical theology.16 Michael Walzer presents his interpretation of the political teachings in the Bible in the light of its theology.17 Yoram Hazony draws from narrative

Introduction

5

episodes to explore the Bible’s ethical, epistemological, and political principles18 and Shira Weiss, in a recent study, looks at morally problematic episodes in the Bible in the light of current ethical issues. Turning to classical and contemporary philosophical analysis, Weiss shows how diverse theoretical approaches may deliver different moral judgments on the enigmatic narratives.19

The biblical narrative As recounted in the Bible, the beginnings of the world were not a haphazard sequence of events. Creation proceeded, step by step, at God’s command. Heaven and earth, the seas and the dry places, the vegetation, and the animal kingdom, were all put into place by divine fiat. With all this done, God, then, in a singular act, made man. The advent of man—Adam—marks the end of the initial stage of creation. God’s plan continues to unfold along a course which He lays out, but it does not proceed by divine fiat. Its unwinding incorporates the freely chosen actions of autonomous agents. God commands Adam; it is up to Adam if he will obey. The theme of this study—the enactment of the divine plan through the actions of the characters in the drama—begins to emerge.20 As the saga proceeds, God continues to work out His design. Sometimes He acts over the heads of the human actors. He brings a flood upon the land. He rains brimstone and fire on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. In these operations human beings do not play active roles in realizing God’s objectives. Other times, God exercises His control by addressing the heroes personally. God warns Noah of the impending flood and instructs him on how to save himself; He charges Abraham to leave the land of his birth and promises to make him a great nation. He urges Jacob to go down to Egypt. In each of the latter instances, for His plan to go through as God intends, the heroes must agree to do as He says. God declares to Abraham in the Covenant of the Pieces that his children will be strangers in a land not theirs. Years go by and one generation follows another along a winding course whereby, by the end of the Book of Genesis, Abraham’s descendants, Jacob’s family, find themselves in Egypt. They arrive there by various routes—Joseph’s brothers, moved by their jealousy and resentment towards him, sell him into Egypt; a famine in the Land of Canaan later sends the brothers themselves to Egypt in search of food and Jacob goes down to Egypt to reunite with his beloved son. The dynamics of the biblical drama are predicated on the characters, for the most part, acting on their intentions and decisions. The narrative represents the characters as freely acting agents of God’s undertaking.21 Philosophical considerations support this reading. Throughout the biblical narrative God issues commands, first to the heroes of the Genesis stories, then also to all the People of Israel. The fundamental principle of “ought” implies “can” entails that if God commands a person to perform a particular

6

Introduction

act or to refrain from carrying it out, then, on the assumption that the person ought to comply with God’s command, that person is capable of performing that act. The logic of the command also entails that the person can fail to obey it. God’s command to Adam not to eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge or His bidding Abraham to offer up his son as a burnt offering dramatize the actors’ abilities to choose whether or not to do as God says. Literary features of the biblical narrative work towards the same effect. Even when God’s conspicuous involvement in the story and the miraculous nature of some of the events are considered, the biblical narrative is, nevertheless, as a whole, realistic. The situations in which the biblical characters are placed are recognizable, and the reader intuitively draws natural connections between the circumstances in which the characters find themselves and the way they feel and behave. The biblical heroes do not move like puppets; they are animated by emotions with which the reader cannot help but identify.22 As we follow the narrative, we see God’s will prevail. Nevertheless, despite God’s designing and directing the drama, He does not, as a rule, know in advance what the actors will do.23 God did not anticipate that, early on, mankind would become corrupt. We read, And the Lord saw that the evil of the human creature was great on the earth and that every scheme of his heart’s devising was only perpetually evil. And the Lord regretted having made the human on earth and was grieved to the heart. (Gen. 6:5–6) Thus, He decides to destroy the world, to wipe out what He had so exactingly created.

Human freedom and God’s knowledge The picture of God that I am drawing, the one that I find painted large throughout the Genesis narrative, does not conform to the notion of God which figures in classical theism.24 Accordingly, the metaphysical and epistemological principles implicit in my picture differ from those of the classical portrayal.25 The latter shows God as an essentially omniscient being who knows all truths, past, present, and future. This omniscience is seen by many to preclude the possibility of human freedom. The standard argument, as formulated by Nelson Pike, from God’s knowledge to the absence of freedom, which I apply here to the story of the binding of Isaac, for the sake of illustration, goes roughly as follows: If God is an essentially omniscient being, then if at t2 Abraham decided to offer up Isaac as a burnt offering, then at t1 God believed that Abraham would offer him up and his belief was true.26 Now, if Abraham had

Introduction

7

the power at t2 to refrain from deciding to offer up Isaac, this would entail that Abraham had the power to bring it about that either God had a false belief at t1 or that God did not hold the belief he did at t1 or that God, who by hypothesis existed at t1, did not exist at t1.27 Based on what Pike takes to be the logic of the concept of human ability or power, he rules out all of these possibilities. The conclusion, then, based on Pike’s argument, is that if God existed at t1 and if Abraham decided to offer up Isaac as a burnt offering at t2, it was not within Abraham’s power at t2 to refrain from doing so. The argument as so formulated has not gone unchallenged and many and various attempts have been made to avoid its conclusion.28 The argument, whether valid or not, however, is not relevant to the notion of God I am expounding. The argument assumes that God is an essentially omniscient being. On my reading, God, as He appears in the Book of Genesis, is not omniscient. He does not have true beliefs about what someone will freely do before he does it. God learns about man by observing him. He tests Abraham and He is gratified when Abraham responds as He wants him to.29 When Abraham reaches out his hand to take the cleaver to his son, the angel of God declares, “now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son from me” (Gen. 22.12). This view of God’s knowledge is at variance with the traditional notion of divine omniscience which appears in Pike’s argument. To accommodate the assumption of human freedom within a classical theological framework, Richard Swinburne proposes attributing to God “modified omniscience.”30 Swinburne argues that with respect to propositions about future actions, God’s omniscience entails that he knows the truth values only of those propositions whose truth values are physically necessitated by a prior cause. Since, by definition, a free human action is not causally determined, God cannot know whether it will occur; God cannot know how human beings will act.31 It follows further that God cannot know about those future events which are contingent upon human choices.32 The Bible does not spell out a theology whereby God’s knowledge is compatible with human freedom, yet its assumption of human freedom is unmistakable. It is God’s will at the time of creation that man be created with an open future.33 This means that the causal nexus in which man is located at the present moment does not uniquely determine what he will do at the next.34 This is not to say that God does not have it in His power to cause people to act as He wishes.35 For the most part, however, in the biblical narrative God forgoes the exercise of this power. In the Covenant of the Pieces, God spells out a series of events that are projected over hundreds of years which involve the actions of Abraham and his children, as well as the Egyptians and the Amorites. How is God able to predict these future developments if they are contingent upon the free actions of the agents in the story?36 I shall argue that the narrative assumes

8

Introduction

that God knows what He wants and intends to bring about.37 He also knows how his heroes are likely to act under certain conditions. He is thus able to create circumstances which He knows to be conducive to their acting as He desires. He is able to follow through on His plan by responding to the free actions of the heroes in the story as they take place, creating additional circumstances and taking overt action when called for. God creates circumstances designed to lead to the fulfillment of His plan.38 God does not cause Joseph to behave towards his brothers as he does— their behavior emerges, at least in part, from the convoluted family history which precedes it. God does not know in advance what Joseph’s brothers will do at any particular time, but He does know that Joseph’s recounting his dreams to them is very likely to result in their hating him. He knows that a caravan traveling to Egypt at the right time in the right place is a means for Joseph to be conveyed to Egypt, which coheres with the plan that God had foretold to Abraham. The brothers’ decision to murder Joseph is freely taken. Their selling him to the passing Ishmaelites is a free action. A free action may nevertheless be inevitable—that is, it may be an action that, due to circumstances, the agent could not have avoided performing.39 This is the case, I shall argue, with the brothers’ act of selling Joseph. God creates circumstances along Joseph’s route from Hebron, to his meeting up with his brothers in Dothan, and then to his sale to the passing caravan, which render the brothers’ act of selling him inevitable. Joseph’s subsequent rise to power in Pharaoh’s court is instrumental in bringing the chosen family down to Egypt. The sequence of events leading to his appointment as viceroy of Egypt includes many free actions. Yet, an air of inevitability hovers over the entire sequence, and the text may suggest that some parts of the sequence, in addition to the sale, are inevitable. The text signals especially clearly, however, as I hope to show, that the brothers could not have avoided their act of selling Joseph.40

Dual causality The historian of biblical religion Yehezkel Kaufmann speaks of “dual causality” as a typical feature of biblical narration. In the Bible events are described as occurring “through both natural causes and divine guidance which determines a purpose for the events.”41 The operation of natural factors contrives to realize God’s plan; the ultimate result is a sign of God’s supremacy. The notion of dual causality is apt for noting the complexity of factors which animate the biblical narrative. The phenomenon it refers to, however, takes different forms in the different parts of the narrative. Kaufmann invokes the notion in the context of the biblical account of the Battle of the Ai (Joshua 7–8). There the Israelites are defeated in their first attack on the city because of faulty intelligence. In despair, Joshua cries out to God, and God explains to Joshua that He is not with the people because they have

Introduction

9

sinned. After the Israelites make good their wrongdoing, God reveals to them the winning military strategy. They again mount an attack against the city, and this time they take it. The account of these military operations is given in naturalistic terms. The warriors act, whether successfully or not, as one might expect them to, in order to realize their objectives. Perhaps God covertly encouraged the overconfidence of their spies who gave them such bad advice, but the lapse can also be explained simply as a human error. God’s intervention is overt, however, when He explains to Joshua that the people were defeated because they defied His command, and He makes clear to Joshua what must be done in order to regain His support. God openly displays His hand by giving the people the winning strategy in the second campaign. Although the operations may be explained naturally, then, they are credited to divine providence. An episode which takes place later in the biblical narrative explicitly evokes the principle of dual causality and highlights its enigmatic nature. So Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam the third day, as the king bade, saying: ‘Come to me again the third day.’ And the king answered the people roughly, and forsook the counsel of the old men which they had given him; and spoke to them after the counsel of the young men, saying: ‘My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke; my father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions.’ So the king hearkened not unto the people; for it was a thing brought about of the Lord that He might establish His word, which the Lord spoke by the hand of Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam the son of Nebat. (1 Kings 12:12–15) Rehoboam’s behavior, somewhat like the military operations to capture the City of Ai, is understandable in ordinary, human terms—Rehoboam exploited the people for the sake of his own gain. In contrast with the campaign against Ai, however, the naturalistic explanation here is self-enclosed; it leaves no gaps for divine intervention, no open questions for which divine intervention provides an answer. Were the text not to tell us, we would have no reason to suspect God’s involvement in what will show itself to be Rehoboam’s fateful misstep.42 That God is behind Rehoboam’s foolhardy behavior might occur only to the reader who recalls the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite’s earlier pronouncement to Jeroboam: “I am about to tear away the kingdom from Solomon’s hand and give it to the ten tribes. . . . And I will take the kingship from the hand of his son and give it to you” (1 Kings 11:29–40). Remarkable here also is that God is not simply credited with the result— with Rehoboam’s losing the throne—but also with Rehoboam’s foolhardy action which led to the result. This confluence of causal chains, whereby a

10

Introduction

state of affairs comes into being because God intends it for His own reasons, and also because a human agent, unaware of God’s plan, intends that same state of affairs for his own, very different, reasons, is the most intriguing of the ways in which divine providence intersects with human initiative. How did God bring about Rehoboam’s foolhardy behavior? Did He harden Rehoboam’s heart against his people the way He hardened Pharaoh’s against the plagues? Was it enough to simply plant the young men in Rehoboam’s court to vie with the old men for his ear? Or perhaps he needed only to stand by and let Rehoboam’s innate greed incline him towards the young men. The narrative offers little to appease our curiosity.

Dual causality in the Genesis narrative The Genesis narratives offer us a closer look at the workings of double causation. When God acts covertly, we can sometimes piece together some of the steps or circumstances by which the meshing of the divine and human causal chains evolve; the stages are elaborated and some of them are described in detail. We note different modes of interaction. Sometimes God promotes His ends by assisting in a person’s own project. Abraham sends his servant to Aram-Naharaim to find a wife for his son. The servant arrives at the well outside the city and beseeches God to send him a sign that he has found the right woman. He prays that when he asks her to tip down her jug so that he may drink, she will answer: “Drink, and your camels, too, I shall water” (Gen. 24:14). The young woman who appears at the well makes the servant the generous offer he prayed for. Upon discovering that Rebecca is the granddaughter of Abraham’s brother, the servant blesses God for the kindness He has shown to him and his master.43 Abraham’s servant is carrying out his master’s charge. Indeed, he considers his mission to be divinely sanctioned, but he pursues it because he is committed to it. It is also the case, however, that Isaac’s wife’s coming from Abraham’s birthplace, and even from his family, coheres with God’s plan for the chosen family. There is a second causal chain at work here, then, working to fulfill the servant’s intentions, facilitating his success. Sometimes two chains are discernible in that the hero seems to be acting from different motivations working in tandem to produce the same result. When Abraham’s servant asks Rebecca’s brother and father if they will let him have Rebecca for Isaac’s wife, Laban and Bethuel respond: “From the Lord this thing has come; we can speak to you neither good nor evil” (Gen. 24:50). They are persuaded by the servant’s story and submit to the divine will. Earlier, however, we saw the servant setting out from Beersheba on the matrimonial mission with ten camels laden with goods and we witnessed him showering Rebecca with precious gifts before introducing himself to her family. The behavior of Rebecca’s brother Laban in his subsequent dealings with Jacob may confirm the suspicion that among his motivations is the prospect of material gain for himself.44

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In a later episode, God tells Rebecca that her older son will serve the younger. Afterwards, we are informed that Rebecca loves Jacob, whereas Isaac loves Esau. It is not clear what role the divine oracle plays in Rebecca’s love for Jacob. Rebecca does not cite the divine oracle to explain her betrayal of her husband and her older son for the benefit of the younger. One cannot but wonder if her love for Jacob played some role in this decision. In the latter part of the Genesis narrative, God’s presence is more muted— the divine causal chain is less exposed.45 God’s overt appearances to the heroes are fewer, and events evolve along natural causal routes. Seemingly unaware, for the most part, that they are part of a providential drama, the heroes do not act with God’s purposes in mind, but pursue, each of them, his own interests and plans. When, towards the end of the saga, Jacob and his family are in Egypt, they do not seem to draw any connection between their finding themselves there and God’s covenant with Abraham. Indeed, the brothers’ appeal to Joseph to have mercy on them prompts Joseph to draw a wider sketch of what ensued. Although in this he credits God for his being in Egypt, he does not include in his sketch the Covenant of the Pieces. In these later chapters, God achieves his goals, not only by determining the results of the characters’ actions, but through the actions themselves. Here, as in the story of Rehoboam, dual causality is exhibited in its consummate form—the two causal chains, the natural and the divine—working surreptitiously in concert to move the heroes’ freely chosen actions to the end determined by God. The narrative here is more forthcoming, however, than the one about Rehoboam in the Book of Kings and we can follow some of the details of this process. In the Genesis narratives we gain insight into how the circumstances in which the heroes find themselves shape the course of their lives—bear upon their desires and beliefs and constrain their choices. These circumstances include the timing and order of their births, their characters and personalities, their relationships with their parents and siblings, the roles God assigns them, and the choices they face. Indeed, the lives of the heroes are conditioned by their circumstances not only in the later narratives, where God acts mainly behind scenes, but also in the narratives throughout, including those in which God’s presence is manifest. In the later narratives, however, the contingencies of circumstances take over more of the role of actualizing God’s plan. As God retires behind the scenes, we see natural causal chains doing the work of Providence. By assuming particular philosophical ideas for that purpose and attending to literary devices which foster the readings we are proposing, we may discern the plot being driven, on the one hand, by forces and contingencies over which the heroes have no control, and on the other, by the heroes’ freely performed actions in response to the reality they face. I single out some of the features of the narrative—theories, concepts, and notions, which sustain this paradox. Since their presence in these episodes is diffuse, I am not attending to them here in the order in which they appear in the narrative,

12

Introduction

nor in the order in which I discuss them in the various chapters of this study, but rather as more or less discrete themes which run through the narrative.

Luck and providence In the course of a person’s day-to-day existence, whether and how he pursues his intentions, realizes his desires, and carries out his plans is contingent upon the circumstances in which he finds himself. When someone takes himself to be benefitting from circumstances, he considers himself “lucky”; when the opposite is the case he may take himself to be the victim of “bad luck.” Nicholas Rescher characterizes luck as “a matter of our condition being affected, be it for good or ill, by developments that are neither intended nor foreseen, but lie substantially outside the domain of our control.”46 Philosophers have explored the different ways in which luck intrudes itself into our lives—the many aspects of our lives which are not up to us.47 Circumstances provide the opportunity for one’s action, giving rise to what has been called “circumstantial luck.” Circumstances impose constraints on a person’s action, placing obstacles in the way of some of his options, inclining him in certain directions rather than others, or placing temptations in his path. They may provoke him into doing something he would not otherwise do. In the extreme case, circumstances may coerce or compel a person to act in a certain way. In addition to the performance of an action being conditioned by circumstances, the consequences of actions invariably depend upon the circumstances attending their performance. “Consequential luck,” comes between our intentions, our actions, and their results. When his brothers conspire to kill Joseph, Reuben urges them to avoid shedding blood and to fling him into a pit instead, where presumably they would leave him to die. It was Reuben’s intention to rescue Joseph from the pit and bring him back to his father. In Reuben’s absence, however, the brothers catch sight of a passing caravan of Ishmaelites on the way to Egypt. Judah convinces his brothers to sell Joseph to the Ishmaelites.48 Reuben’s scheme succeeds in preventing Joseph’s death but fails to return him to his father as Reuben intended. As it worked out, Reuben was party to the evil inflicted upon Joseph. The circumstances one encounters may play a major role in determining how virtuous or vicious he will be. “Moral luck” is a particularly troubling feature of our lives. Some people get to lead placid lives which place only trivial pitfalls in their path; others are called upon to undergo wrenching ordeals. The former may emerge with a sterling moral record; the latter may fall very short of the mark. Had the circumstances of the two been switched, perhaps the outcomes would have been as well. On the phrase “Noah was a righteous man, he was blameless in his age” (Gen. 6:9). Rashi comments that some of the sages interpret this to Noah’s credit—had Noah lived in an age of righteous people he would have been more righteous; while to other

Introduction

13

sages it counts against him—relative to the people of his age Noah was considered a righteous man, but had he lived in the time of Abraham he would have been unremarkable.49 Narratives depict the role of luck in our lives in their weaving together sequences of events and situations into networks in which the characters live their lives. The characters are situated in particular circumstances, presented with options, and confronted with obstacles. Luck is manifest in the interposing of these contingencies with their intentions, desires, responses, and reactions. Circumstances often appear as random states of affairs. In the Genesis narratives, God’s plan frames the twistings and turnings of the plot. The heroes’ control over their lives is circumscribed within the overarching framework of the divine plan. Their lack of control has resonance because it is God who exercises the control they forfeit; the webs of circumstances in which their actions are embedded are divinely ordained. At every juncture of the narrative we see the characters negotiating circumstances which are dictated by the unfolding of God’s plan. Some of these they identify as a matter of divine providence, others may strike them as random occurrences. In either case, the actors experience them as imposed upon them rather than chosen by them. In this sense, what appears or is experienced as “luck” is a potent factor in their lives. From a philosophical perspective, it gives rise to perplexities of various kinds. In addition to the other puzzles associated with luck, which we mentioned earlier, the biblical narrative gives rise to the puzzle of “religious luck,” insofar as the religious status of the heroes and the role they play in God’s design are not up to them, not a function of their merit or achievement, but simply a matter of God’s will.50

Knowledge A key motif running through my analyses is the central role played by knowledge in the shaping of the stories. The recurrence of the leitwort,51 ‫—ויכר‬and he recognized—in the patriarchal narratives focuses our attention on how knowledge, its absence or its presence, functions in these texts—how a pattern of concealing and revealing operates to weave the various episodes together. We follow this motif from Isaac’s failure to recognize Jacob in his disguise and his giving him the blessing he intended for Esau (Gen. 27:23), to Jacob’s recognizing Joseph’s bloodied tunic and mistaking it as evidence that a vicious beast devoured him (Gen. 37:33), to Joseph’s recognizing his brothers when they come to Egypt to buy food but not revealing his identity to them (Gen. 42:7), to name only a few of the cruxes in the plot where the issue of recognition is salient. A major source of knowledge in these narratives is divine revelation, overt and, I suggest, also covert. Events proceed according to God’s plan, knowledge of which God dispenses to his heroes deliberately and purposefully. The heroes’ knowledge of God’s design is never complete, however; sometimes it is only very partial, and often it is lacking completely.

14

Introduction

When Jacob’s sons tell him that Joseph is alive Jacob is at first skeptical. The sight of the wagons Joseph sent to bring him down to Egypt convinces him, and he agrees to go down to Egypt because he wants to see his beloved Joseph before he dies. On the way to Egypt, Joseph stops in Bersheeba to bring an offering to God. There God appears to him and bids him, “Fear not to go down to Egypt, for there I will make you a great nation” (Gen. 46.3). Hizkuni observes that one does not urge someone not to be afraid unless that person is afraid.52 What is Jacob afraid of? Perhaps he has some dim memory of Abraham having been told by God that his children will be slaves for many years in a strange land.53 God urges Jacob on to Egypt, however, “for a great nation I will make you there. I Myself will go down with you to Egypt and I Myself will surely bring you back up as well, and Joseph shall lay his hand on your eyes” (Gen. 46.3–4). God leaves Jacob in ignorance of the dire outcome of his descent into Egypt, however. He is silent about the period of enslavement that will intervene between Jacob’s descent into Egypt and his descendants’ ultimate return. Had Jacob known the consequences of his descent into Egypt perhaps he would have forgone the opportunity to see his son.54 Knowledge confers power and status on its possessor. It gives him opportunities which he may use to advantage. In granting knowledge to His chosen, God has a hand in establishing their identity and forging their role. What they know affects their ability to take part in His plan. Knowledge makes a great deal possible; having knowledge does not, however, determine how a person will act. Having knowledge leaves man his freedom. These stories are charged with accounts of people being explicitly addressed by God—commandments, admonitions, promises, declarations of intention, and disclosures of future events. The results are often dramatic. In the story of the chosen family, overt revelation is on the whole reserved for the patriarchs.55 They are the focal point of social and political power and agency and they are the conduits of God’s blessing. Their centrality is secured by their unique relationship with God. The restriction of divine revelation to the men is one of the patriarchal features of these narratives which have been the subject of feminist criticism. My reading of these narratives reveals a more egalitarian perspective. Although the women in the narratives are rarely addressed by God directly, they display cognitive skills and exhibit an intuitive kind of knowledge, which have a decisive impact on the course of the narrative. I propose that, alongside the epistemic, spiritual, and social benefits which come with receiving divine revelation, there are also epistemic advantages to the latter form of knowledge. On one traditional approach to knowledge, ascribing knowledge to someone awards him credit for the true beliefs he holds. Doing so seems plausible in cases of deliberative, reflective, reasoned knowledge. Since the heroes of these stories obtain the most important knowledge they possess through divine revelation, the question arises as to what, if any, kind of

Introduction

15

credit attaches to them thereby. Should we view revealed knowledge as an instance of “epistemic luck,” arrived at unconnected to the recipient’s efforts or abilities, not subject to his control? To what extent is the more intuitive kind of knowledge notably, but not exclusively, ascribed to the women in the story—the kind that seems to inform their actions implicitly—also an instance of epistemic luck?56 Furthermore, the division between men’s and women’s epistemic roles is not fixed. As the saga progresses the heroes hear God’s voice less frequently. We then see the “intuitive” knowledge, earlier characteristic of the matriarchs, displayed by the patriarchs as well. I propose that when Isaac mistook Jacob for Esau and gave him the blessing that he intended for Esau, Isaac understood, although not explicitly, that in doing so he was doing the right thing. Another instance of what I identify as intuitive knowledge comes up in my discussion of Joseph’s use of “wisdom and discernment” to protect Egypt from starvation during the famine. The question of epistemic luck arises again in connection with the Children of Israel coming to know God. Although the evidence upon which their knowledge is based does not come to them haphazardly, they do nothing to acquire it. The evidence, God’s signs and the plagues, is provided them by God for the purpose of their coming to know His greatness. I propose that evidentialism, a theory of knowledge and epistemic justification according to which a belief is justified for a subject in accordance with the evidence he has for it, supports the view of knowledge assumed in this episode.57

Seeing, hearing, and believing Circumstances bear upon what people come to believe. As a general rule, although not always, a person believes what he judges his evidence to indicate as true.58 In the normal course of events, we expect that people view their evidence in a relatively objective fashion, but in many of these episodes we see how the particular circumstances people are in, their desires, subjective interests, and needs shape their perception of their evidence and, accordingly, their beliefs. The Tree of Knowledge, with its alluring fruit, stands in the middle of the Garden of Eden for Adam and Eve to behold. They abide by God’s prohibition and resist its charms. When the serpent undermines God’s authority Eve sees how lovely the fruit is. When Abraham hears God’s voice commanding him to bring up his son as a burnt offering, he hears the same voice he heard many years earlier calling to him in the same language and promising to make him into a great nation. In the interim he has heard God promising him that through Isaac his seed would be perpetuated. How does the echo of the earlier command in his ears bear upon the impact of the present command? Theorizing about the relation between one’s belief and one’s reasons for believing, I try to understand how Abraham accommodates the tension between the present command and his memories of the promise

16

Introduction

Isaac’s eyes are dim when he confers the coveted blessing. He relies on his senses of hearing, touch, and smell to identify his sons. Based on the former two, Isaac remains troubled by doubts but succumbs to his sense of smell and confers the blessing on the son who has presented himself to him. I propose that at that point Isaac is treating his evidence in a biased fashion and that he is doing so, at least in part, because of the circumstances in which he himself came to be the heir of the Abrahamic covenant. Isaac engages in self-deception, a natural cognitive strategy for achieving one’s ends, and, I argue, he receives divine guidance in doing so. God’s plan is that Pharaoh will acknowledge Him and let the Children of Israel leave Egypt. Pharaoh starts out believing that God has no power over him, and God sends signs and plagues to demonstrate His greatness. God has an additional goal, however—to get the Children of Israel to acknowledge Him. To this end He resolves to multiply His wonders. Pharaoh must not give way too soon. At first Pharaoh enlists his own cognitive resources to avoid the impact of the plagues. When God intensifies the plagues, to ensure Pharaoh’s resistance, God hardens Pharaoh’s heart to keep him from appreciating the forces against him. In contrast to His forcibly taking over Pharaoh’s heart, God gets the Israelites to believe in Him by providing them with evidence of His power. I inquire as to whether God’s strategy raises questions about the justification of belief or gives rise to problems of epistemic luck.

Providential circumstances and moral reckonings On an intuitive and widely held notion of moral responsibility, a person is not morally responsible for what is not under his control. In this narrative, then, how does the fact that the heroes pursue their lives as part of God’s design bear upon their moral responsibility for their actions? Do the circumstances they encounter impinge upon their freedom of action? In the Garden of Eden, Eve is seduced and manipulated, yet she chooses to eat the forbidden fruit for her own reasons. I consider whether Adam and Eve deserve the punishment they receive. Harry Frankfurt’s theory of autonomy informs my analysis of this narrative, as do philosophical discussions of temptation, entrapment, moral responsibility, and punishment. The story of Cain and Abel dramatizes the tensions latent in the relationship of brotherhood and the impact of God’s conduct on their relationship. Cain and Abel bring offerings to the Lord: Cain, the elder, from the fruit of the soil, “also Abel, from the choice firstlings of his flock.” And, “the Lord regarded Abel and his offering but He did not regard Cain and his offering” (Gen. 4: 4–5). Cain is incensed and “his face fell.” He is the older and his offering preceded that of his younger brother. God gives no explanation for his partiality towards Abel’s offering.59 Cain rises up and kills his brother. He too gives no explanation, but we need none. Perhaps Cain enjoys a bit of our sympathy, and God’s as well, since God puts a mark on Cain “so that whoever found him would not slay him” (Gen. 4:15).60 Tensions among brothers and parental choices shape the plots we are examining.

Introduction

17

The rivalry between Jacob and Esau is prefigured in the tumult Rebecca feels inside her womb. Her distress sends her to seek assurance from God. The answer she receives cannot but affect her future attitude towards the twin sons that will be born to her. Barrenness and humiliation embitter the rivalry between the sisters Leah and Rachel, who vie with each other to produce sons for Jacob. The text marks God’s part in the contest between them. Upon seeing that Jacob’s wife Leah was despised, God opens her womb, we are told, but He leaves Rachel, the beloved wife, barren (Gen. 29:31). After Leah bears Jacob six sons and a daughter, “God remembered Rachel and God heard her and He opened her womb” (Gen. 30:22).61 God’s mercy to Rachel leads to the birth of Joseph, upon which Rachel declares, “God has taken away my shame” (Gen. 30:23). The strife between the two sisters lives on in the animus between their offspring. Jacob’s preference for Rachel is mirrored in his partiality towards her sons—first Joseph, then Benjamin. Joseph’s favored status and his pretentious manner provoke his brothers’ fierce hostility. Perhaps we judge the brothers’ villainy less harshly because of their family history. The narrative intimates that the human actors, even when they are carrying out God’s plan, are accountable for their actions. I discuss the ethical implications of Jacob’s plight. God’s plan dictates that Jacob is the heir to the Abrahamic covenant. Jacob will deceive his father and cheat his brother in order to secure his rightful inheritance. Jacob’s life subsequent to his stealing the blessing from Esau is fraught with anguish, and the particularities of the troubles that afflict him point to the evil he inflicted on his father and brother.62 We have the strong intuition that an agent is not morally responsible for performing an action if he is caused to perform it. I distinguished earlier, however, between an action that is caused and an action that is inevitable. Someone may have acted freely, but because of the circumstances he could not have avoided performing it. Along with the intuition that an agent is not morally responsible for an action if he was caused to perform it, there is also a common assumption that an agent is morally responsible for an action only if he could have avoided performing it. It is this latter assumption, which, I hold, bears notably on our reading of certain parts of this narrative, that I bring into question. In my reading of these narratives, the agents’ actions are not only free but also, for the most part, not inevitable. I shall argue that it is God’s plan that Adam and Eve sin in the Garden. However, Adam and Eve acted freely, and it was not inevitable that Eve yield to the serpent’s blandishments. Before the serpent appears on the scene Eve resisted the allure of the Tree. The serpent intervenes and, step by step, wears down Eve’s resolve to obey God’s prohibition. As she earlier resisted the sight of the Tree, Eve at first resists the serpent’s inducements. Then she succumbs. Her initial resistance suggests that she might have refrained that time as well. God might then have introduced some other element into the plot to provoke Adam and Eve to sin. As it is, He did not have to. Thus, however harshly or leniently we may view

18

Introduction

Eve’s yielding to the serpent and eating from the forbidden tree, we assume, I propose, that she could have avoided doing so. Like Adam and Eve, in the story of the sale of Joseph the brothers act freely. However, unlike Eve in the Garden narrative, on my reading the brothers could not have avoided doing what they did. In that the heroes’ actions in this sequence are inevitable, the Joseph story is not unique among biblical narratives. There are also narratives in which it is not clear how specific God’s design is at a particular juncture and whether particular actions in the sequence are avoidable. In the narrative of the sale, I argue, the inevitability of the sale is striking. The account of the sale is particularly intriguing because the larger narrative in which it is embedded raises the question of the brothers’ moral responsibility for the sale. The narratives so far cited may evoke questions of moral responsibility, but the questions are not explicit in them. In the Joseph story, Joseph himself raises the issue. In response to his brothers’ admission of guilt for having sold him into slavery and to their begging his forgiveness, Joseph dismisses their regrets with the assurance that not they, but God, sent him into Egypt. Joseph evokes what he takes to be the happy ending of the story of his descent to Egypt—that his family was saved from the famine—to calm their anxiety. He also looks back at his past and perceives that events conspired, unmistakably, to bring him there. If the sale was inevitable, then, are not the brothers innocent as Joseph assures them? Yet, our intuitions suggest the contrary.63 I turn to Frankfurt’s approach to moral responsibility to lend support to my proposal that, even though the sale of their brother was inevitable, the brothers are morally accountable for what they did.64

Priorities and dilemmas This narrative tells of a chosen family being instated which will give rise to a “Nation of Priests,” a people who will be charged with carrying forth God’s word to the nations of the earth. Individuals and actions take on significance relative to that goal; the goal takes precedence over all else. Divine favor or disfavor is conferred as God sees fit, sometimes leaving the reader puzzled. Abraham is God’s choice to head the chosen family and to receive and pass on God’s blessings. From the reader’s point of view and, so far as we know, from Abraham’s point of view, his being chosen is a matter of luck— “religious luck.” We are told nothing of what there is about Abraham in virtue of which God singles him out.65 Initially, what marks Abraham as worthy is his readiness to respond to the call of an unknown voice that bids him follow His direction to an unknown destination. Abraham is later credited for trusting in God’s promises through many long years during which there is no sign that God will fulfill them. It is only much later, with the Akedah, the Binding of Isaac, that God declares that He has found him to be a God-fearing man. God’s covenant with Abraham is passed down to his son Isaac, whose passive personality and unremarkable conduct seem

Introduction

19

to make him an even less likely candidate for the religious prominence he enjoys. That Abraham’s blessing is then passed on to Jacob who tricked his father and cheated his brother seems a particularly vexing instance of religious luck. I highlight a theme which runs through the entire Genesis narrative—the tensions between personal desires, moral imperatives and the demands of providential destiny. The biblical heroes do not always see their paths clearly marked out for them nor do the choices they make always bring them contentment. Even as they carry out their destinies, the heroes are often struggling with conflicting claims and commitments. The paramount importance of God’s plan does not preclude other, and sometimes opposing, values. Abraham must send away his older son Ishmael although it is evil in his eyes because God has designated his younger son Isaac as the child of the covenant. I ponder the tension Abraham experiences on his way to Mt. Moriah, obeying God’s summons and agonizing over the prospect of losing his beloved son. Does Jacob’s being chosen as the heir free him from moral censure, his religious luck compounded by moral luck? The long list of troubles he endures over the course of his future life suggests that he is not exempt from the consequences of his misdeed. I examine the circumstances of Jacob’s deceiving Isaac, and I take a close look at the scene in which Jacob meets up with his brother Esau 20 years later. Jacob seems to be seeking forgiveness for having done what his mother, presumably in God’s name, charged him to do. By exploring the relationship between the demands of morality and the demands of destiny in these narratives, I try to understand how this could still weigh on his conscience The tension between morality and destiny is dramatized in the later episode, in which Judah’s daughter-in-law, Tamar, deceives her father-in-law, poses as a harlot and risks her life in order to bear Judah’s child. The offspring of this troubling union, it turns out, will be a forefather of King David.66 I call for holding Joseph’s brothers blameworthy for selling Joseph into Egypt even though their doing so was part of God’s design and was inevitable. I look at another episode which is found by some to be morally troubling—God’s depriving Pharaoh of his free will, and then when Pharaoh, as a result, refuses Moses’s and Aaron’s plea to free the Israelites, God’s striking him and his people with terrible plagues and drowning them in the Sea. I argue that God indeed caused Pharaoh to defy Him, but that it is not the case that Pharaoh is being punished for what God caused him to do. That the heroes in these narratives confront so complex a reality, that they are motivated by conflicting values, desires, and beliefs, demonstrates both their subordination to the divine plan and their autonomy. I have argued that although there may be circumstances in which the heroes’ responsibility for their actions is diminished, the overall assumption is that the heroes are accountable. There is the sense, however, that the fact that human autonomy is, in the end, bounded by the divine will and subordinate to the divine plan,

20

Introduction

has a bearing upon the significance of moral judgments. It may explain why the moral qualities of individuals do not appear to carry the weight we might expect in God’s choice of His agents nor in His determination of their fates. The moral, epistemic, and religious luck to which the heroes of the narrative are subject have in common that underlying them all is this view of divine supremacy and of the contingency of human achievement which are hallmarks of the biblical narratives.

Notes 1 For some contemporary discussions of this encounter see Oliver D. Crisp and Michael C. Rea, eds., Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Charles H. Manekin and Robert Eisen, eds., Philosophers and the Jewish Bible (Bethesda: University Press of Maryland, 2008); Eleonore Stump, Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2010). 2 Stump, Wandering in Darkness, 25. 3 Howard Wettstein, “Doctrine,” Faith and Philosophy 14 (1997): 423–443, calls attention to how the Bible takes up theological matters in literary and poetic ways rather than by the propositional articulation of theological truths. See, also, his, “Against Theology” in Philosophers and the Jewish Bible, 219–245. 4 Stump, Wandering in Darkness, 2. 5 Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Ethics and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 6 Much like the thinkers I cite who have practiced this type of analysis, I examine the text as we have it before us. The historical questions as to how it came to be in its present state may be bracketed for purposes of the study. Zvi Adar, The Biblical Narrative (Jerusalem: The Jewish Agency, 1957) (Hebrew) provides a synchronic study of the structure and composition of the biblical narrative. 7 See Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981) (revised and updated edition, New York: Basic Books, 2011); Meir Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature in the Drama of Reading (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985). Shimon Bar-Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible, trans. Dorothea Shefer-Vanson and the author (Sheffield: Almond Press, 1989); Frank Polack, Biblical Narrative: Aspects of Art and Design (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1989) (Hebrew). 8 Jonathan Grossman, Abraham: A Story of a Journey (Tel Aviv: Miskal, 2014) (Hebrew); idem, Text and Subtext: On Exploring Biblical Narrative Design (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2015) (Hebrew); idem, Abram to Abraham: A Literary Analysis of the Abraham Narrative (Bern: Peter Lang, 2016); idem, Genesis: A Tale of Beginnings (Rishon LeZion: Miskal, 2017) (Hebrew); idem, Jacob: The Story of a Family (Rishon Lezion: Miskal, 2019) (Hebrew). 9 Some leading examples are Lenn E. Goodman, God of Abraham (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (New York: The Free Press, 2003); Crisp and Rea, Analytic Theology. 10 An overall view of this undertaking may be found in Jaco Gericke, The Hebrew Bible and Philosophy of Religion (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012). 11 David Shatz in a paper presented at a symposium in honor of Philip Quinn sponsored by the American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division, 1999. Shatz is raising a specific form of a more general problem of interpretation—that there

Introduction

12

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23

24

25

26

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is no way of avoiding employing our convictions when we approach the process of interpretation. See Nicholas Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim That God Speaks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 223–239 “Has Scripture Become a Wax Nose?” David Shatz, “Hierarchical Theories of Freedom and the Hardening of Hearts,” in Peter A. French, Theodore E. Uehling, and Howard Wettstein, eds., Midwest Studies in Philosophy XXI: Philosophy of Religion (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 1997), 202–224. See, also, David Shatz, “Freedom, Repentance and Hardening of the Hearts: Albo vs. Maimonides,” Faith and Philosophy 14 (1997): 478–509. Eleonore Stump, “Sanctification, Hardening of the Heart, and Frankfurt’s Concept of Free Will,” The Journal of Philosophy 85 (1988): 395–420. George Mavrodes, “Is There Anything Which God Does Not Do?,” Christian Scholar’s Review 24 (1987): 384–391; idem, Revelation in Religious Belief (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988). Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse. Howard Wettstein, The Significance of Religious Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). Michael Walzer, In God’s Shadow: Politics in the Hebrew Bible (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012). Yoram Hazony, The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Shira Weiss, Ethical Ambiguity in the Hebrew Bible: Philosophical Analysis of Scriptural Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). Zvi Shimon, Human Choice: Biblical Narrative and the Drama of Choice (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2015) (Hebrew), sees man’s freedom of choice at the core of the biblical narrative. Shimon underscores the conflict and tension the heroes undergo as they struggle to choose between obeying God or submitting to their rebellious impulses. A classic exception is God’s hardening Pharaoh’s heart (Exodus 4–14), discussed in Chapter 7. Alter, Art of Biblical Narrative, 33, describes the biblical narrative as revealing “the enactment of God’s purposes in historical events” to be complicated by the “tension between the divine plan and the disorderly character of human event.” God’s explanation of why He is about to tell Abraham what He is about to do prior to destroying Sodom and Gomorrah seems to indicate otherwise. He says, “‫ אחריו‬. . . ‫( ”כי ידעתיו למען אשר יצוה את בניו‬Gen. 18:19). The Hebrew verb, ‫ידעתיו‬, both in biblical and modern Hebrew, derives from the verb ‫לדעת‬, which usually has the sense of “to know.” The object of the verb in this verse, “that he will command his sons . . . after him,” suggests that God declares that He is revealing his plans to Abraham “because I know that he will charge his sons . . . after him.” I do not accept this reading and rely rather on Robert Alter’s translation: “For I have embraced him so that he will charge his sons . . . after him.” See, also, the JPS translation, “For I have singled him out that he may instruct his children.” I confine my observations to the picture of God that emerges mainly in the Book of Genesis. I do not address the notions of God that may emerge from other parts of the Hebrew Bible and phenomena such as prophecy as they are represented elsewhere, which do not fit into this picture. The notion of God in Classical Theism and how this notion differs from the notion of God in the Bible is discussed in Yoram Hazony and Dru Johnson, eds., The Question of God’s Perfection: Jewish and Christian Essays on the God of the Bible and Talmud (Leiden: Brill, 2019). t1 is a point in time preceding t2.

22

Introduction

27 The argument is adapted from Nelson Pike, “Divine Omniscience and Voluntary Action,” The Philosophical Review 74 (1965): 27–46, reprinted in John Martin Fischer, ed., God, Foreknowledge, and Freedom (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), Chapter 2. 28 For a comprehensive presentation of the philosophical debate on this topic see Fischer, ed., God, Foreknowledge, and Freedom. 29 The midrash solves the problem of God’s apparent lack of foreknowledge of how Abraham would respond to His bidding by reinterpreting the word ‫נסה‬, the plain meaning of which is “tested” to mean “exalted,” which it derives from the word ‫נס‬, meaning “flag.” According to the midrash God is showing Abraham to be above all other men, as the flag of a ship stands taller than every other part of the ship (Bereshit Rabah 55.6). 30 Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, revised edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). On the limitations on divine omniscience, see, also, B. L. Hebblethwaite, “Some Reflections on Predestination, Providence, and Divine Foreknowledge,” Religious Studies 15 (1979): 433–440. 31 An account which provides for God’s knowledge of human actions which are nevertheless free is Molinism, according to which God has “middle knowledge” of how a particular person will freely act in a particular situation. Thomas P. Flint, Divine Providence: The Molinist Account (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998). This view is vigorously debated. I do not relate to it in this work as it does not seem to me to be compatible with the Genesis narratives. 32 Albeit, God is described in places as coming to know about facts not connected to the future actions of human beings. For example, on the first day of creation “God saw the light, that it was good” (Gen. 1:4), and God goes down to see whether the reports about the evils being perpetrated in Sodom are true (Gen. 18:21). However, in the Genesis narratives almost all the gaps in God’s knowledge have to do with future human action. 33 In the view of Nachmanides (also known by the acronym Ramban), on Gen. 2:9, however, man was not created with free will, but by his nature acted as he was supposed to act. Only after eating from the Tree of Knowledge does he have free will. Abarbanel, (Spain, 15th century) on Gen. 2:17 argues that a command can obligate only someone who has free will. 34 For an exposition of this view see William Hasker, Providence, Evil, and the Openness of God (London: Routledge, 2004). See, also, Benjamin H. Arbour, ed., Philosophical Essays Against Open Theism (London: Routledge, 2018). 35 See note 21. 36 This question and the answer I am about to propose is taken up by Gericke, Hebrew Bible and Philosophy of Religion, 389–395 in his discussion of prophecy. 37 Gerike rejects this explanation of God’s prediction in the Covenant of the Pieces on the grounds that it “is unable to deal with the more deterministic elements in the pericope” (393). I grant that the fulfilment of the Covenant of the Pieces seems to require that God cause certain human actions at points in the narrative. This is consistent, however, with my view that while God is committed to human freedom on the whole He revokes it when He deems it necessary in order to achieve an important end, as He does when He hardens Pharaoh’s heart. 38 How people’s actions are conditioned by the circumstances in which they find themselves and how the heroes of the episodes we are studying are affected by the circumstances they encounter is discussed later. 39 In Chapter 6, I elaborate upon the distinction between an action being caused and its being inevitable, as developed in Harry Frankfurt, “The Principle of Alternate Possibilities,” The Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969): 829–839, reprinted in David Widerker and Michael McKenna, eds., Moral Responsibility and Alternative

Introduction

40 41

42 43 44

45

46 47 48 49 50

51 52

53 54

55

23

Possibilities: Essays on the Importance of Alternative Possibilities (Aldershot, Hants, England: Ashgate, 2003), 17–25. I present a reading of this episode in Chapter 6. Yehezkel Kaufmann, The Book of Joshua (Jerusalem: Kiryath Sepher, 1970), 128 (Hebrew). Yairah Amit, “The Dual Causality Principle and Its Effects on Biblical Literature,” Vetus Testamentum 33 (1987): 385–400, cites the Joseph story as exemplifying the principle. Jaco Gericke, “Rethinking the ‘Dual Causality Principle’ in Old Testament Research,” Old Testament Essays 28 (2015): 86–112, argues that the concept of dual causality is too vague to do justice to the complexity of causal relations in the Bible and should be abandoned. This quickly provoked a rebellion against the House of David (1 Kings 12). Although Abraham did not include in his charge to the servant the proviso that the woman the servant brings back be from his family, the servant seems to take this as propitious. Gen. 29–31. On Laban’s behavior towards Abraham’s servant here, see Radak (David Kimhi, France, twelfth century) on the verse “And it happened when he [Laban] saw the nose ring, and the bracelets on his sister’s arms . . . he said, ‘Come in, blessed of the Lord’” (Gen. 24.30), to the effect that Laban extended his hospitality to the servant when he saw the gifts. This is a feature which some take to mark the Joseph story as belonging to the genre of wisdom literature. See, Lindsay Wilson, Joseph Wise and Otherwise: The Intersection of Wisdom and Covenant in Genesis 37–50 (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster Press, 2004). See the discussion of double causality in connection with the Joseph story in Elhanan Samet, Studies in the Weekly Parasha: BereshitShemot. Third Series (Tel Aviv: Miskal, 2012), 222–239 (Hebrew). Nicholas Rescher, “Luck,” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 64.3 (1990): 5–19 at 7. See Thomas Nagel, Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), Chapter 3. There is some confusion in the text as to whether the Ishmaelites or the Midianite merchants sold Joseph into Egypt (Gen. 37:25–30), but it does not seem to make a difference to the question of the brothers’ responsibility. Rashi (France, 11th century) cites the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 108a. For discussions of the consequences of religious luck for moral discourse, see Linda Zagzebski, “Religious Luck,” Faith and Philosophy 11 (1999): 397–413; Charlotte Katzoff, “Religious Luck and Religious Virtue,” Religious Studies 49 (2004): 97–111. See Alter, Biblical Narrative, 116ff. More accurately, one does not tell someone not to be afraid unless one believes that he is afraid. However, since it is God who believes that Jacob is afraid, and we assume that God knows a person’s heart, we may also assume that Jacob is indeed afraid. See Hizkuni (Hezekiah ben Manoah, France, thirteenth century), Gen. 46:3. Berel Dov Lerner, “From Genesis to Exodus: Certainty Lost and Regained,” a paper presented at the Conference of the Shalem Center, “Philosophical Investigation of the Hebrew Scriptures, Talmud and Midrash,” July 2012, refers to this lack of knowledge of the characters at the end of Genesis as their “epistemic decline.” On the other hand, in the midrash, Tanhuma (Buber) Vayeshev 18, Jacob decides to go down to Egypt to see his beloved son even though this means that he will be instrumental in fulfilling God’s promise that Abraham’s descendants will become slaves. There are also cases of overt revelation to characters other than the patriarchs which have a direct impact on the course of events: to Abimelech (Gen. 20:3–7),

24

56

57 58 59 60 61 62 63

64 65 66

Introduction to Laban in a dream (Gen. 31:24) and to Hagar, addressed by God’s messenger (Gen. 16:9–15, 21:17). On epistemic luck see, see Peter Unger, “An Analysis of Factual Knowledge,” The Journal of Philosophy 65 (1968): 152–173; Mylan Engel, Jr., “Is Epistemic Luck Compatible with Knowledge?,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 30 (1992): 59–75. Gericke, The Hebrew Bible and Philosophy of Religion, 376, points to traces of “soft evidentialist religious epistemology,” of which he claims there are many in the Bible. He cites the ten plagues as an instance. See my discussion of judgment and belief in Chapter 3. God’s response to Cain’s dismay is a cryptic poem which seems to say that Cain is subject to the temptation to sin but that it is within his power to overcome it (Gen. 4:6–7). The mark is placed on Cain to protect him, not as a sign of disrepute as signified by the term “mark of Cain” in common parlance. The midrash comments here that God holds the key to the womb in his hands (Bereshit Rabah 73.4). Commentators invoke the legal/moral principle of “measure for measure” to mark the congruence between Jacob’s wrongdoings and the misfortunes which subsequently befall him. I discuss this in Chapter 5. See Elhanan Samet, Studies in the Weekly Parasha: Bereshit-Shemot. Second Series (Jerusalem: Maaliyot, 2012), 184 ff (Hebrew), demonstrates on the basis of the literary structure of the narrative that the subject of the story is sin and punishment. In Chapter 6, which deals with the sale of Joseph, I analyze the relationship of inevitability and moral responsibility in the light of Frankfurt’s theory. On the view I hold, God does not know in advance about Abraham’s future actions. Ruth 4:18–22.

1

Temptation in the garden

The Garden of Eden was the handiwork of the Lord. He laid out the Garden with care, seeing to its being suitably stocked with trees “lovely to look at and good for food,” among them the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.1 The placement of the latter two is a matter of note; they stand at the center of the garden.2 The divine plan also provided for the population of the Garden. Adam did not simply stumble upon the Garden, nor is he there because he chose to make it his home. He is placed in the Garden by his Maker. The creation of the world, we are told, proceeded by divine fiat. The successive days of creation saw the parts of the world coming into being at God’s command, except for man, who is not commanded into being but made by God in a singular act of creation. With deliberation and forethought, God created man in His own image. With the creation of man, God puts an end to His own absolute rule. Adam may eat from the fruit of all the trees in the Garden, God declares, but He warns, “from the tree of knowledge, good and evil, you shall not eat, for on the day you eat from it, you are doomed to die” (Gen. 2:17).3 Adam has it within his power to abide by the command or to violate it. Thus, God cedes part of His control over the future course of His creation. How God’s plan will unfold will from now on depend, in part, on what Adam will do. Adam’s choice will not be made in a void, however. The Garden, as we noted, was planted by design. The presence of the forbidden tree in the Garden provides Adam with the opportunity to sin. The Tree’s location at the center of the Garden points up its distinctiveness. Moreover, Adam will not be alone in the Garden. He eats the forbidden fruit only after Eve, the helpmate God provides for him, offers it to him. And Eve eats the forbidden fruit only after the serpent, the most cunning of the beasts God created, beguiles her. The Garden of Eden narrative displays in high relief the interplay between human action and the divine plan. It reveals the limitations of human freedom in a world in which God’s hand steers the course of events. On my reading, the dynamics in the Garden also give us insight into the limits of

26 Temptation in the garden God’s intervention, so that human freedom is accommodated within the compass of His design. I focus here on the theme we are exploring throughout various episodes in the Book of Genesis—the convergence of human action with God’s design. In the Garden, God’s hand is very visible; He has a plan for humanity. Adam and Eve, as I and many other readers maintain, are destined to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, but they fulfill their destiny by their own doing. God does not force their hand. When they eat from the Tree of Knowledge they are acting for their own reasons, on their own desire for the fruit.4 The serpent must try and try again to beguile Eve because Eve has it within her power to turn her back on him and the Tree; Adam could have turned down Eve’s offer of the forbidden fruit. Their choices are their own. This tension is at the heart of the drama. God’s hand is generally less visible in the other parts of the Genesis narratives. What defines the plot throughout the narratives, however, is that a path has been marked out along which events will unfold. In these stories the characters exercise their freedom in a world not of their making, over which they have limited control. On my reading, the Garden story, in presenting a poignant picture of human beings in just such a world, invites us to ponder the consequences of this predicament. Interpretations of the Garden of Eden narrative are many, and some of them have become staples of our theological and anthropological traditions. If there is any consensus about how to read the narrative, it seems to be that it eludes a unified, comprehensive interpretation. The plot, from its very beginning, seems to lead in different directions, pointing to different and often conflicting conclusions. Readings of any text are by their nature selective— focusing on one theme or motif around which to organize the rest, relegating some of the details to the margins, or simply disregarding them. This is even more the case when reading the complicated narrative before us. The reading I offer is no different. In the course of my exposition I will note some of the consequences of interpretive choices I make. I will point to questions my reading leaves unanswered and try to account for some of these lacunae. I will try to show how my account nevertheless provides a good key for unlocking the meaning of the details of the story. I further recommend my account as offering a perspective through which to follow the motif of human-divine interaction as it runs through the entirety of the Genesis narratives. I begin the discussion of the narrative here at the point at which God forbids the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. God tells Adam what the penalty will be for violating the prohibition but does not reveal His reason for prohibiting the fruit. Why does God forbid Adam to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge? Speculation on this point opens different avenues of interpretation and raises issues which I think are critical to how one understands the story. I shall survey some of the answers which suggest themselves and then present my own account of the prohibition.

Temptation in the garden

27

A jealous God We start from the natural assumption that God forbade Adam and, as we are to assume, Eve, from eating from the Tree because of the unwelcome results which He foresaw from their doing so. We might expect that God was concerned about the danger to Adam and Eve from eating the fruit. The serpent readily explains to Eve what it is that God is afraid of, however: “For God knows that on the day you eat of [the Tree of Knowledge] your eyes will be opened, and you will become like gods knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:5). The reason for the prohibition, then, is that God wants to preserve His unrivaled epistemic status. Is the serpent a reliable source of information? Before insinuating that God is acting out of petty jealousy, the serpent had challenged God’s veracity, telling Eve that, contrary to God’s threat, she would not be doomed to die if she ate from the Tree of Knowledge. It indeed turns out that Adam and Eve do not die on that day, which seems to uphold the serpent’s credibility. Matters may not be as they seem, however. On a common reading, God’s threat to Adam was not that he would die on the day he ate from the Tree but rather that on that day he would be doomed to die.5 A plausible rendering of the latter would be that on the day he ate the fruit Adam would be sentenced to mortality, which is what took place when God blocked his access to the Tree of Life. On this interpretation, God spoke the truth. The serpent’s allegations, then, should not necessarily be taken at face value. Let us then turn a suspicious eye to the serpent’s account of God’s motive for the prohibition. Here, also, it may seem that the serpent is right. After they eat from the Tree, God declares that now they have become like the gods knowing good and evil, which seems to prompt the worry that they may “reach out and take as well from the Tree of Life and live forever” (Gen. 3:22). Does this mean that God’s reason for putting the Tree of Life out of reach is the fear lest man become like Him? If so, is this also His reason for forbidding the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge? Is immortality a mark of divinity? Indeed, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge are mentioned together when we first learn of their presence in the Garden. Unlike the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, however, the fruit of the Tree of Life was not forbidden to Adam and Eve in the Garden. We assume that they ate from it.6 If they did, then, although Adam had been formed out of dust, signaling his transient nature, so long as they were in the Garden, Adam and Eve were immortal. Their immortality was a special privilege granted to them so long as they resided in the Garden. There is no denying, however, that in their being immortal Adam and Eve were like God. Plausibly, so long as they were not party to His knowledge of Good and Evil, God could abide their immortality. What God would not countenance, however, was their being like Him both in their knowledge and their immortality. Since they had already eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, the results of which were presumably irreversible, God wanted to prevent

28 Temptation in the garden them from eating from the Tree of Life. On this reading, in the phrase, “Now that the human has become like one of us,” God is explaining why He is now denying them the Tree of Life. If so, then it would seem that He forbade the Tree of Knowledge for the same reason. This would be in keeping with the serpent’s claim. Another possibility, however, is that the phrase, “Now that the human has become like one of us,” comes to explain what the human’s having gained knowledge of good and evil entails—becoming like God. That their newly gained knowledge has this feature is not necessarily what moves God to sentence them to mortality. Rather, it is that they have sinned. Due to their sinning, they forfeit the special privilege they enjoyed in the Garden. They become the temporal beings ordained by their creaturely origins—“for dust you are and to dust shall you return” (Gen. 3:19). Their reverting to their former status—mortal beings—is part of the penalty exacted from them for having disobeyed God. Like God’s threat of death to Adam if he eats from the Tree of Knowledge, God’s reason for barring the way to the Tree of Life is open to different interpretations. Both these puzzles bear upon the question of the serpent’s veracity—did he deceive Eve or merely seduce her? By contrast, the question of why God prohibited the Tree of Knowledge has more far-reaching implications for our investigation. Was the serpent right on that score?7 Aside from the textual details, which admittedly are not unequivocal, I want to point to a logical difficulty with the serpent’s allegation, which, to my mind, counts heavily against it. If, indeed, God wanted Adam to remain ignorant of good and evil, if He really wanted Adam and Eve not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, did not God have more effective ways of preventing it? By simply not creating the Tree? Or, by planting it outside the Garden and concealing its location or the very fact of its existence from Adam? Yet God placed the Tree within Adam’s easy sight and reach. There is more to this line of argument. When God forbade Adam and Eve to eat from the Tree, He did not know in advance what Eve would do. At first, it seems, Adam and Eve were successful in abiding by God’s prohibition. And then the serpent appears. It had to be clear to God that the more severe the pressure on her to eat the fruit, the more likely it would be that Eve would yield. Why had God created so cunning a creature? Had He simply given the serpent free reign in the Garden? Had God no inkling of what the serpent might do? My reading assumes a less than fully omniscient God—specifically, a God who does not know the future actions of human beings. Perhaps the serpent in the Garden was also endowed with free will. Conceivably, God did not know in advance what havoc he would create.8 Knowing of his cunning, however, might not God have anticipated trouble from him? Did the serpent carry off his scheme without God’s knowing about it until it was too late to stop him? I want to propose that God, who planted the Garden, who carefully laid out the trees inside it, placed Adam within it and saw to his well-being there,

Temptation in the garden

29

kept close watch over the Garden. Indeed, when Adam and Eve hide from God in the Garden, God calls out to Adam, “Where are you?” (Gen. 3:9). Did God really not know where they were? Or is this God’s way of confronting Adam? Adam needs only to explain that they are hiding because they are naked, and God immediately surmises what has transpired. “From the tree I commanded you not to eat, have you eaten” (Gen. 3:11)? Moreover, God does not seem caught by surprise. He straightaway spells out in detail what they will suffer as a consequence of what they did.9 The idea that God was unaware of the serpent lurking near the Tree of Knowledge or that God had no idea of the serpent’s plan seems to me at odds with the picture of God in these narratives. Nor do I think God was indifferent to Eve’s fate at the serpent’s hands. God knew what the serpent was up to, and, I propose, it is very plausible that He did not stop the serpent because He Himself had sent the serpent as His agent on a mission of beguilement. It was part of God’s plan that Adam and Eve eat from the Tree. God had the serpent on hand to assure its happening. Indeed, the serpent is punished along with Adam and Eve,10 but he would not be the only agent in the Bible who serves as an instrument which furthers God’s plan and is then punished.11

A test Contrary to our earlier understanding, we now propose that God did not want Adam and Eve to refrain from eating from the Tree. Why then did He prohibit it? Let us take another look at the scene in the Garden. Confronting Adam at the heart of the garden is a tree bearing enticing fruit. The Tree’s name proclaims the special benefit that comes from eating its fruit. Its location in the center of the Garden commands his attention. The fruit of this tree is denied him. A possible explanation of God’s pitting his command over against the allures of the Tree is His wanting to test Adam and Eve.12 How strongly are they committed to obeying Him, God wants to know.13 Several chapters later there is the story of the binding of Isaac—of God’s testing Abraham to see if he would be prepared to offer up his only son as a burnt offering. The story assumes that God is within his rights in testing Abraham’s loyalty. Perhaps God is doing the same here. The reader of the Akedah story (the Binding of Isaac, Genesis 22:1–19) has the advantage of being informed at the outset that what he is about to witness is a test. The reader of the Eden story is left on his own to figure out what is happening. There are other differences between the two episodes. God’s command forbidding Adam to eat from the Tree of Knowledge is immediately preceded in the text by God’s generously giving Adam leave to eat of all the other trees in the Garden. It is implied, I think, that Adam is not being required to suffer great deprivation. In his command to Abraham, God spells out how agonizing His demand is. “Take, pray, your son, your only one, whom you love, Isaac” (Gen. 22:2).

30 Temptation in the garden Neither Adam nor Abraham question God’s command. We are not told whether Adam feels tempted by the sight of the Tree bearing such appealing fruit and so auspicious a name. The prohibition, accompanied by the threat of death should he disobey it, may well have precluded even the thought of eating from it. If he is, however, attracted by the Tree, he resists. We do not need to be told that Abraham wants desperately to reject God’s demand, but he nevertheless saddles his donkey early the very next morning and makes his way with Isaac to the place to which God sent him. There are no surprises on Abraham’s way to the Land of Moriah, no obstacles placed in his path.14 When he arrives there, he builds an altar, binds Isaac, places him on the altar, and takes the cleaver to slaughter his son. At that point the angel of God calls off the test. Abraham has passed the test by demonstrating his readiness to do God’s bidding. God praises Abraham and rewards him with copious blessings. Adam also complies with God’s command. However, God does not rescind the prohibition when He sees that Adam is honoring it. The test God imposed on Abraham required Abraham to perform one particular action. Abraham passed the test by demonstrating his readiness to perform that action, at which time the test was over. Adam’s obligation, on the other hand, cannot be discharged by any particular action. So long as he refrains from eating from the Tree of Knowledge, he has not failed the test, but neither has he passed it—he must keep on refraining. Not only does the prohibition remain in place indefinitely, but Adam is not given the chance to simply continue to abide by it. God creates Eve and the serpent appears.15 It becomes more difficult to avoid failing the test. The sensory allure of the Tree having failed to get the better of Adam and Eve, the serpent adopts an aggressive strategy against Eve. He opens with the assertion which, presumably, he knows to be false—that God has forbidden her and Adam to eat from any of the trees in the Garden. She hastens to set the record straight. They may eat of all the trees of the Garden save the tree in the midst of the Garden, from which, if they eat, they will die. At that the serpent assures her, “You shall not be doomed to die.”16 God had provided no other reason to refrain from eating from the tree. The serpent could well expect that removing that threat would undercut Eve’s motivation for abiding by the prohibition. The serpent does not stop with his negative campaign, however. His next step is to strengthen Eve’s incentive to eat the fruit—she will “become as gods knowing good and evil.” And, as if anticipating that she may still be held back by her reverence for God, the serpent adds that God knew that her and Adam’s eating from the tree would have that effect—would raise them to His status. Here, then, is God’s reason for forbidding the fruit, the serpent is insinuating. God begrudges her and Adam’s becoming like Him.17 Not only was God being untruthful to them about the consequences of defying His orders, but His motive for the prohibition is self-serving and petty. God is not worthy of her loyalty, the serpent wants her to conclude.

Temptation in the garden

31

Eve does not give way to the serpent’s incitement. God does not rescind the order, however. If this is a test, then it seems that God has not yet found out what He is out to discover. Then Eve looks at the Tree and sees its attractions, and she yields. The reader knows from the beginning of the Abraham story that God is testing Abraham and understands by the end that it was only a test. God did not at all want Abraham to bring up Isaac as a burnt offering. What would have happened had Abraham, instead of dutifully saddling his donkey the very next morning and proceeding to the appointed place, refused to obey God’s command? Perhaps God would have withheld His blessings from him. Perhaps Abraham would not have become the father of a great nation. We may assume, however, that no matter how Abraham performed on the test, Isaac’s life was not in danger. If God set up the Garden of Eden as He did in order to test Adam and Eve, was it likewise only a test? Just as God did not want Abraham to actually bring Isaac up as an offering, perhaps He also did not want Adam and Eve to refrain from eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Had they persisted in refraining from the Tree longer than they did, would God at some point have become convinced that they were committed to Him and called off the test? What could have happened then? Since on this assumption God had no intrinsic interest in the prohibition, once the test is called off Adam and Eve are free to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. They could do as they pleased. The Creator of the Universe stood by, letting the chips fall where they may. The implausibility of the previous reading bears out our earlier proposal. God could not have been indifferent to whether Adam and Eve would eat from the Tree. Their eating from the Tree had momentous consequences— Adam and Eve became like God, knowing good and evil. One is drawn to the further conclusion, moreover, that not only was God not indifferent, but He also wanted them to acquire the knowledge of good and evil. Consider what Adam and Eve’s life in the Garden was like. They were charged with performing only the most menial of labor—to till the garden and watch it. They lived a child-like existence. All their needs and wants were provided them. They were sexually innocent, uninitiated into the complexities of human existence as we know it. In the words of Immanuel Kant, Adam appears there as “a darling of nature,” utterly lacking in cultivation.18

A coming of age story The compelling intuition that humanity was not intended to remain forever in a state of innocence and dependency19 motivates what has become a prevalent reading of the story of the Garden of Eden as a type of “Bildungsroman”—a genre of literature that depicts the growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood. The vivid impression of God’s omnipresence in the Garden, His power and authority over all He created, marks Adam and Eve’s coming of

32 Temptation in the garden age as a process designed and orchestrated by God for the purpose of preparing the protagonists for the kind of world He created.20 The first part of the Eden narrative shows us Adam and Eve as children in the Garden. At its conclusion, they are in the world outside. It is fraught with toil, suffering, sadness, and the prospect of death, starkly different from the one they had known as their home. Eve will bear children in pain and is destined to be subservient to her husband. Adam will win his bread only by oppressive and unrewarding labor. Ultimately, they will return to the dust from which they were taken. We have no trouble recognizing this new world as the world we live in. The features by which it is characterized are hallmarks of what we take to be the “human condition.” God’s plan when He issues the prohibition is that they should disobey it and, perforce, leave the Garden. On this reading, the storyline is predicated on Adam and Eve’s eating from the Tree; it is inevitable that they do so.21 Adam and Eve’s eating the forbidden fruit is an essential part of the process designed to groom them into their full-grown state. By choosing to eat the fruit they proceed along the course God has set out for them. Although it is inevitable that they ultimately eat from the fruit, when Eve succumbs to the serpent’s inducements she does so freely; she could have persisted in resisting him. Likewise, Adam could have refrained from accepting Eve’s offer when he did. Sooner or later, however, they would have violated God’s prohibition.22 This reading of the story differs markedly from a traditional view of the story as etiological in nature. On the latter view the story comes to explain how it is that men get to eat bread only by the sweat of their brow, that women must suffer pain in childbirth, and that human beings are mortal. Such an account can be put to theological service as well—to provide a kind of theodicy. God did not create the world as we find it today. The suffering man undergoes in the world is the consequence of his having rebelled against God. Thus, God is not responsible for the evil in the world—it is man’s doing.23 Viewing Adam and Eve’s experience in the Garden as designed to prepare them for their lives as full-fledged adults in the “world out there” assumes the opposite of the earlier passage—that the world they are destined to move into already has a distinct character with which they are being groomed to contend. The story does not come to account for how the real world became the way it is; it does not provide an explanation of the character of the world outside the Garden. In fact, the story leaves much about the real world woefully enigmatic, and not by chance. God is not answerable to the heroes of his drama or the readers of the story, nor for what Adam and Eve will encounter or for what the heroes of the ongoing saga will undergo. On my reading, the program of initiation is adapted to the life Adam and Eve will be called upon to lead. The details of their experience are dictated by the characteristics of the world outside the Garden. An essential part of what is called for to prepare them for that life is the experience of sin and punishment.

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The crime and its punishment My interpretation is guided by the assumption that God’s plan for the Garden and for what would take place in it is shaped by the educational needs of Adam and Eve. A striking difficulty with this reading is that God’s plan appears to be incoherent. He commands Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit and then prods them into eating it. He punishes them for disobeying His command after having been instrumental in their failure to comply with it. Moreover, the sin for which they are being punished is essential to their becoming mature human beings, which is the objective of the very same divine plan.24 The paradox may be avoided by reading the story selectively. Some readers advocate seeing it simply as an account of “what we are” and refraining from focusing on “what we did to deserve to be that way.”25 This inclination to disregard Adam and Eve’s deserving what befell them arises also, perhaps, from the absence of a correlation between what Adam and Eve did and what happened to them as a result.26 In the Book of Genesis, we find numerous episodes in which there is a discernible symmetry between the troubles that befall the heroes and their earlier misdeeds, giving the impression that the punishment fits the crime. An example is Jacob’s sons’ dipping the tunic of Jacob’s beloved son Joseph into the blood of a goat in order to trick Jacob into believing that Joseph was killed by a vicious beast. We think back to Jacob’s encasing his arms in goatskins in order to trick his father into believing that he is Esau.27 In the Eden story there is no noticeable affinity between Adam and Eve’s sin—their eating from the Tree of Knowledge—and the afflictions they are destined to encounter—the pain of childbirth, unrewarding toil, and the inevitability of death. Nevertheless, in my reading Adam’s and Eve’s sinning remains an integral part of the drama. From the arguments I mustered earlier to show that God wanted Adam and Eve to eat from the Tree, it does not follow only that He wanted them to possess the knowledge of good and evil. If that were all He was concerned with, why were they not born with that knowledge? The answer is, I believe, that the knowledge had to be gained through experience. Consider also the following: if Adam and Eve had resisted all temptation and persisted in abiding by God’s prohibition, could God have granted the forbidden knowledge to them as a prize? I propose that the steps God took to bring about their eating the fruit, to which I pointed in my earlier argument, speak also for His determination that they gain the knowledge by sinning. The experience of sinning was essential to their growing up. Sinning was not enough, however; there had to be punishment. Ringing in our ears is God’s angry declaration that Adam and Eve will be punished because they violated His command. Inherent to the notion of commandment is its power to “constrain the will”; if you violate the commandment you will be punished.28 This was a lesson they had to learn, and in order to learn it they had to sin and be punished.

34 Temptation in the garden This interpretation leads to a paradox—a paradox similar to the one that the selective reading I cited earlier was designed to avoid. On this reading, Adam’s and Eve’s sinning in the Garden is an integral part of their growing up experience, and that experience must include their being punished for sinning. On this same reading, however, the elements of their punishment—Adam’s hard and thankless labor, Eve’s pain in childbirth, and their mortality—were built into the world prior to Adam and Eve’s sinning. They are among the afflictions for which Adam and Eve’s ordeal in the Garden is meant to prepare them. As I noted earlier, the plot of the Garden story leads in different directions. As we see, when it comes to the matter of punishment my interpretation reaches an impasse. The idea that the Garden of Eden was intended from the outset as only a temporary residence for Adam and Eve is at odds with the idea that Adam and Eve’s defying God’s command is the reason they were driven from the Garden.29 My solution to the paradox is also to resort, in effect, to reading the story selectively. Unlike the readings I reject, however, in my reading, Adam’s and Eve’s punishment for disobeying God is at the core of the narrative. The story is about their becoming adult human beings. In the world for which they are being groomed, for better or for worse, the experience of sinning is part of achieving adulthood. In the Garden they learn that their sinning has consequences. God berates them, chastises them, and drives them out of their childhood home. He makes clear to them that the world they are now being sent into is very painful and difficult—not at all like the Garden of Eden. Why is the world this way? My reading leaves this question unanswered. Of course, Adam and Eve learn more as a result of their experience in the Garden than that sinning brings punishment in its wake. The Tree of Knowledge makes good on its promise. By God’s own testimony Adam and Eve have become like Him, knowing good and evil. The most immediate and dramatic change they experience directly in the wake of their eating the fruit is that “the eyes of the two were opened and they knew they were naked” (Gen. 3:7). God does not dismiss this truth or disparage this knowledge. Rather, apparently acknowledging their predicament, and in a gesture of fatherly love and solicitude, God makes them skin coats and clothes them.30 We glimpse Him in the guise of the exasperated parent for that moment, but He quickly becomes the wrathful Lord and Master. Adam and Eve hear very quickly from God about the hard life that awaits them outside the Garden. There is much to learn about their new existence. For example, Marc Klein focuses beyond the grim fact of their mortality to their awareness of their being subject to death.31 This knowledge has a major impact on their moral and spiritual development, according to Klein. If one understands the good and evil referred to in the name of the Tree as moral right and wrong, Klein suggests, then one sees how the knowledge they gain from eating the Tree’s fruit grows out of their awareness of their mortality. Moral judgments would have little meaning for immortal beings,

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Klein explains, because in the infinity of time the significance of their actions would dwindle away. There are additional truths to be learned, for which we must look to the details of the drama. On this reading, Adam and Eve’s ordeal in the Garden is preparing them for their lives outside the Garden. Its efficacy as a learning experience depends on its corresponding, in some recognizable way, to the defining features of the new reality into which God is introducing them. Adam and Eve’s experience in the Garden is formed, not simply by the fact of their having sinned and been punished, but by the particulars of their sinning, the specific circumstances which surround it, and the nature of the punishment. What brought them to sin? Why did they decide to eat the forbidden fruit? To what extent are they to blame? For what are they being punished? Bearing in mind that this is a story about Adam and Eve’s maturation and initiation into a new phase of their existence, it is not enough to answer the previous questions from the reader’s perspective. It is through their own experience that Adam and Eve gain understanding of the world that awaits them. Their perspective determines what insights they will be taking with them into the new world. We must try to see through their eyes what they underwent in the Garden.

“What is this you have done?” (Gen. 3:13) Disobeying God is only a partial description of Adam’s and Eve’s misdeed. If the experience of the sin and what it brings in its wake is essential to their initiation into adulthood, we need a fuller description. They knew that in eating the fruit they were disobeying God’s command. God did not force them to; there is no evidence that they felt compelled. So why did they do it? For what purpose, if any? How did they perceive the circumstances leading to or surrounding their sin? Leon Kass sees their eating from the tree as an act of defiance. In choosing to disobey, Adam chose the “principle of disobedience”32 which, according to Kass, is the principle of freedom and autonomy. Their eating the forbidden fruit, on Kass’s view, stems from a critical decision on their part to live a free and autonomous life. Accordingly, Adam and Eve learn from their being punished “that obedience to God, not the independent and rational pursuit of wisdom, is the true and righteous way.”33 Reuven Kimmelman also interprets eating the fruit as an act of defiance but goes further than Kass. As he sees it, Eve regarded her eating the fruit as a means of replacing God’s authority with her own. Living in the Garden, Adam and Eve knew full well what was right and wrong, Kimmelman reasons—God had made that clear to them. What Eve was missing was an explanation of God’s prohibition, its reason. The Tree of Knowledge, she believed, held the solution to this mystery. She believed, according to Kimmelman, that if she understood the basis of the prohibition, she would

36 Temptation in the garden become “the arbiter of its rightness.” She would become the source of the knowledge of good and evil.34 Indeed, reading this story as a Bildungsroman casts Adam and Eve as children growing into adulthood. That Adam and Eve effect this transition by dint of their disobeying God’s command conjures up the image of an adolescent rebellion.35 It is commonplace that knowledge confers power, and no doubt having knowledge can be conducive to independence and autonomy. Was it for the sake of these that Eve ate from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge? Was Eve rebelling against “parental authority”? Did she mean to arrogate to herself God’s prerogatives? Not necessarily. Knowledge is desirable in and of itself, as is loveliness in appearance and taste and may be appreciated independently of its instrumental value. Gaining knowledge is a worthy goal—it is to become like God.36 The Bible encourages us to emulate God.37 To aspire to be like Him is not to aspire to replace Him. A careful reading of the story reveals, it seems to me, that the road that led Adam and Eve out of the Garden was not paved with subversive motives. Nor was their traversing it the result of a principled decision. The word ‫ השיאני‬by which, when later confronted by God, Eve refers to what the serpent did to her in the Garden, has few occurrences in the Bible. I am adopting the commonly used translation—“beguiled me”—the meaning of which is not precise.38 It seems that Eve is blaming the serpent for having deceived her, duped her, or tricked her into eating the fruit. Perhaps she realized by then that the serpent had suppressed the possibility of God’s punishing her in some way other than death. Had she considered that possibility it might have deterred her. No doubt, now, under the impact of God’s anger, she sees through the serpent’s allegations which were designed to undermine God’s authority in her eyes. It is open to us to speculate as to how Eve regards, in retrospect, the serpent’s treachery. We do not have much leeway, however, in imagining how Eve views her own actions. The description of Eve’s succumbing, as she experienced it, is explicit. The serpent’s arguments in themselves had not moved her all the way to the deed. However, apparently, what the serpent said did move her to look at the tree. When the woman saw that the tree was good for eating and a delight to the eyes, and the tree was desirable as a source of wisdom, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave some to her husband, and he ate. (Gen. 3:6)39 Had she never seen the tree before, standing there in the midst of the Garden? Perhaps she had disregarded it, deliberately or not, since it was out of bounds to her. Or, perhaps she had looked at it many times before, but her view of its fruit had been darkened by the consciousness that it was forbidden. Now that the justifcation for its being forbidden has been challenged,

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the prohibition is on shakier ground in her eyes. She has become vulnerable, or more vulnerable to the fruit’s attractions. She fnds the fruit attractive to look at, and in looking at it also discerns its appeal to the palate.40 Now, as she beholds the fruit, in the same act of direct perception by which she notes its lovely appearance and tasty look, she is attracted to its wisdomgiving aspect. Her immediate response to what she sees is to take the fruit and eat it.41 Fruit that looks tasty and is pleasing to the eye is available on many other trees in the Garden. The Tree of Knowledge was unique in its offer of knowledge. So perhaps, it was indeed the prospect of gaining knowledge that overcame her restraints. Nevertheless, her surrender is impulsive, uncalculated. She neither consults a principle nor formulates one. As for Adam, we are not told that he was taken in by the sight of the tree. Nor do we hear Eve urging or commanding Adam to eat. He eats simply because his wife hands him the fruit.42 When confronted by God, Eve is meek in His presence. Compare her submissiveness here to Pharaoh’s arrogant response to Moses and Aaron when they tell him that the Lord requires him to send off Israel to worship Him in the desert. “Who is the Lord, that I should heed his voice to send off Israel?” (Exod. 5:2). Eve does not assume a defiant posture—she offers an excuse. As I have said, my reading subscribes to the assumption, common to many of the “coming-of-age” renditions of the Garden story, that their experience of disobeying God and being punished for it is an essential part of Adam and Eve’s becoming full-fledged human beings.43 What Adam and Eve learn from that experience depends on how they construe what happened. As they tell their story, it was not by rebelling against God’s authority, not by an act of willful disobedience, but by giving way to temptation that they incurred God’s wrath. They seem to be claiming a dispensation on these grounds and the reader may not be totally unsympathetic. The circumstances in which they came to sin—their having been strongly tempted—while they do not absolve them of guilt, perhaps should count in the reckoning of their blameworthiness.

Temptation Paul Hughes explains temptation as a state of inner conflict. To be tempted is to desire that which one regards as in some sense wrong or inappropriate, to “simultaneously welcome yet recoil from an object.”44 A person in the face of temptation is not single-minded either in resisting or in yielding. Since he is ambivalent with respect to his desires, whatever he may do he does not do wholeheartedly. Hughes grounds his account of temptation in Harry Frankfurt’s hierarchical theory of the will and the notions of autonomy and responsibility which Frankfurt derives from it. According to Frankfurt, human beings are unique in their being capable of reflecting on their desires. A person typically has

38 Temptation in the garden many desires, some of which conflict with one another. In reflecting upon his desires, the person forms higher-order desires with respect to them. The higher-order desires take as their object the lower-order desires. They determine how intent he is on realizing each of them, if at all. Desires which take actions as their objects are first-order desires. In deliberating over his firstorder desires a person chooses which among them he wants to act upon. When a person chooses to act from a particular desire, he identifies himself with that desire, makes it his own and takes responsibility for it. Frankfurt defines personal autonomy as the conformity of the first-order desire from which one acts to one’s higher-order decision to identify with it. If a person acts from a desire which he did not choose, he will not feel that he is doing what he wants to do but rather that he is being moved by forces outside of himself. A classic example is an unwilling addict who struggles to resist his addiction. If he gives in, he will feel a “helpless bystander to the forces that move him.”45 We tend to hold a person morally responsible only for those of his actions which reflect his stable wants and preferences. On Frankfurt’s view, a person may not be morally responsible for what he does if there is a “discrepancy between the desire that motivates his action and the desire by which he wants to be motivated.”46 That would explain why we might be inclined to blame a willing addict for assenting to his addiction, although we might not blame the unwilling addict for yielding. In order that a person’s second-order decision exercise authority or impose itself over his first-order desires, his second-order decision must be firm and unambiguous. However, just as a person’s first-order desires may conflict with one another, so may his second-order desires be in conflict. When this happens, the person is suffering from “volitional ambivalence.” If a person’s ambivalence with respect to his second-order desires is not resolved, either he will do nothing or he will act from a desire which he has not freely chosen, with which he does not fully identify. It is this state of volitional ambivalence which Hughes takes to be characteristic of a person acting from temptation. Whatever he does, he is not fully free. He does not identify himself with his actions and, following Frankfurt’s analysis, does not take responsibility for them.47 Since the person is not wholehearted about the desire from which he acts, his autonomy is compromised. Hughes invokes Frankfurt’s theory to argue, not for the absence of all responsibility in the case of temptation but for diminished responsibility.48 When Joseph’s brothers conspire to do away with him none of them show signs of inner conflict. Indeed, there are differences among them. Reuben dissents from the plan to take his brother’s life and tries to save Joseph’s life by subterfuge. He persuades his brothers to avoid shedding Joseph’s blood and to simply fling Joseph into a pit, ostensibly to die. Judah apparently is also averse to killing Joseph. Taking advantage of the passing merchants’ caravan, he convinces his brothers that they have nothing to gain by killing Joseph and so they agree to sell Joseph down to Egypt. Neither Reuben nor

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Judah seem to struggle over what they are about to do, but neither do the other brothers. They could not but have recognized the evil of what they were doing, yet the brothers, except for Reuben, who tried to foil their plan, seem to have no misgivings about doing it. Later on, they will accept full responsibility for what they did. Does Eve qualify, on Hughes’s account, for diminished responsibility for eating the fruit? Did she succumb to a desire she deemed wrong or inappropriate? Did she feel tension between a desire to eat from the tree, which she satisfied, and a desire to obey God and not satisfy the desire to eat from the tree, which she contravened? What we know is that until the serpent marshals his cunning against her, she holds her ground. The encounter with the serpent brings about her downfall; only then does she eat the forbidden fruit.49 Perhaps the serpent convinced her to change her mind, however. He offers her good reasons to dismiss God’s prohibition. Albeit, the serpent is introduced to us, the readers, as the most cunning of all the beasts, but why should Eve, presumably not having the benefit of this knowledge, not take his words at face value? In Frankfurt’s terms she could have made a decisive choice to act on her desire to eat from the tree. She would have acted autonomously and bear full responsibility for what she did. On the other hand, are we not, in imagining that the serpent’s encouragement could completely dispel her fear of God, being unduly harsh towards Eve? The text suggests the more likely scenario—that throughout her encounter with the serpent she desired to remain faithful to God’s command. However, struggling under the pressure of the serpent’s arguments, one following upon the other, her defenses crumbled. Her resolve to abstain from the fruit could no longer overcome the fruit’s allure. She yielded. When God calls her to task for disobeying Him, she does not attempt to justify what she did. Eve blames the serpent for beguiling her. That she did not point a finger beyond the serpent is plausible, since the serpent’s campaign was aimed at getting her to disobey his Creator, whom he maligned and discredited. Adam was not so unmindful of God’s role in his downfall. His wife gave him the fruit, but he points his finger beyond her. In contrast to Eve, who presents herself as having been simply gullible, Adam defends his decision to eat the fruit. “The woman whom you gave by me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate” (Gen. 3:12). When the woman gave me the fruit I ate, he concedes, but who is this woman to whom I deferred? The woman given to me by you.50 He is insinuating that in providing him with Eve as a helpmate, God in effect beguiled him.51 Adam is accusing God of bearing at least some responsibility for his eating the fruit.52 Hearing this, how did Eve feel? Did she see herself as God’s instrument in bringing about Adam’s downfall?53 And if so, did she now wonder about the snake’s eagerness to trip her up? Consider again the story of Joseph’s brothers. They are sorely provoked by Joseph’s imperious attitude towards them and by his being so favored

40 Temptation in the garden by his father. Nevertheless, later, when they are held prisoners in Egypt, when they recall among themselves what they did to Joseph, they do not, even among themselves, allude to his arrogance, even though it might be regarded as lightening their guilt. In their desperation at being compelled to leave Simeon in detention and to bring Benjamin back with them to Egypt, they say to one another, “Alas, we are guilty for our brother, whose mortal distress we saw when he pleaded with us and we did not listen. That is why this distress has overtaken us” (Gen. 42:21). Joseph’s brothers do not complain, even to one another, of having been wronged. They make no excuses; they throw themselves at Joseph’s mercy.54 In the cases of both Adam and Eve and Joseph’s brothers there were mitigating circumstances—the former were tempted, the latter were provoked. Rather than take responsibility, as Joseph’s brothers do, Adam and Eve try to shift it. They feel wronged. Whether or not the reader sympathizes with them, it seems to me, he can understand them. Adam and Eve’s perception of how they came to sin determines what they learn from their experience in the Garden. Why should we validate their perception? Because God, the Master of the Garden and the Master of the real world, stands behind the initiation program. The program, building on their perception, is meant to give them a foretaste of what the “real world” is like—its complexities and moral ambiguities. Is the program, then, also complex and morally ambiguous? How does the program reflect on its author?

“And before the blind you shall not put a stumbling block” (Lev. 19:14)55 We noted earlier that both Adam and Eve abide by God’s prohibition until the serpent steps in. Eve’s initial response to the serpent suggests that she had no intention of violating God’s prohibition. In inducing Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge the serpent was bringing about a sin which, it seems, would not otherwise have taken place. Had the serpent not interfered, Eve and presumably Adam, left on their own, would have lived out their lives as obedient denizens of the Garden. Holding God responsible for the serpent’s actions sharpens the moral perplexities that the drama raises. We might have expected God to support Adam and Eve in their virtuous resolve. Instead, He seems to work towards the opposite effect. He sees to it that their attraction to the forbidden fruit is intensified and that their inhibitions against eating it are weakened, that the likelihood that they disobey Him is increased. He undermines their moral agency.56 Having had no intention to do so, apparently, Adam and Eve end up sinning. This troubling conclusion may be avoided by adopting an allegorical rendering of this episode, which identifies the serpent with the evil impulse. On such a reading, Eve’s confrontation with the serpent is “introjected into the

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interior life of Eve.”57 That God created the serpent amounts to saying that He created us, Eve included, beset by wayward inclinations. God did nothing further, however, to bring about Eve’s downfall. When she yielded to the serpent, Eve was giving in to her own craving for the fruit of the tree, which got the better of her commitment to God’s prohibition, due to the weak nature with which God had endowed her. My reading, in contrast, locates the serpent in the real world of the Garden. The serpent seduces Eve, not simply by urging her to do what she is otherwise inclined to do but also by marshalling new information against her. He knows what she does not—that she will not die from eating the fruit but rather that when she eats it her eyes will be opened, and she will become like the gods. He is even well enough informed to add that God knows that will happen. On my reading, Eve’s beliefs, desires, and inclinations are parties to her struggle, but the serpent’s inducements are independent of her mental states and interact with them. And since, on my reading, the serpent is God’s agent, God has a hand in Eve’s sinning. To say that Eve was not simply giving in to her own evil impulses is not to say that she was totally innocent prior to the snake’s seduction, however. Indeed, there is no sign that she had any intention of eating from the forbidden tree. The clever ploys of the serpent might well have ensnared just anybody. Eve, and also, perhaps, Adam, are guilty of something less than an intention, perhaps an inclination. Kimmelman proposes that the serpent had a very easy time seducing Eve into eating the fruit. This suggests to him that the option of doing so could not have been strange to Eve when the serpent proposed it.58 Kimmelman, along with others, has called attention to features of Eve’s response to the serpent which, on his reading, suggest that prior to having been accosted by the serpent she was predisposed to disobey God’s command. He points to differences between the wording of God’s original command to Adam and the way Eve recounts God’s command to the serpent. God’s charge to Adam in the Garden is reported in the text as follows: “And the Lord God commanded the human, saying, “From every fruit of the garden you may surely eat. But from the tree of knowledge, good and evil, you shall not eat, for on the day that you eat from it, you are doomed to die”’ (Gen. 2:16–17). As Eve reports it to the serpent, however, “From the fruit of the garden’s trees we may eat, but from the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it and you shall not touch it, lest you die’” (Gen. 3:2–3). Note that in the original account God commanded Adam not to eat from the tree, whereas Eve describes God as only saying as much. In the original the tree is identified by its essential quality whereas later, Eve merely cites its location. In the original version God specifies that death will come on the day they eat of the tree, whereas in Eve’s rendition the timing of the punishment is left vague. Kimmelman, moreover, hears Eve diminishing God’s authority and belittling the gravity of His command. Eve’s low regard for

42 Temptation in the garden the prohibition explains why, according to Kimmelman, when the serpent approached her he found her so open to his inducements and such an easy target for his blandishments. In God’s defense we could claim, then, that the serpent did not instigate Eve’s transgression but merely coaxed her along in the direction upon which she was already bent. Although she had not intended to eat the fruit, she was predisposed to do so. Similarly, in the case of Adam, we might claim predisposition on the grounds that the temptation—Eve’s simply giving him the fruit—was such that were he not already considering eating the fruit he would not have succumbed. The alacrity with which Adam responds to Eve’s offer—she gave him the fruit and he ate—counts against there having been much reluctance on his part to violating God’s command.59 How would Eve’s having a predisposition to eat from the Tree, which she did not act upon before being beguiled by the serpent, bear upon her deserving to be punished for what she did, following the serpent’s inducement, however? As Gerald Dworkin observes, a general willingness on the part of someone to commit a crime before he is prodded or manipulated into doing so is not sufficient grounds for punishing him for committing that crime should he commit it following his having been prodded or manipulated. He is blameworthy for committing the crime, Dworkin insists, only if he had formed the specific intention of committing that crime. We have been assuming that Eve had not formed the intention to eat from the forbidden tree before the serpent beguiled her. In keeping with the view expressed by Dworkin, even had she had a prior disposition to eat from it, the disposition, in and of itself, would not justify punishing her for having eaten from it after the serpent beguiled her. Law officers today are known to sometimes resort to deceiving or seducing a suspicious agent to induce him to commit a crime which he had no intention of committing. This strategy is sanctioned in order to obtain evidence which could not have been gotten otherwise. In such cases, the agent may challenge his prosecutors, claiming that he was “entrapped.” In order to legitimate the “proactive” measures that were taken, the prosecution may cite the agent’s predisposition to commit the crime. The rationale supporting the appeal to predisposition to legitimate “entrapment” is a subject of lively legal debate.60 One way proposed to defend it is to connect the agent’s mental state as a result of his being tempted with his mental state prior to his being tempted. The argument begins by noting that although the agent knew at the earlier time that the act was wrong, he nevertheless was, prior to being tempted, already considering committing it. It proceeds with the claim that the agent’s deliberation was not a distinct process that ended prior to his being tempted. Rather, the subsequent deliberation, after his being tempted, that led up to his committing the misdeed was a continuation of that very same deliberative process that had already been set in motion prior to his having been tempted.61 Since the action for

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which he is being condemned reflects his tendency prior to his having been tempted, the tempter is not guilty of corrupting a totally innocent person. Note that the previous justification is of only limited scope. A predisposed agent is not one who intends to commit a crime but one who is only likely to commit one. The efforts of the proactive law enforcement agent are directed towards increasing the likelihood that he does. The courts countenance that policy only when standard investigative techniques are inadequate. Only when the interests of combating crime seem to make it indispensable for achieving a very important end, does the law allow the “entrapment” of predisposed agents. Is there an end for which Adam and Eve were made to undergo temptation in the Garden of Eden which might justify God’s having induced them to sin? On my reading, their being tempted was for the sake of their education. Moreover, the specific circumstances of their temptation were essential to what they were intended to learn.

Victims of circumstances Grappling with temptation, and the experience of succumbing, are, on my reading of this narrative, part of growing up. Note, however, that Adam and Eve do not think of themselves as having simply succumbed to their sinful desires but as having been manipulated. My earlier discussion of temptation was indifferent to the nature of the circumstances which give rise to the temptation. I did not distinguish between a person by chance stumbling into a tempting situation and someone being tempted deliberately by another for his own purposes. Nor did it matter to my discussion what the reason was that the person regarded the desire to which he succumbed to be wrong or inappropriate. What counted only was the effect the inner conflict would have on the subject’s autonomy. On my reading of the Garden story, it makes a difference that the temptation to which Adam and Eve are subject to is not the result of an accidental confluence of events but is built into the flora and fauna of the Garden by the Garden’s creator. Both during their sojourn in the Garden, and especially when looking back upon it, Adam and Eve must have been mindful of God’s having a part in the circumstances which led to their downfall. Was it not God Himself who had placed Adam in the Garden and permitted him to eat every tree but one? Did not that lie at the root of their troubles? When they must answer for what they did, Eve names only the snake as the culprit. Adam names Eve but also implicates God. The very authority who issued the prohibition they were beguiled into violating had a hand in the beguiling. It cannot have been lost on Adam and probably not on Eve either by this point, that God, who is judging them and pronouncing their sentences, had plotted the course for their sin. God does not deny responsibility for abetting their wrongdoing.

44 Temptation in the garden Moreover, Adam and Eve’s avowals that they were tempted into eating the forbidden fruit, and even tempted by God Himself, are not acknowledged as reasons for leniency.62 Should not Adam and Eve be credited for their attempts to resist? Plausibly, the punishment could have been harsher, but God gives no hint that the circumstances of their sinning earned them a lighter sentence.63 How is this a part of their education into adulthood? On my reading, the Garden drama is introducing Adam and Eve to a cardinal yet very troubling axiom of the Genesis narrative, that God sometimes induces people to sin against Him and then makes them pay for it. This is a sober lesson that they must take with them into adulthood—that they will suffer the constraints imposed upon them by their creaturehood, by their being part of God’s plan, and yet they will be held accountable for their conduct. The heroes throughout the Genesis narrative are commanded, instructed, provoked, and tempted, in the course of their implementing God’s plan. And through it all they are held responsible. The Genesis narratives spell out this truth. From Cain, whose offering God disregarded while He paid heed to the offering of his younger brother, to Jacob who emerged from his mother’s womb grasping the heel of his firstborn twin, the biblical heroes live out their lives in the spaces between their agency and their destiny. The Eden drama is part of the Creation story, and God appears in it in the role of Creator. In that role, He lays down the law; He demands obedience. Adam and Eve must be educated into the world they are about to enter, the world we are said to live in. In that world we are the authors of our actions, but we live our lives enmeshed in webs of circumstances which condition our actions and put limits on our freedom. God fashioned that world, laying out the contours which shape our existence, plotting our route in the divine scheme of things, and leaving us vulnerable to all manner of contingencies, among them such as result from the freedom enjoyed by our fellow man. Each person is accountable for his conduct, but God does not promise each man his just deserts. In such a world how is what one deserves to be measured? And more fundamentally, what are we to make of the notion of deserts? What is its place in the divine calculus—in God’s ultimate reckonings? The Eden drama is the first of the Genesis narratives which record the unfolding of God’s plan. Did Adam and Eve perceive their tribulations and their ultimate banishment from the Garden in the context of this plan whose objective was to prepare them and ultimately initiate them into the fullness of humanity? We see no sign that they did. They wordlessly accept their sentence and go on from there into their new existence. This is also part of the human condition—to possess only imperfect knowledge, to have only a partial view of where one is going, not to be able to penetrate the mysteries that lie beyond. The saga of the Chosen Family is charged with this epistemic tension. It begins with God’s promise to Abraham to make him into a great nation. We watch as Isaac grants Jacob the blessing he intended for Esau, as the brothers sell Joseph into Egypt, as Jacob descends into Egypt to reunite with his son,

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and we see the plan coming to fruition. As it goes on, the heroes maintain a tenuous balance between their awareness of themselves as autonomous agents, negotiating the turnings and twistings of the roads they traverse and their knowledge that they are on their way to fulfilling their God-given destiny.

Notes 1 The meaning of the term, “knowledge of good and evil,” is the subject of considerable scholarly debate. Suggestions include wisdom, judgment, moral discernment and sexual awareness. For an overview see, Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (New York: Free Press, 2003), 61ff. ‘Good and Evil’ may also be a merism, a figure of speech that couples contrasting terms together to connote everything in between, so that ‘knowledge of good and evil’ may mean ‘knowledge of everything.’ S.J. Gustave Lambert, “Lier-Délier. L’Expression de la totalité par l’opposition de deux contraires,” Revue Biblique 52 (1943–44): 91–103 at 94. I am loosely adopting the last meaning of the term. 2 The Hebrew phrase used to describe the location of the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge is ‫בתוך הגן‬, which could be taken to indicate simply that the trees were inside the garden. However, especially in light of the description the trees in Gen. 3:3, the phrase has been traditionally taken to indicate the center of the garden. See Onkelos and Ramban on Gen. 2:9. See, however, Don Isaac Abarbanel ad loc., Perush al Hatorah (Jerusalem: Bnai Abarbanel, 1964), 92. While the Tree of Life is explicitly located in the center of the garden, it is not clear that what is true of the location of the Tree of Life is also true of the location of the Tree of Knowledge. I will, however, assume that the Tree of Knowledge was there. 3 I quote Robert Alter’s translation of the phrase ‫ביום אכלך ממנו מות תמות‬. This is also Ramban’s understanding. The JPS translation reads, “for as soon as you eat of it, you shall die.” I will attend to this distinction in what follows. 4 Abarbanel, Perush al Hatorah, page 93, takes issue with Ramban’s view that before eating from the Tree of Knowledge, Adam and Eve do not have free will. He argues that God could not have commanded Adam had Adam not been able to freely choose whether or not to comply. 5 See Robert Alter, Gen. 2:16–17. See, also, Rabenu Saadya Gaon on Gen. 2:17, who specifies that God’s threat is that on the day that Adam eats from the tree he will deserve to die, not that he will die immediately. 6 See Radak on Gen. 2:17; Hizkuni (Hezekiah ben Manoah, thirteenth century, France) on Gen. 2:17 understands that Adam was intended to be immortal, and mortality was the penalty he incurred for sinning. On the other hand, see, also, Ha’amek Davar (Rabbi Naphtali Zvi Yehuda Berlin [the “Netziv”], nineteenth century, Poland) who asserts that man’s returning to dust is not a punishment but that it is his nature to do so, having been created from dust (Gen. 2:9, 3:19). 7 For example, David Carr, “The Politics of Subversion,” Journal of Biblical Literature 112 (1993): 577–595, sees the text to be representing the serpent’s responses to Eve as more accurate than God’s pronouncements. He takes this as part of a textual strain which polemicizes against the wisdom tradition, suggesting that even though the wise snake is right, his knowledge leads to disaster. 8 Jonathan Grossman, Genesis: A Tale of Beginnings (Rishon LeZion: Miskal, 2017), 92 (Hebrew), cites the suggestion that the serpent’s motive for beguiling Eve was his resentment at being rejected as Adam’s helpmate in favor of Eve. For a survey of some of the interpretations proposed for the role of the serpent in this episode, see Reuven Kimmelman, “The Seduction of Eve and the Exegetical

46 Temptation in the garden

9 10 11

12

13 14

15 16 17 18 19

20

21

Politics of Gender,” in Alice Bach, ed., Women in the Hebrew Bible (New York and London: Routledge, 1999), 255–269. My deliberations over these verses, as over a great deal more of this episode, were prompted by Jerome Gellman’s insightful comments. My interpretation is my own and does not represent Gellman’s views. The serpent does not receive the same treatment as do Adam and Eve, however, in that God does not challenge him to explain his conduct as he does them. See Jeremiah 25:8–14 where after declaring that He will send His servant, King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon, to bring desolation to Israel, God promises to punish the king of Babylon and the land of the Chaldeans for having done so. The explanation is sometimes given that the agent carrying out God’s plan is punished because he is doing so for his own reasons, rather than for the sake of serving God. See Ramban on Gen. 15:14. Abarbanel, Perush al Hatorah, page 93, commenting on Gen. 2:15, suggests that God put Adam in the Garden to test him. According to Sa’adia Gaon (ninth century, Iraq) in his longer commentary, quoted by Rabbi Yosef Kafah in his note to his edition of Saadia’s shorter commentary Perushe Rabenu Saʻadyah Gaon al ha-Torah, ed. Yosef Kafah, 2nd edition (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1984), 20, at Gen. 3:1 note 1, God gave this particular serpent the ability to speak in order to test Adam and Eve. See, also, Abarbanel on Gen. 3:1 (p. 102). See Jacob Licht, Testing in the Hebrew Scriptures and in Post-Biblical Judaism (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1973), 17ff (Hebrew). The midrash, however, interpolates impediments along the way. For example, Satan appears to Abraham on his way to Mt. Moriah saying, “Old man! Where is your sense? You are going to slaughter the son whom God gave you when he you were a hundred years old? I am the one who misled you and told you to take your only son.” Midrash Agadah (Buber) Genesis, Vayera, 22.10. For pointing out the difference between the terms of the two tests as well as for his many other penetrating observations and helpful suggestions, I am indebted to Ira Schnall. As noted in the Preface, I am using Alter’s translation here. The NJPS translates the phrase as, “You are not going to die.” Note that this characterization of God is at odds with the image we have of Him in the first account of creation where He creates man in his own image (Gen. 1:26–27). Immanuel Kant, Religion and Rational Theology, trans. and ed. Allen W. Wood and George Di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 411. See Israel Knohl, Biblical Beliefs (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2007), 31ff (Hebrew). Contra: Rimon Kasher, “Beliefs and Exegesis,” Katharsis 8 (2008): 82–103 at 88 (Hebrew), who argues that Knohl’s proposal is no stronger than the proposal that God wished to leave mankind in its childlike state. Jonathan Grossman, “The Expulsion of Ishmael Narrative: Boundaries, Structure, and Meaning,” in Elizabeth R. Hayes and Karolien Vermeulen, eds., Doubling and Duplicating in the Book of Genesis: Literary and Stylistic Approaches to the Text (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2016), 27–37 at 33–34, points to the difference between the two verbs used to describe how Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden. God sends Adam out of the Garden to till the land—the verb ‫ שלח‬is used. This is followed by the report that God banishes him from the Garden—the verb ‫ גרש‬is used. The latter, according to Grossman, is a harsher term implying a rupture and severance of relations, while the former is a softer term implying extension of contact with what is to follow. See Rachel Reich, Knowingly and Unknowingly: On Knowledge and the Lack of it in Biblical Stories (Alon Shevut: Tevunot-Herzog, 2011), 104 (Hebrew): God would have been disappointed had they not done so.

Temptation in the garden

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22 In Chapter 6 I discuss the matter of inevitability and its implications for moral responsibility. 23 See Grossman, Genesis, 90–107. 24 See Deeanne Westbrook, “Paradise and Paradox,” in Vincent L. Tollers and John Maier, eds., Mappings of the Biblical Terrain: The Bible as Text (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1990), 121–133. See, also, Grossman’s rendering of the paradox inherent in the Eden tale, Grossman, Genesis, 100. 25 See Marc Klein, The Serpent’s Skin: Creation, Knowledge and Intimacy in the Book of Genesis (Jerusalem: Urim, 2011), 53. Kass, Beginning of Wisdom, 95, expresses a similar inclination to put aside the question of desert by referring to the fate of Adam and Eve after their sinning as their “punishment” in quotation marks. 26 The case with the serpent is different. His punishment includes there being enmity between him and the woman, which of course is apt in that Eve, understandably, holds the serpent responsible for her downfall. 27 See in particular in Chapter 5 of this book. 28 In this a commandment is distinguished from a request or a suggestion. See Herbert Fingarette, “Punishment and Suffering,” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 50 (1977): 499–525 at 510ff. 29 See, for example, Grossman, Genesis, 101. 30 This, together with the fact that their expulsion from the Garden is followed very closely by their bearing children, suggests to some that the knowledge they gained included sexual awareness. See Northrop Frye, The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), 109. 31 Marc Klein, The Serpent’s Skin: Creation, Knowledge, and Intimacy in the Book of Genesis (Jerusalem: Urim, 2011), 61ff. On the connection between awareness of mortality and other components of the human condition, see, also, Kass, Beginning of Wisdom, 90ff. 32 Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (New York: Free Press, 2003), 65. Italics at source. 33 Kass, Beginning of Wisdom, 58. 34 Kimmelman, “The Seduction of Eve,” 253. 35 See Grossman, Genesis, 98. 36 Konrad Schmid, “The Ambivalence of Human Wisdom: Genesis 2–3 as a Sapiental Text,” in Scott Jones and Christine Roy Yoder, eds., When the Morning Stars Sang: Essays in Honor of Choon Leong Seow on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 500 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017), 279–290, reads the story as teaching of the undesirable consequences of acquiring knowledge per se. 37 “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy” (Leviticus 19:2). 38 The Hebrew word ‫ השיאני‬is translated variously as “beguiled me” (Alter) or “duped me” (JPS). Most of the classical Hebrew commentaries understand the term to connote deception or misleading. Ibn Ezra (Spain, 12th century) understands the term to mean “seduced me” or “tempted me.” Avraham Even-Shoshan, The Abridged Hebrew Dictionary (Jerusalem: Kiryath Sepher, 1974), 471 (Hebrew) offers two definitions: to seduce or to incite, and to deceive. See, also, Ernest Klein, A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English (New York: Macmillan, 1987), 428. 39 I follow the JPS translation here. Alter translates the last of the triad as “lovely to look at,” a phrase devoid of epistemic connotations. 40 I follow the JPS translation, “delight to the eyes.” Alter’s translation, “lust to the eyes,” provides even more support to my reading. 41 The use of metaphors of sight in the Bible to describe first-hand personal experience, learning, thought, and understanding, is well documented. See Yael

48 Temptation in the garden

42

43 44 45

46

47 48 49 50 51 52

53 54 55 56 57 58 59

Avrahami, The Senses of Scripture: Sensory Perception in the Hebrew Bible (London: T&T Clark, 2012), Chapter 5. However, when God pronounces Adam’s punishment, He accuses him of having “listened to the voice” of his wife (Gen. 3:17), implying that Adam was obeying his wife when he ate the forbidden fruit. cf. God’s instruction to Abraham, “Whatever Sarah says to you, listen to her voice” (Gen. 21:12), and Rebecca’s command to Jacob, “Listen to my voice” (Gen. 27:8). Grossman, Genesis, 91ff; Knohl, Biblical Beliefs, 28ff. Paul M. Hughes, “Temptation, Culpability, and the Criminal Law,” Journal of Social Philosophy 37.2 (Summer 2006): 221–232 at 222. Harry G. Frankfurt, “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,” Journal of Philosophy 68 (1971): 5–21, reprinted in Harry G. Frankfurt, The Importance of What We Care about (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 11–25 at 21. Don Locke and Harry G. Frankfurt, “Three Concepts of Free Action,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 49 (1975): 95–125, reprinted in Frankfurt, The Importance of What We Care about, 47–57. For Frankfurt, “Freedom of the Will,” 25, the causal origin of the action is not relevant to the agent’s moral responsibility but rather whether or not he identifies with it and does it wholeheartedly. Hughes argues that this is the case even when the temptation is resistible. Note that on Hughes’s account a person succumbing to temptation is not caused to act as he does. His action is his own, and he is responsible for it, but his responsibility is diminished because he does not perform it wholeheartedly. Grossman, Genesis, 100, attributes her compliance with the prohibition to her foolishness or naïveté. See, Radak on Gen. 3:12. Adam is claiming that since upon giving the woman to him God had designated her as a helpmate for him, he was justified in assuming that her offer was for his good and that it had God’s approval. See Ramban on Gen. 3:12. God subsequently chastises Adam for having listened to the voice of his wife and eaten from the tree that He had commanded Adam not to eat from (Gen. 3:17), thereby signaling His rejection of Adam’s excuse. See, Dru Johnson, Biblical Knowing: A Scriptural Epistemology of Error (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2013), 60ff. Jerome Gellman, “Gender and Sexuality in the Garden of Eden,” Theology and Sexuality 12 (2006): 319–335, argues that it was Adam who was the serpent’s target, and the serpent worked shrewdly through Eve to get to him. In Chapter 6, I shall discuss the moral implications of the circumstances surrounding Joseph’s brothers selling Joseph into Egypt. Abarbanel, Genesis 2, page 81, question 14, raises the question as to whether God’s planting the Tree of Knowledge among the trees of the Garden should be considered an instance of placing a stumbling block before the blind. See Jeffrey W. Howard, “Moral Subversion and Structural Entrapment,” The Journal of Political Philosophy 24 (2016): 24–46, on respect for an agent’s moral capacities. Kimmelman, “The Seduction of Eve,” 257. Kimmelman, “The Seduction of Eve,” 243–245. Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978), 113, reads Adam as being passive, weak, and inept. Perhaps, however, he was not really acquiescing to his wife’s offer but taking advantage of it. On the other hand, perhaps Adam did not know that the fruit Eve was handing him was from the forbidden Tree. I thank Jerome Gellman for this suggestion.

Temptation in the garden

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60 See Gerald Dworkin, “The Serpent Beguiled Me and I Did Eat: Entrapment and the Creation of Crime,” Law and Philosophy 4 (1985): 17–39 at 28ff. See, also, the discussion of entrapment in Joel Feinberg, “Causing Voluntary Actions,” in idem, Doing and Deserving: Essays in the Theory of Responsibility (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), 176ff; and Gideon Yaffe, “‘The Government Beguiled Me’: The Entrapment Defense and the Problem of Private Entrapment,” Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 1 (2005): 2–50. 61 Yaffe, “The Government Beguiled Me,” 14. 62 Yaffe, “The Government Beguiled Me,” 2, reports that in the very first case in which a U.S. court considered the entrapment defense, a New York court rejected it on the grounds that God refused to excuse Eve when she said, “The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.” If the excuse of “beguilement” wasn’t good enough for God, why should it be good enough for the court? 63 See, however, Haamek Davar on Gen. 3:19, who comments on God’s declaring to Adam that “for dust you are and to dust shall you return,” that God is telling Adam that in sentencing him to mortality He is not punishing him because he did not eat the fruit with criminal intent.

2

Matriarchal knowledge

The heroes of the Genesis narratives have encounters with God. God reveals Himself to them, tells them what He wants of them and what He has in store for them. He speaks directly to Adam, stipulating that he may eat from all the trees of the Garden of Eden except from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Later, He has an interchange with Adam and Eve, chastises them, and pronounces their punishment. God warns Noah of an impending flood and instructs him to build an ark. He later assures him that He will never again bring a flood to destroy mankind. When Abraham is singled out by God to father a great nation, God reveals Himself to him to inaugurate him into this role. He commands Abraham to leave the land of his birth and promises to bless him. God’s commandments, promises and blessings accompany Abraham throughout his life. Abraham learns from God that his children will be strangers in a land not theirs and will ultimately return to the Land of Canaan bearing great wealth. Abraham’s son and grandson, Isaac and Jacob, continue to enjoy direct communication from God. As a result of God’s revealing Himself to the heroes, issuing commands, making promises, and disclosing parts of his plan, the heroes acquire knowledge by which they guide their lives. Because of their special access to this valuable knowledge they enjoy authority. With the exception of Eve in the Garden of Eden, and then only by way of rebuke, it is only men whom God addresses directly.1 Even when God’s messengers bring the happy news that Sarah will soon give birth to a son, it is Abraham they address and Sarah is left to eavesdrop in the tent. In most of the major scenes of the drama the women are subsidiary characters. When Abraham leaves his home for the promised land Sarah is taken along, together with the rest of his household. When God bids Jacob return from Haran to his father’s house, Jacob’s wives renounce their father, and the family relocates to Jacob’s patriarchal homeland. These texts are the subject of a rich body of feminist criticism. Esther Fuchs contends that, “the biblical text reduces women to auxiliary roles, suppresses their voices and minimizes their national and religious significance.”2 The Genesis narrative, like the greater part of pre-modern literature, is indeed patriarchal at its core. In the Bible, society is organized by

Matriarchal knowledge

51

“houses of the fathers,” the father heading the household and all its members counted in terms of their relationship to him. Women are subordinate socially, economically, and legally. I am not the first to notice, however, two marked departures from this androcentric pattern in the narratives of Genesis.3 In the scene in which Sarah demands of Abraham to banish Hagar and Ishmael, and in Rebecca’s initiating and directing Jacob’s deception of Isaac, the women gain the upper hand. Sarah has a critical impact on the future of the patriarchal line. Abraham objects to Sarah’s directive, but God instructs him to comply. Rebecca’s imprint on the saga is no less decisive. Isaac chooses Esau to receive the blessing, but Rebecca succeeds in securing the blessing for Jacob. After the fact, God confirms Jacob’s status as heir to the Abrahamic legacy and assures Jacob of his ongoing support. In the one scene the patriarch objects to what turns out to be the correct course of action and in the other the patriarch is about to go wrong and the matriarch sees clearly what must be done and sets the matter right.4 The women in these scenes have the leading roles. In neither of the episodes, however, is their political or social subordination to the patriarchal order challenged. In order to effect the expulsion of Ishmael and Hagar, Sarah must turn to Abraham to banish them. Rebecca has no say in the disposition of the blessing. Nor does she even attempt to get Isaac to change his mind—she resorts to deceit. The Genesis narratives do not, overall, however, adopt an essentialist view of women—women are not by their nature different from men.Tikva FrymerKensky points to the divergence between the social structure depicted in the Bible and the egalitarian theology that prevails in the same texts.5 Although God is referred to as male, He does not have physical characteristics which characterize Him as such. Man and woman are both created in His image. God is a man of war, but He also opens women’s wombs. The Bible does not distinguish psychological characteristics as “male” or “female.” Eve transforms the human condition due to her attraction to lovely looking fruit and her craving for knowledge. A major motif in the Genesis narratives is the pivotal role of knowledge. From the fateful consequences of Adam and Eve’s eating from the Tree of Knowledge at the beginning of the book, to Jacob’s insistence that he knows what he is doing in elevating the younger Ephraim over the older Manasseh towards the end of the book, we see how having knowledge makes a difference. As we read the stories, we watch how knowledge is gained, transmitted, manipulated or withheld and how possessing knowledge affects its possessor and his surroundings. Granting knowledge is one of the major strategies God employs to determine how his plan unfolds. Despite the centrality of knowledge, however, the epistemological presuppositions underlying the Genesis narratives have, for the most part, not been examined. I propose that the Bible’s epistemology is in tune with its egalitarian theology. Although these stories are embedded in an unmistakably patriarchal

52

Matriarchal knowledge

context, if we focus on their epistemological presuppositions, gender distinctions are not determinative. Indeed, as I shall argue, the knowledge the women display in these scenes has an epistemic advantage over the revealed knowledge that is reserved for men elsewhere. The exercise of the former is grounded in a capacity that is inherent to them, whereas acquiring revealed knowledge depends completely on the grace of God. Moreover, the epistemological differences between the genders are neither absolute nor fixed. As the narrative proceeds, we see “matriarchal knowledge” being exercised by men as well. Overall, it bears noting, from an epistemological point of view men and women in the Genesis narratives have a great deal in common. We do not see much of either of them consciously and deliberately making inquiries or investigations or pondering over what to believe. The dominant mode of knowledge is perceptual—they learn from the deliverances of their senses. In this mode the role of the knower is essentially passive. Both the revelatory knowledge to which the patriarchs are privy, and the more “intuitive” knowledge displayed by the matriarchs in these scenes share with sensory perception its essentially passive character. No effort or ingenuity goes into acquiring it, no reflection or deliberation. Earlier I proposed that the epistemology in these stories resembles the theology in the egalitarian character of both. I want to further propose that the relationship between the two is more than resemblance and that the epistemological presuppositions complement the theological tenets of the narrative. In what follows I will expand upon the link between the two.

Revelation—overt and covert We think of divine revelation most commonly as overt communication, such as God’s command to Abraham to heed Sarah’s bidding. Such revelation is assertoric—God reveals a truth by asserting a proposition, openly and explicitly. In the narratives we are studying we see God achieving His objectives by assertorically revealing His plans to His followers and issuing His commands. Divine revelations of this kind generally have some immediate and discernible impact. In principle, however, asserting a proposition need not be the only means of revealing a truth.6 God could implant or insert a thought into a person’s mind, a true conviction. We might view this as a covert form of revelation. In a later episode in the Book of Genesis—Jacob’s blessing his sons—we see Jacob exercising knowledge the source of which is not made known to us. We are told that Jacob called to his sons and said, “Gather round, that I may tell you what shall befall you in the days to come” (Gen. 49:1). We did not hear God revealing the future to Jacob, and Jacob does not cite God as authority, but Jacob mentions God in the course of his addressing his sons and invokes God’s blessings. Jacob speaks as one divinely inspired. How did Jacob come to know what the future held in store for his children? Perhaps

Matriarchal knowledge

53

the knowledge was implanted directly into Jacob’s mind. This might count as an instance of covert revelation. In the scenes we noted earlier, the matriarchs implement the divine plan without having received any overt revelation. Did God implant that knowledge directly into their minds? Could Sarah and Rebecca have found themselves with the thought of how to carry on, a set of instructions, and as a result they knew what they should do. They might not know or even have an inkling that their knowing was due to God’s, in effect, telling them. This account seems to be at odds with the way the matriarchs are described. Sarah’s demand is in reaction to what she observes. Rebecca, we are told, was provoked by Esau’s foreign wives and of her it is told that she loves Jacob. When God imparts truths to a person, either overtly or covertly, He is enriching the content of that person’s cognitive life. Another way in which God could enrich a person’s cognition is to grant him a “power,” a disposition or an ability, such as the power of abstraction or inference.7 In order to assure that the patriarchal line be carried on according to His designs God could have endowed the women in these scenes with the cognitive sensitivities and capacities which would give rise to true convictions. Guided by these convictions they would respond adroitly to the various stimuli they received, make the right decisions, and act on them effectively. This kind of knowledge is different from the knowledge of truths. It is a form of epistemic empowerment that results in the subject coming to know something important he did not know before, thanks to God’s intervention. Although no content is revealed, it could be regarded as an indirect form of covert divine revelation. If we include epistemic empowerment as a kind of divine endowment, the epistemic repertoires of the Genesis heroes are expanded. The different kinds of knowledge call for different analyses and are measured by different criteria. In what follows we sketch out some of these kinds of knowledge and examine how they come into play at various points in the narrative.

Internalist and externalist theories of knowledge Theories of knowledge almost all assume the distinction between knowledge and mere true belief. When someone luckily happens upon a true belief it may prove to be very helpful. We may be grateful to whoever happened upon it, but we hold him in no special regard and are not inclined to invest him with authority. Possessing a true belief is not yet knowing it. In these stories’ revelation is a source of truth. Likewise, the judgments the women come to because of what they see and feel prove to be correct. Aside from their being true, however, what, from an epistemological point of view, distinguishes these various deliverances from subjective impressions, seemings, or imaginings which happen to be true or prove to be correct? What confers on them the honorific status of knowledge?

54

Matriarchal knowledge

On a rationalist approach to knowledge, a true belief is counted as knowledge only if it is justified. A belief is justified for a knower if he has good reason for believing it to be true. The reason must be “internal” to the knower—he must be aware of his reason for thinking it true or the reason must be accessible to his consciousness.8 On this approach, an ideal instance of knowledge, what may be viewed as “high-grade knowledge,” involves a person’s acquiring a true belief by conscious and voluntary acts— reflecting on his belief and on his reasons for believing it, seeking out evidence and evaluating it.9 Because on this approach what justifies a belief must be in some sense internal to the knower, the approach is characterized as “internalist.” This mode of knowledge which is prized in traditional philosophical discourse characterizes neither the men nor the women in the Genesis narratives. We do not see either the matriarchs or the patriarchs deliberating, considering evidence or making inferences from premises to conclusions. We see little of them actively seeking knowledge or reflecting on their beliefs. An alternative approach to knowledge recognizes factors which are not accessible to the consciousness of the believer, which are “external” to it, as sufficient for a true belief to count as knowledge. One of the leading candidates for serving as such a factor is the reliability of the process which gives rise to the belief—reliability being understood as the tendency of the process to produce true beliefs.10 Knowing that a belief was produced by a reliable process is good reason to think it true. A belief may have been produced reliably even if the subject is not aware of, or has no conscious access to, that fact. The fact, in and of itself, on the externalist view, might be enough for the true belief to count as knowledge. Like rationality, reliability distinguishes an instance of knowing from a mere lucky guess. In these narratives communications from God are utterly reliable. The most unlikely pronouncements—that the entire world will be engulfed in water and that only Noah and the denizens of his ark will be saved, that Sarah will bear a child at the age of 90, come true. The recipients of overt revelations from God, insofar as they believe that God is the source of their belief—and in these narratives it is always the case that they do—have good reason to believe that what was communicated to them is true. It may have been their good luck that God chose them to receive his revelations, but given that He did, it is not a matter of luck that what they heard from Him is true. There is no question that what one hears from God one knows. When we look to see how people gain knowledge in the Genesis narrative, we find that, aside from what is learned via divine revelation, the major part of what the heroes and heroines know is gained through direct, immediate, sensory perception. Perceptual beliefs do not generally present themselves accompanied by reasons for regarding them as true.11 Ordinary perception in most, but not all, circumstances gives rise to true beliefs, however, and that is the way it is represented in the Genesis narratives. Isaac correctly identifies Jacob’s voice and the smell of Esau’s garments but mistakes the feel of the

Matriarchal knowledge

55

goatskins encasing Jacob’s arms for Esau’s hairy skin. Perception counts as a reliable, if not infallible, cognitive process.

Perceptual knowledge All the senses provide knowledge, but in the Bible the most common, reliable, and informative is the sense of sight.12 Sight provides more than just a visual experience; it incorporates judgment and understanding—practical, aesthetic, moral, and more. The first view we get of the efficacy of direct, immediate, perception in the Bible is that of God’s seeing. At the end of each day of creation God saw that what He had done was good, and at the end of the sixth day He “saw all that He had done, and, look, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31). As time passes, God sees that “the evil of the human creature is great” (Gen. 6:5), and later on He tells Abraham of His intention to go down to Sodom “and see whether as the outcry that has come to Me they have dealt destruction, and if not, I shall know (Gen. 18:21). God sometimes is explicitly involved in human perception. He comes to Hagar’s rescue in the wilderness after her water has run out. “And God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water” (Gen. 21:19). We may assume that the well was there before, but she had not seen it. At the parallel moment in the Akedah story, after the angel has stopped Abraham’s hand and Isaac is safe, “Abraham raised his eyes and saw . . . a ram was caught in the thicket by its horns” (Gen. 22:13). Abraham brings up the ram as a burnt offering in place of Isaac. Was the ram in the thicket there all along, his horns camouflaged by the thick tangle of the branches? How is it that Abraham spotted the ram when he did? The story of Hagar may be suggestive. In contrast to the previous passage, the vast majority of human seeings in the Bible take place in a perfectly natural way. Sometimes people simply note the presence of physical objects and their physical features. When Joseph approaches his brothers in Dothan, they see him from afar, and after flinging him into a pit they sit down to eat and see a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from the Gilead. There are also innumerable instances where, like God’s seeing, people’s seeing comprehends more than the physical qualities of objects. Lot saw the plain of the Jordan and he “saw that all of it was well-watered . . . like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt” (Gen. 13:10). Lot took note of its desirable qualities—he saw it as desirable.

Recognitional capacities Because seeing, both divine and human, includes evaluation and judgment it often evokes action. When Jacob amassed considerable wealth, arguably at his father-in-law Laban’s expense, “Jacob saw Laban’s face and look, it was not disposed toward him as in time past” (Gen. 31:2). God then tells Jacob to return to the land of his fathers. Jacob shares with his wives his impression of their fathers’ disaffection. When he tells them of God’s instruction

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to leave for Canaan Rachel and Leah readily agree, complaining of their own ill-treatment at their father’s hands. Jacob’s sense of his father-in-law’s hostility struck a respondent chord in his wives. Jacob then departs with his family for his father’s home in the Land of Canaan. When Tamar, Judah’s daughter-in-law, sees that Shelah her brother-in-law has grown up, and she was not given to him as a wife as her father-in-law had promised, she acts on her own. “She took off her widow’s garb and covered herself with a veil . . . and sat by the entrance to Enaim” (Gen. 38:14).13 Judah saw her and took her for a whore, for she had covered her face. Tamar had realized her predicament and moved quickly. The solution called for obstructing Judah’s vision so that her appearance would mislead him. The characters cited earlier, in looking at a scene, understood what they should do. Elaborating upon the Aristotelian notion of virtue, John McDowell identifies the reliable exercise of such a perceptual capacity—the capacity to see reasons—as a virtue, as a “reliable sensitivity.” McDowell calls it a “recognitional capacity.” Its possessor correctly identifies objective features of a situation which dispose him to behave rightly.14 He not only perceives reality correctly, but he knows what kind of behavior is called for, and he is disposed to act accordingly. As McDowell has it, the agent does not invoke principles to justify his actions. It is impossible to explain his actions to someone who does not share his view of the situation. What he does is due to his recognitional capacity, and it is accounted for by the distinctive way he sees the situation he is in. Recognitional capacities answer to different standards than does propositional knowledge. Propositions are true or false and may or may not be supported by evidence. As McDowell spells it out, recognitional capacities capture objective features of a situation, but the person who exercises the capacity is not necessarily able to give any reason for taking that feature as a reason for acting the way he does. He may not even be able to articulate what it is that evokes his response, that moves him to act as he does. “It is enough if he thinks of what he does . . . under some such description as ‘the thing to do.’”15 When Sarah bids Abraham, “Drive out this slavegirl and her son, for the slavegirl’s son shall not share in the inheritance with my son, with Isaac” (Gen. 21:10), she offers no justification for why this should require Ishmael’s expulsion. Her voice is clearly that of a mother zealously protecting the rights of her son. Her outburst, however, is provoked by something she saw—the son of Hagar the Egyptian, ‫מצחק‬, variously translated as “playing,” “laughing,” perhaps “mocking.”16 We are not told exactly what Sarah saw, but whatever it was, what she saw triggered her angry response. From Sarah’s perspective, it called for action. No doubt she harbored maternal concerns for Isaac’s welfare and was determined that he be Abraham’s heir prior to this scene. However, it is her seeing Ishmael’s conduct that moves her to act. Did her feelings for her son color her vision of Ishmael’s behavior? Perhaps, indeed, her vision was less than objective.

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“And the thing seemed evil in Abraham’s eyes because of his son” (Gen. 21.11). Abraham does not see in Ishmael what Sarah sees. Sarah does not point out to him what she finds so objectionable. Abraham does not interest himself in Ishmael’s behavior but rather reacts to the prospect of sending away his son. And it was “very bad in his eyes, ‫בעיניו‬.”17 Moral concerns are not what move him—he speaks from his heart.18 Sarah’s vision is vindicated by God. “Let it not seem evil in your eyes on account of the lad” (Gen. 21:12), God tells Abraham. What seems to you evil is not really evil. Not only does God instruct Abraham, “Whatever Sarah says to you, listen to her voice,” but God also endorses Sarah’s perspective. In explaining to Abraham why he must submit to Sarah’s authority, the reason God gives echoes what Sarah insisted upon: “through Isaac shall your seed be acclaimed” (Gen. 21:13). To justify Ishmael’s expulsion, God tells Abraham, that it is part of His plan. God had already told Abraham earlier about the plan for Isaac and Ishmael. At that time, upon receiving God’s promise that Sarah, his 90-yearold wife, would bear him a child, Abraham laughed to himself. He entreated God: “Would that Ishmael might live in Your favor” (Gen. 17:18). God’s response was: Yet Sarah your wife is to bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac, and I will establish my covenant with him. As for Ishmael, . . . I will make him a great nation. But my covenant I will establish with Isaac whom Sarah will bear you. (Gen. 17:18–21) Abraham made this earlier plea on Ishmael’s behalf when Isaac was still merely a promise. In the later scene, on which we are focusing here, Isaac is a reality. Yet Abraham still looks upon Ishmael as his son and is loath to send him away. Does he wish that God change his mind about which of his sons will inherit him? Or perhaps, accepting God’s favoring Isaac, he wishes to keep Ishmael beside him nevertheless.19 God must make it clear to him that Isaac is the one who is his heir and give him to understand that what follows from this is that Ishmael must be removed from their household. Sarah was not present at the earlier scene. She did not hear God’s promise that her son Isaac, and not Ishmael, will be heir to the covenant. She did not hear a heavenly voice directing her to call for Ishmael’s expulsion. Seeing Ishmael’s behavior, Sarah knew what God’s plan was without being told. Sarah is not simply pitting her will against Abraham’s, she is pitting her knowledge and understanding against Abraham’s failure to understand what God’s plan requires. Sarah displayed a sensitivity to the way Ishmael was behaving. It was not encoded in rules or principles. It did not enable her to articulate what it was about the situation that evoked her response; she could not defend it in the eyes of another who did not share the same sensitivity. Sarah exercised a

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perceptual capacity—the ability to apprehend particular features of a situation as reasons to act, as imposing certain requirements on her behavior. McDowell’s theory of virtue calls for a reliable sensitivity to objective features of the situation. It also calls for acting rightly. Since we do not see Sarah exercising her perceptual abilities on other occasions, we have no basis for assessing their reliability. All we have to go on is this instance. God confirms that what she saw in Ishmael’s behavior was good reason to demand his expulsion, and that in doing so she acted rightly.

Emotions and knowledge In addition to incorporating understanding and judgment, seeing is also associated with emotional experience. Hagar, despairing in the desert, distances herself from Ishmael because she does not want to see the death of her child (Gen. 21:16). She wants to avoid the suffering that seeing him die would cause her.20 Judah pleads before Joseph to allow him to stay as a slave instead of Benjamin, for he cannot return to his father without his younger brother. “Let me see not the evil that would find out my father” (Gen. 44:34). Seeing also connotes emotional understanding. “God saw that Leah was despised and He opened her womb” (Gen. 29:31). In the second of the two episodes in which the matriarch prevails over her male counterpart perceptual knowledge is significant for its absence. Isaac is old, and his “eyes grew too bleary to see” (Gen. 27:1), we are told, and then Isaac prepares to give Esau the blessing. It is Jacob, however, Rebecca’s favorite, who will receive the Abrahamic blessing and become the third in the patriarchal line. Unlike Sarah, Rebecca received a communication from God that her older son will serve the younger.21 Also, she may have taken as an omen the unusual manner of their birth, the heel of the firstborn clutched in the hand of the second. She does not appeal to God’s message, either to justify or to explain her efforts on Jacob’s behalf. We are told that she loves Jacob and Isaac loves Esau because he had a taste for game, but the reason for her love for Jacob is not stated. The unfolding of the story makes it clear, however, that Rebecca loves more wisely than Isaac—that her favorite, not Isaac’s, is God’s favorite. We do not know exactly what to make of Isaac’s feelings towards Esau. His penchant for game may strike us as somewhat unworthy, particularly as a reason for giving Esau the blessing. Perhaps Rebecca was attracted to the more innocent son, whose nature was so different from hers. Or, did she see in Jacob the craftier son, whose nature resembled her own? In whatever way we are inclined to understand the conflict, Rebecca does not muster any arguments on Jacob’s behalf. She makes no attempt to persuade Isaac to change his mind. Rebecca’s diffidence may have something to do with her relationship with her husband. Recall that when she sees Isaac for the first time she falls from

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the camel. Upon hearing from the servant that this is his master, she covers her face with her veil. The Netziv learns from this that she feels unworthy of him and takes this feeling of inferiority to be constraining her throughout her marriage. He contrasts her reticence towards Isaac with the readiness of the other matriarchs to confront their husbands when they wanted to press their claims.22 The comparison with Sarah is helpful. Sarah openly confronts Abraham. However, like Rebecca, she does not attempt to argue or persuade. For whatever reason, rather than accost Isaac directly, Rebecca resorts to deceit. However, she is acting on what she feels, and like Sarah, has no defense. Her feelings and Isaac’s push them in opposite directions, but her feelings rather than his were attuned to God’s plan. Although she tricked her husband in order to get her way, her feelings were honored; her choice of Jacob over Esau was upheld. Rebecca, in contrast to Sarah, may have something of a record to vouch for her reliability. Her generosity to Abraham’s servant at the well, her agreement to leave her home immediately and go with him, and perhaps also her decision to seek out God’s word when she is troubled may suggest that she tends to get things right. After having secured the blessing for Jacob, Rebecca does not relax her vigilance. When Esau learns that Isaac cheated him of his blessing he seethes with anger.“And Esau said in his heart,‘As soon as the time for mourning my father comes round, I will kill Jacob my brother’” (Gen. 27:41). Fortunately for Jacob, Rebecca “was told the words of Esau.” She immediately contrives a plan for removing Jacob from danger, a plan which again involves the deception of Isaac.23 The plan succeeds—Jacob leaves his father’s house and takes refuge in the home of Rebecca’s brother, Laban. Rebecca’s ongoing worry for Jacob’s welfare is one more instance of her emotional acuity. To begin with, she learned of Esau’s plan. Since Esau hatched his murderous designs “in his heart,” who could have told Rebecca about them? The Rabbis’ answer is that the matriarchs were prophets.24 The plain sense of the text is, presumably, that Esau revealed his plan in some way, and it reached Rebecca’s attentive ears. That she had good sources of information, and even more so, that she immediately devised a plan and cleverly implemented it, are indeed signs of the virtues she had over which the Rabbis marveled. In the Western philosophical tradition, emotions have been generally viewed as obstacles to knowledge. They are depicted as irrational passions or urges that overpower us and sweep us away. More recently, however, the idea has taken hold that our feelings reflect our norms and values and that our norms and values shape our perceptions of the world. Our emotions may be expressions of norms that we follow but are not able to formulate or even of which we are not aware.25 Taking in a particular scene is not simply passively recording sensory stimuli or observing “facts.” We choose what we take note of and how we take note of it, and our choices are influenced by how we feel about what we see.26

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Our emotions sometimes reveal to us truths about ourselves. They may also put us in touch with objective features of our environment and provide us with knowledge about the world. Christopher Hookway looks to the experienced hiker. He may possess a body of propositional knowledge about how the weather conditions affect a particular route and when they may make it risky. In addition, or alternatively, the hiker may feel anxious or insecure about taking the route. His anxiety may be an expression of his habitual sensitivity to subtle features of the route of which he is not consciously aware, upon which he cannot reflectively deliberate. His ability to negotiate these features may then depend on his affective responses to them.27 Contemporary psychological research has produced a rich store of empirical findings confirming the role of emotion in cognition.28

Intuitive knowledge Common to both perceptual and emotional modes of knowing is that they involve beliefs for which there are no conscious or introspectively accessible proofs or arguments. Knowledge of this unreasoned kind is sometimes associated with “intuition,” a term used to connote a form of immediate direct knowledge. Like perception and emotional cognition, intuition gives rise to beliefs which come without consciously accessible etiologies. In addition to sharing this feature with them, intuition may have a similar phenomenological character. In perceptual experience the way the content of the experience is presented generally makes it feel to the subject that the experience is veridical. The “phenomenological force” of both emotional and intuitional experience makes one feel that the content is true.29 Traditionally, intuition was regarded as a form of a priori knowledge— certain, infallible. For Plato it was the immediate perception of ideas which constituted the ultimate realities of the world. Intuitions picked out the true objects of knowledge. Descartes taught that the constituents of complex operations involved in reasoning are basic, simple, self-evident intuitions. In the modern period the notion has been appropriated by various philosophical theories and reinterpreted in many ways. Contemporary analytic philosophy appeals to people’s everyday intuitions to explore concepts which serve in various areas of philosophy, such as ethics, epistemology, or metaphysics. More recently some philosophical discussions of intuition focus on the role intuitions play in philosophical deliberation.30 In the course of the transformations the notion of intuition has undergone, the term is no longer reserved for a priori knowledge. In ordinary usage today, the term “intuition” is often used loosely, for lucky guesses, hunches, premonitions, and all manner of appraisals or assessments that present themselves to consciousness, unaccompanied by argument or history to account for them, or by a perception, or memory to justify them. Lacking the sharpness and transparency which characterize reasoned argument, this style of thought is often associated with women. The term “women’s

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intuition” has often been intended as a pejorative term and used dismissively. Inasmuch as Sarah and Rebecca do not present evidence or argument for their positions, their success seems based on something like intuitive knowledge. Does this signify their low epistemic status? Happily, today, both in philosophical and non-philosophical discourse the term “intuition” is reclaiming a more highly regarded role. The term often connotes instances of immediate knowledge where the knowledge claim expresses a “‘competence,’ (an epistemic ability or virtue) on the part of [someone] to discriminate the true from the false reliably (enough).”31 A person is thought to develop such competence as a result of having a great deal of experience in a given area—a mother who can tell when her daughter is lying, a physician whose correct diagnoses precede the results of the laboratory tests, a chess player who, faced with a complex challenge, responds immediately with the right move. The beliefs of the matriarchs in the scenes we have been looking at stem from their experience. Sarah makes her stand based on what she saw in Ishmael’s conduct, and Rebecca received a message from God but also acted in the wake of her dismay at Esau’s foreign wives and on her love for Jacob. Both women are exercising their perceptual and emotional capacities in a very specific domain—that inhabited by their children. They both have had many opportunities to learn about their children and about the struggles within their families. If experience is what confers reliability on intuitive thinking, both Sarah and Rebecca have good claims to creditability. Given that we know people to be naturally endowed with cognitive dispositions which are activated or triggered by certain stimuli, do we take God to be playing a special role in the matriarchs’ epistemic abilities? It seems to be the case that people are not uniformly endowed with these abilities—some people seem much more adept at making accurate discriminations than others, and differences in experience do not seem to account completely for the range of differences in abilities. McDowell, in discussing perceptual capacities reserves the term “virtue” for the reliable exercise of these capacities. People who are “virtuous” in this sense correctly respond to objective features of a situation. Perhaps God saw to it that these women were capable of taking maximal advantage of their experience and of taking very sharp note of their environment. This might count as a “low-grade” form of covert revelation. How, then, do we read the stories of Sarah and Rebecca? Do we see them exercising natural abilities, enlisting the wisdom they gained from their experiences to take store of the realities they behold and to make the right choices and decisions? Or do their intuitive abilities strike us as more than just the natural product of their life-experiences? In the routine case of cognitive dispositions, the stimuli to which people react take the form of data or evidence for a particular conclusion. If God were to enable a person to respond to stimuli, not merely by drawing the conclusions that are logically called for by the data but by going beyond the information contained in

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the stimuli, this might count as an instance of divine revelation.32 Do Sarah and Rebecca’s choices and decisions, in the service of the divine plan, reflect more than the stimuli the reality contains? Are their actions guided by more than the data they perceive? If so, this might count as a more robust form of covert revelation.

The patriarchs’ “matriarchal knowledge” In the last of the succession dramas in Genesis, Jacob, the patriarch, favors Joseph’s younger son, Ephraim, over the older, Manasseh. Jacob, whose eyes are “dim with age” (Gen. 48:10), like his father Isaac’s when he sought to bless Esau, crosses his hands when he blesses his grandsons in order to give the greater blessing to the younger. When his son Joseph points out what he takes to be his error and tries to re-position his hands, Jacob objects, saying: “I know, my son, I know.” Joseph is silenced. Jacob sees dimly but speaks with authority. What are we to make of Jacob’s avowal that he knows? After placing Ephraim above Manasseh, Jacob proceeds to bless them accordingly. Did God covertly implant the appropriate blessings for each of his grandsons into Jacob’s consciousness? Jacob might then have discovered within himself the belief that Ephraim would be greater than the older Manasseh. This seemed an unconvincing account of Sarah and Rebecca’s knowledge because in both cases the women were responding to what they had seen or experienced. Jacob favors Ephraim for no apparent reason. His determination is not credited to either his perceptual abilities or emotional sensitivities. Since Jacob’s choice between his grandsons is a prelude to his blessings to his sons, we might be inclined to view his choice in the same light as the latter. There is a feature in the scene with Jacob’s grandsons which may suggest otherwise, however. When Jacob crosses his hands over Manasseh and Ephraim he is challenged. Jacob’s answer to the challenge tells us something about how he regards his choosing between the two. “I know!” he responds to Joseph’s objection. Jacob takes full responsibility for his departure from the natural birth order. Note also that the pattern here is familiar to us—a parent placing a younger child ahead of an older one. It suggests that Jacob, even though he is blind now, may be benefitting from the kind of intuitive knowledge that the matriarchs exercised in the earlier succession struggles. If intuitive abilities are born out of life experiences, Jacob’s long and troubled life may have afforded him opportunities to develop a sensitivity to the dynamics within his household. He has suffered no small measure of grief in the course of raising his very unruly family. Towards the end of his life, in an audience with Pharaoh, when Pharaoh asks his age Jacob answers: “The days of the years of my sojournings are a hundred and twenty years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life” (Gen. 47:9). During the latter part of his life Jacob received very little divine guidance. There is no woman mediating the struggles within his family—the tensions

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among his sons and between him and them. Perhaps his experience of fatherhood taught Jacob lessons his father and grandfather were denied or spared. Perhaps he came away from those years with epistemic abilities of a kind exhibited by the matriarchs. On this reading, God empowered Jacob epistemically as He did the matriarchs—Jacob was able to go beyond the data available to him. If God’s voice is heard less frequently as the patriarchal saga progresses, its absence becomes yet more pronounced in the later episodes.33 Joseph, the last hero in the saga, has no direct experience of divine revelation. His youthful dreams indeed betoken his future, a sign perhaps of divine grace, but unlike his father, Jacob, Joseph is not appeared to by God in his dreams. What of Joseph’s ability to interpret other people’s dreams, which serves him to such advantage? In offering to solve the dreams of Pharaoh’s courtiers in the prison house Joseph says to them: “Are not solutions from God? Pray, recount them to me” (Gen. 40:8). Perhaps Joseph is only being modest. He is more explicit in his disclaimer when Pharaoh turns to him with his dreams. Adumbrating Jacob’s appropriation of knowledge later, but to the opposite effect, Joseph declares to Pharaoh, “Not I! God will answer for Pharaoh’s well-being” (Gen. 41:16). In both these successful ventures in dream-solving, which are crucial for Joseph’s future, Joseph seems to be exercising abilities which are not part of people’s standard repertoire, and Joseph himself realizes it. God is not an overt source of Joseph’s knowledge, however. Joseph’s initial credibility is due to his predictions to the courtiers proving correct. When Joseph presents Pharaoh with solutions to his dreams, he further ingratiates himself with Pharaoh by following them up with a detailed program for how to survive the famine he predicts. The first step is to locate a “discerning, wise man” to take charge over all of Egypt. Pharaoh is quick to see in Joseph the right man for the job. He says of Joseph to his servants, “Could we find a man like him, in whom is the spirit of God?” And then, to Joseph himself, “After God has made known to you all this, there is none as discerning and as wise as you” (Gen. 41:38–39). Pharaoh puts Joseph in charge of mobilizing the Land of Egypt because he takes “the spirit of God” to be residing in him. James Kugel observes that it is not that God overtly interacts with Joseph. What Pharaoh means to say is that, “His spirit is just permanently there.”34 Pharaoh appreciates that Joseph is “gifted.” He is counting on Joseph’s outstanding abilities and talents to serve him in carrying out his critical assignment. Does Pharaoh also take Joseph to have benefitted more specifically from God’s bounty—that there is something God has made known to Joseph. Does Pharaoh think that Joseph received an overt or covert revelation from God informing him of the meaning of the dreams, or of how to deal with the famine? In his interpreting the dreams, Joseph seems to be going way beyond what the data suggest. As to the program to save Egypt from famine, however, Joseph could plausibly have figured that out on his own.35

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In whatever way Pharaoh may have understood Joseph’s success, the narrative does not include any report of Joseph’s receiving any overt communication from God. Furthermore, in whatever way Pharaoh accounts for Joseph’s past performance, Pharaoh is not counting on God’s overt intervention to direct Joseph in the difficult task he assigns him. Pharaoh values Joseph for his being wise and discerning. God may have endowed Joseph with his wisdom and discernment, but in Pharaoh’s eyes Joseph is living by his wits, with extraordinary success. The gendering of knowledge which appeared in the earlier episodes is not in evidence here.

Dirty work Even with intuition acknowledged as a bona fide form of knowledge, one may look askance at the roles assigned to the matriarchs. With the roles of Sarah and Rebecca in mind, Cheryl Exum asks how it is that although the matriarchs are typically minor actors in the biblical drama, they act at these pivotal junctures and move the plot in the proper direction. Her answer is twofold: The roles played by the women in these scenes, despite their prominence, conform to patriarchal norms. The actions of the matriarchs “are allowed to advance the plot only insofar as they have important consequences for their sons, the future patriarchs.”36 Exum goes on to posit that the women are placed in the foreground in these scenes because of the compromising nature of their conduct. They are enlisted to do the “dirty work” that is necessary for the realization of God’s plan. This way the hands of the patriarchs remain clean. Exum sees the prominence of women in these scenes to be a strategic feature that serves the patriarchal agenda inscribed in the saga. Indeed, the astute and quick-witted moves on the part of the matriarchs earn such high regard in virtue of the role they play in the divine scheme of things, a scheme that is conceived in unmistakably patriarchal terms. The promise of progeny and the promise of the Land are given to Abraham and his descendants. As was noted earlier, the basic units of the nation are “fathers’ houses.” I propose, however, that in promoting their preferred candidates and in asserting their own visions of where the divine promise is leading, these women do not see themselves as subordinating their own interests to the interests of others. Sarah wants her son to be the sole heir to Abraham, and Rebecca wants the son she loves to receive the Abrahamic promise. They are acting for their own good, furthering their own agendas, which they do not see as opposed, and in fact, prove to be not opposed, to God’s design.37 Are Sarah and Rebecca left with dirty hands as a result of their intercessions on behalf of their sons? In our eyes, as in those of Exum, their behavior seems morally problematic. Moreover, in the aftermaths of each of these scenes, there are hints of censure. The banishment of Ishmael and Hagar is followed by a touching scene where God hears Ishmael’s cries in the desert

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and comes to his rescue, comforting his mother with the promise that He will make Ishmael into a great nation. The contrast between God’s solicitude towards Hagar and Ishmael and Sarah’s cold-blooded treatment of them is not to Sarah’s advantage. As for Rebecca, following her successful ploy, she must send her beloved son Jacob away, and although she expects to send for him to return, it turns out, it seems, that she never sees him again.38 That the course along which God’s plan unfolds includes episodes that are morally troubling, has, I propose, significance for the story.39 Are women being singled out to do the dirty work their male counterparts are spared? Recall that Abraham’s opposition to sending off Ishmael does not seem to be on moral grounds, but because he loves his son. Also, his sending Hagar and Ishmael off into the desert with only bread and a skin of water hardly speaks well for him. Note, moreover, that in the first instance of a younger son being favored over an older in the Book of Genesis, it is God Himself who is in the role of the father and looks favorably upon the younger Abel’s offering but does not regard that of Cain the older. Furthermore, in the fourth clear instancing of the pattern, it is the patriarch, Jacob, who promotes the younger Ephraim over his older brother Manasseh.

Epistemic success and epistemic virtue As we said earlier, to count as knowledge it is not enough that a true belief be simply a lucky guess. Nevertheless, in many ways one’s acquiring a true belief is standardly a matter of luck in that it depends upon factors which are not under one’s control. The proper functioning of one’s sensory organs is, for the most part, such a factor. When one witnesses a bank robbery because by chance one happened to be passing by the bank at the time, one may still be in a position to know what happened. Clearly, not all forms of luck are incompatible with knowledge. Both in instances of revealed knowledge and what I have called intuitive knowledge the subject’s acquiring a true belief is largely not a matter of his own doing. How then, does the latter form of knowledge measure against the former? Intuitive knowledge is not so easily granted a presumption of reliability. Were it not for God’s earlier revelation to Abraham that Isaac would be his heir and God’s instruction to Abraham to do as Sarah says, we would likely put little credence in Sarah’s impression of Ishmael’s behavior. Abraham rejects her demand until God intervenes. It is God’s support that endows her with authority. Likewise, Rebecca’s favoring Jacob over Esau is presaged by a divine message and Jacob’s receiving the blessing is subsequently confirmed by God. We do not rely simply on Rebecca’s motherly love to assure us that she is making the right choice. It is God’s confirmation after the fact that shows that her choice of Jacob was the right one. At the time she acts she is on her own; she receives no overt divine guidance or support. In this respect, the matriarch’s knowledge stands on shakier ground than that of the patriarchs.

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In another respect, however, the matriarch’s knowledge is firmer. Indeed, overtly revealed knowledge is of supreme value; it confers status, authority, and power. Knowing what God wants and what He plans to do helps one wind one’s way through life and lead others. However, that someone possesses knowledge because God revealed it to him, whether overtly or covertly, is not a matter of his own epistemic capacities. It says nothing about his intrinsic ability to acquire knowledge. By contrast, intuitive knowledge arises from an inherent ability, a reliable capacity, in McDowell’s terms, a virtue. The knower is characterized by this capacity; he is epistemically virtuous. He may be lucky for having this capacity, but given that he does, the likelihood that his beliefs are true is enduring. The reliability resides in him. Their revealed knowledge, when it is granted overtly, marks the patriarchs out as God’s chosen. If we think that Jacob or Joseph received covert revelations, that God imparted truths to them which were not available to people in general, then that too made them knowledgeable and gave them status. We may also count Sarah and Rebecca in the scenes we have been studying as having received covert revelations, but only in an extended sense. God did not grant them knowledge of truths but endowed them with the ability to uncover truths. The women in these scenes, whether, by God’s grace they are exercising natural capacities, or they are benefitting from divinely enhanced abilities, enjoy epistemic status.

Conclusion God dispenses knowledge at his discretion in the service of his own purposes. Those who receive this knowledge overtly and demonstrably become the leaders of the people. God’s work is also carried out covertly, however, sometimes via intuitions and emotions. The success of God’s plan is dependent on the latter as it is on the former. The knowledge revealed overtly by God to the patriarchs is essentially external to them, in a sense an adventitious gift.40 It does not bespeak intellectual worth. Without God’s explicit direction, the patriarchs are fallible human beings and we see them making mistakes. In the two episodes we examined, the women do not receive overt direction from God, but they seem to know how to play their part in the divine design. God may be to thank for their having that ability—acquiring virtues is not something over which we have very much control. However, even if one is endowed with divinely enhanced virtues, one’s virtues are part of who one is. I noted earlier that the epistemology in these narratives shares with the theology its egalitarian leanings. There is a further way, I want to suggest, in which the epistemology accords with the theology. Epistemic activism is not only not a virtue in these narratives, but is also, by and large, absent. The biblical hero—man or woman—is not distinguished by curiosity, initiative, or conscientiousness in the pursuit of knowledge. This epistemic passivity

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on the part of human beings complements, I propose, the forcefulness of God’s control over events. God reveals and He also conceals. Before He sets out on his plan to destroy Sodom, He asks Himself: “Shall I conceal from Abraham what I am about to do?” (Gen. 18.18). God considers whether to keep his plans to Himself, as is His wont. He decides instead to let Abraham into His confidence, thereby relaxing his control. By revealing his intentions to Abraham, He is giving Abraham a chance to intervene in His plans. It is clear, however, that God is making an exception for Abraham. As a rule, God does not announce in advance what He is about to do. The characters in the biblical drama act with only partial knowledge. Their ignorance of God’s plan leaves them free to make their own decisions—for the better, and sometimes, tragically, for the worse. Analyzing these stories in political or social terms places women in decidedly subordinate positions. Bringing an epistemological perspective to the reading of the stories leads to a more balanced appraisal of their attitude towards gender. The two scenes we have examined are dramatic instances of the reversal of the hierarchy. Indeed, the hierarchy is not often overturned. But these scenes suggest that epistemic standing is not essentially linked to gender. God assigns different epistemic roles to the various actors in His drama, and the best parts do not necessarily go to the men.

Notes 1 Cf. the account of the Netziv, in his commentary, Ha’amek Davar, of Eve’s attraction to the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge because it was “desirable as a source of wisdom.” Because Adam had, until then, been an intimate of God’s, he had received all his knowledge directly from God by way of revelation, and he had no human knowledge. The woman was not granted revelation, and she saw in the fruit of the Tree a source of natural human knowledge. 2 Esther Fuchs, Sexual Politics in the Biblical Narrative: Reading the Hebrew Bible as a Woman (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 11. 3 See, for example, J. Cheryl Exum, ‘“Mother in Israel’: A Familiar Figure Reconsidered,” in Letty M. Russell, ed., Feminist Interpretation of the Bible (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1985), 73–85; Savina J. Teubal, Sarah the Priestess (Athens, OH: Swallow Press, 1984), discerns in these scenes echoes or vestiges of an ancient religious order in which women served as priestesses, were perhaps perceived as goddesses incarnate, communicated with the deities, and enjoyed status and power. She sees these stories as reflecting power struggles between the mothers and the fathers for religious control. 4 There is an interpretive tradition according to which Rebecca mistook Isaac’s true intentions and had she not intervened all would have gone well. I will advert to this reading in Chapters 4 and 5. 5 Tikva Frymer-Kensky, “The Bible and Women’s Studies,” in L. Davidman and S. Tenenbaum, eds., Feminist Perspectives on Jewish Studies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 16–39, arguing from a comparison of the Biblical representation of God and that of the Gods and Goddesses of other near-eastern religions; Uriel Simon, Seek Peace and Pursue It: Topical Issues in the Light of the Bible, the Bible in the Light of Topical Issues (Tel Aviv: Yedi’ot Ahronot, 2002), Chapter 6 (Hebrew).

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Matriarchal knowledge

6 See Nicholas Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim That God Speaks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), Chapter 2. See, also, George Mavrodes, Revelation in Religious Belief (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988) chapter 2. 7 See Mavrodes, Revelation, 65ff. 8 This is a very loose characterization of an approach to knowledge known as “internalism,” in contrast to an “externalist” notion which will be discussed later. For discussions of these notions within the broader context of theory of knowledge, see Sven Bernecker and Fred Dretske, Knowledge: Readings in Contemporary Epistemology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), Part II. 9 See Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), Part III. 10 One of the classic works on this subject is Alvin I. Goldman, Epistemology and Cognition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986). 11 On the epistemic status of perceptual beliefs, see Alvin I. Goldman, “Discrimination and Perceptual Knowledge,” The Journal of Philosophy 73 (1976): 771–791; James Pryor, “The Skeptic and the Dogmatist,” Nous 34.4 (2000): 517–549. 12 See Yael Avrahami, The Sense of Scripture: Sensory Perception in the Hebrew Bible (London: T&T Clark, 2012), Chapter 5. 13 Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary (New York: Norton, 2004) ad loc., comments that it is likely that the place-name means “Twin Wells.” Note, however, that the place-name “Enaim,” in Hebrew, “‫ ”עיניים‬also means “eyes.” 14 John McDowell, “Virtue and Reason,” The Monist 62 (1979): 331–350, develops this notion of a virtue to account for moral behavior and includes in the notion the reliability of the capacity. I am extending it here to cover sensitivities to other kinds of situational requirements, i.e., those arising from the requirements of God’s plan. 15 McDowell, “Virtue and Reason,” 342. 16 See Robert Alter’s commentary ad loc., page 103. Particularly intriguing is Alter’s suggestion that we construe the meaning of the verb as “Isaacing-it,” that is, “that Sarah sees Ishmael presuming to play the role of Isaac, child of laughter, presuming to be the legitimate heir.” 17 This is my own translation, more literal than the one given by Alter. The expression “in the eyes of,” ‫בעיני‬, usually refers to a subjective opinion and sometimes to a mistaken one. See Avrahami, Sense of Scripture, 262. 18 Edward Greenstein, “Presenting Genesis 1, Constructively and Deconstructively,” Prooftexts 21 (2001): 1–22, observes that the expression ‫ בעיניו‬indicates personal appreciation, not moral evaluation. 19 In Chapter 4, I consider Abraham’s attitude towards Ishmael in comparison with Isaac’s attitude towards Esau. 20 Avrahami, Sense of Scripture, 251. 21 This is how God’s word to Rebecca is generally understood. However, some have taken the syntax of God’s pronouncement to be ambiguous, so that it is not clear which son will serve which. Radak on Gen. 25:23; Alter, Five Books of Moses, note to Gen. 25:23. I discuss this in Chapter 5. 22 Ha’amek Davar on Gen. 24:64–65. 23 Rebecca tells Isaac they must send Jacob away to prevent his marrying Canaanite women. 24 Bereshit Rabah, 67.9. 25 Christopher Hookway, “Epistemic Akrasia and Epistemic Virtue,” in Abrol Fairweather and Linda Zagzebski, eds., Virtue Epistemology: Essays on Epistemic

Matriarchal knowledge

26

27 28

29 30 31

32 33

34 35

36 37 38 39 40

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Virtue and Responsibility (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 178–199 at 193. See Alison M. Jaggar, “Love and Knowledge: Emotion in Feminist Epistemology,” in Ann Garry and Marilyn Pearsall, eds., Women, Knowledge, and Reality (New York: Routledge, 1996), 166–190; Michael Stocker and Elizabeth Hegeman, Valuing Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Christopher Hookway, Truth, Rationality, and Pragmatism: Themes from Pierce (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), Chapter 10. See, for example, Joseph E. LeDoux, The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996); Tobias Brosch, Klaus R. Scherer, Didier Grandjean, and David Sander, “Medical Intelligence: The Impact of Emotion on Perception, Attention, Memory, and DecisionMaking,” Swiss Medical Weekly 143 (2013): w13786. Pryor, “The Skeptic and the Dogmatist.” Michael R. DePaul and William Ramsey, eds., Rethinking Intuition: The Psychology of Intuition and Its Role in Philosophical Inquiry (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998). This is not to say that intuitions are infallible. Like perceptions, they can be mistaken. The point is that the term is reserved for reliable competencies. See Ernest Sosa, “Intuitions: Their Nature and Epistemic Efficacy,” Grazer Philosophische Studien 74 (2007): 51–67 at 58. Mavrodes, Revelation, 63ff., raises this possibility as conforming to the Causation Model and identifies it as the Calvin-Wolterstorff view. God is nevertheless present in the Joseph story. God is credited on many occasions, directly and indirectly, for Joseph’s success. See, for example, Gen. 39:3, 5 and 21–23. On God’s role Joseph’s success, see Michael V. Fox, “Wisdom in the Joseph Story,” Vetus Testamentum 51 (2001): 26–41. James L. Kugel, The Great Shift: Encountering God in Biblical Times (New York: Mariner Books, 2018), 34, 204. See Lindsay Wilson, Joseph Wise and Otherwise: The Intersection of Wisdom and Covenant in Genesis 37–50 (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster Press, 2004). In contrast to Kugel, Wilson, citing Pharaoh’s saying to Joseph, “After God has made known to you all this, there is none as discerning and wise as you” (Gen. 41:39), claims that, “Pharaoh does not say that God gave Joseph the ability to interpret the dream, but rather that he informed him of its meaning.” Wilson, p.  8. Ira Schnall proposes distinguishing between Joseph’s dream-solving abilities and his administrative acumen in this respect. J. Cheryl Exum, Fragmented Women: Feminist (Sub)versions of Biblical Narrative (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 103. Menachem Perry, “A Helpmate Beside Him: Rebecca and Her Bridegroom the Servant and the Coalition between God and the Women in the Biblical Narrative,” Alpayim 29 (2005): 193–278 (Hebrew). When Jacob returns to his father in Hebron, Gen. 35:27, Rebecca is not mentioned. I return to this point in later chapters. This is all the more true in light of the point we will make in a following chapter— that the patriarchs are not chosen for their special merit. Yehezkel Kaufmann, History of the Religion of Israel, Vol. 1, book 2 (Tel Aviv: Mossad Bialik, 1937) (Hebrew), describes the role of the prophet in the Bible to be to transmit what God tells him—he is God’s messenger and does not have an inherent prophetic nature or spirit.

3

Abraham A God-fearing man

“Take your son,” God bids Abraham, “your only one, whom you love, Isaac, and go forth to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I shall say to you” (Gen. 22:2). Abraham recognizes the voice. God’s earlier command to Abraham, the first, echoes in his ears. “Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” Then, the call was accompanied by the promise, “And I will make you a great nation and I will bless you . . . and all the clans of the earth through you shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:1–3). God’s promise frames Abraham’s journey. Abraham is now being tested— summoned to go forth to bring that promise to naught. After Abraham passes the test, God reaffirms the promise. I will greatly bless you and will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand on the shore of the sea. . . . And all the nations of the earth will be blessed through your seed. (Gen. 22:17–18) The reader is told from the start that it is a test—he knows that God does not really want Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. For Abraham, however, it is a real test. Abraham has it in his power to refuse to comply with the command. Whether Abraham passes the test depends on him; he must choose to obey the summons. God does not know in advance what Abraham will do. When Abraham demonstrates to God that he is prepared to offer up his child, God declares that now He knows that Abraham is a God-fearing man. It was not inevitable that Abraham earn that accolade.1 The promise accompanied Abraham along his journey from the land of his birth; at one juncture after another God repeats and expands upon it.2 Signs of its being fulfilled are very slow in coming, however. The years pass and Abraham remains childless. Abraham voices his growing despair to God and God responds by taking Abraham outdoors and bidding him, “Look up to the heavens and count the stars, if you can count them. . . . So shall be your seed” (Gen. 15:5). At that, Abraham “trusted in God, and He reckoned it to his merit.”3 His renewing his trust in God despite growing reasons

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for skepticism is counted to Abraham’s credit. The Covenant of the Pieces immediately follows, in which God further elaborates upon His promises (Gen. 15:7–21). Abraham’s trust in God is further tried. He learns that God will not fulfill His promise of the land during his lifetime and that his children “shall be strangers in a land not theirs and they shall be enslaved and afflicted four hundred years” (Gen. 15:13). His hopes for an heir are raised by the birth of Ishmael, only to be dashed by God’s insistence that Ishmael is not the child of the covenant. The son through which these blessings will be realized will be born to him from his wife Sarah, “and you shall call his name Isaac and I will establish My covenant with him as an everlasting covenant, for his seed after him (Gen. 17:19). Finally, when he is 100 years old, Sarah’s child, Isaac, is born to him. God explains to Abraham that he must send away Ishmael, “for through Isaac shall your seed be proclaimed” (Gen. 21:13).4 And now the summons. God spells out for Abraham the cost of what He is demanding of him. Not simply, “Take Isaac,” he instructs him, but “Take your son, your only one, whom you love.” Abraham is silent, but in the words of God’s summons we hear Abraham’s agony. Isaac is Abraham’s beloved son but also, at this point, his only son. He is Abraham’s only hope for posterity; his death is Abraham’s annihilation. What Abraham is being required to do, moreover, is to commit murder, perhaps a particularly heinous form of murder, the murder of a son. Not long earlier we witnessed a mother’s distress at the prospect of her son’s death. When Hagar ran out of water in the dessert she flung Ishmael under a bush and went off to where she could not see him for she could not bear to see him die.5 How much the worse for Abraham who must take the knife to his son! As Abraham responded unquestioningly to God’s initial command to go forth, now he does the same. Although the earlier promise reverberates in God’s summons now, God makes no mention of it. Pointedly, however, the episode is introduced by the phrase, “And it happened after these things” (Gen. 22:1). The twelfth-century Bible exegete, Rabbi Shmuel son of Meir, known by the acronym “Rashbam,” takes the phrase to refer to the immediately preceding story of Abraham’s peace treaty with Abimelech.6 We may look further back and take the phrase to refer to an earlier event in Abraham’s life—to when Abraham sent away his son Ishmael. He did so on the strength of God’s promise that Isaac would be the one to carry on his name. I propose that we look even further back—that the phrase directs us to consider this test in the context of the many promises God made to Abraham, beginning from His first call to him—promises of seed and greatness and land. All these may be within the purview of those “things,” after which God tests Abraham.7 The demand God is now making of Abraham patently negates the promise. How does Abraham regard God’s contravening his long-standing and oft-repeated promises, His suddenly turning His back on His covenant with him? Does Abraham simply discount the promise when he hears God’s call? Not only has it accompanied him and sustained him over these many years

72 Abraham but also his special relation to God is predicated on his reliance on the promise. The promise is a gift of grace from God, but it is also a challenge to him to believe in it and live his life by it. Thus, to discount the promise would not simply be to cast doubt on God’s integrity, but it would also be to abandon his calling to believe in God’s trustworthiness. It is to the God of the covenant that Abraham is being called to sacrifice his son. How are we to understand Abraham’s cognitive state as he acquiesces to God’s demand, in the face, not only of personal devastation, but of the sudden and utter reversal of his expectations for the future, expectations which God Himself had consistently fostered? How does Abraham go forth so purposefully in the face of such good reason to pause? Does Abraham give up on the promise after having struggled so long to hold on to it? For us, watching Abraham obediently and submissively fulfilling the divine command, Abraham is an enigma.8 The Akedah (the Binding of Isaac, Genesis 22:1–19) is a momentous chapter in the history of the children of Abraham and a seminal event for all people who look to Abraham as their spiritual ancestor or as a religious ideal. It establishes Abraham as a hero in God’s eyes, a paragon. We know that Abraham passed the test, but what is there about Abraham that this trial reveals? What is displayed by Abraham that the story is celebrating? Because the description of Abraham is so sparse, limited to a quick report of his external behavior, the narrative is open to a diversity of readings. In the different pictures Abraham embodies different religious ideals and manifests different religious virtues. I shall examine some of these views of Abraham and then present him through my own eyes.

“We will worship and we will return to you” (Gen. 22:4–5) We watch Abraham closely to look for clues to the mystery. On the very next morning after receiving God’s command, Abraham quickly makes all the necessary preparations for carrying out his mission and sets out for the place to which God sent him. He has with him his son Isaac, the wood, ready for the offering, the fire and the cleaver and two young servants. We hear nothing from him until the third day of the trip. On that day Abraham catches sight of his destination from afar. Abraham readies himself for the final stage of his journey and breaks his silence. He turns to his servants, “You stay here with the ass. The boy and I will go up there; we will worship and we will return to you” (Gen. 22:4–5). A bit further on, now that the two of them are alone, Isaac asks Abraham, “Here are the firestone and the wood; but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?” Abraham answers, “God will see to the sheep for His burnt offering, my son” (Gen. 22: 7–8). Speculations abound as to what lies behind Abraham’s words to his servants and to Isaac.9 Abraham’s actions at receiving God’s command bespeak the intention to carry it out; he sets out the next morning to sacrifice Isaac. When he reaches the place God designated for the sacrifice, he proceeds straightaway to prepare for it. He binds Isaac to the altar. He reaches for the

Abraham 73 knife. He believes that he is about to sacrifice Isaac. If this is the belief which Abraham held throughout the course of his trip, how do we explain that on the way he gives his servants and Isaac to understand that all will end well? Perhaps Abraham is lying—we have seen him take liberties with the truth before.10 It would not be difficult to explain or even to justify Abraham’s deliberately hiding the truth from them. How could he bring himself to speak the unspeakable? There were also practical considerations. Were he to reveal his intentions to the servants they might try to prevent him from carrying them out. As to Isaac, it would be cruel for Abraham to reveal to him earlier than necessary what lay in store for him. Perhaps Abraham also fears that if Isaac knew he would try to resist. On the other hand, if Abraham is lying, he must believe that Isaac will discover the truth very shortly. When Isaac does, his horror at realizing that his father is about to slaughter him will be all the greater for his realizing that his father had been duping him. Considering Abraham’s unbearable distress, a psychological explanation might be in order.11 It would start from the very reasonable assumption that Abraham desperately wanted it to be the case that he would not lose his son. It might proceed to the proposal that Abraham’s desires triggered and sustained automatic, unconscious, biasing processes which led to his forming beliefs on the basis of what he wanted to be true, rather than on the basis of his evidence.12 On this account, then, in the course of his journey up the mountain Abraham came to believe that all would be well because that is what he wanted to believe. Abraham is not guilty of deliberately misleading either his servants or Isaac on this view but rather is himself misled by his desires. Although viewing Abraham as a victim of self-deception may diminish his status as an epistemic agent, it frees him of the moral stain of having lied to his servants, and especially, to his son. To describe Abraham as engaging in self-deception implies, however, that a disinterested appraisal of his evidence would point to the opposite of what he told them.13 The charge of self-deception assumes that God’s command to offer up Isaac has greater evidential weight than the many promises God made to Abraham. Is it the case, however, that Abraham’s evidence, were it judged objectively, would require him to believe that he will return without Isaac? Can one definitively assess the relative epistemic weight of the summons as against that of the promises? On my view, the totality of Abraham’s evidence as he walks up the mountain allows for the belief that Isaac will return. This is not to say that his evidence mandates that belief. If the relative weight of the summons as against the promises is incalculable or indeterminate, Abraham would be justified epistemically in remaining in doubt, and possibly also justified in taking either position. That given his evidence Abraham is justified either in remaining in doubt or in adopting either of the two beliefs about the fate of Isaac, coheres with my construal of Abraham’s doxastic state as he climbs the mountain. As I shall try to show, during the trip Abraham vacillates between the two beliefs—that he is about to lose Isaac and that Isaac will return with him— and I shall argue that his evidence supports either of the beliefs.

74 Abraham There is, however, a further question. Is Abraham beholden to his evidence and should he be? I shall now examine two portrayals of Abraham, one of Soren Kierkegaard14 and the other of Eleonore Stump,15 at the heart of which are not epistemic concerns but spiritual and ethical ideals. In both portrayals, what Abraham tells his servants and his son is what he really believes. In the latter he is extolled for completely trusting in God that he will not lose Isaac; in the former he is held up as a paragon for his holding both that belief and also the contradictory belief that he will lose him. In my own portrayal of Abraham I bring an epistemic perspective to Abraham’s beliefs—to the beliefs he holds when he receives the summons, to those he holds as he climbs the mountain, and to those he holds when he reaches for the cleaver. Abraham’s evidence remains the same throughout—the echo of God’s summons confronts the memory of His promises. What, however, does he in fact believe during that interval of time? I propose that although Abraham’s epistemic reasons for his beliefs remain the same all along, his beliefs waver—at times he believes he is on the way to giving up Isaac, but at other times he does not. I invoke a theory of belief according to which one’s feelings and attitudes towards one’s evidence may influence what one believes even when one’s judgment of one’s evidence remains the same. The ordeal Abraham undergoes is charged with emotional and spiritual tension. He brings to it his religious values and commitments as well as his love for his son. The changing circumstances Abraham experiences during the various stages of his test, I propose, evoke changes in his feelings and attitudes towards his evidence and give rise to changes in his belief. Although he does not judge the validity of the summons or that of the promises any differently, and although he does not reassess their epistemic weight, what he believes when he hears God’s voice commanding him is not the same as what he believes when his destination comes into view. What he believed then is not the same as what he believes when he has reached the designated site. Essential to my reading is that the attitudes and feelings Abraham brings to his evidence are expressions of his singular spiritual qualities. The beliefs they evoke emerge from the way he responds to his evidence. The beliefs attest to his religious merit. Abraham’s beliefs waver as he climbs the mountain, but, I shall argue, at the culmination of his ordeal, when he takes the cleaver to slaughter his son, he does so in the belief that he is about to lose him. This shows him to be the “God-fearing man” exalted by God. The doxastic state I ascribe to Abraham here differs markedly from that which characterizes Abraham in the readings of the Akedah by Kierkegaard and Stump, which I present in the following section.

The knight of faith Abraham’s instructions to his servant boys and the assurance he gives to Isaac lend support to a longstanding Christian interpretive tradition according to which, although Abraham obediently made his way to the place that

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God showed him, he had faith that he would not, in the end, lose Isaac.16 Abraham’s faith was not an epistemic virtue. Abraham’s trust in God was a spiritual excellence. This reading harks back to Hebrews chapter 11, where the Akedah is seen as prefiguring the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Abraham is credited for having offered Isaac up “by faith.” “He considered the fact that God is able even to raise someone from the dead” (Hebrews 11:17). The nineteenth-century thinker, Soren Kierkegaard, and the contemporary philosopher, Eleonore Stump17 elaborate upon this tradition. For them both, Abraham’s trust in God is not a conclusion from his evidence, but a matter of faith. Kierkegaard’s portrait of Abraham has been and still is a major subject of countless discussions of the Akedah. The different facets of his interpretation have been examined with great care. Stump’s interpretation of the Akedah is part of an extensive project in which she draws on the biblical narrative to support her construction of a theodicy. Stump’s work is far-reaching and touches upon complex theological issues. A systematic discussion of the contributions of each of these thinkers to the study of the Akedah is beyond the scope of this work. In what follows I shall present a sketch of Kierkegaard’s and Stump’s readings of the Akedah with an eye to addressing the questions I raised earlier. I will focus on a central assumption of each of these readings and take issue with it. I will then take up what is common to both the readings, in virtue of which, I will argue, they do not provide for the ideal of the God-fearing man, which Abraham fulfills in this episode.

Kierkegaard Kierkegaard does not look to penetrate the mystery of Abraham’s beliefs in terms of the epistemic grounds he has for holding them. He explores the spiritual dimensions of Abraham’s test and focuses sharply on its moral dimensions. In the foreground of Kierkegaard’s picture of the Akedah, Abraham’s ethical obligation to love his son confronts God’s summons to bring Isaac up as a burnt offering. Abraham experiences the trial as a dilemma in which he must choose between performing a morally repugnant act and disregarding God’s command.18 The ethical is universal and the ethical task of the individual is to abolish his particularity. From the ethical perspective, asserting one’s particularity is a sin; not to do so in this case would be to fail the test. Abraham, by the power of his will, as Kierkegaard depicts it, puts his ethical task aside. He places himself as an individual higher than the universal, subordinating the universal to the particular. The command to sacrifice Isaac requires of Abraham to place himself in a direct relationship to God; it requires of him a “teleological suspension of the ethical.”19 Kierkegaard points to another paradox in Abraham’s story. Abraham truly believes he will lose Isaac, but at the same time, by performing an act of faith, he wholeheartedly believes that although he will sacrifice Isaac, somehow he

76 Abraham will not, in the end, lose Isaac, “in virtue of the fact that with God all things are possible.” For Kierkegaard the logically absurd is not beyond God’s ability.20 This logically absurd belief arises from a deliberate act of will. Abraham makes two movements: he makes the infinite movement of resignation and gives up Isaac . . . but in the next place, he makes the movement of faith every instant.21 By dint of his executing this dialectical motion, Abraham earns the title “Knight of Faith.” Not simply obedience and devotion to God then, but confict and contradiction are at the heart of Abraham’s trial.22 Kierkegaard peers at the inner workings of Abraham’s soul and fnds them “inaccessible to thought.”23 This, for him, is Abraham’s greatness. Abraham’s faith is, a paradox which is capable of transforming a murder into a holy act well-pleasing to God, a paradox which gives Isaac back to Abraham, which no thought can master, because faith begins precisely where thinking leaves off.24 Kierkegaard’s picture is, as he observes, comforting. Abraham relinquishes everything and then grasps everything. Resignation goes hand in hand with hope. Abraham’s faith not only renders the prospect of sacrificing Isaac less frightening, it also mitigates the ethical revulsion he feels about what he is about to do. Yet Abraham’s faith “has resignation as its presupposition.”25 He is wracked by anxiety; he is kept sleepless. Even as he believes that God will not require him to give up Isaac, he is willing to do so and believes that that is what God wants of him. Kierkegaard acknowledges the full brunt of God’s demand. Abraham passes the test because he is prepared to murder his son. However, for this not to be morally reprehensible Abraham must, at the same time as he believes that he is about to murder his son, believe that he will not murder him. He must be resigned to losing Isaac and at the same time believe that he will not lose Isaac. To give up the former is to fail in his duty to God; to give up the latter while holding on to the former is to be guilty of intending to murder Isaac. Kierkegaard’s Abraham is forced into paradox. He must sustain this paradox in order to preserve his spiritual and moral integrity. Kierkegaard pictures Abraham’s cognitive state as complex, fraught with conflict and contradiction. Abraham acts by virtue of the absurd.26

Killing an innocent child In Kierkegaard’s reading of the Akedah, Abraham’s suspension of the ethical is a key to his passing the test. Murder is plainly condemned in the Genesis narrative—witness God’s reaction to Cain’s killing Abel. After Noah leaves the ark, God declares that, “He who sheds human blood, by humans his

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blood will be shed” (Gen. 9:6). There are good grounds, nevertheless, for not viewing God’s test of Abraham in ethical terms. I propose that it is not the ethical horror of committing a murder that Abraham is challenged to contend with. What God is demanding of Abraham is that he give up what is dearest to him in the world. In summoning Abraham to the test, God is explicit about the sacrifice he is demanding—Abraham must offer up on the altar his only, beloved, son. Isaac is again described as Abraham’s only son when God praises Abraham after he passes the test. That the son he is murdering is an only son and a beloved one does not make it any the worse morally, but it does make it more emotionally wrenching.27 Furthermore, Abraham does not appear to be struggling with the moral dimensions of doing what God requires of him; he does not seem to regard God’s demand as morally outrageous.28 My view is supported by what many readers have wondered at—Abraham’s failure to protest God’s brutal demand.29 Abraham’s reticence in this instance, following closely on his tenacious haggling with God over the fate of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, is striking. The difference in Abraham’s behavior may be explained by the difference in the roles God assumes in the two episodes. At the beginning of the Sodom story, we hear God musing: Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, since Abraham is to become a great and populous nation and all the nations of the earth are to bless themselves by him? For I have singled him out,30 that he may instruct his children and his posterity to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is just and right, in order that the Lord may bring about for Abraham what He has promised. (Gen. 18: 17–19) God has decided to take Abraham into His confidence—to disclose to Abraham what He is about to do—in virtue of the fact that Abraham will teach his children to follow God’s way in doing what is just and right. That doing the just and the right is God’s way sets the stage for the story. God explains to Abraham that He is investigating Sodom and Gomorrah to see if they deserve to be punished. If they do, He will destroy them. Having cast Himself in the role of judge, God makes Himself accountable to principles of justice and Abraham can chastise Him for violating those principles. By comparison, the Akedah narrative opens by telling us that God is putting Abraham to the test. In contrast to God’s behavior towards Abraham in connection with Sodom and Gomorrah, God is now concealing from Abraham what he is about to do. When He demands of Abraham to offer up Isaac, God offers no justification, no explanation. There is no high ground for Abraham to take. God assumes the role of master. His authority is unconditional, his dominion all-embracing. God’s praise of Abraham after he passes the test is for Abraham’s not having withheld Isaac from Him.

78 Abraham God’s words suggest that in agreeing to sacrifice Isaac to Him Abraham was agreeing to relinquish Isaac to a rightful claimant—that Isaac never rightfully belonged to Abraham. Abraham, in the end, is prevented from making the sacrifice, but the aftermath of the story supports Abraham’s belief that he was right to agree to make it. Although God rescinds his order, He does not renounce His right to give such an order or place it out of bounds. He praises and rewards Abraham for his readiness to fulfill it.

Stump Like Kierkegaard, Stump does not concern herself with epistemic questions about Abraham’s beliefs, but focuses on his spiritual achievements. Also, like Kierkegaard, she is appalled by what God commands Abraham to do. In her reading, however, Abraham is not required to pit his moral commitments against his loyalty to God, but to pit his faith in the goodness of God against the force of God’s summons. A good God would not renege on his promises. He would not treat people in hurtful and deceitful ways. Internal conflict is not a sign of spiritual exaltation, according to Stump, but a state to be overcome. Stump’s Abraham is not called upon to embrace the absurd, to believe in a paradox. Stump reads the course of Abraham’s encounters with God as a series of lessons administered by God to teach Abraham to trust wholeheartedly in His goodness.31 Abraham, however, did not naturally emerge from these lessons with an unfaltering faith in God’s goodness. He is now being called upon to achieve that faith—to believe that he will not be required to carry out the monstrous deed. As Stump reads the biblical account, although Abraham enjoyed a long and intense relationship with God, throughout the greater part of it, his faith in God was infected with “double-mindedness”; he did not have complete confidence in God’s goodness and reliability. The purpose of the trial and its effect is to do good to Abraham, to stretch him spiritually and refine him. When God commands him to bring Isaac up as a burnt offering, Abraham finally takes an unambiguous stand—he entrusts Isaac to God in the utter certainty that God will not break His promise or require the death of an innocent child. With Isaac before him bound on the altar, Abraham reaches out for the cleaver to slaughter him, but his doing so does not express his being ready to lose Isaac because he does not believe that he will lose him. By virtue of his believing that he will not lose Isaac, Stump’s Abraham passes the test. For Kierkegaard, resignation is a necessary presupposition of Abraham’s faith; for Stump it is its antithesis. Stump writes: So Abraham passes this test not in case he is willing to give up Isaac, as most commentators assume, but just in case he believes that if he obeys God’s command to sacrifice Isaac, he will not be ending Isaac’s life. He passes the test only if he believes that in obeying God he is not giving up Isaac.32

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Kierkegaard’s Abraham is caught in a dilemma—what God demands of him is in flagrant violation of an ethical prohibition. Stump challenges Kierkegaard’s view. “Why would a good God want to set his authority against morality, rather than with it?” she asks.33 On Stump’s reading, Abraham faces no dilemma. Not complexity and paradox, but single-mindedness and coherence are the hallmark of the knight of faith. Such faith is not achieved by an act of will. It is, in Stump’s rendering, a trait of character, a virtue, which Abraham develops in the course of his long years under God’s tutelage. The faith required of Abraham does not develop automatically. Although it is grounded in Abraham’s experience of God, Abraham must rise to the challenge of making it complete.

Because he did not withhold his only son Kierkegaard and Stump are alike in transposing the test from the demand to give up Isaac to the demand to believe, whether in part or entirely, that God will not take him. For Kierkegaard, the belief constitutes only one half of a contradictory doxastic state, but it is the key to Abraham’s moral guiltlessness and spiritual greatness. On Stump’s view, for Abraham to believe that he would lose Isaac would be to fail the test. To take Abraham to believe that Isaac will not be lost to him is a good way to understand how Abraham sets himself to fulfill God’s demand. Also, both Kierkegaard’s and Stump’s readings solve the riddle of Abraham’s parting words to his servants and his answer to Isaac’s question. Abraham is straightforwardly telling what he takes to be the truth, according to Stump, and according to Kierkegaard, what he believes to be part of the truth. God’s words, as I hear them, say otherwise, however. When the angel stops Abraham’s hand, he proclaims that God now knows that Abraham is a God-fearing man “because he did not withhold his only son from Him” (Gen. 22:12). Indeed, Abraham did not slaughter Isaac, but he did not have to in order to convince God. God discerned in Abraham’s raising his hand Abraham’s relinquishment of Isaac. The same phrase is repeated by the angel shortly afterward, this time explicitly in God’s name. When Abraham raised the knife, God discovered what he was seeking. God saw in that gesture Abraham’s intention to give Isaac up to Him.34 I maintain that taking Abraham to be raising the cleaver in the belief that he would not lose Isaac, as Kierkegaard and Stump would have it, denies him the due that God renders him. The stronger Abraham’s faith would be that “in obeying God he is not giving up Isaac,” the less credit he would deserve for not withholding his son. Abraham earns God’s praise because he chooses to obey God’s command despite his believing that, as a result, Isaac will be lost to him.35 Stump’s picture of Abraham and mine differ in the ideals we see inscribed in this narrative. For Stump, Abraham’s challenge is to believe that because God is good and loving, Abraham’s suffering will be redeemed in his “receiving the desires of his heart.” God has promised Abraham that He will establish His covenant with Isaac and that through Isaac Abraham’s seed will be

80 Abraham proclaimed. This is what Abraham has his heart set on. For this Isaac must live. Abraham is “glorious,” according to Stump, in that he trusts in God to preserve Isaac’s life even as he goes to sacrifice him.36 As I read this narrative Abraham is glorified precisely because he goes to the sacrifice believing that he will lose his heart’s desire. He is being challenged to break his heart and give Isaac up to God. Not faith in God’s securing one against heartbreak, but readiness to obey God even at the expense of one’s heart’s desires, is the ideal which Abraham holds up. Moreover, the ordeal of the Akedah does not teach Abraham to have faith that God would never call for the death of an innocent child. At the end of the story there is no rainbow in the clouds to signal God’s commitment never again to require a father to sacrifice his son. That Isaac understood, at least in retrospect, that his father had intended to slaughter him may be discernible in the aftermath of the present episode. On their journey up the mountain, Abraham and Isaac took leave of the servants who were accompanying them. Continuing along the way, “the two walked on together” (Gen. 22:8). The journey back from Moriah presents a different picture. After Abraham passes the test “Abraham returned to his servants, and they departed together for Beer-Sheba” (Gen. 22:19). Isaac is not a member of the party. We are not witness to any further contact between father and son. We next see Isaac when he first encounters Rebecca, coming from the vicinity of Beer-lahai-roi (Gen. 24:62). Abraham was last reported settled in Beer-Sheba. The earlier rapport between father and son does not seem to have survived the experience on the mountain- top. Like Kierkegaard and Stump, I too see Abraham caught in a struggle. On my view, it is in part an epistemic conflict. Having charted the course of his life these many years by God’s word Abraham now sees God’s word come to nothing. Faced with the prospect of losing Isaac, how does he relate to the promises God made him? In what follows I will examine two answers to this question, which attempt to reduce the dissonance Abraham experiences by diminishing, each in its own way, the gravity of the promises, thus changing Abraham’s epistemic situation. In doing so, each of them, in effect, may be denying Abraham the full measure of esteem which is due him.

Forgoing the promise According to one midrash, Abraham could have used the promises as grounds for objecting to God’s demand. In that midrash Abraham seeks credit from God for not having done so. Abraham says to God: Lord of all ages, when you said to me, “Take your son, your only son” (Gen. 22:2), I could have replied to you, “Yesterday you said to me, ‘For through Isaac shall your seed be acclaimed’ (Gen. 21:12), and now you say, ‘Take your son, your only son’” (Gen. 22:2). I did not reply to you that way, God forbid. Rather, I suppressed my love so as to carry out your will.37

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Abraham takes God’s promises seriously enough that he believes he could enlist them to free himself from God’s command. Were he to do so, God would have acceded to the legitimacy of his claim, he believes. Abraham chooses not to make use of this tactic. He voluntarily forgoes this option because he believes that it is God’s will that Isaac be brought up to him. This reading allows for Abraham to acknowledge God’s promises and nevertheless agree to bring up Isaac to God. Ascribing this choice to Abraham bears upon our picture of him. Until now we have been assuming that Abraham’s only alternative to bringing up Isaac was to disobey God’s command. We admire him for not doing so. On this picture Abraham had what might seem to be, on the face of it, a more acceptable alternative. He could have invoked the promises to fend off God’s demand. Do we admire him for not doing so? Perhaps, if he had this way out, he should have taken it. Another possibility is that Abraham gives up on the promise because he believes he has forfeited it as a result of his own wrongdoing. The story of the Akedah, as I noted earlier, opens with the verse: “And it happened after these things that God tested Abraham” (Gen. 22:1). Rashbam interprets the phrase, “And it happened after these things,” as marking a connection between the story of the Akedah and the story that precedes it. The latter recounts how Abraham made a treaty with Abimelech, king of the Philistines. According to Rashbam, Abraham’s making this treaty angered God because God had given the land of the Philistines to Abraham, and the Philistines were slated to be wiped out by the Children of Israel. Rashbam interprets the phrase “and God tested Abraham” to mean that God reprimanded Abraham, saying: You were so proud of the son I gave you that you went and made a treaty between you and your sons and their sons. Now go and bring him up as a sacrifice and see what good your making treaties did you!38 Rashbam takes God’s promises to Abraham to be signifcant and is looking to justify their abrogation. Note, however, that if Abraham views God’s commanding him to offer up Isaac as a punishment for his misdeed, his readiness to comply is somewhat less remarkable.

Affirming the promise That Abraham had such a long history of promises from God, that God had made a covenant with him that he would be the father of a great nation, may also serve as grounds for criticizing Abraham for accepting the summons as he did. In one midrashic source, Abraham is accused of misinterpreting God’s summons. When he said, “Now I know that you are God-fearing,” he meant that considering that you knew the promises that were made to you, you

82 Abraham should have inferred other meanings from the command to bring up Isaac as a burnt offering, which would not require slaughtering him and burning him. But you, because of your excessive perfectionism, did not stop to consider how to interpret my injunction in accordance with my promises. Rather, you gave it the most severe possible interpretation due to your fear and your striving for perfection.39 God commanded Abraham to bring up Isaac for a burnt offering, and Abraham mistakenly took that to mean that Isaac should actually be slaughtered and burned. The tendency to be strict and exacting, on the view of the midrash, is not an unadulterated good—striving for perfection may be a religious failing. In his unquestioning determination to uphold God’s singular command, a command that was, on the face of it, so implausible, in the light of the promises Abraham had received from Him, Abraham’s good intentions brought him to the brink of disaster. To criticize Abraham’s performance requires a major departure from the plain and obvious meaning of God’s words. Although I differ from Kierkegaard and Stump as to what virtue Abraham displays in his response to God’s summons, my reading of the story agrees with theirs, that Abraham passes the test with distinction. In God’s designating Abraham a “God-fearing man,” God is conferring the highest praise on Abraham unreservedly. Because of what he has done, God tells Abraham, He will bless him and multiply his seed “because you have listened to my voice” (Gen. 22:18). Furthermore, the Genesis narratives do not hold up questioning and criticism as ideal cognitive states. The heroes in Genesis may struggle in order to carry out God’s will, but when He talks to them, they recognize His voice without difficulty.40 The appropriate attitude to God’s call is submission. In the one outstanding episode in Genesis where God is challenged by his devotee, Abraham’s intercession on behalf of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, not only is Abraham not praised for his efforts, but they are also, in fact, in vain. Indeed, God does not in the end bring death upon the innocent together with the guilty, but not by acceding to Abraham’s appeal to spare the entire city but rather by extricating Lot and his family. I return, then, to my earlier thesis that if Abraham is to be worthy of God’s praise, if he is to be the God-fearing man God declares him to be, he must set himself to slaughter his son in the belief that as a result his son will be lost to him. Furthermore, to understand Abraham’s doing so, we must take Abraham to have faith in God; he must believe that God deserves his loyalty. Recall that Abraham “trusted in God, and He reckoned it to his merit” (Gen. 15:6). God’s promises are not meant to be just an excuse for Abraham’s not obeying God’s command; they are also a good reason for Abraham to believe that he must obey them. On this view, then, Abraham is faced with a paradox similar to that which Kierkegaard sees him facing. Kierkegaard’s Abraham must answer God’s

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summons, while holding on to the belief that he will lose Isaac because that is what God wants of him and also, simultaneously, holding on to the belief that he will not lose Isaac—to clear him of the moral stain of murder. He needs to persist in the latter belief in order to stay clear of moral atrocity. My picture of Abraham, in order to account for the praises and blessings God subsequently confers on him, requires Abraham to have answered God’s summons in the belief that he will lose Isaac. On the other hand, Abraham believes that he will not lose Isaac because he has faith in God’s promise. On my version, however, Abraham does not need to hold on to the contradiction as he does on Kierkegaard’s. Abraham does not need to hold both beliefs simultaneously—his moral integrity does not depend on the latter offsetting the former. How, then, on my view, do the two contradictory beliefs reside within Abraham? In both Kierkegaard’s and Stump’s endeavors to provide an account of Abraham’s cognitive state, they both ascribe to him the same belief or set of beliefs throughout the entire ordeal. In Kierkegaard’s account Abraham’s greatness is in his holding on to two contradictory beliefs as he undergoes the test. Stump has Abraham passing the test because he comes to believe wholeheartedly in God’s goodness. I suggest that Abraham’s cognitive state is more changeable than it is taken to be in the previously mentioned accounts.

Belief vs. judgment In whatever way one chooses to consider Abraham’s cognitive state during his ordeal, as an instance of self-deception, as the result of an act of will, or as an acquired virtue, one is ascribing to Abraham a set of beliefs. To gain insight into Abraham’s doxastic state from when he hears God’s fateful command to when he hears its revocation, I turn to a theory of belief which distinguishes between the logical and attitudinal components of belief. During the course of his journey to the Land of Moriah, the evidence that logically supports what he is to believe, his epistemic reasons for believing, remain the same. The memories of God’s repeated promises engage the very recent memory of the summons. However, these memories do not just serve as evidence. The experiences they preserve also affect Abraham’s attitude towards his evidence. These attitudes change during his journey up the mountain. To appreciate the distinction I am about to enlist, I begin with the commonplace that to believe that p is to believe that p is true.41 It would seem to follow, then, that if I judge that my evidence supports the conclusion that p is true I believe that p.42 This intuition is captured by Jonathan E. Adler: Necessarily, if in full awareness one regards one’s evidence or reasons as adequate to the truth of p then one believes that p, and if in full awareness one attends to one’s believing that p then one regards one’s evidence or reasons as adequate to the truth of p.43

84 Abraham That believing one’s evidence supports the truth of p is equivalent to believing p is a matter of controversy, however. Nishi Shah proposes that this tight linkage between belief and judgment does not hold in all circumstances. Only when someone is deliberating about what to believe, can the question of whether to believe that p not be separated from the question of whether p is true—that is, not be separated from the question whether the evidence I have supports the truth of p. When one is deliberating, one necessarily takes the two questions to have the same answer; the judgment that one’s reasons support the truth of p determines the answers to both. Only from that perspective, “the perspective of first-person doxastic deliberation,” does the identity between judgment and belief hold.44 We are not always in a deliberative mode when we make judgments about our evidence, however. At times we may judge that our evidence indicates the truth of p, but our believing does not follow our reasoning. The logic by which we reach our conclusion does not carry the corresponding belief in its tow. What may stand between making a judgment and believing its conclusion? Shah and J. David Velleman explain that belief is not just an epistemic relation to a proposition based on one’s evidence. It requires, in addition to the judgement as to the adequacy of the evidence, “acceptance.” In order to believe we must regard the conclusion arrived at as true. Judgments are made by an act of reasoning; acceptance is an attitude which, when it takes place, we “find ourselves with.” Our attitude to our judgment, whether it seems true to us or not, may be elicited by our reasoning, but it does not necessarily follow from it. For the most part when we judge that our evidence supports the truth of p, we find ourselves with an attitude of acceptance towards p. We believe p. But not always. “One may find oneself as yet unconvinced by one’s own judgment.”45 Undoubtedly, there is a strong tendency for someone to believe that p if he thinks he has good reason to believe it. Alfred R. Mele explains why it does not always happen. He distinguishes between one’s epistemic evaluation of the reason-giving force of the evidence supporting a belief and the motivational force of that evidence on one’s forming the belief.46 An epistemic evaluation of the reason-giving force of the evidence is a function of how much support the evidence provides for the proposition’s being true. The motivational force of an item is a function of those of its features which have an impact upon the subject’s consciousness. Which items stand out vividly for the subject and which hold his attention are determined only in part by the qualities of the items themselves. It is also affected by the qualities of the subject—his emotional state, his desires, interests, values—his receptivity to the causal properties of the items which influence his attitude towards the proposition.47 Items which the subject judges to provide only weak reasons for believing p may, because of his cognitive state, capture his attention and distract him from competing items, and he may believe p as a result.

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On Mele’s analysis, someone can hold a belief without denying what he takes to be the good evidence he has against it. He may hold what he himself takes to be a poorly grounded belief because his attention is drawn to those items of evidence which provide some epistemic support for it, and he does not focus on the opposing evidence.48 Furthermore, without there being any change in the way the subject evaluates the reason-giving force of his evidence, its motivational force may change. Different circumstances may cause it to appear saliently or vividly before his mind. Thus, he may go from believing to disbelieving p without acknowledging any change in the import of his evidence. Thomas Scanlon illustrates how reasons can have different effects on our thought processes when considered in different circumstances: I may know, for example, that despite Jones’s pretensions to be a loyal friend, he is in fact merely an artful deceiver. Yet when I am with him I may find the appearance of warmth and friendship so affecting that I find myself thinking, although I know better, that he can be relied on after all.49 The hero takes himself to “know” that Jones is a deceiver—that is to say, he judges his evidence of Jones’s false-heartedness to be very strong.50 Yet, when he is with him he is drawn to the more vivid and emotionally compelling evidence—Jones’s appearance of warmth and friendship—which has the effect of eclipsing his memories of his friend’s treachery. In the example, Scanlon’s hero, when he is no longer in his friend’s presence, when he considers it in retrospect, remarks upon the anomaly of his cognitive state. In the grips of the encounter, however, he does not find himself thinking that he knows better. He does not feel conflicted; he does not struggle to adjudicate between opposing evidence. Since the motivational impact on him of his friend’s appearance is a contingent feature of the circumstances, were someone to remind the hero, even with his friend present, of his past experiences with his friend, very possibly the friend’s show of warmth and affection might lose its hold on him.

The epistemic status of the covenant—the motivational impact of the command It is crucial to the account I wish to develop of Abraham’s cognitive state that only within a deliberative context is a judgment tantamount to a belief. Based on this analysis, the belief sequence in the Akedah episode may be spelled out as follows: at the opening, when God bids Abraham “Go forth!” Abraham recognizes the voice—remembers it as the voice that first came to him from a God he did not know, whose promises were yet untried. Abraham had no grounds for believing that this God would make good his word, yet the voice evoked his trust. He responded to its authority, its power, its

86 Abraham majesty. Committing his life to this unknown God was untenable, but that is what Abraham did. Now Abraham hears God’s command to sacrifice Isaac. Abraham has reason to be less than confident that God is requiring him to give up Isaac. The command is in blatant violation of God’s repeated promises to him, of the solemn covenant He made with him. The hero in Scanlon’s story knows that his friend is a deceiver, but he is so affected by his manner that he finds himself believing that he can rely on him. Abraham knows that he has good reason to believe that he will not lose Isaac, but hearing God’s voice, he also recognizes good reason to believe that he will lose him. He might well judge that he should remain in doubt and set himself to act accordingly. However, Abraham does not deliberate. As it did the first time, and many times since, God’s voice takes hold of Abraham. It rivets him to the command. It evokes his conviction that God requires that he offer up Isaac.51 He gets up at dawn, makes rapid preparations for the journey, and sets out immediately on his mission. He believes that he is setting out on a journey at the end of which he will lose Isaac. Accompanied by Isaac and his servants, Abraham makes his way wordlessly towards the Land of Moriah. On the third day a dramatic change occurs. “Abraham raised his eyes and saw the place from afar” (Gen. 22:4). It is no longer a vague designation—“on one of the mountains which I shall say to you” (Gen. 22:2)—but the place to which he is headed.52 He must take leave of his servants. Abraham must tell them what to do in his absence. Abraham is not in the same emotional state he was in earlier, when he first received God’s summons. Three days have elapsed since he heard the summons.53 Earlier, the forcefulness of the promises was eclipsed by the powerfulness of God’s call. Now, the impact of God’s voice has waned. The sight of his destination focuses his mind on what lies at the end of his journey. Although his evidence has not changed, his attitude towards it wavers. Abraham is more receptive to the assurances the promises hold out. He does not discount the command; he does not judge it to be inauthentic. Rather, its motivational hold on him diminishes. The belief that he will return with Isaac now takes hold. When Abraham speaks to his servants he is unhesitating. He tells them straightforwardly that he will return to them with Isaac. In answering Isaac’s anxious question he also speaks sincerely. Yet, the answer he gives him—that God will provide the lamb—is evasive. Although he is dwelling on God’s promises, he is not deaf to the formidable echoes of the summons. Abraham continues onward. Outwardly his course is steady, but his emotional state remains volatile, and his doxastic state is complex and fluid. Upon reaching the place which God marked out for the sacrifice, Abraham is brought back to the reason for his mission. The summons once again takes hold of him. The belief that God wants Isaac for a burnt offering. impels him to build the altar, lay out the wood, and bind Isaac. When Abraham raises the knife for the slaughter, he believes he is about to lose Isaac.

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Separating belief from judgment allows for the different nuances of Abraham’s doxastic state. Judgments are a matter of reasoning, of weighing evidence, and of drawing conclusions. Moving from one judgment to another calls for deliberation. The possibility that one’s attitude towards one’s evidence can change in the absence of a change in one’s judgment allows for more fluidity. It can account for the impact Abraham’s earlier encounters with God have on him later, when he hears God’s command. Abraham’s memory of the promises does not blunt the zeal with which he responds to God’s summons, even though they contradict them. His directive to his servants and his answer to Isaac reflect the earlier encounters with God of the Covenant, but they do not signal a reversal in his reasoning. Abraham’s optimism on the way up the mountain gives way, however, when he reaches the top. His belief at that point that he is about to slaughter Isaac prevails, and he is resigned to do so. God attests to Abraham’s readiness to relinquish his son. Abraham may be described as having been “double-minded,” as Stump has it.54 However, his entertaining two contradictory beliefs did not plunge Abraham into conflict and paradox because he did not entertain the two beliefs simultaneously. Because his beliefs were not anchored to his judgments, he was able to move between them without painstaking reassessment. More important, however, Abraham, in my picture, felt himself morally at liberty to move from one belief to the other. Kierkegaard’s Abraham had to persist with the paradox in order to preserve his moral integrity because the paradox was “capable of transforming a murder into a holy act.” The prospect of slaughtering Isaac is agonizing for Abraham, but on my view, it is not morally repugnant to him. Abraham could let go of his faith in God’s promise when he took the knife to Isaac. He could resign himself to slaughtering his son.

Fear of God The looseness of the link between the motivational force of the evidence on Abraham and his evaluation of the reason-giving force of the evidence can account for Abraham’s inconstant doxastic state on his journey to Mt. Moriah. The looseness between the two, however, does not mean that Abraham has control over what he believes. It is not that Abraham deliberately chose to eschew a deliberative context when he heard God’s call and then in the course of the trip chose to recall the reasons he had for not taking God’s call at face value. He did not choose to suppress the memory of the promise and focus his attention on the command. What then is there about Abraham in this story that is being celebrated? Abraham is a spiritual giant in virtue of the fact that upon hearing the command the perspective through which he relates to it is not that of first-person doxastic deliberation. He has conflicting evidence about the authenticity of God’s command. Skepticism is perhaps what is epistemically called for.

88 Abraham When he hears God’s voice, however, his beliefs are not held in tow by his judgment, and he immediately finds himself under the sway of the command. The sound of God’s voice eclipses all else. Abraham accepts the summons as an authentic expression of what God wants from him. Had Abraham deliberated when God first called to him to deliver up Isaac, he might have considered God’s earlier promises and defied God’s command. Or, perhaps, possessed by the belief that Isaac would not be lost to him, Abraham would have ascended to Mt. Moriah, bound up his son and taken up the cleaver, without despair. Had he not believed that he was about to bring an end to his son, however, he would not have shown God that he was a God-fearing man. Abraham sets himself to make the supreme sacrifice. He does not perform an outstanding act of will, however, a heart-wrenching decision to subordinate his desires to God’s dictates. How emotionally compelling the command is at any time is not something over which Abraham has voluntary control. Nor does Abraham choose to dwell on the firmness of the covenant at other times. Where his attention is focused depends on his emotional state and his receptivity to that evidence at the time. Moreover, Abraham’s belief at the top of the mountain that he was going to lose Isaac while intending to do God’s bidding, nevertheless, was not simply a psychological predilection. It was also an evaluative state—a matter of Abraham’s beliefs, ideals, and religious principles. Scanlon’s hero is swept away by his friend’s warm show of friendship and against his better judgment believes in his sincerity. Although he is deficient epistemically, Scanlon’s hero may be credited for his generosity in giving his friend the benefit of the doubt, or for his refraining from holding grudges. Abraham’s responsiveness to God’s command, his readiness to give up Isaac, is a token of his distinctive character, an enduring trait, a virtue which God now knows Abraham can be counted upon to display. Abraham’s raising the knife to his son brings the test to a halt. In virtue of the latter, he passes the test. It testifies to his unreserved openness to God’s charge. Because the divine call has this impact on him, Abraham is counted a God-fearing man.

Conclusion A recurring motif in these studies is the heroes’ engaging with circumstances through which they realize God’s plan. When Abraham hears God’s call it resonates with overtones from his past. Abraham recognizes the voice and is reminded of the summons which impelled him to set out on his life’s mission. God’s call is electrifying, now, as it was then, because it electrified him then. God enlists the same words to mobilize Abraham now. His voice sustains the momentum. It is steering Abraham in the direction God has set out for him. Because Abraham’s responsiveness to God’s summons is so grounded in his past relationship with God it cannot, I maintain, signify a repudiation of that relationship. Abraham’s life has been testimony to his faith in God’s

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promise. His passing the test here cannot be due to his giving up on God’s promise. He must find himself believing in the promise no less than in the command. The distinction we invoke between judging and believing allows for Abraham to hold on to the two contradictory beliefs which were at the heart of this test and fall under the sway of each in its turn. Thus, he emerges from the test with his faith in God intact, but having passed the test—having shown himself to be a God-fearing man. As the reader knew all along, God had no intention of taking Isaac from Abraham. Abraham did not know that; nor did he believe it. The sacrifice is called off not because Abraham had faith that it would not happen but because, even though he believed it would happen, he persisted.55 To fear God is to believe that everything you have belongs to Him. Abraham is called upon to relinquish the most precious thing he has, and God reaffirms His covenant with him because Abraham is ready to do so. Abraham, once again, is called upon to have faith in God’s promises. Abraham descends from Mt. Moriah with his son alive and with his future reassured. He continues on the way, however, not with the comforting knowledge that God did not lay claim to Isaac, but in the sobering knowledge that God does count Abraham’s only beloved son as His own.

Notes 1 I discuss inevitability more fully and its implications for moral responsibility in Chapter 6. 2 David J. A. Clines, The Theme of the Pentateuch (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1982) elaborates on the centrality of the promise in the biblical narrative and its role as the impetus for the progression of the storyline. 3 On an alternative reading, Abraham trusts that God will deal with him righteously. See Nachmanides’ commentary on Gen. 15:6. The Hebrew word “‫האמן‬,” translated here as “trusted” is also commonly translated as “believed.” See, for example, The King James Version and The New International Version. 4 Eleonore Stump, Wanderings in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), Chapter 11, lays out a step by step description of the interactions between Abraham and God which led to Abraham’s growing trust in his goodness. 5 Susan Weingarten suggests that the description of Hagar’s piteous state when she believes her son is about to die (Gen. 21:15–16) gives us some insight into Abraham’s emotional state, which is not described here. 6 I bring Rashbam’s reading in later. 7 Where we set the boundaries of a biblical narrative—more narrowly or more broadly—affects the meaning of the story. After establishing the boundaries of a discrete story, one may still want to place it within the larger context of an extended narrative encompassing a series of stories. See Grossman, Text and Subtext, Chapter 4. 8 Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Willard R. Trask. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), 11–12, observes that in the Bible, thoughts and feelings remain unexpressed, only suggested by silence and fragmentary speeches. 9 See, Jon D. Levenson, Inheriting Abraham: The Legacy of the Patriarch in Judaism, Christianity & Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), Chapter 3. In

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Avot d’Rabbi Natan we find the comment on Gen. 22:4–5: “Abraham prophesied but did not know what he prophesied.” The midrash stipulates that Abraham does not know that he is prophesying because if he would it would vitiate the test. See Genesis, Chapters 12 and 20. Jerome I. Gellman, “A Hasidic Interpretation of the Binding of Isaac,” in Avi Sagi and Daniel Statman, eds., Between Religion and Ethics (Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 1993), xxiii–xxxix, cites Rabbi Mordecai Leiner of Izbica as taking the test to be a challenge to Abraham to resist succumbing to self-deception. Alfred R. Mele, Self-Deception Unmasked (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), Chapter 2. I lay out Mele’s account of self-deception more fully in Chapter 4, where I argue that Isaac engaged in self-deception when he conferred the blessing he intended for Esau on Jacob. On the standard views of self-deception, the “victim” believes a false belief. This, of course, is not the case with Abraham here. However, there is also a view that someone might be counted as self-deceived who formed a true belief if it was based on a biased interpretation of his evidence. See Dion Scott-Kakures, “Self-Deception and Internal Irrationality,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 56 (1996): 31–56. Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, first published in 1843. Citations in this work are from, Fear and Trembling and the Sickness unto Death, translated with introductions and notes by Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954). See note 4. See Levenson, Inheriting Abraham, 71ff. Stump, Wandering in Darkness, Chapter 11. A prominent proponent of this view is Immanuel Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties (New York: Orbis Books, 1979). I am putting forth a very general, and what I hope is an uncontroversial, sketch of Kierkegaard’s position. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 67. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 57. Kierkegaard is alluding to Matthew 19:26. See, also, Gen. 18:14. Note that in the passage in Genesis, God is referring to an empirical possibility—an old woman giving birth—rather than to the logical contradiction to which Kierkegaard is referring. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 124. See Avi Sagi, Kierkegaard, Religion, and Existence: The Voyage of the Self (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), 125ff. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 66. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 64. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 58. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 67. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1995), 131, describes Abraham as, “having acted in a universe of enigma and contradiction—without insisting on resolutions.” Howard Wettstein, “The Faith of Abraham,” www.academia.edu/16134205/ The_Faith_of_Abraham_Final_Version, writes, “Were I asked to kill a child of mine, probably only (much) later would I think about morality . . . To be primarily stunned by the violation of morality would be the proverbial one thought too many.” See Jon D. Levenson, “Abusing Abraham: Traditions, Religious Histories, and Modern Misinterpretations,” Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought 47 (1998): 259–277, argues that moral criticisms of Abraham fail to

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consider the attitudes towards child sacrifice in the biblical context. See, also, his The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 3–52. See Levenson, Death and Resurrection, 129. I am adopting this translation of the Hebrew word ‫ ידעתיו‬rather than the more literal association of the verb with knowledge. Stump, Wanderings, Chapter 11. Stump, Wanderings, 300. Stump discusses Kierkegaard’s reading of the Akedah on pages 260–263. Stump, Wandering in Darkness, 263. Were Abraham to believe that what he was about to do would not result in his giving up Isaac it would mean that God was deceived by Abraham’s act. This is not coherent with what we know about God in the Genesis narratives. See, for example, Gen. 18:12–15. Hemchand Gossai, Power and Marginality in the Abraham Narrative (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1995), 151, points out that if Abraham were confident that he would return together with Isaac from the sacrifice, the test would be a farce. See, also, Levenson, Death and Resurrection, 13. Stump, Wanderings, 306. Genesis Rabah, 56:10. Rashbam on Gen. 22:1. See Shlomo Astruk, Midrashei Torah, Genesis 22:12, ed. Y. Epenshtein (Berlin: Zvi Hirsch Itzkavsky, 1899), 36 (Hebrew). The midrash has Satan posing as an old man trying to convince Abraham of the absurdity of his killing the son God had given him when he was 100 years old. He tells him that the voice he heard commanding him was really that of Satan, who wanted to get him to commit murder. Abraham does not argue against the old man’s logic. He simply reiterates his conviction that it was not Satan, but God, who addressed him. Midrash Tanhuma, Vayera 22. p here is a placeholder for any proposition. Note that one’s belief that p is linked to one’s assessment of the strength of one’s evidence for the truth of p, not to the true strength of the evidence. Jonathan E. Adler, Belief’s Own Ethics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), 32. Nishi Shah, “How Truth Governs Belief,” The Philosophical Review 112 (2003): 447–482. Nishi Shah and J. David Velleman, “Doxastic Deliberation,” The Philosophical Review 114 (2005): 497–534 at 507. Alfred R. Mele, Irrationality: An Essay on Akrasia, Self-Deception, and SelfControl (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 115. In the following chapters I invoke the notion of motivational biasing. The notion implies that the subject has a skewed perception of his evidence. I am not applying this notion here because, although I claim that Abraham’s changing emotional states give rise to different attitudes towards his evidence, and, accordingly, to different beliefs, his evidence supports either of the beliefs he holds during the course of his journey so that his changing perceptions of it are not instances of bias. Mele, Irrationality, 144. In Chapter 7, I refer to selective focusing as one of the evidence-biasing strategies which skew a subject’s judgment. The selectivity I am talking about here differs in that it does not affect the subject’s judgment, but just what it is that he believes. T. M. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 35.

92 Abraham 50 I am assuming Shah and Velleman’s interpretation of Scanlon’s example. 51 In Scanlon’s example the hero holds the “wrong” belief under the strong emotional impact of weak evidence, but in my example here Abraham is holding the “right” belief, that is to say, the belief which will lead to his passing the test, under the strong emotional impact of evidence that is not epistemically conclusive. 52 In these texts, when someone is described as seeing something when he raises his eyes, what he sees is especially important. For example, when Abraham was sitting by the tent flap in the Terebinths of Mamre, “he raised his eyes and saw . . . three men were standing before him” (Gen. 18:2). The men, it turned out, were bringing him tidings of the forthcoming birth of a son to Sarah; at the Akedah, after the angel stops Abraham from slaughtering Isaac, “Abraham raised his eyes and saw . . . a ram was caught in the thicket . . . and Abraham offered the ram as a burnt offering instead of his son” (Gen. 22:13). 53 The midrash asks why God did not show Abraham the place immediately and answers that it was in order that the nations of the world not say: God stunned Abraham, dazed him and confused him, and Abraham went and slaughtered his son. They would say that if Abraham had been sober-minded he would not have obeyed God’s order to sacrifice his son. Midrash Tanhuma, Vayera 22, cited in Rashi on Gen. 22:4. 54 Compare my rendition here of Abraham’s state of mind to that proposed by Jerome Gellman as “light double-mindedness,” in which one regards the prohibition against holding contradictory beliefs as imposed from without and adopted freely. One may choose to disown the prohibition without falling into inner tension or paradox. “The lightness of belief bestows the feeling of moving easily along the surface of life’s promise.” Gellman suggests that at the Akedah, God grants Abraham the opportunity to enter into this state. See Jerome I. Gellman, The Fear, the Trembling, and the Fire: Kierkegaard and Hasidic Masters on the Binding of Isaac (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1994), 79 ff. 55 Levenson views the Akedah narrative as showing Abraham to be not a knight of faith but a “knight of observance, rigorously keeping his divine master’s charge.” Death and Resurrection, 141.

4

Isaac A tale of deception and self-deception1

Isaac survives the trial on Mount Moriah to take a wife and to father the next patriarchal generation. Abraham, the first in the line, was chosen directly by God; there were no other contenders. Isaac’s status as heir to Abraham’s legacy had to be secured against the claim of Abraham’s firstborn son, Isaac’s half-brother, Ishmael.2 Abraham did not easily move his older son aside, and only when God instructed him unequivocally to do so, did Abraham send Ishmael away. Now Jacob, to take the next place in line, must also displace his father’s firstborn, in this case his twin brother.3 Isaac, however, does not receive a divine directive instructing him to instate his younger son as his heir. Jacob wins his place in the patriarchal line, not by divine decree, but by deceit. The blessing Isaac confers upon Jacob when Jacob appears before him in the guise of Esau is the following: May God grant you from the dew of the heavens and the fat of the earth, and abundance of grain and drink. May peoples serve you, and nations bow before you. Be overlord to our brothers, may your mother’s sons bow before you. Those who curse you be cursed, and those who bless you, blessed. (Gen. 27: 28–29) This is not the Blessing of Abraham, which Isaac will confer on Jacob only afterwards.4 On one common and straightforward reading, however, the reading I will ultimately pursue, the son who receives this blessing will not just be materially blessed but is also designated to be the heir to the Abrahamic Covenant.5 What is at stake, then, is God’s chosen nation.6 This view is difficult theologically.7 It raises questions about how God carries out his plans and how

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he relates to the heroes and heroines of the biblical narrative. Does God, who personally chose Abraham and decreed Isaac his successor, allow the next heir to be determined by an act of deceit? Is this fateful blessing hostage to the opposing fancies of Isaac and Rebecca? To read this as an intrigue fueled by a conflict between a blind, credulous, old man and his wily wife, in which the former is bested by the latter, is not only to discredit the patriarchal legacy but also to undermine the providential vision of Israelite history which the patriarchal saga promotes.

A more modest reading of the stolen blessing The reader would find himself in less of a quandary if he were to view the blessing Jacob receives here in more modest terms. The blessing makes no mention of Abraham or of the covenant God made with him to inherit the Land of Canaan. Some would read this blessing as promising only material prosperity to Jacob and dominion over his brothers.8 Read this way, had Isaac given the blessing to Esau as he had intended, Esau’s receiving it would not have threatened Jacob’s status as Isaac’s successor. Esau’s receiving the blessing would have been compatible with Isaac’s giving the blessing of Abraham to Jacob. The reader would thus be free of the worries which beset the earlier, more expansive, reading—God did not entrust the Abrahamic Covenant to the power struggles within the chosen family, and it was not Jacob’s misappropriation of the blessing that established him as successor to his father. This welcome solution to the theological puzzle, to restrict the political scope of the blessing, seems to imply, however, that the principals in this drama were mistaken about the content of the stolen blessing. Rebecca’s determination to wrest it from Esau and the lengths to which she was prepared to go in order to do so make sense only if she believes the blessing is very important. Likewise, Isaac’s mighty trembling when he discovers Jacob’s hoax, and Esau’s dismay, and his subsequent murderous designs on Jacob’s life, attest to their believing as did Rebecca. To construe them all as deluded is a possibility, but, it seems to me, not the most natural one. Another difficulty with restricting the political scope of the blessing is that the wording of the blessing seems to support a more expansive reading. The blessing not only grants the recipient dominion over his brothers, it also promises that peoples will serve him. Along with his brothers, nations will bow down to him. Also, the modest reading takes no account of the echo of the initial blessing God gave Abraham: “And I will bless those who bless you, and those who damn you will I curse” (Gen. 12:3). Later developments also count against the modest interpretation. When Esau discovers that he has been robbed of his blessing, he cries out bitterly, “Bless me too father!” Isaac responds, “Your brother has come in deceit and has taken your blessing.” Esau then pleads, “Have you not kept a blessing back for me?” Isaac could give Esau a material blessing straightaway, but

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instead he turns him down. “Look, I made him overlord to you, and all his brothers I gave him as slaves, and with grain and wine I endowed him. For you, then, what can I do my son?” Only when Esau implores him, “Do you have but one blessing, my father? Bless me too, father” (Gen. 27:34–39), does Isaac come up with a blessing for him—something of a consolation prize. Look, from the fat of the earth be your dwelling and from the dew of the heavens above. By your sword shall you live and your brother shall you serve. And when you rebel you shall break off his yoke from your neck. (Gen. 27: 39–40) Yet another problem with the restrictive reading of the stolen blessing concerns the material component of the blessing. The restrictive reading leads to the improbable result that one brother, Esau, is given a rich and abundantly fruitful land while the other brother, Jacob, is promised that land as his inheritance. Jonathan Grossman adopts the restrictive interpretation of the stolen blessing, but proposes a rendition that avoids this anomaly. On Grossman’s reading, in keeping with the restricted scope of the blessing, had Esau received the blessing Isaac had intended for him, Jacob would not thereby have lost the Abrahamic Covenant. But, on Grossman’s reading, this is not because Isaac was keeping the Blessing of Abraham for Jacob; Isaac’s plan is not as we imagined. Rather, on his reading, Isaac never intended to single out one son to be heir to the Covenant and to reject the other; he never considered splitting his family apart.9 Isaac slated both his sons, Esau and Jacob, to inherit the fertile land of abundant grain and drink. Grossman cites the nineteenth-century Italian Jewish scholar, Samuel David Luzzatto, known by the acronym “Shadal”: Isaac said in his heart, Jacob will reside with Esau and the two of them will inherit the land that God gave Abraham, and the Blessing of Abraham will be fulfilled in them both since both of them are the children of Isaac and the matriarch.10 Isaac, on Grossman’s reading, harbored the natural fatherly desire that his children live together in harmony. He did not see the relationship between Jacob and Esau on the model of that between Isaac and Ishmael. We may suspect that Abraham would also have preferred the relationship between his sons to be otherwise. Was he not opposed to expelling Ishmael from his home?11 According to Grossman Isaac had in mind a model such as the relationship Jacob would later establish between Judah and his brothers. In blessing Jacob that his mother’s sons bow before him, Isaac was intending the same

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as Jacob would later intend when he blessed Judah that his father’s sons bow down to him. Judah, you, shall your brothers acclaim— your hand on your enemies’ nape— your father’s sons shall bow to you . . . The scepter may not pass from Judah, nor the mace from between his legs, that tribute to him may come and to him the submission of peoples. (Gen. 49: 8–10) Jacob is naming Judah the leader of his family; he endows him with power and mastery over his brothers. However, as Jacob intends it, all Judah’s brothers—all Jacob’s sons—remain part of the chosen family. Grossman proposes that like Judah, who was appointed leader by Jacob over the older Reuben, Simeon, and Levi, Jacob is elevated in this blessing over the older Esau. Grossman’s reading is supported both by the linguistic similarity of the stolen blessing to the blessing Judah receives, and, as Shadal notes, by the fact that Esau is not the son of a slave woman as is Ishmael, but the son of the matriarch, as is his twin brother Jacob. The narrative allows for this reading, Grossman points out, in that Esau is never expelled from his father’s house or from the Land of Canaan, neither by God nor by either of his parents. On his own initiative, Esau departs from Beersheba eastward to the Land of Seir and establishes his family there. Grossman chronicles in eye-opening detail the steps Esau takes to make a home for his progeny in Seir and become an independent nation. Esau’s motive for transplanting his family there, away from his brother Jacob, as reported in the narrative, is pragmatic and self-serving—he has acquired such large holdings of livestock and goods that the two brothers could not dwell together— “the land of their sojournings could not support them” (Gen. 36:6–8).12 Although Grossman also adopts the modest interpretation of the stolen blessing, then, his account avoids the incongruity I noted earlier when I first presented the modest interpretation of the stolen blessing. On Grossman’s account of Isaac’s intentions, it would not be the case that Esau would be blessed with a rich and fruitful land, and Jacob would be promised that land as his inheritance. I think, however, that the wording of the blessing Isaac confers on Esau does not favor Grossman’s interpretation. The blessing concludes with: By your sword shall you live and your brother shall you serve. And when you rebel you shall break off his yoke from your neck. (Gen. 27: 39–40)

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This is not a picture of two brothers sharing an inheritance, one of them enjoying the privileges of leadership. Esau will be engaged in violent struggle and his subservience to his brother is a yoke around his neck which he will strive to break. Indeed, Judah too bears down on his adversary’s neck, but it is the neck of his enemies, not his brothers. On Grossman’s construal of Isaac’s intentions, the future was unkind to them. Given Isaac’s patriarchal status, the discrepancy between the united family he intended and the two separate nations which ensued would be surprising. Earlier, I took Rebecca’s determination at the beginning and Isaac and Esau’s consternation afterwards as evidence that they believed that whoever received the contested blessing was destined to come by the Blessing of Abraham as well. It is also evidence, I propose, that they believed that the patriarch’s blessing would be fulfilled. Admittedly, they could be mistaken about the blessing’s fulfillment—the patriarchs and matriarchs are not infallible. Indeed, Abraham wanted his son Ishmael to inherit the covenant God made with him and Abraham may well have expected that to happen. God explicitly tells him otherwise, however, and God’s word prevails. In the narrative here, on Grossman’s reading, Isaac is not pictured as simply wanting Jacob and Esau to share the Abrahamic Covenant. Isaac bestows a blessing on Jacob embodying that intention. This seems to be at odds with the plausible assumption that in blessing Jacob, Isaac was fulfilling God’s will. Indeed, people in these narratives may defy God’s will, but the overall direction in which the events move is towards the fulfillment of His plan. That Esau’s personal initiative is so potent a factor in shaping his future is, in itself, not inconsistent with the Genesis narratives, on my view. The agents who enact God’s plan do, indeed, for the most part, act freely, for their own reasons. As I see it, however, the Genesis narratives show heroes acting freely, knowingly or unknowingly, in the service of the divine plan. Sarah, for her own reasons, demands of Abraham to banish Ishmael, thereby ensuring the fulfillment of God’s design that it will be through Isaac that Abraham’s seed will be perpetuated. Joseph’s brothers go down to Egypt to secure food during the famine, thereby paving the way for the chosen family to descend into Egypt as God had proclaimed. On the reading Grossman puts forth, Esau’s initiative thwarts Isaac’s intentions; moreover, Esau succeeds in this although it runs counter to God’s design. Putting such a construction on the course of Esau’s life marks it as singularly out of keeping with the overall trend of the Genesis narratives. For these reasons I turn now to what I described earlier as the natural and straightforward reading of this episode. On this reading, although the blessing Isaac bestows upon Jacob when Jacob comes to him disguised as Esau is not the Blessing of Abraham and makes no explicit mention of the Abrahamic Covenant, Isaac’s conferring it on one of his sons precludes his conferring the Blessing of Abraham on the other. What are the implications of these assumption for our understanding of the story? Admittedly, we are

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again faced with the quandaries which, had we adopted the more modest interpretation of the blessing, would not have troubled us. To these quandaries we now return.

The epistemological puzzle On the face of it, Isaac’s role in the drama is that of the hapless victim of a carefully thought out ruse. This view of him fits in with what we know of him from earlier on. Of the three patriarchs in Genesis, Isaac is marked by his passive nature. He lives in the shadow of his father, Abraham, in part retracing his steps.13 In the most striking scene of his lifetime, Isaac’s role is to be led unresistingly, perhaps uncomprehendingly, to the sacrifice.14 And as opposed to both his sons, who choose their own wives, and especially in contrast to Jacob, who falls in love with Rachel in a dramatic scene at the well and then struggles to win her, Isaac’s wife is chosen for him and delivered to him by his father’s servant.15 We are inclined to see Isaac here as a gullible old man, sensing that something is wrong, but unequal to the conspiracy hatched against him by his wife and son. As a result, he unwittingly grants the blessing to Rebecca’s favorite rather than to his own. That this view of Isaac is out of focus is suggested by a comparison with two other stories of deception in the Genesis narrative. One follows closely on this one—Jacob is fooled by Laban, who substitutes his older daughter, Leah, to be Jacob’s bride, in place of Jacob’s beloved, the younger Rachel. Jacob is an easy mark, a guileless victim of Laban’s foul play. In a later episode Jacob is deceived, this time more cruelly, by his sons, when they bring him Joseph’s coat that has been dipped in the blood of a goat, tricking him into believing that his most cherished son was devoured by a wild animal. Jacob has no inkling of his sons’ treachery, and their scheming against him meets no resistance. In neither of these instances does Jacob experience any epistemic tension, any doubts about the belief being foisted upon him. Isaac, on the other hand, in the story before us, is troubled. He resists, vacillates, struggles to penetrate the contradictions he confronts. That this is not a story of a feeble old man mindlessly stumbling into a cleverly laid trap is also attested to by the attitudes of Rebecca and Jacob. Neither Isaac’s wife nor his son, who, presumably, know him intimately, take for granted their ability to deceive him. Rebecca’s plan is carefully crafted. Jacob is to bring the food that Isaac had requested of Esau. Jacob must also swathe himself in goatskins, to simulate Esau’s hairy skin. With all that, Jacob nevertheless fears that Isaac will see through the ruse and, instead of blessing, curse him. “Let the curse be on me” (Gen. 27:13), Rebecca responds, in order to exact his compliance. This is indeed a tale of deception. I propose, however, that in order to do justice to the dynamics of the story, another notion should be called into play—one that has been developed a great deal by analytic philosophers— the notion of self-deception. My thesis is that Rebecca’s plot succeeds because

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Isaac cooperates in his own deception. On a simple notion of self-deception, the subject comes to believe something that he wants to believe. Because I see the motivation which gives rise to Isaac’s self-deception as being highly complex, I shall put forth a more complicated account. Support for my reading comes, not only from the text before us but also from the larger narrative of which it is a part. I shall further try to show how my understanding of this episode is consonant with the prevailing theological presuppositions and motifs of the Genesis narratives.

The interrogation Despite Rebecca’s elaborate designs, the plan she devises falters from the very beginning. Jacob approaches Isaac, bringing, as Rebecca has arranged, the offering Isaac requested from Esau. The flaw in Rebecca’s scheme immediately comes to light. Jacob must signal his arrival—he must speak to Isaac. Neither he nor his mother has addressed this aspect of the encounter between the two. “Father,” Jacob presents himself. Isaac is expecting Esau. So far as Isaac knows, no one other than Esau and he are privy to the fact that he requested food in order to grant a blessing. Yet his response to Jacob’s filial address is, “Which of my sons are you?” Jacob’s voice has sounded an alarm. Jacob identifies himself as Esau, but Isaac plainly does not take Jacob at his word. His eyes are dull, but his ears are sharp, and his mind is keen. He does not challenge his son directly, but there is no mistaking that he has misgivings. “How did you succeed so quickly?” he demands. Jacob’s answer, “Because the Lord, your God, granted me good fortune,” is designed to deflect his father’s suspicions, and perhaps also to ingratiate himself with his father and thereby soften his defenses. Whether it is because Isaac finds this explanation implausible, or that his hearing Jacob’s voice once again stirs up his doubts, he is not satisfied. By now he is so troubled that he does not conceal his suspicions. “Come closer that I may feel you, my son—whether you are really my son Esau or not.” The goatskins encasing Jacob’s arms do not put Isaac at ease.16 The sound of Jacob’s voice is vivid in his ears, and it does not match the feel of this son who stands before him. Isaac does not give way easily. He struggles with his conflicting evidence. We hear his anguish as he spells out his dilemma: “The voice is the voice of Jacob, yet the hands are the hands of Esau!” More than skeptical, Isaac sounds incredulous. Although this son is carrying out the charge he just gave to Esau, although this son’s skin feels like Esau’s, what Isaac hears repeatedly—what he cannot fail to hear—is his son Jacob declaring that he is Esau. How shall we characterize Isaac’s doxastic state as he stands on the verge of giving the blessing? Both the objective features of the situation and his own protestations make clear his plight. Not only is the data in fact inconclusive, but he is also obviously aware that it is. Does he suspect this may be Jacob? It certainly seems so. Indeed, it seems fair to say that he strongly suspects that this is Jacob.

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At this point the text subtly signals a shift in Isaac’s attitude. Directly after Isaac notes the disparity between the voice and the feel of his son, we are told, “And he did not recognize him, because his hands were hairy like his brother Esau’s hands.” The possibility that this is Jacob is receding. Jacob’s voice has lost its hold on Isaac; the goatskins appear to have won the day. Nevertheless, before he proceeds to the blessing, Isaac presses his son Jacob yet again. “Are you really my son Esau?” To which Jacob answers unequivocally, “I am.”

Isaac casts the die17 Isaac probes no more. He sends for the food, and eats and drinks in preparation for the blessing. Then he asks Jacob to approach him so that he can kiss him. Jacob complies, and Isaac takes in the smell of his clothing. Giving way to the aroma, he proclaims, “See, the smell of my son is like the smell of the fields that the Lord has blessed” (Gen. 27:27). Isaac has transcended the conflict between his ears and his fingertips, transported by his sense of smell. No longer grappling with the inconsistencies in his evidence, he pronounces the blessing. Has Isaac simply changed his mind? People regularly re-evaluate their evidence, reconsider their beliefs. People who change their minds in the usual way, however, have reasons for doing so. They can point to new evidence or point out some aspect of their original evidence which they had missed or misunderstood. Sometimes these reasons are what really caused the change; sometimes they are only rationalizations. Whichever, such people can account for the reversal in rational terms. Isaac does not reject any of his evidence, however, nor does he reinterpret it. The paradoxical coupling of the voice of Jacob with the hands of Esau remains a mystery. For Isaac, the move from suspicion, or even belief, that this is Jacob, to the conviction that it is Esau is a leap over what Dion Scott-Kakures calls a “cognitive fissure,” a blind spot separating his earlier and later cognitive perspectives.18 Isaac avails himself of neither rationale nor rationalization to bridge the gap. Although this blessing is not the blessing of Abraham, which Jacob will receive only later,19 its significance, I maintain, should not be underestimated. The blessing includes political supremacy: “May peoples serve you and nations bow before you. Be overlord to your brothers, may your mother’s sons bow before you.” It ends with an echo of the blessing which God originally bestowed upon Abraham, which ordained him as God’s elected, “Cursed be they who curse you; blessed they who bless you” (Gen. 27:28). Yet, despite the gravity of the deed, and although we see no grounds for laying his well-founded doubts to rest, nor any signs that he thinks he has resolved them, Isaac bestows the blessing. Before us here, as throughout most of the Genesis narratives, is a psychologically realistic human drama. Rebecca’s urging her younger son to secure the blessing by deceiving his father may strike us as anomalous, even bizarre

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and unethical, but it is not baffling. Given the message she received from God, which she may take to have been confirmed by the manner in which her sons were born, the second emerging from her womb grasping the heel of the first, given her preference for Jacob, and assuming that she took herself to have neither authority nor influence over her husband, Rebecca’s decision to obtain the blessing for Jacob by trickery is understandable. Similarly, we can make sense of Jacob’s acquiescence to Rebecca’s urging. Not so Isaac’s behavior. The blessing Isaac is about to give is critical. We would expect that Isaac would want to be confident that Esau is the one who is now asking to be blessed and that Isaac would refrain from giving the blessing so long as he is in doubt. How could Isaac have proceeded with this critical blessing, given his earlier suspicions—given his palpable uncertainty until the very end? The mixed data certainly called for circumspection. How does it happen, then, that Isaac, who clearly appreciated the conflicting nature of his evidence, who was so suspicious from the outset, suddenly has a change of heart, which leaves him so certain of the very thing that he has until just now persisted in doubting, that he unreservedly gives the blessing? Why did he not delay? Why did he not continue to probe, to assure himself that this was really Esau? Fear, I propose, is what keeps Isaac from investigating further, fear of what he will discover.20 Isaac has more than a premonition that it will turn out that the petitioner is Jacob. He would be obliged to denounce Jacob and take the steps required to assure that Esau receives the blessing. I will argue in what follows that this is precisely what Isaac wants to avoid. The aftermath of the blessing is no less a psychological mystery. When he realizes that it was not to Esau that he gave the blessing, Isaac trembles mightily. One wonders that this discovery should come to him as such a shock. Until the very last moment he could not rid himself of the suspicion that he was giving the blessing to the wrong son. However, if Isaac is shocked to discover what he has done, he seems to recover quickly. He believes that whoever pre-empted the blessing will remain blessed, yet he does not lament his mistake.21 There is no sign of anger or reproach towards the son who duped him. In response to Esau’s entreaties, Isaac, at first at a loss, in the end graces him with a distinctly second-class blessing, leaving him destined to be subservient to his younger brother.22 Moreover, very shortly thereafter, Isaac, this time in full cognizance of what he is doing and of his own accord, confers the blessing of Abraham on Jacob, the son who has just deceived him, thereby confirming and enhancing the earlier, stolen, blessing. How do we explain Isaac’s magnanimity? Here is my proposal: Isaac, as he is poised to give the blessing, understands that Esau is not the one meant to receive it. At that moment, not only does he strongly suspect that he is blessing Jacob, but he also believes that Jacob is the one for whom the blessing is intended. It is this double insight which underlies his decision to give the blessing when he does. However, if

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these are his assumptions his deciding to confer the blessing as he does is in stark opposition to his earlier commitments and intentions. Isaac resolves the opposition by engaging in self-deception. By the time he confers the blessing he believes that he is blessing Esau, and he believes that Esau is the rightful recipient of the blessing.

Isaac’s self-deception Alfred Mele stipulates the following conditions as jointly sufficient for entering self-deception in acquiring the belief that p:23 1 2 3 4

The belief that p which S acquires is false. S treats data relevant, or at least seemingly relevant, to the truth value of p in a motivationally biased way. The biased treatment is a cause of S’s acquiring the belief that p.24 The body of data possessed by S at the time provides greater warrant for ~p than p.

Requirement 1 is straightforwardly satisfied by Isaac’s belief that he is conferring the blessing upon Esau. Now, skip to requirement 4. This may give some readers pause. They may not agree that Isaac’s evidence provides greater warrant for its being Jacob than for its being Esau. Arguably, the evidence does not settle the matter. To determine that Isaac’s belief meets the fourth requirement, we turn to a widely accepted theory of epistemic justification, known as “evidentialism.” The theory stipulates that a person is justified in believing proposition p at time t if and only if his evidence for p at t supports believing p. According to one traditional version of evidentialism, if one’s evidence for p is inconclusive, one is justified or permitted to either believe or disbelieve p.25 So Isaac would be within his epistemic rights in believing that he is blessing Esau. A more stringent version of evidentialism, however, one that is more faithful to the requirement that one’s belief fit one’s evidence, denies the subject such epistemic latitude. If one’s evidence is inconclusive, as is the case with Isaac, the epistemically mandated doxastic state is suspension of belief. On this version of evidentialism, then, the gap between the inconclusiveness of Isaac’s evidence and the certainty he displays in conferring the blessing would satisfy requirement 4.26 Mele’s requirements 2 and 3 call for the subject to adopt a biased view of the evidence and for that biasing to cause the subject to form the faulty belief. What are my grounds, then, for claiming that Isaac comes to the belief that he is blessing Esau due to a biased view of his evidence? Isaac, during the first part of the story, is completely rational—he goes where the evidence leads him. Up until the critical moment, he interrogates, he investigates. A great deal is hanging in the balance—he wants to give the blessing only when he is sure. Whence his sudden confidence that the person he is about to bless

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is indeed Esau? Isaac takes in the smell of Esau’s garments—it is this new evidence that lays his doubts to rest. Does the smell of the garments really change the evidential picture so decisively, however? I propose that if Isaac were still looking at his evidence objectively, as he was until then, the smell of the garments would not weigh so heavily on the scales. Rather, Isaac feels sufficiently assured to proceed with the blessing because now he is looking at the evidence in a different light. His view of the evidence is now biased in favor of the belief that he is blessing Esau. How are we to construe the process by which Isaac arrives at a belief which is not truly supported by his evidence? Mele lists a number of ways in which biasing shapes people’s beliefs.27 Among them are selective focusing/attending, i.e., failing to focus attention on evidence that counts against p—in Isaac’s case, the voice he hears—and focusing instead on evidence suggestive of p—in Isaac’s case, the feel of the goatskins and the smell of the clothing. Another form of biasing is selective evidence-gathering, which includes overlooking evidence for ~p that is easily obtainable—in Isaac’s case, his foregoing further opportunity to clear up the uncertainty. Requirement 2 specifies that the self-deceiver’s biased treatment of the evidence be motivationally grounded. Not all biases meet this specification. Research into cognition suggests the prevalence of “cold” biases—people’s tendencies, which are not motivated by their own personal interests and desires, to skew their assessment of their evidence. Cold biases are often cognitive shortcuts, taken by people universally because they offer pragmatic benefits. For example, people tend to place more weight than is called for on the first piece of evidence they get. This strategy helps them get more quickly to a conclusion, but not necessarily the right one. Stereotyping is also a cold bias—the tendency to assign an individual to a group and then expect him to have certain qualities associated with that group. This is a useful strategy for quickly deciding about a stranger whether he is a friend or foe. It can, of course, mislead. As opposed to cold biases which serve impersonal interests, “hot” biases are those which are motivated by the subject’s personal preferences. The bias which causes Isaac to believe that he is blessing Esau is of the hot variety—motivated by Isaac’s desire to believe that he is blessing Esau. Identifying Isaac’s motive for his bias in terms of what he desires to believe leaves open the question of what Isaac desires to be the case, what it is he wants to be true. The two are not necessarily the same. With respect to what he calls “Garden-Variety Straight Self-Deception,” Mele stipulates that in self-deception that p, the desire that p be true is what motivates the biased treatment of the data.28 Mark Johnston requires further that the desire that the belief be true be accompanied by the anxiety that it is false.29 On this model, Isaac would be motivated to believe that he is blessing Esau because he wants it to be true that he is blessing Esau but fears that he is blessing Jacob. We are arguing, however, that Isaac wants it to be Jacob that he is

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blessing. Why then does he self-deceive himself into believing that he is blessing Esau, rather than openly and explicitly blessing Jacob?

Isaac’s mixed motives At the time we witness Esau being summoned by Isaac to receive the blessing, Esau is no stranger to us. We know that from before his birth, he is destined by God to serve his younger brother. Isaac favors Esau because Isaac has a taste for game, we are told. No judgment is made in the text as to the worthiness of this motive, but the reader may have some reservations. We have seen Esau sell his birthright to Jacob for some bread and lentil stew, upon which the narrator comments, presumably disapprovingly, that Esau “spurned” the birthright (Gen. 25:34).30 As the firstborn, Esau is the natural claimant to the birthright. Does Isaac know of Rebecca’s communication from God or of the transaction between his two sons? What are we to make of Isaac’s feelings towards his firstborn? We know that Isaac’s feelings towards Esau are not unadulterated. Immediately preceding the present episode, we read: And Esau was forty years old and he took for a wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite and Basmath the daughter of Elon the Hittite. And they were a provocation to Isaac and Rebecca. (Gen. 26:34–35) Yet Isaac does not renounce Esau, nor do we have reason to think that his affection for Esau fags. To appreciate the complexity of Isaac’s feelings, we need to widen our gaze beyond the boundaries of this episode.31 Isaac himself is the bearer of a contested birthright—the younger of his father’s sons, whose supremacy was secured by the banishment of the older. Does his older son, the outdoorsman, remind him of his older brother, Ishmael, “the wild ass of a man” (Gen. 16:12), whom he had perhaps loved, perhaps admired, who was lost to him? Does he see himself in the younger Jacob, the mild-mannered homebody? And if so, is it in Jacob’s being a potential usurper that Isaac identifies with him, or in his being the true heir of his father? Or both? Bear in mind also, that Isaac has witnessed within his family, at very close range, estrangement and alienation—the rupture of both parental and fraternal ties in the wake of a father’s choosing the younger son over the older. Let us venture also to factor Isaac’s relationship to his wife, Rebecca, into the complex of Isaac’s emotions. Even if she did not share God’s tidings with Isaac, could Isaac have been unaware of her preference for Jacob? Was he determined to follow his own inclinations, no matter what?32 Or, was his love for Esau tempered by his knowledge that she did not share it? Isaac is a man conflicted—between his love for, and perhaps duty to, Esau, his older son, and his intuition that Esau is not suited to be the heir to the

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father Abraham. Initially he summons Esau, but he has misgivings. As the interrogation of Jacob proceeds, his suspicions that Esau is not the one who is presenting himself for the blessing grow. Perhaps realizing the likelihood that this is Jacob rather than Esau helps to jolt him into the recognition that this is as it should be. On the verge of giving the blessing, he understands that the one he should be blessing is Jacob. Why, then, does he not declare that he has changed his mind and act accordingly? Think of the cost to Isaac of such a move—of choosing one son and rejecting the other. Esau would know of this betrayal; he would be pained and incensed by it. His rage would be directed against Isaac at least as much as against Jacob. Given this picture of Isaac’s motivational state, what should he do? One option which recommends itself, and which has been imputed to him by some commentators, is to simply feign credulity.33 He can pretend that he believes he is blessing Esau, confident, or almost confident, that he is blessing Jacob. He would, indeed, be betraying Esau, but with relative impunity. He would have to bear the brunt of Esau’s disappointment, but not his wrath. Esau’s fury with Jacob for stealing his blessing would not be compounded by his jealousy at Jacob’s having stolen his father’s affections as well. On this reading, the story is not one of deception and self-deception, but just of deception. The perpetrator is not Jacob, as we thought, however, since Jacob’s attempt at deception failed; rather, the dissembler is Isaac. Although regarding Isaac as performing a cynical charade makes sense of what he does from a pragmatic point of view, what appears to be his genuine delight in the smell of Esau’s clothing and his mighty trembling upon learning of the deception do not support such a reading. Furthermore, there is little of what we know of Isaac from elsewhere to suggest that he would be inclined to compromise his integrity so severely, or that he would even be capable of doing so.34 I have an additional reason for ruling out the possibility that Isaac is simply lying. I postulate that it is not simply the outward repercussions of an open confrontation that Isaac fears. He shrinks from the inner upheaval which would attend his betraying his older son, the one he had favored, whom he had led to expect to receive the blessing. Perhaps he dreads the humiliation of acknowledging that his wife loved more wisely than he. Isaac wishes to negotiate the present situation in a way that will compromise him least—in his own eyes and in the eyes of others.

Isaac’s strategy Although we are not inclined to take Isaac as simply putting on an act, the fact that we are tempted to do so advances my argument. If Isaac’s pretending to believe that he is blessing Esau could serve his interests, then his deceiving himself that he is blessing Esau will work even better. Indeed, it has been suggested that self-deception evolved as a strategy for more effective lying. Someone who believes that the tale he is telling is true is less likely to

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emit the signs of stress and self-consciousness which accompany conscious lying and are apt to give him away.35 Isaac is motivated to bias his evidence by the belief-desire complex I have outlined earlier. He believes that he is blessing Esau because he wants to believe it. He does not want the belief, for the sake of which he biases his evidence, to be true, however. Although he wants to believe that he is blessing Esau, he wants it to be true that he is blessing Jacob. Thus, Isaac’s self-deception does not conform to the simple model. Self-deception may take other forms. David Pears considers instances of self-deception where people come to have unfounded beliefs which they do not want to be true, which are intrinsically unpleasant or even painful to them.36 These are often cases where the self-deception is motivated by emotions such as fear or jealousy. A husband who has no evidence that his wife is being unfaithful may nevertheless form the belief that she is, even though he is grieved by the thought and does not want it to be true. According to Pears this kind of conduct can often be explained by the person’s having an ulterior goal, towards which the unpleasant, counter-indicated belief is a means. In the case of the jealous husband, he forms the belief that his wife is unfaithful as a strategy for ensuring that he will be zealously on guard against any rivals for her affections. By exaggerating the danger, he increases the likelihood that he will take the steps required to thwart it. Thinking of self-deception as a strategy conforms to the principle that the subject’s biased view of his evidence is motivationally grounded in a desire for some sort of gain for himself. The gain he desires, however, need not be that the unfounded belief be true. On my reading, Isaac wants to believe that he is blessing Esau as a means of achieving his goal, the main element of which is to bless Jacob. Although the achievement of the latter, in itself, is compatible with his believing that he is blessing Jacob, Isaac’s more complex goal, as I have laid it out earlier, is better advanced by his believing that he is blessing Esau. Johnston, as you may recall, stipulates that reducing anxiety is the root motivation for self-deception. In the case of “garden-variety straight selfdeception,” the subject desires that the belief caused by the bias be true and is anxious that it is false. Although we can easily agree that Isaac is anxious during what must have been something of an ordeal for him, on this reading he is not anxious lest his biased belief, that he is blessing Esau, be false. Annette Barnes makes it possible to accommodate the case of Isaac. She subscribes to Johnston’s view of the key role played by anxiety in self-deception but allows that the anxiety may pertain to beliefs other than the one caused by the bias, thus accommodating Pears’s more comprehensive approach.37 According to her, the belief caused by the bias may be desired for its presumed usefulness. The subject believes that his having the biased belief will be instrumental in bringing about the truth of the belief about which he is anxious—the belief he wishes were true but fears is not. The analyses of self-deception we have examined so far have in common with Barnes’s view that the self-deceived subject is anxious that a particular

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proposition be true. Barnes’s expansive view is congenial to the story of Isaac, but her notion of anxiety does not do justice to Isaac’s mental state. As she sees it, the motivational state of the self-deceiver is clear-cut; what provokes his anxiety is the gap between what he wants to believe and what he finds himself believing. Isaac’s anxiety is indeed epistemically grounded— he is, at least at times, uncertain about the facts. Isaac’s predicament is not entirely epistemic, however. Were he wholeheartedly behind his choice of Esau, or alternatively, were he not conflicted over giving the blessing to Jacob, he might have taken direct action to ascertain the identity of the person petitioning him. Torn as he is, instead of clearing up the matter, he resorts to self-deception. I am suggesting that the anxiety at the root of Isaac’s self-deception is also fueled, perhaps primarily, by his ambivalence about which of his children he wants to receive the blessing, and his feeling at a loss about how to bring about the satisfaction of his discordant desires. We may learn from this that the anxiety which motivates the self-deceiver may not only have its source in his beliefs—his fear that the facts are not as he would like to believe—but also in his desires, his conflicts about what he wants the facts to be.38 He may engage in self-deception in order to form a belief which will enable him to avoid acknowledging the conflict, or facing the necessity of resolving it. Isaac’s conflicts as he proceeds with the blessing go beyond his dilemma with respect to his sons. His perception of himself, his role in his family, his relationships with his children—all these are being threatened. Bela Szabados observes that a person feeling called upon to give up his deeply held commitments is pained by the prospect; he may perceive such a concession as profoundly threatening to his sense of self. It may be difficult for him to abandon his former commitments at once; he may need time for retrenchment and adjustment. According to Szabados, in such circumstances selfdeception may provide an occasion for self-transformation.39 Isaac’s plight fits Szabados’s description—he is contending here with his very identity. Isaac’s commitment to Esau is a function not simply of his taste in food but also of his childhood experiences and family history. It is anchored in his perceptions of his own identity. That it is ultimately overturned, that Isaac, so shortly after having been deceived into blessing Jacob, gives Jacob another blessing of his own volition, is in line with Szabados’s observation that self-deception may make possible a reversal of one’s deeply held attitudes and commitments—a radical change of heart that one could not bring about by a direct or self-conscious reappraisal.

The ethics of Isaac’s self-deception Two of the characters in our drama perpetrate a deception, as a result of which their moral standing is compromised. While there is no explicit expression of disapproval of Jacob’s conduct in this episode, as we noted earlier, his life thereafter is beset with misfortune.40 He seems to be receiving his just

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deserts. Similarly, although there is no explicit condemnation of Rebecca in the text, perhaps the fact that she must send away her beloved Jacob, never to see him again, counts as her punishment. Isaac, on my account, is “guilty” of self-deception. Is this a moral stain on his record? Self-deception figures as part of the standard array of coping mechanisms people avail themselves of, especially in times of stress. Often it is to be lamented because it is counter-productive. Acting on false or unwarranted beliefs is not, on the whole, an effective way to achieve one’s goals, and even if the self-deception achieves its goal, other very important goals may be forfeited thereby. Many instances of self-deception are deplored because of the pain they cause others. Sometimes, however, we commend an instance of self-deception as the best or only way of achieving a welcome end. If we regard subsequent developments in the story as keyed, at least in part, to the characters’ moral deserts, then Isaac seems to emerge morally uncompromised by his having conferred the blessing on Jacob. Not only does his having done so serve Isaac’s own purposes, as I have described them, but the reader also cannot but applaud its results. Esau is displaced by the worthier Jacob but is not made to suffer the humiliation he would have experienced had he been openly rejected by his father. Isaac is spared the pain which his doing what he did would have caused him, had he done it deliberately and knowingly. He is no less righteous for deceiving his son and depriving him of his due because he does so unwittingly. He emerges from the ordeal in Esau’s good graces and with his self-respect intact.41 It is against Jacob that Esau bears his grudge; his trust in his father is not shaken. Isaac’s strategy is further vindicated by the ultimate reconciliation between Esau and Jacob. Twenty years later, when Jacob meets up with Esau, Jacob offers Esau a very lavish tribute. Esau responds, “I have much, my brother. Keep what you have” (Gen. 33:9). And when Isaac died, “old and sated with years, Esau and Jacob his sons buried him” (Gen. 35:29). What account of self-deception allows for so sympathetic an attitude towards Isaac? The favorable results which ensue from the blessing are compatible with either of the following: Isaac’s conduct is not subject to moral censure because in engaging in self-deception Isaac did nothing intentional. The happy results of the blessing are the natural playing out of a successful strategy but are not to be Isaac’s reward for having acted well. Alternatively, Isaac intentionally engaged in self-deception and is morally praiseworthy for doing so, and the favorable outcome is Isaac’s reward. I shall begin with the second possibility. A natural way of incorporating intentionality into the notion of selfdeception is to understand it on the model of other-deception.42 We do not count a person who inadvertently—unintentionally or unknowingly— misleads someone, to be deceiving him. To qualify as a full-fledged deceiver he would not only have to know or believe that he was causing his victim to believe a falsehood, but he would also have to be deliberately taking steps

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to convince him of it.43 Correspondingly, a person who simply misinterprets his evidence, even if it is due to his own negligence, and even if as a result he comes to believe what he wishes to believe, is not self-deceived. By analogy with the deceiver of others, to count as a self-deceiver on this model, a person must intentionally bias his evidence in order to cause himself to form a belief he takes to be false, and he must intentionally conceal this from himself.44 If the self-deceiver intentionally induces in himself a false or unwarranted belief in order to achieve a goal which, presumably, he desires not to acknowledge, he may well be subject to moral censure. Ignorance, as a rule, exculpates, but if someone intentionally brings it on himself in order to use it as an excuse, how can he then hide behind it? If Isaac were deliberately concealing from himself that he was blessing Jacob in order to escape responsibility for betraying Esau, he would be derivatively responsible, not only for blessing Jacob, thereby betraying Esau but also for doing so underhandedly. Only in utilitarian terms might Isaac be justified—because of the greater good he presumably foresaw and indeed gained by employing this strategy. Freer of paradox and more conducive to a morally neutral attitude to the subject is a non-intentionalist rendering of self-deception. On this approach, self-deception arises from the operation of unconscious biasing processes which are automatically triggered and sustained by a person’s desires and beliefs.45 In some kinds of stressful situations skewing one’s belief-forming processes may typically be the “default response.”46 Mele brings James Friedrich’s “primary error detection and minimization” analysis of lay hypothesis testing.47 According to Friedrich’s analysis, the principle governing the testing of a hypothesis is the avoidance or minimization of “costly errors”—errors the subject sees as having painful consequences. The subject chooses to consider certain hypotheses which, in his estimation, if he accepts them and they turn out to be false, he will not lose very much as a result. He then tests these hypotheses in a biased fashion, making it easy for him to adopt them. Mele cites an example of how we may non-intentionally test hypotheses in a biased fashion.48 We start from the assumption that when we go about testing our hypotheses we tacitly assign a “confidence threshold” to each of the hypotheses we test—we unconsciously and unintentionally fix the weight of the evidence required for its acceptance. The lower the threshold, the sparser the evidence required to reach it. Faced with two opposing hypotheses, by manipulating their confidence thresholds we can skew the weighting of the evidence for each. This constitutes a bias towards the hypothesis for which the lower level has been fixed; it will triumph over its rival even though the evidence supporting it is weaker. Our desires can influence what we come to believe by influencing our acceptance and rejection levels. These automatic processes can be purposive—their function might be to reduce anxiety—even though they are not intentional. Although the manipulation of the thresholds is motivated by the self-deceiver’s goals, he is not

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consciously trying to further those goals. The subject, unaware of these processes, would also be unaware of the beliefs and desires which prompt them. How does this model make sense of the particulars of the strategy I have attributed to Isaac? Since Isaac strongly suspects that he is dealing with Jacob and also has a strong intuition that Jacob is the one who should receive the blessing but at the same time loves Esau and is loath to betray him, the “primary error” for him would be to take direct action—halt the blessing and investigate further. The belief that he ostensibly holds, the one that he wants Esau to believe that he holds—that he is blessing Esau—would be revealed to be false. He would then have to either proceed to bless Jacob and suffer Esau’s disappointment and rage or bless Esau in the belief that he is blessing the wrong son. If he were to believe that he is blessing Esau, however, he would have no reason to commit that error. To secure that belief, he engages in self-deception. The notion of a “confidence threshold” serves well to account for Isaac’s “transformation.” What Isaac wanted most to avoid was believing that Jacob stood before him asking to be blessed. He wanted to avoid believing it because he suspected it was true, and he wanted to be able to give the blessing to Jacob without taking responsibility for doing so. His alternative was to believe that it was Esau who was standing before him. He wanted to believe that it was Esau because he suspected it was not. Thus, he would be giving the blessing to Jacob, the son for which he now believes it is intended, with impunity. The belief that Jacob is the rightful claimant had taken hold of him in the course of his interrogations prior to his self-deception, during which time his confidence thresholds were more evenly balanced. Given his antecedent assessment of the likelihood of each of them being true, Isaac unconsciously establishes the thresholds for the two hypotheses—that he is about to bless Esau or that he is about to bless Jacob—on the basis of the relative costs to him of believing each. He sets the threshold low for believing that it is Esau—the smell of the garments will settle the matter—so that he will believe it is true that he is blessing him. If he is wrong, which he expects to be the case, he will be blessing Jacob, which is what he wants to do. We need only imagine how high he set his confidence threshold for believing that it is Jacob, to assure that he would not believe it. Does a non-intentionalist account, invoking as it does cognitive processes which are unconscious and automatic, remove all responsibility from the self-deceiver? One juncture at which it may yet be possible to take the unintentional self-deceiver to task is suggested by Scott-Kakures. He focuses on the self-deceiver’s cognitive state after he has adopted the desired belief.49 Given the cognitive fissure that separates his present perspective from his former perspective, the self-deceiver cannot explain to himself how he came to believe what he now believes. Upon reflection, he understands that without any reason for having rejected his former beliefs, he is, in a sense, still committed to them, and nevertheless he is currently holding a set of contrary beliefs. This thought should make him uneasy and tend to undermine his

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current beliefs. That there is an unaccounted epistemic gap in his cognitive history should give him pause. If he is to persist in his self-deception, he must turn his eyes away from his epistemic predicament. For doing so, rather than confronting his irrationality and attempting to set matters right, the selfdeceiver may be held responsible. Given that at the time of the blessing Isaac was lodged at the far end of the fissure, did he not remember that he had started out at the other side? Could he explain to himself how he came to abandon his doubts so completely? And if not, given the importance of what he was about to do, perhaps, from a moral point of view, was he not obligated to try? In Isaac’s defense, however, it must be pointed out that the possibility of recognizing that one is being irrational in the sense defined by Scott-Kakures arises only after the transition has been negotiated—the self-deceiver must then look over his shoulder, so to speak. In Isaac’s case this possibility lasts for only a brief interval. Jacob, whom he takes to be Esau, is standing before him having prepared the food he had requested, with the expectation that he will now receive the blessing. Isaac, whose beliefs now, by hypothesis, are consistent with his proceeding straightaway with the blessing, has little opportunity to reflect upon his newly acquired doxastic state or puzzle at how he came to it. There is a kind of indirect responsibility, however, that a self-deceiver may bear, even on a non-intentionalist account. Although he did nothing to initiate the processes which afford him the beliefs he desires, he may be guilty of not having taken enough steps to block or curtail those processes. Indeed, there may be circumstances in which one cannot keep oneself from yielding to the cognitive mechanisms which bring relief from anxiety. Perhaps, however, at other times one may be able to resist giving way, and if so, one may be blameworthy for failing to do so. If Isaac could resist his inclination to believe as he wishes, rather than as his evidence dictates, that he did not to do so when the issue is of such major importance may be blameworthy. Had he been motivated only by his aversion to domestic strife, we might consider him a coward. On my reading, however, Isaac’s goal is more comprehensive. It is to cause the blessing to be given to the worthy recipient while inflicting minimum collateral damage to Esau and to the relationships within his family. If we are sympathetic to this goal, although we cannot credit Isaac for engaging in self-deception in order to achieve it, since, on this view he did not do so intentionally, we may not be inclined to censure him for not trying to foil the cognitive mechanisms which came to his aid.

An epistemological resolution of the theological quandary The stealing of the blessing is part of a larger saga of the patriarchal family which culminates in the establishment of the House of Israel. While the heroes act out of their own desires and intentions, as I read it, the narrative, taken as a whole, testifies to God’s providence and especially to His

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steering the course of the children of Abraham. God promises to make Abraham into a great nation. The need to provide for the continuation of Abraham’s line is at the heart of the drama of Genesis. Childlessness, on the one hand and sibling rivalry, on the other, cast their shadows repeatedly over God’s promise. Throughout the narrative succession and dominion are subjects of tension and strife. They repeatedly call for the rejection or subjection of aspiring contenders. The contests between Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, and Joseph and his brothers occupy center stage, but the record also includes the reversal of the birth-order of the twins Peretz and Zerach, born to Tamar and Judah, whereby the second-born Peretz will sire the royal House of David,50 and the ascendance of Joseph’s younger son, Ephraim, over the older, Manasseh. At some of these junctures God overtly intervenes to secure the privileged status for His chosen, in others we may detect His presence behind the scenes directing the affairs. In yet others it seems that matters work themselves out on their own—Zerach, one of the twins born to Tamar, who is initially positioned to be born first is overtaken in birth by his twin brother Peretz. The triumph of Peretz is later confirmed when Peretz turns out to be the progenitor of King David. God explicitly decrees the election of both Abraham and Isaac. He overtly grants them both the promise of seed and land. If we skip forward to the selection of Ephraim over Manasseh, Jacob receives no overt guidance from God in making the determination. When challenged by Joseph he insists that he knows what he is doing.51 Yet as we argued earlier, the proximity of this scene to the following one in which Jacob reveals to all his sons what will befall them in the days to come, where Jacob’s pronouncements seem to be divinely inspired, suggests that Jacob’s crossing his hands here was also. Jacob’s blessings were part of the divine design. The transmission of the Abrahamic line from Isaac to Jacob is embedded in this providential account. That it is also accompanied by divine blessings, argues for its similarly bearing God’s imprint. Indeed, before our story began, we heard God’s prophetic announcement to Rebecca, which foreshadows the story’s conclusion. Perhaps this is part of what inclines Rebecca to favor Jacob, as a result of which she contrives to secure him the blessing. If so, the divine pronouncement not only foretells the future but is also a link in the causal chain that shapes it. God’s control over the unfolding events, as it is represented in these narratives, takes many forms. As was noted earlier, as the story proceeds there is a progressive lessening of God’s overt intervention. The stamp of God’s authorship is unmistakable throughout the story, but over the course of the narrative it becomes more covert, more natural, and subtler. When Sarah demands of Abraham that he cast off Ishmael the thought of sending away his son “distressed Abraham greatly” (Gen. 21.12). God openly addresses Abraham, ordering him to do Sarah’s bidding. In the struggle among the sons of Jacob, the last of the patriarchs, Judah gains ascendancy over his

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brothers by dint of the lapses of the latter and his own virtues. Joseph has a privileged position because Jacob loves him best of all his sons. Jacob exercises his patriarchal prerogatives into the generation of his grandchildren. In the last of the succession dramas in Genesis, when Jacob, of whom it is said that he could not see, crosses his hands when he blesses his grandsons in order to give the greater blessing to the younger, we do not suspect that Jacob is simply acting out of personal preference or favoritism.52 His being the grandfather rather than the father of Manasseh and Ephraim distances him from the emotional entanglements which complicated the earlier patriarchs’ involvement in their sons’ destinies.53 Although Jacob makes no mention of God, it appears that Jacob is speaking here, as he will be in the forthcoming blessings, with prophetic voice. Yet, he takes full responsibility for his departure from the natural birth-order. Jacob professes to be acting out of knowledge, and he claims the knowledge as his own. Theologically, Isaac’s blessing Jacob must be positioned somewhere between Abraham’s expulsion of Ishmael at Sarah’s demand and on God’s bidding and Jacob’s favoring Ephraim over Manasseh without any outside intervention. While Sarah, with God’s support, imposed her will on Abraham, in Rebecca’s case it was only her son, not her husband, that did her bidding. Isaac acts as he chooses, but his autonomy is compromised by his son’s deception and his own self-deception. I suggest that it was nevertheless a divinely informed choice. God overtly chooses Abraham, overtly dictates Abraham’s choice of Isaac and grants Jacob prophetic knowledge of the ascendance of Ephraim. It is inconceivable that He simply leave Isaac “in the dark” over the next in line.

Isaac’s insight On the reading I am proposing, Isaac, as he is about to confer the blessing upon Jacob, knows or strongly suspects, both that the son he is about to bless is Jacob and that Jacob is the one who should receive the blessing. He suspects that it is Jacob because, among other things, he repeatedly hears Jacob’s voice. What makes him think that Jacob rather than Esau is the one who should receive the blessing? God did not reveal this to him explicitly, it would seem. Had He done so, Isaac would not then have set out to give Esau the blessing. I am arguing that Isaac had good reason to believe that Esau was not fit to receive the Abrahamic blessing and that he avoided the conclusion by engaging in self-deception—by treating his evidence in biased fashion. What, then, was Isaac’s evidence? What was his reason for thinking that Jacob was the one to whom he should give the blessing? The present episode is prefaced by the report of Isaac’s dismay at Esau’s taking Hittite wives—they were a “provocation”54 to Isaac and Rebecca (Gen. 26:35). In taking Hittite wives Esau does not appear to have violated any explicit divine injunction, yet both Isaac and Rebecca are strongly affected by it. Isaac’s commitment to endogamy cannot surprise us. He is

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the son of Sarah, whose country of birth is the same as that of his father Abraham, and who, some say, was Abraham’s half-sister. Abraham, Isaac’s father, charged his servant to travel to the land of his birth to find a wife for his son. Abraham has his servant take an oath that he will not take a wife for Isaac “from the daughters of the Canaanite in whose midst I dwell” (Gen. 24.3). Did God plant the conviction in the heart of the patriarch that his line must remain unalloyed by the offspring of the nations that surround them? Although Abraham does not say as much, Abraham’s servant seems to regard himself as being engaged in a divine mission. In the city of Nahor, when the servant discovers that the young girl who tends to him and his camels is from Abraham’s family, the servant thanks God for the special favor He has awarded his master.55 In his eyes and in those of Rebecca’s family, the match was made in heaven. The present narrative returns to Rebecca and Isaac’s aversion to foreign women towards the end. After Esau discovers Jacob’s treachery, Rebecca determines to send Jacob back to her ancestral home in order to remove him from Esau’s vengeful reach. In presenting this plan to Isaac, she hides her real motive from him and says to him instead, “I loathe my life because of the Hittite women! If Jacob takes a wife from Hittite women like these, from the native girls, what good to me is life?” (Gen. 27:46). Her protestations have the desired effect on Isaac. He straightaway summons Jacob, blesses him and commands him, “You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan. Rise, go to Paddan-Aram . . . and take you from there a wife from the daughters of Laban, your mother’s brother” (Gen. 28:1–2). It is not simply that Isaac disapproves of Esau’s wives—they evoke an emotional aversion in him and Rebecca. Perhaps Isaac’s distress at Esau’s marital choices was not simply a contingent emotional reaction, but a specific sensibility, which, perhaps was nurtured in him under his mother’s and father’s tutelage. Or, perhaps God directly endowed Isaac with the cognitive sensitivities and capacities which gave rise to his visceral antipathy to Esau’s Hittite wives.56 Despite how he feels about Esau’s wives, however, Isaac prepares to bless Esau. He is old and his eyes are “too bleary to see.” His physical blindness is what makes Jacob’s ruse possible, but it may also serve as a metaphor for a cognitive lapse.57 Perhaps because of his love for Esau, Isaac failed to attend as he should have to what his feelings revealed to him about Esau.58 Because of his conflicted state, he formed the belief that Esau should receive the blessing, although he had good reason to believe it to be false. He concealed his true and correct appraisal of Esau from himself. God saw to it, however, that Isaac would have the ability at the crucial moment to discern his children’s suitability for the role of patriarch. Taking Isaac to be unknowingly acting on his correct appraisal allows us to integrate Isaac’s blessing Jacob more coherently into the patriarchal saga. It is part of God’s design that Isaac appreciate the necessity of endogamous alliances. If Isaac is educated or “programmed” to be pained by the threat of foreign women, the effect of Esau’s taking Hittite wives is, ultimately, to

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cause Isaac to know which of his sons is worthy of the blessing. Throughout this episode there is no suggestion that Isaac’s affection for Esau wanes. God does not interfere with Isaac’s love for his son; He allows Isaac’s Abrahamic commitments to be pitted against his natural emotions. Whereas Abraham’s love for Ishmael brought him up against God’s clearcut directive to send him off, Isaac subordinates his love for his firstborn to an inner call, which also emanated, directly or indirectly, implicitly, from God. Abraham is ordered to submit; Isaac is left to come around on his own. Abraham does not pass on the Abrahamic blessing to his son Isaac; rather, God blesses Isaac after Abraham’s death. Jacob, on the other hand, takes charge and boldly and assertively blesses all his children. In bestowing the blessing upon Jacob, Isaac is only partly in charge. Depicting Isaac as choosing his successor with the help of divine guidance places him more squarely in the patriarchal tradition. Having internalized God’s directive as Abraham had not, but having implemented it unawares, in contrast to Jacob who knew what he was doing, Isaac occupies the transitional position marked out for him in the patriarchal saga. On my reading, Isaac is not simply a vessel through which the blessing is transmitted. The authority for the succession remains invested in him and the choice is made, ultimately, according to his own lights. The integrity of the Abrahamic line is preserved. Although Jacob secured the blessing by deceit, his place in the Abrahamic succession is affirmed. Jacob receives his blessing, not due to Isaac’s blindness, but thanks to Isaac’s insight.

Notes 1 This chapter is drawn mainly, with the kind permission of the publishers, from my previously published study, “Jacob and Isaac: A Tale of Deception and SelfDeception,” in Robert Eisen and Charles H. Manekin, eds., Philosophers and the Hebrew Bible (Bethesda, MD: Maryland University Press, 2008): 143–165. 2 The privileges and advantages associated with the first-born—‫—בכורה‬are not spelled out in these narratives. Implicit here is that they include succession to the father’s position as head of the household and rights to, either all or a greater part of, his estate. In these stories the covenantal relationship with God is also at issue. See Nissan Rubin, “The Social Significance in the Bible of the First Born,” Beit Mikra: Journal for the Study of the Bible and Its World 113 (1988): 155– 170 (Hebrew). 3 In an earlier episode Esau sold the birthright (‫ )בכורה‬to Jacob in exchange for a mess of lentil stew (Gen. 25:29–34). Jacob does not mention this transaction in the present scene. 4 Gen. 28:3–5. 5 A different, but related, question concerns the relationship of each of the two to the birthright Esau sold to Jacob earlier in return for some lentil stew. Does Jacob’s ownership of the birthright, if indeed that is the case, entitle him to either of these blessings? The relationship between the birthright, the first-born privileges and the Blessing of Abraham is not clarified in this narrative. This ambiguity may be inherent to the narrative. See, Elie Assis, Identity in Conflict: The Struggle between Esau and Jacob, Edom and Israel (Winona Lake,

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9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

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IN: Eisenbrauns, 2016) Chapter 2. In this chapter I deal primarily with the relationship between the blessing Isaac intended to give to Esau and the Blessing of Abraham. The matter of the birthright will come up in Chapter 5. See, for example, Nachmanides, 27:4. Jacob’s winning the blessing from Isaac by deception is notoriously troubling morally as well. This will be discussed in Chapter 5. Shmuel Klitsner, Wrestling Jacob: Deception, Identity, and Freudian Slips in Genesis, 2nd edition (Teaneck, NJ: Ben Yehuda Press, 2009), 64ff., argues that Rebecca tragically misunderstood Isaac’s true intention. Isaac had never meant to give the Abrahamic blessing to Esau but rather had reserved it for Jacob all along. See, also, David Berger, “On the Morality of the Patriarchs in Jewish Polemic and Exegesis,” in Clemens Thomas and Michael Wyschogrod, eds., Understanding Scripture: Explorations of Jewish Traditions of Interpretation (New York: Paulist Press, 1987). See, also, Yair Zakovitch, Jacob: Unexpected Patriarch (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), Chapter 2. Jonathan Grossman, Jacob: The Story of a Family (Rishon LeZion: Herzog College, 2019), Chapter 3 (Hebrew); Elie Assis, Identity in Conflict, Chapter 2, presents a somewhat similar interpretation. Samuel David Luzzatto (Shadal), Commentary on the Pentateuch (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1965), 231. This is perhaps also what Abraham had in mind when, in response to God’s telling him that His covenant would be made with the son to be born to Sarah, he pleaded, “Would that Ishmael might live in your favor!” (Gen. 17:18). Note, however, that the circumstances of Esau’s departure recall those in which Lot, Abraham’s, nephew, parted from Abraham. This constituted Lot’s separation from Abraham’s line. See Gen. 26:12–19. When he asks his father where the sheep is for the offering, Abraham answers him that “God will see to the sheep” (Gen. 22:8), a vague answer for such a fraught question, with which Isaac nevertheless makes do. This contrast is underscored by the comparison between Jacob’s meeting Rachel at the well and Abraham’s servant meeting Rebecca at the well. See Alter, Biblical Narrative, 61 ff. The reader may wonder to what extent a man who, during his lifetime, was the owner of many flocks would confuse the feel of a goatskin with the feel of the hairy arm of his son. I am indebted to Joshua Berman for helping me work out the timing in the progression I am laying out here. See Dion Scott-Kakures, “Self-Deception and Internal Irrationality,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 56 (1996): 31–56. Gen. 28:3–4. Christopher Hookway, “Epistemic Akrasia and Epistemic Virtue,” in Abrol Fairweather and Linda Zagzebski, eds., Virtue Epistemology: Essays on Epistemic Virtue and Responsibility (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 178–199, suggests that self-deception may be caused by a reluctance to acknowledge that more careful investigation may work counter to our goals or bring us face to face with unpleasant truths. Hookway attributes this observation (not explicit) to Mark Johnston, “Self-Deception and the Nature of the Mind,” in Brian P. McLaughlin and Amelie Rorty, eds., Perspectives on Self-Deception (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 63–92. Isaac believes that once the blessing is given it cannot be rescinded. See David Daube, “How Esau Sold His Birthright,” The Cambridge Law Journal 8 (1942): 70–75. This, in itself, does not account, however, for Isaac’s not showing any anger towards Jacob.

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22 Like Esau’s uncle, Ishmael, of whom the angel of the Lord had said, “His hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him” (Gen. 16:12), Esau is destined by Isaac to live by his sword. 23 Alfred R. Mele, Self-Deception Unmasked (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 50. 24 Mele, Self-Deception, 51, actually requires that it be a nondeviant cause. Nondeviance in this context is a technical requirement, which I disregard for purposes of this discussion. 25 Richard Feldman and Earl Conee, “Evidentialism,” Philosophical Studies 48 (1985): 15–34. 26 There is also a view that someone might be counted as self-deceived who formed a true belief, provided it was on the basis of a biased interpretation of his evidence. See Scott-Kakures, “Self-Deception,” 38. The emphasis, on this view, then, is on the manipulation of the evidence. Similarly, it might not be essential to self-deception that the subject’s belief fail to comply with what his evidence in fact indicates. It would be sufficient that the subject believe contrary to the way he views his evidence. Isaac clearly believes that the evidence is troubling yet, in giving the blessing, expresses the conviction that he is blessing Esau. 27 Mele, Self-Deception, 26. 28 Mele, Self-Deception, 25. 29 Johnston, “Self-Deception,” 73. 30 See Shira Weiss, Ethical Ambiguity in the Hebrew Bible: Philosophical Analysis of Scriptural Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 97–11, for a discussion of the unethical aspects of Jacob’s behavior in this transaction. When Esau discovers that Jacob has cheated him of the blessing, he protests that Jacob had also cheated him of his birthright (Gen. 27:36). 31 Jonathan Grossman, Text and Subtext, 202–210, points out that where the reader sets the boundaries of a story affects the meaning of a story. Grossman analyzes the story of stealing of the blessings to illustrate the use of “dynamic boundaries.” 32 I thank Howard Wettstein for raising these questions in conversation. 33 See Abarbanel on Gen. 27:30 and the contemporary feminist critic Tikva FrymerKensky, Reading the Women of the Bible (New York: Schocken Books, 2002), 20. 34 One might point to Isaac’s presenting Rebecca to the men of Gerar as his sister rather than his wife, as an instance of deception on his part (Gen. 26:6–11). Isaac is lying here to foreigners out of fear for his life, rather than to his son. Furthermore, he fails to carry off the deception. 35 Mele, Self-Deception, 89 cites Robert Trivers, Social Evolution (Menlo Park, CA: Benjamin and Cummings, 1985), 415–417. 36 David Pears, Motivated Irrationality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 42–44. Mele, Self-Deception, 95, accommodates such cases under the rubric of “Twisted Self-Deception.” 37 Annette Barnes, Seeing through Self-Deception (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 39. 38 Barnes, Seeing through Self-Deception, 48, treats such a case as a possible counter-example to her claim that there are instances of self-deception where the subject does not desire that the belief he forms be true. It could be that rather than not wanting the belief to be true, he is simply ambivalent. 39 Bela Szabados, “The Self, Its Passions and Self-Deception,” in Mike W. Martin, ed., Self-Deception and Self-Understanding: New Essays in Philosophy and Psychology (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 1985), 143–168 at 160. 40 See Chapter 5. 41 Herbert Fingarette, Self-Deception (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 139, suggests that the self-deceiver is motivated by a concern for his own

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54 55

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authentic inner dignity and that it is our perception of this that moves us to feel compassion towards him rather than regard him as a mere cheat. For a discussion of this view of self-deception, see Harold A. Sackheim and Ruben C. Gur, “Self-Deception, Self-Confrontation, and Consciousness,” in Gary E. Schwartz and David Shapiro, eds., Consciousness and Self-Regulation, Vol. 2 (New York: Plenum Press, 1978), 139–197; also, Mele, Self-Deception, 59ff. This may not always hold, however. Perhaps if I cause you to believe what I take to be a true proposition, but I cause you to believe it by manipulating the evidence, that might count as my deceiving you. For a discussion of the philosophical difficulties inherent in an intentionalist view of self-deception, see Barnes, Seeing through Self-Deception, chapter 5. See Barnes, Seeing through Self-Deception, Chapter 5. Also Johnston, “SelfDeception,” 73ff. and Mele, Self-Deception, Chapter 2. Barnes, Seeing through Self-Deception, 164, note 20. James Friedrich, “Primary Error Detection and Minimization (PEDMIN) Strategies in Social Cognition: A Reinterpretation of Confirmation Bias Phenomena,” Psychological Review 100 (1993): 298–319. Cited in Mele, Self-Deception, 31. This process is posited by Yaacov Trope and Akiva Liberman, “Social Hypothesis Testing: Cognitive and Motivational Mechanisms,” in Arie W. Kruglanski and E. Tory Higgins, eds., Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles (New York: Guilford Press, 1996), 239–270, cited in Mele, Self-Deception, 34. Scott-Kakures, “Self-Deception,” 51. Ruth 4:18–22. Gen. 48:19. See my discussion of this episode in Chapter 2. Gen. 48:10. See Devora Steinmetz, From Father to Son: Kinship, Conflict, and Continuity in Genesis (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster and John Knox Press, 1991), 123ff. The text may also be suggesting that Jacob had never met Joseph’s sons before this encounter (Gen. 48:8). This is Alter’s translation based on the Hebrew verb ‫ מרה‬meaning “to defy” or “to rebel.” The JPS translates the phrase as “they were a source of bitterness to Isaac and Rebekah.” See Ibn Ezra on Gen. 26:35. Note that Rebecca’s grandfather, Nahor, is her mother Milkah’s, uncle. Thus, she is both Abraham’s great-niece, as she is the granddaughter of Nahor, Abraham’s brother, and also his great-great-niece, as she is the great-granddaughter of Haran, Abraham’s other brother. See Chapter 2. Grossman, Jacob, 129, explores Jacob’s blindness as a literary symbol. John McDowell, “Virtue and Reason,” The Monist 62 (1979): 331–350 at 332ff, cautions that the deliverance of a sensitivity is not enough to necessitate the right action. The person who exercises this sensitivity must also be free from “possibly obstructing factors, for example distracting desires,” in order for him to act virtuously.

5

Jacob seeks atonement

Jacob is successor to the patriarchal legacy, the heir to God’s covenant with Abraham. He fathers the 12 tribes of Israel and is brought to burial at the side of his forefathers in the Cave of the Machpela in the city of Hebron. However, his life is plagued by misfortune and tragedy. In his old age Pharaoh asks him: “How many are the days and years of your life?” Jacob answers: “The days and years of my sojourning are a hundred and thirty years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life” (Gen. 47:8–9). The disparity between his exalted status as father of the Chosen People and his personal desolation is not the only irony we meet in Jacob’s life. That he occupies his patriarchal status in spite of, and by way of, lying to his father and cheating his brother is even more striking.1 This dissonance casts a shadow over Jacob’s life. I shall focus on a striking meeting between the two brothers many years after the deception took place and argue that implicit in his conduct towards his brother in this scene are Jacob’s misgivings about his past. I shall further propose that the scene gives us dramatic insight into some of the major tensions running through the Genesis narratives.

The meeting between the brothers After 20 years’ sojourn abroad, Jacob returns to the Land of Canaan. Having fled his parents’ home to escape the vengeance of the brother whose blessing he had stolen, he is now returning to the arena of his earlier intrigues and struggles. Jacob’s way home is not smooth. At the head of a large party—two wives, two maidservants, 11 sons, a daughter, several attendants, and large herds of livestock—he anticipates the impending meeting with Esau. Jacob is anxious. He does not wait for the face-to-face encounter, but before receiving any sign from Esau, sends messengers on ahead to him. “My lord Esau,” the messengers are instructed to address his brother, “thus says your servant Jacob.” Jacob’s deference to Esau is not a mere formality. His words evoke the frightful circumstances of their parting. The blessing that Jacob received by deceit from his father clearly staked out Jacob’s superior status relative to his brother: “May peoples serve you, and nations bow before you. Be overlord to your brothers, may your mother’s sons bow

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before you” (Gen. 27:29). In his greeting his brother now, Jacob reverses their roles. Upon their return, Jacob’s messengers do not bring back a reply. Rather, they describe to Jacob the scene they observed—Esau is coming towards him, “and four hundred men are with him.” The report, on the face of it, leaves open the question of Esau’s motive. Is he bringing with him an impressive entourage to honor his brother’s arrival?2 Or, is he marching at the head of a fighting unit bent upon annihilating Jacob and his family?3 Jacob fears the worst and prepares against a lethal attack. He divides his camp into two, with no thoughts of defending himself, seeking rather to minimize the impending devastation. Jacob’s behavior—the protective measures he takes and the lavishness of the gift he subsequently sends to his brother—speak for how frightened he is. Although Jacob has little in the way of military capability as he faces his brother, his fear may yet strike us as inordinate. We were told at the time that because Jacob stole his blessing “Esau seethed with resentment against Jacob . . . and . . . said in his heart . . . I will kill Jacob my brother” (Gen. 27:41), and we heard Jacob’s mother warning Jacob then that Esau was planning to kill him. All this was 20 years ago, however, and a great deal has happened since then. Jacob might consider at this point whether Esau was still angry with him. Esau’s rage might well have subsided over the years, years during which Esau had been blessed with progeny and acquired a large territory for himself.4 Before his departure from his father’s house Isaac had bestowed upon him the Blessing of Abraham promising that he would become “an assembly of peoples” (Gen. 28:3). In his 20-year stay in Haran he saw the blessing begin to be fulfilled as more and more children were born to him. Jacob could not have forgotten that when he first set out from home to seek refuge with his mother’s brother, Laban, in Padan Aram, God had told him, “I am with you and I will guard you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done that which I have spoken to you” (Gen. 28:14). And there were more promises and assurances from God since then. After he divides his camp, Jacob turns to God: God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac! Lord who has said to me, ‘Return to your land and your birthplace, and I will deal well with you.’5. . . O save me from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him, lest he come and strike me, mother with sons. And You Yourself said, ‘I will surely deal well with you and I will set your seed like the sand of the sea multitudinous beyond all count. (Gen. 32:10–14) His memories of the divine promises he has received are still vivid. We might also expect that Jacob’s triumph over the mysterious “man” at the Jabbok Ford would give him courage. The stranger he bests at the Ford changes Jacob’s name, with its connotations of crookedness or deviousness,

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to “Israel,” commemorating Jacob’s victory in his struggle “with God and men.” The angel then blesses him. Jacob calls the site “Peniel” (literally: “the face of God”) in celebration of his having seen God face to face and survived. Yet Jacob seems very anxious. Perhaps it is simply that Jacob is, like most people, including many biblical heroes, a man of little faith.

A guilty conscience The medieval commentator, Rashi offers an explanation more favorable to Jacob.6 He proposes that Jacob feared for his and his family’s life, not because of a lack of faith in God but because of a lack of confidence in his own merit—doubts as to whether he deserves that God fulfill His magnanimous promises. On Rashi’s view, Jacob’s fear of Esau is stoked by the worry that he may be guilty of sins which he committed during the time which elapsed since God made those promises to him. He may have forfeited God’s protection. I propose, however, that it is not what he may have done since he left his home and received God’s blessing that is troubling Jacob’s conscience. His thoughts as he arranges the gift to be sent ahead to Esau are directed elsewhere: (Gen. 32:21) “‫אכפרה פניו במנחה ההלכת לפני‬, Let me placate him with the tribute that goes before me.”7 “‫אולי ישא פני‬.” Perhaps he will show me a kindly face.” He is sending the gift to make amends with Esau, in the hopes that he will forgive him.8 What is making Jacob feel unworthy is his past behavior towards his brother; he fears his brother’s revenge as punishment that he deserves. Twenty years earlier, in response to Rebecca’s charge to encase his arms in sheepskins and trick his father, Jacob raised only prudential concerns— “What if my father feels me and I seem a cheat to him and bring on myself a curse and not a blessing?” (Gen. 27:12). When his mother lays these fears to rest with assurances that in that case the curse would be on her, he obeys. We can detect no sign of a moral struggle. Yet, we may wonder—was it only fear that his act of deceit would be discovered that made him hesitate at first? Snatching the blessing out of Esau’s hands, did he not feel like a scoundrel? Perhaps, on the other hand, he is afflicted by guilt feelings only now, as he faces the imminent danger ahead of him; his view of how he behaved then has taken on nuances which, perhaps, it did not have at the time. Or, perhaps feelings of guilt welled up within him during his 20-year exile in his uncle’s home, himself a victim of deceit. In any event, on his way to the meeting with Esau, they seem to have overtaken him. When Jacob meets his brother he bows down to him seven times, again reversing the roles assigned to the two in the stolen blessing.9 In his address to him the symbolic significance of the gift becomes evident. Designating the gift by the word “‫ברכה‬,” blessing, Jacob entreats Esau, “Pray take my blessing, ‫( ”ברכתי‬Gen. 33:11), echoing Esau’s cry to his father 20 years earlier, “He’s taken my blessing,” when he finds out about the hoax Jacob has perpetrated (Gen. 27:36).10 Abarbanel explicates Jacob’s words as follows:

122 Jacob seeks atonement “The blessing that I tricked my father into giving me, take it, because I admit that it was given to you and not to me.”11 I suggest that Jacob’s behavior, both when he prepared for the meeting with Esau and in the encounter itself, is best explained by his carrying with him a heavy burden of guilt, a consequence of his having cheated Esau of his blessing 20 years earlier. How does having a guilty conscience explain Jacob’s behavior? Guilt is a complex emotion. It involves mental pain or distress at having done something wrong and worry at the prospect of being punished. Feeling guilty, as David Velleman defines it, is having a sense of “normative vulnerability.” When a person perceives himself to have done a wrong, he feels that he is deserving of blame, punishment, or retaliation. He may expect the victim to be angry with him, and he has nothing to say to defend himself. He has no claim to be spared the victim’s resentment; he feels “defenseless.”12 His sense of self-worth is diminished. A person with a guilty conscience feels that he has created a debt, and by apologizing or making recompense he relieves his burden of guilt and improves his standing in his own eyes. Jacob’s deferential behavior and the lavish gifts he bestows upon Esau fit this psychological portrait.13

The puzzle On this account, to feel guilty for doing something is to feel deserving of blame and punishment for having done it. If I feel guilty for some act I performed, I feel that I should have acted differently, and I believe that were I to be again in the same circumstances I should refrain from acting in the same way. Would not my apology imply such a counterfactual commitment?14 Is not an offer of restitution an admission that I should not have taken the contested object? My explaining Jacob’s behavior as arising from feelings of guilt, then, gives rise to the following puzzle: where exactly does Jacob think he went wrong? That Jacob caused his brother a grave injury and that he tricked his father is beyond dispute. What does he think he should have done instead, however? Consider the circumstances. The command to deceive his father comes to Jacob from his mother: “So now, my son, listen to my voice, to what I command you” (Gen. 27:8).15 Indeed, we were told earlier that Isaac loved Esau and Rebecca loved Jacob. Whatever her motivation, however, Rebecca has divine revelation to justify her betrayal of her husband. When during her pregnancy Rebecca was alarmed by the commotion inside her womb and turned to God to ask its meaning, the answer she received—the oracular pronouncement that echoes throughout the Jacob story and beyond—was as follows: Two nations—in your womb, two peoples from your loins shall issue. People over people shall prevail, the elder, the younger’s slave. (Gen. 25:23)16

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She learns, not only the reason for the struggle she feels in her womb but also its ultimate resolution. Rebecca may see the message she received from God confrmed when the twins are born. “And the frst one came out ruddy, like a hairy mantle all over, and they called his name Esau. Then his brother came out, his hand grasping Esau’s heel, and they called his name Jacob” (Gen. 25:25–26). She may see Jacob’s deceiving his father in order to secure the blessing for himself, which she instigates and abets, as part of the struggle foretold by God. On our previous encounters with Rebecca she showed herself to be assertive and energetic—when she meets Abraham’s servant at the well, when she leaves her home for a far-off land to become Isaac’s wife, and when, alarmed during her pregnancy by the commotion in her womb, she inquires of God. Rebecca takes up the challenge and acts boldly in all those instances, and she takes charge now. As Isaac sent Esau off to the field to bring him back some game, Rebecca now sends Jacob to the flock to bring her back two kids. Jacob would no more be inclined to refuse her than Esau would be inclined to turn down his father.17 Rebecca then follows through with her scheme. She dresses Jacob in Esau’s garments. She sees to it all. “The skin of the kids she put on the smooth part of his neck. And she placed the dish, and the bread she had made in the hand of Jacob her son” (Gen. 27:15–16). We do not know if Rebecca told Jacob what God had foretold her about her unborn twins, but she gives Jacob to understand that she knows what she is doing. To Jacob’s fears that his father may detect the ruse and place a curse on him, Rebecca responds with assurances that if that were to happen the curse would be on her. She seems to imply that she has the power to determine upon whom the curse will fall.18 She speaks with parental authority and Jacob very likely hears her speaking with divine authority as well. Not to do as she says would be not only to defy his mother but also to discredit her self-acclaimed status as an agent of providence. It would also be to fail to implement what Jacob believes to be God’s will. In addition to his mother’s reassurances, Jacob could believe the birthright is his because Esau sold it to him.19 Furthermore, leading up to the story of the stealing of the blessing, we were told that Esau’s marriage with foreign wives distressed Isaac and Rebecca. Jacob must have known of his brother’s alliances. Was he aware of his parents’ dismay? Whether he was or not, his brother’s marital choices might also count in his view against Esau’s claim to Isaac’s blessing. Given this picture, Jacob had justification for believing, when his mother bid him to secure the blessing for himself, that he should do as she said.20 If we assume, moreover, that Jacob knew of the prophecy God had given his mother before his birth, and that Rebecca learned of the content of the blessing Isaac conferred upon Jacob, then the very words of the blessing should have been reassuring to both, for they hear in them echoes of that earlier prophecy.21 Given Jacob’s beliefs and commitments at the time, then,

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there was nothing he could have done that would have been less bad from his perspective. Jacob could, of course, have acted differently—he could have refused his mother’s command. Rebecca presses him to do her bidding, but she does not compel or coerce him; nor does God. Jacob does as Rebecca says for his own reasons. God chose Jacob to be the heir to the Abrahamic Covenant, but He did not determine in advance the means by which Jacob would secure his inheritance. The circumstances which lead to Jacob’s appearing before his father disguised as his brother result from decisions taken by Isaac, Rebecca, and himself. Once the situation evolved as it did, however—Isaac is about to bless Esau, and Rebecca sends Jacob to deceive Isaac in order to secure the blessing for himself—it was indeed God’s will that Jacob do as Rebecca said.22 Even so, at this point it seems to me that it was not inevitable that Jacob deceive his father.23 Jacob hesitated at first for fear of disclosure—he might have succumbed to his fear, but he did not. Had Jacob shown signs of not heeding his mother, however, there is not good reason to think that God would have intervened and caused him to obey her. I maintain that not only did Jacob believe that in deceiving his father he was doing what God wanted of him, but that Jacob was right about this. Jacob is never reproached by God for what he did. Jacob heeds his mother’s voice and God does not chastise him as He did Adam for listening to the voice of his wife.24 Almost immediately after the present episode, when Jacob is on his way from his parents’ home to Haran, God appears to Jacob reaffirming the Blessing of Abraham.25 Indeed, Isaac had already bestowed the Blessing of Abraham on Jacob, but that would not have constrained God to do the same—the patriarchs transmit God’s covenant as God wills it, not the reverse. Furthermore, God accompanies Jacob throughout his life, repeatedly blessing him and assuring him that He will be with him. If at the time Jacob perpetrated the hoax he had qualms about how God looked upon what he was doing, by the time he faces the encounter with Esau his doubts should have been set at rest. Why then is Jacob remorseful? Perhaps what troubles Jacob’s conscience is not the stolen blessing, but his earlier ploy to take advantage of Esau. The idea of usurping his brother’s firstborn privileges was not new to him. Quite on his own, Jacob had contrived to manipulate Esau into selling him his birthright. Later, when Esau discovers that Jacob has tricked him out of the blessing his father had intended for him, Esau declares this to be of a kind with that earlier injury Jacob inflicted on him.26 The sequencing in the narratives does not suggest a causal connection between the birthright transaction and Jacob’s present fears, however. Following the transaction, we see no sign of resentment on Esau’s part. Rather, the episode concludes with the observation that “Esau spurned the birthright” (Gen. 25:34). It is after he steals the blessing by deceit that we are told that Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing his father had blessed him, and that he had plans

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to kill him. Furthermore, it is the latter event that is alluded to by Jacob’s language when he addresses Esau. Perhaps, however, Jacob feels guilty at the pleasure he takes in his good fortune, which is at his brother’s expense. Jacob could not have been sorry that God’s plan required him to prevail over his brother. His inborn propensity for struggling to overtake his older brother is encoded in his name. Darker thoughts yet may be feeding Jacob’s guilt. Could not the pleasure Jacob now takes in the coveted status evoke misgivings in him about his motivations for doing what he did? Did he wonder if a selfish desire to have the blessing for himself played a part in his agreeing to his mother’s scheme? Would he have agreed to take part in such a risky plan had it not held out such rewards for him? There are no hints in the text of such thoughts, but it would not be unnatural for Jacob to be harboring them. It is unlikely, however, that misgivings about his motives were what moved him to affect the reversal of rank between himself and Esau, to beseech Esau to take his gift/blessing. Jacob must know that he had had no plans of his own to deceive his father, that it was his mother who initiated the scheme and that he acted in response to her bidding. Whatever his motivation for doing so, he acted in the belief that in stealing the blessing he was doing God’s will. Jacob also knows that Esau wanted to murder him because of what he did—because he stole his blessing—not because of his motivation. For what he did Jacob should believe he was justified—that whatever his motives, he did the right thing. Perhaps there is no puzzle, however. A person may feel guilty, or believe himself to be guilty, even though he has not done anything wrong. He may have the facts of the matter wrong. He may be judging himself wrongly, irrationally, his guilt feelings grounded in a mistaken sense of normative vulnerability. Are Jacob’s feelings of self-reproach incoherent, prompted simply by his overwhelming fears at meeting Esau? I would argue that to dismiss Jacob’s guilt feelings as misplaced is to misread this episode and to do him an injustice. Jacob’s guilt feelings must be given their due, and the puzzle is not to be dismissed. The solution of the puzzle, I propose, calls, to begin with, for viewing Jacob’s plight in light of the struggles of the generations that preceded him in the Genesis narrative, and those that would succeed him. Jacob’s tortured relationship with Esau brings into sharp focus the dynamics that characterize the founding families of the Book of Genesis. The striving of brother against brother is a pervasive theme in these stories.27 The rivalry is inherent to the process by which, ultimately, the Chosen Family emerges. The contests are painful and sometimes violent, creating a rich breeding ground for anger, envy, and resentment. Lines of responsibility are convoluted and often hard to trace. Questions of guilt are only sometimes raised explicitly. In various forms, however, they hover over the entire drama. Although the resolutions of the struggles are in every case part of the divine plan, the characters and the circumstances in

126 Jacob seeks atonement each are different, as are their outcomes and their aftermaths. In every case, however, God’s plan dictates that, contrary to what we presume to be convention and custom, the younger is favored. God’s motives for this anomaly are by and large obscure, but the reactions of the rivaling siblings reveal the tensions and strains. The reversal of expectations and the overriding of traditional claims heighten the poignancy of these conflicts and leave lasting marks on the protagonists.

And the elder shall serve the younger We meet the first pair of biblical brothers, Cain and Abel, bringing up offerings to God. Cain, the tiller of the soil, brings from the fruit of the soil, and Abel, a shepherd, from the choice firstlings of his flock. God attends to the offering of the younger, Abel, and pays no heed to Cain’s. This is the case although Cain is the first of the two to bring an offering and Abel is described as also bringing one (Gen. 4:4), to say, perhaps, that he is simply following Cain’s lead. Cain reacted as we would expect—he was incensed and “his face fell” (Gen. 4:5).28 How did Abel feel upon seeing Cain’s dismay when his offering was rejected? The biblical text is not forthcoming, but we may speculate. Abel could not have believed himself to blame—he had done nothing to bring about God’s rejection of his brother’s offering. Nor was Cain’s misfortune a result of his own good fortune; God could have looked favorably upon both their offerings. Abel could not but have sensed Cain’s vexation, however. Did he fear that it would turn into resentment?29 Did his older brother’s keen disappointment make him uneasy about his own success? When Cain subsequently rose up to kill him, did Abel’s uneasiness weaken his resistance to Cain’s attack? The sparseness of the text and the dreadfulness of the events it depicts whet our imagination. Abel had no hand in Cain’s comedown. If Cain felt he had been treated unfairly, his complaint was against God. Yet Cain could not abide his younger brother who had bested him. That God favored the younger Abel over his older brother is the first instance of the recurrent pattern in the Genesis narratives—the younger brother prevails over the older. God pronounces a harsh punishment on Cain—the land will no longer yield him its produce. He will be a “restless wanderer” on the earth. Cain is aghast. Whoever finds him will kill him, he protests. However, he expresses no regret, no remorse. He seems not to be troubled by having violated the moral norms implicit in God’s censure of him—it is the punishment that makes him feel vulnerable. The story of Joseph and his brothers, the most elaborate of the stories of fraternal contests, leaves less to the imagination. Joseph, low in the birth order of Jacob’s sons, is his father’s favorite.30 For this his brothers hated him. Also, Joseph has dreams which he relates to his brothers in which he rules over his family. This also provokes their hatred and jealousy. The brothers,

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perhaps looking back at Ishmael’s and Esau’s fates when their younger brothers were favored over them, fear that they too may be excluded from their father’s legacy. They conspire to kill Joseph, but throw him into a pit instead and then sell him into slavery. Years later, when the brothers find themselves in desperate circumstances in Egypt, unaware that they are being manipulated by their brother Joseph, they interpret their predicament as the result of their unconscionable behavior towards Joseph when he was at their mercy. Joseph, on the other hand, seems oblivious to the effect his father’s favoritism towards him has on them then. He seems not to have considered that his own conceited conduct may have played a role in provoking his brothers’ hostility towards him. In his later dealings with his brothers, he takes full advantage of the opportunity to exercise his power over them. Having been cruelly victimized by his brothers, he shows no ambivalence, no reservations over his triumph over them. In the end Joseph is magnanimous to his brothers. In response to their admissions of guilt, he assures them that he bears them no grudge and that he will care for them and their families. Aside from the ordeal to which Joseph subjected them before he revealed himself to them, the brothers do not suffer any ill effects from their brutal treatment of him. They do not share in the fate of patriarchal sons who were overlooked in the earlier generations. Joseph’s brothers become the fathers of the tribes of Israel, all of them heirs to God’s covenant with Abraham. Whatever resentment they once bore towards Joseph seems to evaporate; Joseph is not confronted by claims of injustice to which he has no defense. Going backwards in time, we look at Isaac’s role in his older brother, Ishmael’s, expulsion from Abraham’s home and his loss of his inheritance. There was nothing Isaac had done to bring about his brother’s misfortune. However, it was for his sake—to ensure that he become Abraham’s sole heir—that Sarah demanded Ishmael’s banishment. Isaac could not fail to see himself as the cause of his older brother’s rejection. It had to be plain to Isaac that he had benefited from it. We are not told how Isaac feels towards the brother he displaced. However, in the scene where he first meets Rebecca on her way from Haran, we find that Isaac arrived from “the approach to Beer-Lahai-Roi” (Gen. 24:62), the spring of water where the angel of God had appeared to Ishmael’s mother, Hagar, when she fled from the ill-treatment of her mistress, Sarai (Gen. 16:14). Isaac’s presence at Beer-Lahai-Roi may suggest that after they were separated Isaac remained with an ongoing attachment to his older brother. The narrative goes on to recount that upon Abraham’s death he is buried by his sons Isaac and Ishmael, and that after Abraham died Isaac settled near Beer-Lahai-Roi. The midrash elaborates upon Isaac’s whereabouts. It relates that Hagar was in Beer-Lahai-Roi bemoaning her disgrace. After the death of his own mother, Isaac went there to bring her to his father Abraham to take as his

128 Jacob seeks atonement wife.31 The Isaac of the midrash is perhaps making recompense to Ishmael’s mother for the wrong she suffered as a result of his having been favored at the expense of her son. Jacob’s triumph over Esau is one more of a series of sibling reversals. While we know nothing of Ishmael’s feelings at being banished from his father’s house to clear the way for Isaac, we hear Esau’s cry of pain when he discovers his loss. Esau’s anguish at the injustice he experiences may remind us of Cain’s at having his offering rejected by God when God favored that of his younger brother. Cain vented his fury on Abel although he was not to blame. Joseph’s brothers made Joseph pay for his pretensions of grandeur. Esau, in the end, does not avenge himself of Jacob for having bested him unfairly. Jacob, in Velleman’s terms, feels that he created a debt to his older brother which was not discharged. These complexes of emotions among the various brothers bear a certain affinity to the puzzling phenomenon referred to as “survivor guilt.” If Isaac’s conscience was troubled by his good fortune at Ishmael’s expense, the notion might serve as a model for understanding Isaac’s guilty feelings. Although it is not as good a fit for understanding Jacob’s feelings, the model, I shall show, sheds some light on the latter as well. I shall then point to where it falls short of accounting for Jacob’s case, however, by focusing once again on the puzzle about Jacob and on what the notion of survivor guilt leaves unsolved.

Survivor guilt Survivor guilt is an emotion sometimes experienced by those who, through no fault of their own, survive a catastrophe in which others perish. The survivor may not hold himself guilty of any wrongdoing or even of unworthy feelings or thoughts. He feels guilty for the mere fact that he survived where others did not. How is it that an innocent survivor feels normatively vulnerable? The victim of a misfortune for which the more fortunate are not to blame, although he might naturally be envious of those who fared better than he, has no justified grounds for anger towards them. Why would a person blessed by luck, who perceives himself to be blameless, feel, in Velleman’s terms, normatively vulnerable to the victim’s resentment? Velleman explains that the normative content of the feeling of vulnerability need not be the belief that one has done wrong. In the case of the lucky survivor, the survivor realizes that the unfortunate victim may feel envy towards him and that if the victim perceives him to be no more deserving of good fortune than himself, he is apt to harbor ill feelings towards him. Like anger, envy turns into resentment “when tinged with the bitterness that accompanies a sense of injustice.”32 The survivor feels innocent of wrongdoing but may acknowledge the injustice suffered by his ill-fated counterpart. Anxiety at his having no answer to the victim’s complaint gives rise to his feelings of guilt. His sense that the victim’s resentment is warranted is

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what, on Velleman’s view, endows his feeling of vulnerability with normative content. Isaac may well feel innocent of wrongdoing yet might feel survivor guilt towards Ishmael. Unlike Isaac who did nothing to bring about Ishmael’s banishment, it is what Jacob deliberately and knowingly did that brought about his brother’s misfortune. He certainly appears to be normatively vulnerable. How, then, does the notion of “survivor guilt” help us understand Jacob? I propose that within the context of the biblical narrative Jacob is in a stronger position than the typical innocent survivor. On Velleman’s account the survivor feels guilty because he has no answer to the claims of injustice that arise from the misfortune of the victim. He can only invoke the vagaries of luck to account for his success. Jacob has a defense, however, even if Esau might not be persuaded by it.33 Jacob was carrying out God’s will. Despite Jacob’s active role, then, in Esau’s not receiving the blessing, in virtue of which he is not an innocent survivor, the notion of survivor guilt highlights an important commonality between Jacob and the innocent survivor. If the latter feels guilty it cannot be that he feels that he should have acted otherwise—the victim’s misfortune was in no sense his doing. Although Jacob’s actions were indeed the cause of Esau’s misfortune, and he could indeed have acted otherwise, Jacob believes he did the right thing. While the innocent survivor did nothing to bring about the victim’s misfortune, what Jacob did is what he believes he should have done. Neither of them believes he should have acted otherwise, but they both feel, nevertheless, normatively vulnerable. The notion of survivor guilt may give us insight into how a person can feel guilty for a situation which he did something to bring about, even though what he did was something he believed was the right thing to do. It falls short of accounting for Jacob, however. As opposed to the innocent survivor who, on Velleman’s account, feels normatively vulnerable because he feels defenseless, Jacob has a defense. How is it that his having done God’s will still leaves Jacob feeling normatively vulnerable to Esau’s resentment? The answer I propose is that Jacob acknowledges two different normative systems—two sets of claims upon his conduct. Albeit, in Jacob’s eyes the obligation to do God’s will is ultimate. What is troubling him, however, is another obligation he feels bound by as well—the moral obligation to deal honestly with his father and fairly with his brother. The relationship between God and morality is the subject of intensive deliberation among philosophers and theologians, as is the question of how the Bible represents that relationship. I will try to show that this distinction between God’s commands and the claims of morality is implicit in the Genesis narratives and that Jacob’s commitment to the latter, while being responsive to the former, is an important part of the key to the puzzle we are investigating.

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Moral obligation and divine command On a common and intuitive view of morality moral concerns are marked by their weightiness. Moral requirements take precedence over all others. They defeat other claims, justify our doing things which we might otherwise have reason to refrain from doing. A moral requirement is more than a mere moral consideration—it is an all-things-considered judgment. This quality of morality to command our compliance is known as its “overridingness.”34 On this view, the gravity that attaches to morality is such that one has greater reason to obey it than to adopt any other course of action. Of all the reasons of various kinds which compete for authority over our actions— legal, religious, prudential, hedonic, and the like—moral reasons take priority. One cannot waive the authority of a moral requirement by invoking a non-moral consideration, no matter how pressing.35 This view of morality, however natural it feels and however widespread it is, is not unchallenged. Ishtiyaque Haji contends that it presupposes an “overarching normative standard” for comparing competing perspectives on our conduct.36 There would have to be an independent, non-questionbegging way to order their relative weights. Haji suggests that we lack an adequate account of how to compare different evaluative perspectives, a basis for establishing that one is more authoritative than another. This means that different evaluative standpoints are incommensurable—one cannot adjudicate between them. Haji cites an example of a father who, knowing that his son has committed a serious crime, and believing he is morally obligated to hand him over to the authorities, nevertheless deliberately misleads the police about his son’s whereabouts to make it possible for his son to escape.37 The father is acting out of parental love; he feels justified in what he is doing. Moreover, he believes that his protecting his son in these circumstances complies with a normative standard, albeit not the moral one. Haji upholds what he takes to be the intuitive judgment that there is no independent standard by which to determine whether in this case the claims of morality or those of love are overriding. If moral claims are not marked by their overridingness, how might they fare from a perspective which recognizes the authority of the divine will? I will present only a very sketchy account of the vigorous debate on the subject. The strongest connection posited between God’s will and morality, what is known as the strong version of the Divine Command Theory of Morality (DCM) is that of identity between moral properties and certain theological properties. On this version the moral is defined in terms of the theological— the property of being morally obligatory is just the property of being commanded or required by God. The view that moral properties are identical with certain theological properties is not widely accepted as a general principle, and even less as representing the biblical view of morality.38 A weaker version of the connection

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between moral and theological properties does not identify the two but asserts the dependence of the moral on the theological. According to the dependency thesis, an act has a particular moral property due to its having a particular theological property—if an act is morally obligatory it is so because it is commanded or required by God.39 Yet a weaker view of the connection between moral and theological properties rejects this dependency. Moral obligations have independent validity; God does not determine morality. The two are related, however, in that God’s commands are coextensive with moral obligations. Thus, we may learn from His commandments what is right and wrong. On some views we are even dependent on God’s commandments to inform us of our moral obligations. Another view, which is close to the latter, would have it that even though we are not epistemically dependent upon God’s commandments we need God’s authority to motivate us to fulfill our moral obligations.40 Eliezer Schweid, a prominent contemporary scholar and theologian, construes the status of moral obligation in the Bible much in line with the last view mentioned earlier.41 On Schweid’s reading, the Bible treats morality as a “natural feeling” for one’s fellow man that grows out of a sense of brotherhood among blood relations. Our moral sensibilities are not grounded in our submission to God’s commands but are rooted in our emotional attachments to one another. We depend on God neither for insight into what is morally right or wrong nor for the inclination to act accordingly. However, by endorsing our inclinations He gives us more motivation to follow them. Our natural feeling of love for our fellow man is not enough to account for the commanding nature of morality, according to Schweid. A moral claim is experienced as a demand impressed upon the will by an external authority to which man subjects himself. In the Bible, according to Schweid, the external authority underlying morality is divine. Because God wants the good of his creatures, He endorses their moral inclinations.42 We must treat our fellow man morally because God commands it. Our benevolent feelings towards our fellow man thereby confront us as objective moral obligations. That God commands them both validates them and motivates us to obey them. Whence God’s supreme authority? Schweid finds in the biblical account of creation the grounds of God’s sovereignty. The opening chapters of Genesis show the natural universe coming into being in obedience to divine fiat. By virtue of this act of creation, God “possesses” everything and thereby gains the right to command it.43 “From the hour of their creation men are under authority.”44 Schweid’s view of the relationship in the Bible between God’s commands and morality is not shared by everyone. My purpose in bringing it here is not to recommend it as a key to the entire Biblical corpus. It does, however, provide for a persuasive reading of the Jacob story to my mind. I begin with several other episodes in the Genesis narrative in which the separateness of the one from the other seems implicit. In some of the episodes we discern the

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interplay between the two. By my account, the story of Jacob is notable for its showing Jacob struggling with a conflict between them.

Moral concerns in the Genesis narratives One of the biblical texts that appears most strikingly to rule out the strong version of DCM is the tale of Abraham’s bold exchange with God over the destruction of the city of Sodom. “Will you really wipe out the innocent with the guilty?” Abraham demands. “Far be it from you. Will not the Judge of all the earth do justice?” (Gen. 18:23–26). Abraham’s protest assumes that God’s destruction of the innocent with the guilty would not make that action just. Abraham makes no mention of a divine dictum regarding justice; not only is God’s command not necessary for creating moral obligation, it also does not appear to be epistemically necessary for recognizing it. In his challenge to God Abraham gives voice to a very strong conviction about what justice requires. His appeal is to God’s moral sense which he assumes is congruent with his own. He confronts God not as the fount of justice but as the Judge of all the earth. Abraham seems to be saying that it behooves God, because of his lofty judicial stature, to do justice. God’s response to Abraham bears out Abraham’s assumptions. Not only does God not chastise him for his insolence or folly in challenging Him, but He concedes to Abraham’s challenge. God assures Abraham that if Abraham’s conditions are met—that is, if there are a minimum number of guiltless people in Sodom—He will not destroy the city. Sodom is in the end destroyed because there are fewer than the required number of innocents, but the righteous people are rescued. Since in the end God destroys Sodom without violating the norms of justice, however, this episode is compatible with God’s commands being coextensive with moral obligations. Intimations of the independent status of moral intuitions may be discerned in a later episode, the story of Judah and his daughter-in-law Tamar.45 The story has Judah guilty of a legal infraction but shows him moved by his moral sensibilities. Although his moral inclinations point him in the same direction as his legal obligations, I propose that the former reflect a separate normative judgment. The story begins with Judah’s firstborn, Er, dying without children, leaving Er’s wife, Tamar, a widow. The story presupposes the legal or quasi-legal practice of levirate marriage.46 In keeping with this practice, Judah directs his second son, Onan, to fulfill his duty as the next in line to the deceased and have sexual relations with Tamar in order to perpetuate the seed of Onan’s deceased brother. Onan also dies, having failed to provide any offspring. Judah, then, instructs Tamar: “Stay a widow in your father’s house until Shelah my son is grown up” (Gen. 38:11). Tamar is to understand that she will be given to Shelah when he comes of age. The narrative reveals, however, that the reason Judah instructed Tamar as he did was for fear that should Shelah marry her he would die like his brothers. Judah is being duplicitous with Tamar—he sends her off to wait as

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a widow in her father’s house until Shelah reaches adulthood, although he does not intend for Shelah to fulfill the levirate obligation to her. Later, Tamar realizes that Shelah is grown and that she has not been given to him as a wife, and she lays a trap for Judah. Tamar waits for him on the road disguised as a prostitute. Judah sees her and, not recognizing her, asks to have sexual relations with her and promises her a kid from his flock in payment. Tamar extracts from him his seal-and-cord and staff as security. She then becomes pregnant and Judah, unaware that he is the father, instructs that his daughter-in-law be burned for having committed adultery. As she is taken to her death, Tamar displays Judah’s seal-and-cord and staff, declaring that their owner is the father of the child she is carrying. Judah responds resoundingly: “She is more in the right than I,47 for have I not failed to give her to Shelah my son?” How is Tamar more in the right than Judah? On what scale are we to compare them? Tamar, designated to be the wife of the brother of her late husband, has the legal status of a married woman. Can Judah be saying that Tamar was more in the right in committing adultery than he was in calling for her death?48 What have both Judah and Tamar done, but Tamar with more justification? I propose that each has acted deceitfully to the other. Tamar concealed her identity from Judah in order to get him to impregnate her. She maneuvered him into unwillingly, or at the least, unintentionally, siring her child and caused him public humiliation. Judah concealed his true intentions from Tamar, leaving her to await her redemption in her father’s home. Judah thereby abdicated his economic responsibility for her and deprived her of both the opportunity to bear a child to uphold the name of her deceased husband, as well as the opportunity to contract a new marriage.49 Indeed, Judah failed to carry out his legal obligation, but in comparing Tamar’s standing favorably to his own his standard does not appear to be legal nor relative to a divine commandment, but an expression of a moral judgment of the wrong he inflicted on her.50 In yet a later episode, moral sensibilities play their role without any reference to the divine will or to any legal stricture. Joseph accuses his brothers of being spies and demands that one of them be imprisoned in Egypt while the others return home and bring back their youngest brother Benjamin. The brothers lament, “Alas, we are guilty for our brother, whose mortal distress we saw when he pleaded with us and we did not listen. That is why this distress has overtaken us” (Gen. 42:21). Indeed, they may perceive the connection between their present fate and their earlier wrongdoing as an instance of divine retribution. However, they blame themselves, not for violating God’s commandments but for their cruelty towards their brother. If we cast our net beyond the confines of the Genesis narratives, another biblical episode in which an appeal to justice and fairness is distinguished dramatically from a claim based on God’s directive is the petition of the daughters of Zelophad to Moses. Their appeal follows upon God’s instructions to Moses to apportion estates in the Land of Canaan to those who are

134 Jacob seeks atonement about to enter the land. The distribution will be according to the names of their fathers’ tribes. The daughters of Zelophad petitioned Moses, saying, Our father died in the wilderness, and he was not part of the community that banded together against the Lord with the community of Korah, for through his own offence he died, and he had no sons. Why should our father’s name be withdrawn from the midst of his clan because he had no son? Give us a holding in the midst of our father’s brothers. (Num. 27:3, 4) The orders Moses had just received from God specified how the land would be initially distributed. Assuming that inheritance passes down only through the male line, since their father died without sons, the daughters of Zelophad fear that his portion will be lost. Without any legal support, relying simply on the moral claim that their father did nothing to deserve that the name of his family disappear, the women protest. Moses, apparently at a loss, brings their petition before God.51 God acknowledges its merit. His answer is definitive: “Rightly do the daughters of Zelophad speak. You shall surely give them a secure holding in the midst of their father’s brothers and you shall pass on their father’s estate to them” (Num. 27:7). God goes on to issue a general law granting women right of inheritance to their father’s estate if their fathers leave no sons. The validity of the women’s claim does not derive from divine fiat. Grounded in a moral challenge, their claim leads to God’s ordaining a new law to prevent an injustice. In discussing the Sodom interchange, we noted that although the dependency thesis seems ruled out, since God accedes to Abraham’s challenge, the notion that moral requirements are coextensive with God’s is not precluded. Neither is it precluded by the story of Tamar or the story of Joseph’s brothers. That God legislated a new law in order to give the daughters of Zelophad their due would seem to be incompatible with that view, however. On my reading, the Jacob episode here shows us not simply that divine commandments are not coextensive with moral requirements but that the two may conflict. While Jacob obeys the former, he is troubled by the latter. To gain further insight into Jacob’s conflict, I would like to make use of the conceptual framework developed by moral theoreticians for analyzing a particular type of moral conflict, a “moral dilemma.”52 I will turn to the philosophical consideration of moral dilemmas to support my claim that Jacob was not to blame for what he did and to account for the fact that he nevertheless felt sorry that he did it.

Dilemmas Moral conflicts are regular features of our lives—we find ourselves faced with two obligations, both of which have a moral claim upon us, but where the fulfillment of one is incompatible with the fulfillment of the other.53

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On the widely accepted principle of “ought” implies “can,” if one cannot honor both one’s obligations, one is not obligated to honor both.54 One must choose which of the obligations to honor. The assumption is that honoring one of them frees one of the obligation to honor the other. Often when faced with a moral conflict, we sort it out easily. As an example of such a conflict, David Ross proposes the following: If I have promised to meet a friend at a particular time for some trivial purpose, I should certainly think myself justified in breaking my engagement if by doing so I could prevent a serious accident or bring relief to the victims of one.55 The agent here is not likely to agonize over his choice and some might say that the confict falls short of counting as a dilemma. Moral conficts, which are characterized by struggle and anguish, are the classic instances of moral dilemmas. Daniel Statman lays out conditions for a moral dilemma as follows: 1 2 3

P morally ought to do a and morally ought to do b. a and b are incompatible. Doing a or b involves a high moral cost.

In Ross’s example the moral cost of missing the appointment in order to help accident victims does not seem very high. In the most acute form of a moral dilemma, of the two incompatible alternatives between which we must choose, neither morally outweighs the other.56 We agonize, at a loss as to which of the incompatible duties to perform and which to neglect.57 Sometimes, however, even though we have no doubt as to which of two competing claims is the weightier, the conflict is fraught with tension. Although our duty is clear, fulfilling it does not relieve us of the necessity of doing something seriously wrong. Unlike Ross’s case, the moral cost of violating the less authoritative obligation is very hard to bear. This too, on Statman’s account, would count as a moral dilemma. Jacob honored the obligation which was weightier in his eyes at the time, and which he still takes to be more authoritative—his obligation to God. The overridden moral obligation not to deceive and not to steal seems still to have a hold over him, however. Had he not become free from that obligation? Whence its force?

Competing values Statman proposes that when obligations conflict, alongside the normative perspective through which the agent determines how to act, he also views his actions through an axiological perspective.58 The latter perspective is informed by ideals of goodness and virtue, ideals which the agent brings

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to his assessment of the states of affairs resulting from his actions. Indeed, once an agent, due to his having fulfilled a weightier obligation, is no longer able to fulfill a less weighty duty, the latter no longer lays claim to his action. However, in his normative decision as to which of the competing obligations to honor, the agent is choosing also among the competing values which would be realized by the different courses of action he is considering. His choice will lead to realizing one value at the cost of others to which he may feel committed even though he is betraying them. That the loss of those values is mandated by the overriding obligation does not make those values unworthy. The value which was not realized remains sound. On a monistic view of morality,59 honesty and compassion and all the other moral values could be analyzed in terms of one authoritative moral value, and then the right act would be cost-free. There would be no moral dilemmas. The possibility of viewing our actions through different perspectives assumes a plurality of incommensurable values. If we assume a plurality of moral values, not reducible to one another or to any one supreme value, then an act that is right may be lacking in honesty, justice or compassion. Choosing to perform the right act, we might still be committed to the latter. They would constitute for us, in Michael Stocker’s terms, nonaction-guiding values. Their violation might be accompanied by regret or remorse.60 The view of the pluralists, then, accounts for the force of the overridden obligation. The moral dilemma is generated by a conflict between moral principles or values. Jacob’s struggle is not between conflicting moral claims, but between moral claims and a divine directive. Luc Bovens considers moral dilemmas where moral considerations are pitted against conflicting non-moral ones.61 Bovens cites Bernard Williams’s well-known example of the artist Gauguin struggling between his moral obligations to his family and his commitment to pursue his artistic talents.62 Do Gauguin’s moral obligations constitute overriding reasons for determining how he ought to lead his life? Bovens considers that for Gauguin being an artist may be essential to how he conceives of himself as a person. His choice to leave his family and to go live in Tahiti in order to realize his ambitions as a painter may be construed, in Bovens’s terms, as an “authentic choice,” one “that is constitutive of living one’s life well.” Perhaps there are instances where one “genuinely ought” to make an authentic choice at the cost of violating a moral obligation. Williams does not stop at the idea that Gauguin may be justified in neglecting his moral obligations for the sake of his artistic aspirations. He deliberates as to the circumstances in which Gauguin might be able to morally justify this choice, at least to himself.63 The possibility that Gauguin could do so hinges, on Williams’s view, on the success of the project for the sake of which he violated his moral obligations. If it turned out ultimately that his choice did not lead him to live his life well, he might be hard put to

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defend it morally. Were the project to succeed, however, Gauguin would feel, in retrospect, morally justified in his choice. According to Williams, Gauguin would then be right. His story of Gauguin illustrates for Williams how one’s moral status may be hostage to luck. That the success of one’s project may be a factor in morally justifying it is controversial.64 One may wonder how the moral cost Gauguin pays in violating his familial obligations could be morally set off by his artistic achievements. The moral reckoning for Jacob is different from that for Gauguin, however. Jacob’s moral sensibilities confront his loyalty to God rather than his personal aspirations. While the successful outcome of Gauguin’s project—that he has become a great painter—is, arguably, at least in part, a matter of luck, the success of Jacob’s project is not. For Jacob, choosing to submit to what he believes is God’s will constitutes “living well.” Whatever ensues, and however much it may be a matter of luck or not, by that very choice Jacob has succeeded. Yet, it appears that he does not take this as moral justification for what he did. The notion of competing values can explain how Jacob deeply regrets that he cheated his brother while being convinced that he should not have done otherwise. Jacob suffers because he is committed to two sources of value— morality and the will of God—which in this instance prove to be incommensurable. When the two conflict it is the latter that generates action-guiding obligations for him. The former, nevertheless, remains worthy in his eyes; to violate it constitutes a betrayal. Jacob’s conscience is troubled because of his loyalty to a value which he could not implement, due to his greater allegiance to an authority which he could not deny. The notion of competing values does not go far enough, however. Jacob is not merely sad about cheating his brother, or sorry that he had to do so. He feels unworthy—he apologizes. He offers restitution. He wants to improve his moral standing in his own eyes. On the principle of moral responsibility we cited earlier—that “ought” implies “can”—an agent’s moral standing— whether he is morally praiseworthy or blameworthy—is affected only by factors over which he has control. His welfare, his happiness, his very life, may depend on circumstances in which he simply finds himself, but his moral status is impervious to them. We typically think of physical limitations as setting boundaries to a person’s moral responsibility. However, along with physical constraints, moral and religious commitments may also bind an agent, place certain options out of his reach. Jacob’s options are fixed by his acceptance of God’s authority and submission to His will. His uncompromising submission to God’s will, as he believes it to be, does not allow Jacob to avoid deceiving his father and cheating his brother. From his perspective, then, Jacob should not feel guilty for his trickery. Although he deceived and cheated his closest of kin, his moral status should be none the worse because it was not up to him whether to do so or to refrain.

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Agent-regret Yet Jacob feels guilty. In his guilt there are perhaps intimations of a less restricted notion of moral responsibility, one which may include factors not of the agent’s own making or choice. Jacob feels morally diminished for having been the cause of his brother’s harsh disappointment. That he saw himself with no other option but to act as he did does not free him from the burden of the tragic consequences of his actions. Constraints over which he had no control impinge upon his inner worth. One of the leading exponents of this more inclusive notion of moral responsibility is Bernard Williams. Williams coins the phrase “agent-regret” to connote the mental pain a person may experience at having caused harm or injury to someone unintentionally, even unavoidably. Williams brings the example of a truck driver’s feelings of remorse for having backed his truck into a little child and gravely injured her through no fault of his own. The driver took all reasonable precautions; his action was not only unintentional but also non-culpable. The driver regrets not merely that something bad has been done but that he brought it about by something he did. He suffers agent-regret even though he believes that he is not to blame. It is not the case that he should have done otherwise—there is nothing that he should have done differently.65 Williams anchors the moral self within a network of circumstances not of its making. “One’s history as an agent is a web in which anything that is the product of the will is surrounded and held up and partly formed by things that are not.”66 The truck driver’s regret, on Williams’s view, illustrates how one’s agency may extend beyond the reach of one’s control; one’s moral worth may escape the boundaries of one’s intentions. Our moral standing is vulnerable to the exigencies of luck. We share the bad luck of the unlucky victim of our actions, in that it is our bad luck that we are morally the worse because of his bad luck. Agent-regret is a natural and intrinsic feature of our moral lives, Williams urges. It reflects our sensitivity to the claims other individuals have on us simply because they are affected by what we do. This expansive notion of moral responsibility is defended, not simply as capturing the way some people feel about the effects of their actions but on the grounds that it is a morally more adequate notion than the more restrictive one. There is a certain moral callousness in limiting one’s moral responsibility to the foreseen results of one’s intentional actions. A moral individual may well feel guilty, may feel the need to apologize and make restitution for actions which he could not have avoided—not only for those which were physically necessary but also for those which were dictated by the values to which he is committed.67 The notion of agent-regret suggests an even broader notion of moral responsibility which may include our duties to all manner of needy people independent of any connection between their plight and anything we did. Statman makes the point that we regularly become subject to moral

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obligations due to circumstances which we did not create, choose, or even consent to.68 Examples that come to mind are the duties we have to our parents or the responsibility we have to the needy neighbor who lives down the hall. We may well feel guilty if we are not responsive to these claims. The notion of agent-regret accounts for Jacob’s troubled conscience even though he believes that he cannot be blamed for stealing the blessing. The injury inflicted by the truck-driver, however, was not only unavoidable but also unintentional. The latter cannot be said of how Jacob stole the blessing. The notion of dirty hands, which I now discuss, addresses the guilty feelings of someone who regrets having done something intentionally—deliberately and knowingly—that he believed he should do.

Dirty hands A witness to a catastrophe may be deeply saddened, even horrified, by what he sees. He may become changed by the experience—more sober, more appreciative of his own good fortune, more responsive to the needs of others. Having seen with his own eyes the pain and misery, he may be moved to take a special interest in the victims to help. The experience will have left its mark on him. Williams’s truck driver, who, through no fault of his own, runs down a little child and undergoes a more profound change. He is not just saddened—he is remorseful. He appropriates the unintended consequences of his actions—he relates to them as products of his agency. Because his agency now encompasses what befell the child, he is no longer the man he was; his identity has been redrawn, reshaped. It now includes his having been the cause of an injury to a child which spoils her life. His new self bears the blemish. The truck driver is a victim of the unlucky confluence of circumstances. Despite having taken all the required precautions the little child evaded his detection and ended up in the path of his truck. Jacob, on the other hand, is the victim, not just of circumstances but of a conflict of values and norms. As a result of his behavior he does not just injure Esau, he also violates his own moral commitments. The remorse he feels is more complex than the agent-regret experienced by the truck driver—the blemish to his self is more threatening to his integrity. This intuition is captured by the notion of “dirty hands.”69 Acts of dirty hands are “justified, even obligatory, but nonetheless wrong and shameful.”70 A person who has performed such an act may believe that he has done the right thing, and yet feel that he has been defiled, soiled, by having done it. Although he views himself as justified in doing what he did, he feels morally compromised, polluted by the shameful action he performed. He is not a passive victim of ill luck—by his own hands he has committed the evil. People required to act in the face of rival claims—clashes

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of values, opposing loyalties, competing commitments—are at high risk for emerging with dirty hands.71 They deal with problems for which there are only imperfect solutions. Classically, the problem of dirty hands has been associated with politics and affairs of state. Political leaders or, sometimes, aspirants to public office, often find themselves facing particularly wrenching moral dilemmas. The exigencies of securing and exercising power on a grand scale create acute conflicts for them, and the choices they are called upon to make often have farreaching and very severe outcomes. A head of state or a military commander may give an order which he takes to be the right one, but which he recognizes will cause innocents to suffer. He may feel guilty even though he takes himself to be beyond reproach, even though he does not believe he should have done otherwise. If he is a good man, the politician may not simply feel sorry for what he did; he may feel defiled. Michael Walzer notes that we may esteem the political leader who as a result of fulfilling his role sometimes suffers from dirty hands. That the politician feels guilty afterward and is prepared to “do penance for” what he did is evidence that he deserves to be a leader.72 We want the people who must make enormously fateful decisions in our name or on our behalf to feel keenly the moral weight of the actions they take. Their guilt, remorse, or regret are emotions which testify to their good character. As a motivational force, a guilty conscience can play a morally valuable role in making good a wrong.73 Jacob’s anxiety and his conduct towards Esau when he meets him may be taken as a sign of his moral sensitivity. The price he pays throughout his life for his act of deceit, on my reading, is not just a result of what he did but also a result of his remorse at having done it. Especially because of the latter, he may arouse our compassion. That the struggle dirties his hands is a mark of his worthiness. Beyond crediting the political leader for the pain which his act causes him, Walzer proposes that that we admire political leaders for undertaking their difficult roles—among other things, for knowingly putting themselves at risk for compromising their integrity. If we appreciate the complexities of the situation, value the ends to which the leader is committed, and for the sake of which he chooses to violate some of his moral commitments, we may be grateful to him for his readiness to soil his hands. In circumstances where a lesser man might retreat, the leader moves forward, not, we believe, out of a crass drive for power but because the leader takes it to be morally necessary. I have been arguing that Jacob is not to be blamed for the wrong he inflicted on Esau. Are there grounds for praising him, however? Not, it seems, for the reasons Walzer proposes. Walzer’s hero is to be admired for undertaking his difficult role. Jacob’s role was not of his choosing; it was divinely decreed upon him before his birth—his struggle against his older brother and his ultimate triumph. Even if we allow that he may have felt twinges of conscience as his mother dressed his arms in goatskins, he does

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not seem to have undergone a moral struggle at the time. His later feelings of guilt and attempts at restitution may be to his credit; his earlier actions are to be excused, but the reasons suggested by Walzer do not serve as grounds to applaud them.74

They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind (Hosea 8:7) As I pointed out earlier, the series of evils that pursue Jacob from the time he flees his father’s house call to mind, sometimes subtly, and often expressly, instances of his wrongdoing.75 I mention only two. First, under cover of darkness Laban substitutes Leah for Rachel as Jacob’s bride. When, upon discovering the ruse, Jacob protests, Laban responds pointedly: “It is not done thus in our place, to give the younger girl before the firstborn” (Gen. 29:26).76 Second, Jacob’s sons slaughter a kid and dip Joseph’s tunic in its blood in order to make him believe that his beloved Joseph was devoured by a wild beast. Recall that Jacob’s disguise when he posed before Isaac as his brother Esau was made of the skins of kids which his mother put on his neck and hands to simulate Esau’s hairy skin. Perhaps Jacob’s suffering is retribution for his sins. If I am right that Jacob is not to blame for what he did to his brother, then to punish him would be patently unfair. And, in fact, we do not hear God rebuking him as He does Adam and Eve in the wake of their sin, nor do we hear God contemplating his punishment as he does the destruction of Sodom. How may we account for Jacob’s sad life, then? I propose that Jacob’s misfortunes be viewed not as his just desert but as a natural outcome of his behavior. Jacob’s actions were justified, but that is not to say that they did not have regrettable repercussions. By his own underhandedness and guile Jacob set an example for his children. They learn from him how one behaves towards one’s kin. Joseph strives to dominate his brothers, and they, in turn, harbor murderous thoughts towards him. They mercilessly deceive Jacob into believing that Joseph is dead. Although God does not condemn Jacob, He does not protect him from the tragic consequences of his behavior.77 Jacob’s transgressions impact morally not only on the conduct of members of his family, but on himself as well—he is tainted by his dirty hands. Statman proposes that there is also a forwardlooking component to the phenomenon of dirty hands.78 How a person behaves does not simply affect how he feels about himself. It also shapes his character and affects how he will behave in the future. Beyond burdening him with painful memories, stealing the blessing may have weakened Jacob’s character, further darkening his life. Jacob’s conduct when his daughter Dina is raped by Shechem the son of Hamor is troubling on several counts. Jacob gets word that Shechem “had defiled Dina his daughter and his sons were with the livestock in the field, and Jacob kept silent till they came” (Gen. 34:5).79 That Jacob should wait

142 Jacob seeks atonement for his sons to return before taking any action is understandable, but that he should remain silent at news of what has befallen his daughter is perhaps less than what we would expect from a responsible and devoted father. His silence contrasts sharply with the response of his sons. When Jacob’s sons heard of it, they came in from the field. They were “pained and incensed,” for Shechem “had done a scurrilous thing in Israel by lying with Jacob’s daughter, such as ought not be done” (Gen. 34:7). Dinah’s brothers perceive what Shechem has done to Dinah as an offense against Jacob. Jacob, however, makes no move. Even later, when he is joined by his sons, we still hear no word from Jacob. Although Shechem initially turns to both Jacob and the brothers to work out the terms of their agreement, it is only the brothers who respond. Jacob’s sons take charge of the negotiations with Shechem and Hamor; Jacob defaults on his role as paterfamilias. Perhaps the breakdown in his parental authority betrays his lingering self-doubts in the wake of his faithlessness to his own father.80 After the massacre of the people of Schechem, Jacob protests to Simeon and Levi that they have stirred up the people of the land against him, and the people will unite to destroy him. To Jacob’s rebuke Simeon and Levi retort: “Like a whore should our sister be treated?” (Gen. 14.31). It is no longer Jacob’s honor that they are defending but their own. In their declaration of fraternal loyalty towards their sister one may detect a veiled reproach, however. Dinah was introduced at the beginning of this episode as the daughter of Leah. Simeon and Levi are, like her, Leah’s children and may still be smarting from the pain their mother suffered as Jacob’s unloved wife.81 Jacob’s objection to the mass killing carried out by Simeon and Levi is prudential, reminiscent of the reasons he had for hesitating to take up Rebecca’s plan to deceive Isaac. We are told that later, when Jacob and his family traveled onward from Shechem, “the terror of God was upon the towns around them” (Gen. 35:5), and they were not harmed. Jacob’s fears were misplaced. God seems to have vindicated Simeon and Levi’s zealotry. At the end of his life, when Jacob gathers his sons around him to bless them, he denounces Simeon and Levi angrily. He criticizes them harshly for their violence and, rather than blessing them, apprises them of a very grim future. Are we to project his later strong opposition to what they did to the people of Shechem onto his attitude towards the deed when it was carried out? Shortly thereafter, Jacob suffers an outright challenge to his parental authority when his firstborn Reuben lies with Bilhah, Jacob’s concubine (Gen. 35:22). Jacob “heard” but did nothing. I suggest we hear echoes there of his continuing struggle between his moral sensibilities, his family responsibilities, and his personal passions. Jacob does not seem to learn from his past. His pronounced favoritism towards Joseph, marked so conspicuously by the special coat he gives him, provokes Joseph’s brothers’ envy. Against the background of Jacob’s love for Joseph’s mother and his grief at having lost her, we may be inclined to condone, or at least understand, Jacob’s weakness for her son; his despair

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when he is told that Joseph is dead fills us with pity. Nevertheless, Jacob’s overt partiality towards Joseph was a cause of the brothers’ hatred towards him. Rather than taking steps to promote harmony among his children, he stirred up dissension among them. The threads leading from Jacob’s injudicious conduct as a father to the strife among his sons may begin, then, in the moral toll Jacob’s deception of his own father and struggle with his brother had taken on him. The threads lead to Joseph’s abduction and Jacob’s bitter years of mourning.

Jacob’s destiny From whatever perspective one reads the Genesis narratives, Jacob’s conduct towards Esau calls for explanation. That the founder of a great nation, one that is bid to act righteously and do justice, obtained his blessing through stealth and deceit challenges our moral and religious sensibilities and confounds our understanding. We are not surprised that Jacob feels guilty for having stolen Esau’s blessing, and that Jacob asks Esau to forgive him does not strike us as unbefitting. Esau at first declines Jacob’s gift protesting that he has his own wealth. At Jacob’s urging, he ultimately accepts the gift and treats Jacob most amicably, but he does not dismiss the apology as not called for. The paradox evokes a range of interpretive responses. Some try to lessen Jacob’s culpability by emphasizing the evidence of Esau’s unworthiness, and expanding upon it.82 Others make Jacob’s actions appear in a more favorable light. Rashi proposes a reading of the text by which Jacob is not really guilty of deceit. When Jacob identifies himself to Isaac with the words: “I am Esau your firstborn” (Gen. 27:19). Rashi parses it as: “I am bringing this to you, and Esau is your firstborn.” The view held by others, that Jacob’s conduct was morally wrong, is presented forcefully by Shmuel Klitsner. In developing his thesis, Klitsner focuses on the guilt feelings discernible in Jacob’s words and deeds and the hardships and tragedies he undergoes during his lifetime which evoke memories of his wrongful behavior. Klitsner proposes that Rebecca’s scheme to deceive Isaac was based on a misunderstanding of Isaac’s intentions and argues that Jacob was at fault for failing to exercise his moral autonomy in the face of his mother’s command to do wrong. By obeying her, Jacob was acting contrary to God’s will. The Genesis narratives teach, according to Klitsner, that, “sacrifice of moral autonomous choice and resorting to dubious means to achieve even the most lofty or divinely mandated visions constitute a violation of the very divine will it is intended to serve.”83 On Klitsner’s reading, then, since it was not part of God’s design that Jacob steal his brother’s blessing, our story does not show the divine will in tension with morality. Rather, it shows both God and man judging human action by moral standards.84 On my reading Jacob’s deception of Isaac was a link in the series of events that served God’s plan. When Jacob agreed to carry out his mother’s scheme,

144 Jacob seeks atonement in the belief that he was carrying out God’s will, he was right. The Genesis narratives show us that God’s will may conflict with morality, and that when it does it is God’s will that supersedes, but not without residue. Jacob suffers the adversities imposed upon him from without but also guilt feelings and feeling of regret which arise from within. The Genesis narrative affords the reader a relatively close and extended look at Jacob’s life. We see him grow and develop into perhaps the most complex of the patriarchal figures. Along with portraying the complexity of Jacob’s character, however, it presents a picture of the complicated and treacherous reality in which Jacob steered his course. I have proposed various models of regret, remorse and feelings of guilt that people may experience even when they believe that what they have done is the right thing—that they could have done no other, that it was the least bad thing they could do, or that what they did was unavoidable or unintentional. These notions provide insight into Jacob’s enigmatic conduct in the scene we examined here as well as in some of the subsequent chapters of his life. Thinking of Jacob as having been left with “dirty hands” from the compromise forced upon him by his conflicting commitments enlarges our perspective on the answer he gave to Pharaoh—on the “evil” of the days of the years of his life. With God’s blessings, Jacob goes on to play a towering role in the patriarchal saga. His stature as heir to Abraham’s blessing, the perpetuator of his line, the father of the 12 tribes of Israel, is secure. The costs of Jacob’s triumph are there for all to see, however; he fulfills his role under the enduring shadows of his moral failing. The lives of the patriarchs, like those of other biblical figures, demonstrate that fulfilling God’s will and playing one’s designated role in God’s plan does not keep one safe from misfortune or assure one of personal contentment. Jacob’s story brings home in a particularly poignant way that it does not guarantee moral integrity. Putting the latter at risk may be one of the prices imposed by God on those He has chosen to be leaders of His people.

Notes 1 That God chooses people whose conduct is sometimes very questionable is a phenomenon we have referred to as “religious luck.” The focus of this chapter is not on Jacob’s religious luck but rather on his moral luck—on his being placed in a morally compromising situation. 2 Rashbam takes this view and cites Exodus 4:14, where the term “coming towards” is used in a positive sense. 3 Rashi takes this view. Yehudah Kil, Daat Mikra, Genesis, Vol. 2 (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 2000), 317 (Hebrew), commenting on Gen. 32:8, cites passages in the Book of Samuel which identify this as the size of a military unit, e.g., Samuel I 25:13, and observes that in light of Jacob’s memory of Esau’s murderous intentions towards him he is likely to understand Esau’s men as a hostile army.

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4 When the two meet, “Esau ran to meet him and embraced him and fell upon his neck and kissed him” (Gen. 33:4). See, also, Gen. 33:12–16. This is not necessarily indicative, however, of Esau’s intentions towards Jacob as he was coming to meet him. Esau may have undergone a change of heart as a result of Jacob’s propitiatory behavior. Elhanan Samet, Studies in the Weekly Parasha (Maaleh Adumim: Maaliyot, 2002), 103 (Hebrew), suggests that Esau’s cordial reception was due to Jacob’s triumph over the “man” at the Jabbok Ford. 5 It was upon God’s urging that Jacob removed his family from Laban’s house to return to the Land of Canaan. Gen. 31:3. 6 Rashi on Gen. 32:11. 7 Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary (New York: Norton, 2004) on Gen. 32:21, observes that ‫ לכפר פניו‬is literally translated as “cover over his face” (presumably “angry” face). The expression ‫אולי ישא פני‬ “show me a kind face,” is an idiom that connotes forgiveness. See Ibn Ezra on Gen. 32:21. Abarbanel (Gen. 32, section 18) brings the suggestion that Jacob’s gift to Esau was indeed as “a sinner who brings a sacrifice to atone for his sin,” citing Jacob’s use of the term “‫ ”אכפרה פניו‬in presenting it. However, according to Abarbanel, the sin for which Jacob wants to atone is his failure to seek Esau out during the 20 years which had elapsed, not the stealing of the blessing. 8 Some view Jacob’s efforts to placate his brother and his begging forgiveness as merely a tactical move to dispel Esau’s animosity towards him. (See Midrash Gen. Rabah, 76.21; Nahmanides on Gen. 32:5.) See Hanoch Wachsman, “‫ ויוותר יעקב לבדו‬,‫פרשת וישלח‬,” in Ezra Bick and Yonatan Feintuch, eds., Torat Etzion: New Readings in Parashat Hashavua, Bereishit (Jerusalem: Koren, 2014), 331–336 (Hebrew). 9 The midrash takes Jacob to task for his obsequious behavior towards Esau. See Bereshit Rabah, 75.11. 10 Based on Jacob’s language, Alter, The Five Books of Moses, on Gen. 33:11, interprets Jacob’s offering of the tribute as his “making restitution for his primal theft.” 11 Abarbanel on Gen. 33, Section 1. Menahem Kasher, Torah Shelema ad loc. cites the gloss of the Midrash Sechel Tov (Buber, VaYishlach, 33.11) on the verse, “Take my blessing.”: “My blessing, that is, it is instead of the blessing I took from you” (my emphasis). Likewise, he cites Perush Rabeinu Efraim Al Hatorah, ed. Chaim Yosef Isser Gad (Johannesburg: privately printed, 1950), 35, who interprets “my blessing” as the benefits I gleaned from the blessing my father gave me. 12 David Velleman, “Don’t Worry, Feel Guilty,” in A. Hatzimoyosis, ed., Philosophy and the Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 235–248. 13 Shmuel Klitsner, Wrestling Jacob: Deception, Identity, and Freudian Slips in Genesis, 2nd edition (Teaneck, NJ: Ben Yehuda Press, 2009), presents a sustained, psychological analysis of Jacob’s conduct based primarily on nuances of the language of the biblical text, pointing in particular to instances of parapraxis, occurring in the Jacob story, which convey in both overt and subtle ways the pangs of remorse Jacob experiences as well as the disapproving stance of the narrative towards Jacob’s actions. I am indebted to Klitsner’s analysis in my own rendition of the text. 14 Luc Bovens, “Apologies,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 108 (2008): 219–239 at 236. 15 When Sarah demands that Hagar be sent away God bids Abraham, “Whatever Sarah says to you, listen to her voice” (Gen. 21:12). Haamek Davar comments there as well as here that the admonition “to listen to one’s voice” is a bid to pay special attention and to carry out one’s instructions with precision. Haamek

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Davar adds that Rebecca, in saying this, was hinting to Jacob that she was speaking with divine inspiration. The medieval commentator Radak points to the ambiguity in the Hebrew syntax of the last line which leaves open the possibility that it is the younger who will serve the elder. The Hebrew word “et,” “ ‫את‬,” the marker of the accusative case, is omitted, which, according to Radak, makes it unclear who will be the slave and whom he will serve. On Radak’s view, however, the order in which the two are mentioned favors the more conventional reading—i.e., that the elder will serve the younger. Shira Weiss, Ethical Ambiguity in the Hebrew Bible: Philosophical Analysis of Scriptural Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 98, observes that “The chiastic structure of the second stanza of the divine prophecy is a literary device aimed at highlighting the unusual; namely, that the elder shall serve the younger, a reversal of the traditional fraternal roles.” Rebecca herself must have understood it that way because had she understood it in the reverse order it is not likely that she would have acted as she did—contrary to what she took the words of the oracle to mean. Victor P. Hamilton, International Commentary on the Old Testament: The Book of Genesis 18–50 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995) ad loc. calls attention to the contrast between Rebecca’s commanding Jacob and Isaac’s saying to Esau. Ira Schnall, in private correspondence, suggests that Rebecca’s statement is a “typical motherly prayer or wish that she should suffer evil herself than have her son suffer.” This conforms to a certain stereotype of a mother’s self-sacrificial attitude towards her son but does not seem a compelling reading to me. Gen. 25:29–34. I discuss the relationship of the birthright and the blessing Jacob received from Isaac in Chapter 4. Radak on Gen. 27:19 justifies Jacob’s lying to his father on the grounds that (a) Jacob knew that he was more worthy of the blessing than his brother and therefore God would be more responsive to Isaac’s blessing him than his blessing Esau and (b) that in doing so he was obeying his mother’s command and she was a prophetess. Compare Isaac’s blessing to Jacob, “May peoples serve you, and nations bow before you. Be overlord to your brothers, may your mother’s sons bow before you” (Gen. 27:29) with God’s message to Rebecca when she was pregnant, “Two nations—in your womb, two peoples from your loins shall issue. People over people shall prevail, the elder, the younger’s slave” (Gen. 25:23). That Isaac, who was no stranger to goats and sheep, was fooled by the goatskins on Jacob’s arms may suggest that God cooperated in Jacob’s deceiving his father. In Chapter 6, I elaborate upon the notion of inevitability and its implications for moral responsibility in connection with Joseph’s brothers’ selling him into Egypt, which, I claim, was inevitable. Indeed, God does not urge Jacob to listen to his mother’s voice as He urged Abraham to listen to Sarah’s voice when she instructed him to send Hagar and Ishmael away. There was no need to, however, because Rebecca acted on her own to overcome Jacob’s resistance to her directive. Rebecca was exercising her parental authority over her son, while Sarah had no authority over her husband. Gen. 28:13–13. See Gen. 27:37. See Jonathan Grossman, Text and Subtext: On Exploring Biblical Narrative Design (Tel Aviv: Herzog College, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2015), 76ff (Hebrew). The Netziv distinguishes between the two elements of Cain’s response—his fury, an expression of his pride, and his “face falling,” an expression low self-esteem as a result of what happened. Abel might have an answer to Cain’s resentment. Cain is described as bringing his offering “from the fruit of the soil” (Gen. 4:3), which is explained by Rashi

Jacob seeks atonement

30 31 32 33

34 35 36 37 38

39 40 41 42

43 44 45 46

47

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as the worst part of the fruit, following Bereshit Rabah 22.5. Cain’s offering is described as having been taken from the rejected fruit. Joseph is Rachel’s first-born but the eleventh son born to Jacob. Rashi on Gen. 24:62, following Bereshit Rabah 60.14. We read further on (Gen. 25:1) that after Sarah’s death Abraham takes a woman named Ketura as a wife. Rashi ad loc., also following Bereshit Rabah 61.4, identifies Keturah as Hagar. Velleman, “Don’t Worry,” 246. Bernard Williams, “Moral Luck,” in Daniel Statman, ed., Moral Luck (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 35–55, observes that not always when the agent has a properly acceptable justification for a wrong he has inflicted on someone, is it reasonable to expect the injured party to accept that justification. See, for example, Sarah Stroud, “Moral Overridingness and Moral Theory,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 79 (1998): 170–189 at 170. For a discussion of different possible reasons for the “overridingness” of morality, see Dan W. Brock, “The Justification of Morality,” American Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1977): 71–78. Ishtiyaque Haji,“On Morality’s Dethronement,” Philosophical Papers 27 (1998): 61–180 at 173. Haji, “Dethronement,” 165–6, cites this example from Michael Slote, “Admirable Immorality,” in idem, Goods and Virtues (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 86. For a discussion of the more complex question of the Bible’s view of the relationship between morality and the divine will, see Jaco Gericke, The Hebrew Bible and Philosophy of Religion (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012), especially his arguments for traces of moral realist assumptions in the Bible, 411–420. See Edward Wieranga, “A Defensible Divine Command Theory,” Noûs 17 1983): 387–407 at 388. See Gericke, Hebrew Bible, Chapter 14. Also, Yoram Hazony, The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), Chapter 4. Eliezer Schweid, “The Authority Principle in Biblical Morality,” The Journal of Religious Ethics 8 (1980): 180–203. Schweid emphasizes that it is not only through our feeling of moral responsibility that we know God. There are other forms of religious experience, such as a prophetic revelation, which put us in touch with Him. The latter experience may be more powerful than our moral feelings and create tensions with them. Unlike the natural bodies, man’s obedience to God’s command is not a permanent feature of man’s being; a person can refuse to obey. When he disobeys, however, he is in violation of his duty, and he does so to his detriment. Schweid, “The Authority Principle,” 185. Gen. 38. The practice is enumerated among the commandments God gives the Israelites when they are about to enter the Promised Land (Deut. 25:5–6). In the event that a man dies without leaving children his brother is required to marry the widow of the deceased in order to produce a child who will perpetuate the deceased brother’s line. This practice was common in the ancient Middle East. See Millar Burrows, “The Ancient Oriental Background of Hebrew Levirate Marriage,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 77 (1940): 2–15; Dvora E. Weisberg, Levirate Marriage and the Family in Ancient Judaism (Waltham, MA and Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press and University Press of New England, 2009). Ramban on Gen. 38:8 comments that this was practiced by the ancients before the giving of the Torah. The Hebrew is ‫צדקה ממני‬. I adopt the most common translation to be the plain meaning of the term.

148 Jacob seeks atonement 48 The levirate law enunciated in Deut. 25 does not allow for a union between the widow and her father-in-law. Whether in this story the relations between Judah and Tamar are considered a form of levirate marriage is a matter of debate. See Esther Marie Menn, Judah and Tamar (Genesis 38) in Ancient Jewish Exegesis: Studies in Literary Form and Hermeneutics (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 55–64. 49 See Mordechai Breuer, Pirqe Bereshit, Vol. 2 (Alon Shevut: Tevunot Press, 1998), Chapter 33 (Hebrew). 50 See Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (New York: Free Press, 2003), 526ff. 51 The rabbis note the anomaly of the daughters being the source of a biblical law which Moses did not know on his own. See Rashi on Num. 27:5. 52 In the following discussion I am indebted to the comprehensive analysis presented in Daniel Statman, Moral Dilemmas (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995). 53 For an argument for dispensing with the notion of a moral dilemma see Earl Conee, “Against Moral Dilemmas,” The Philosophical Review 91 (1982): 87–97. 54 For a discussion of the principle of “ought” implies “can” and its application to instances of conflicting obligations, see Statman, Moral Dilemmas, Chapter 2. See, also, Bas C. Van Fraassen, “Values and the Heart’s Command,” Journal of Philosophy 70 (1973): 5–19 at 13, who upholds the conflicting claims of the tribunal of heaven and the tribunal of earth in his challenge of this application of the “ought” implies “can” principle. 55 David Ross, The Right and the Good (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930), 18. Ross’s example is discussed by Statman, Moral Dilemmas, 21. 56 See Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, “Moral Dilemmas and Incomparability,” American Philosophical Quarterly 22 (1985): 321–329 at 322. In the view of some, such a dilemma points to there being an inconsistency in the principles of the moral theory which it presupposes. This may be due to incommensurable values embedded in the theory. See Ruth Barcan Marcus, “Moral Dilemmas and Consistency,” The Journal of Philosophy 77 (1980): 121–136. Such a dilemma may be logically precluded by the principle of “ought” implies “can.” See, also, Bernard Williams, Problems of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), Chapter 11. 57 On Statman’s view, a genuine dilemma is only one in which the loss felt by the agent is not simply due to his lack of imagination or his failure to notice the solution but rather where there in fact is no solution. The reason for Jacob’s suffering is not, of course, that he is at a loss as to which of his commitments have priority. 58 Statman, Moral Dilemmas, 134ff. 59 An example of such a moral theory is classical utilitarianism, which defines the morally right action as the action that produces the most utility or good, usually defined as the greatest amount of well-being or pleasure for the most people. 60 See Michael Stocker, Plural and Conflicting Values (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), especially Chapter 4. See, also, Stephen De Wijze, “Tragic-Remorse: The Anguish of Dirty Hands,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 7 (2004): 453– 471; Christopher W. Gowans, Innocence Lost: An Examination of Inescapable Wrongdoing (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). 61 Bovens, “Apologies,” 223. 62 The example of Gauguin appears in Bernard Williams, Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers, 1973–1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), Chapter 2: “Moral Luck,” reprinted in Statman, ed., Moral Luck, Chapter 2. 63 Williams holds that in these circumstances one’s ability to morally justify one’s decision does not entail that one could justify oneself to others as well, particularly to the ones who suffered as a result of one’s choices. Cf. note 29. 64 See Thomas Nagel, “Moral Luck,” in Statman, ed., Moral Luck, 57–71, reprinted from Thomas Nagel, Mortal Questions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979). 65 Williams, “Moral Luck,” 43.

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76

77

78

79 80 81 82

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Williams, “Moral Luck,” 44. See Gowans, Innocence Lost, Ch. 5. Statman, Moral Dilemmas, 118. The notion of dirty hands has been widely discussed following Michael Walzer, “Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 2 (1973): 160–180. Stocker, Plural and Conflicting Values, 9. De Wijze, “Tragic-Remorse,” 457. Walzer, “Dirty Hands,” 167. See, also, Anthony P. Cunningham, “The Moral Importance of Dirty Hands,” The Journal of Value Inquiry 26 (1992): 239–250. See Kevin Sludds, Emotions: Their Cognitive Base and Ontological Importance (Bern: Peter Lang, 2009), 75ff.; also P. S. Greenspan, “Guilt and Virtue,” The Journal of Philosophy 91 (1994): 57–70. Similar reservations, apply, I believe, to Samet’s, holding Jacob’s stealing the blessing up as a moral sacrifice he was called upon to make in order that the Children of Israel fulfill their destiny. Studies in the Weekly Parasha (2002), 84. Commentators invoke the legal/moral principle of “measure for measure” to mark the congruence between Jacob’s wrongdoings and the misfortunes which subsequently befall him. They point to literary features such as the repetition of linguistic features or the highlighting of the same or similar objects to connect the two. See Jonathan Jacobs, Measure for Measure in the Storytelling Bible (Alon Shevut: Tevunot Press, 2006) (Hebrew). Jacob’s silence in the face of Laban’s retort may be a sign of his feeling guilty for his behavior towards the firstborn in his family. I thank Ira Schnall for this suggestion. The midrash has Jacob, on the morning after his nuptials, protesting to Leah at her having tricked him. Leah responds that Jacob tricked his father when he declared before him: “I am Esau your first-born.” Midrash Tanchuma (Buber) Va’yetze, 11. See, also, Klitsner, Wrestling Jacob, 91. The midrash (Bereshit Rabah 67:4) detects disapproval in the biblical text, pointing to the use of wording very similar to that of the verse “When Esau heard his father’s words, he cried out with a great and very bitter outcry” (Gen. 27:34) to describe Mordecai’s response upon learning of Haman’s plot to destroy the Jewish people in Esther 4:1. See, also, Klitsner, Wrestling Jacob, 55 note 12, who notes the use of the word ayef (“famished”) to suggest a connection between Jacob’s treachery and Amalek’s treacherous attack on them in the desert (Deut. 25:18). Statman, Moral Dilemmas, 140, cites the case of King David who, although he may have been justified in his acts of warfare, nevertheless because his hands shed so much blood, “suffered a loss in his moral sensitivity and integrity,” and therefore was forbidden to build the Temple. I am following the JPS translation here of ‫ והחריש‬rather than Alter’s translation— “and Jacob held his peace.” Hamilton, International Commentary, 433, sees Jacob’s son Judah’s subsequent taking of a Canaanite woman for a wife as a sign of Jacob’s loss of control over his family following the Dinah incident. See, for example, Gen. 29:31–35. We are told, “And Isaac loved Esau for the game that he brought him” (Gen. 25:28), the second part of which Alter points out, is to be translated literally “for the game in his mouth.” Rashi interprets the second part as referring to Esau’s trapping not game in the literal sense but trapping Isaac with the deceitful words coming out of his mouth. Rashi cites the midrash in Bereshit Rabah 63.10. For linguistic features of the narrative that support Jacob’s claim to the blessing, see Samet, Studies in the Weekly Parasha, Second Series, Bereishit-Shemot (Jerusalem: Maaliyot, 2004), 102–121 (Hebrew). Klitsner, Wrestling Jacob, 80. Klitsner, Wrestling Jacob, 87.

6

Who sold Joseph into Egypt?1

The Genesis narratives conclude with an extended story—chapters 37 through 50, what some refer to as a novella2—linking the descendants of Abraham, the first of the patriarchs, to the Children of Israel who will soon become slaves in Egypt. The hero of the novella is Jacob’s son Joseph, the older of the two sons born to him by his beloved wife, Rachel. The story follows the 17-year-old Joseph, his father’s favorite, from his sale into slavery in Egypt to his tenure as Viceroy over the Land of Egypt during the years of plenty followed by the years of famine. It recounts how Joseph manipulated his brothers when they were at his mercy, when the family in Canaan was on the brink of starvation and they came to Egypt to buy food. Joseph’s maneuvers ultimately culminate in the descent of Jacob and all his descendants to Egypt. The novella closes with Joseph’s death in Egypt at the age of one hundred and ten after having sworn his brothers to take his bones with them when God takes them up “to the land He promised to Isaac and Jacob” (Gen. 50:25). Although in these chapters God’s intervention is subtle and His shaping of the events is suggested, by and large, only implicitly, the stamp of divine providence on the unfolding of the plot is unmistakable. We trace it from the Covenant of the Pieces: Know well that your seed shall be strangers in a land not theirs and they shall be enslaved and afflicted four hundred years. But upon the nation for whom they slave I shall bring judgment, and afterward they shall come forth with great substance.3 Now we watch as many years later “events conspire” to bring that about. Nonetheless, it is human action, governed by recognizably natural factors, that propels the plot. The reader sees God’s hand at every turn but cannot remain indifferent to the human pathos of the drama. This confluence of divine providence and human agency, as we have seen, often makes it hard to determine to what or to whom to ascribe actions and events. Quandaries about these issues often hover in the background of the stories, but are rarely articulated. Striking in the Joseph story is that

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Joseph raises, on his own, albeit obliquely, the question of moral responsibility. When Joseph first reveals himself to his brothers, he urges them not to reproach themselves for having sold him into Egypt because, “it was not you who sent me here, but God” (Gen. 45:4–8). The reader may, however, be inclined to think poorly of Joseph’s brothers for what they did to him.4 Nowhere in the Joseph story do we see God causing any of the brothers to act in a particular way. If God sees to it that they sell Joseph, it is not by forcing their hand at any specific juncture. However, that God’s design shapes the unfolding of the Genesis narratives, and that His presence is pervasive throughout, gives a semblance of inevitability to the flow of events.5 God does not, for the most part, cause people to act as they do. He does not intervene in an agent’s particular action. Yet, God’s design proceeds—it seems inevitably—to its fulfillment. Causing an action to happen is one way of bringing it about that the action is inevitable. In the biblical narrative a classic instance of an action being caused is God’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. On one intuitive understanding of what happened, God directly intervened in Pharaoh’s motivational system so that he could not avoid not letting the Israelites leave Egypt. If Pharaoh was caused not to let the Israelites go then it was inevitable that Pharaoh not let them go. Circumstances, however, may bring it about that an action is inevitable without causing it. An example from the episode we are examining might be the passing of the caravan of Ishmaelites through the Dothan Valley on its way to Egypt. Given that the merchants were coming from the Gilead and that their destination was Egypt, and given that the terrain left them no choice but to travel along the Via Maris which passed through the Dothan Valley, they could not have avoided passing through the Dothan Valley.6 The circumstances made it inevitable. The distinction between an action’s being caused and its being inevitable is an important one for the following discussion. I maintain that throughout most of the Genesis narratives, the actions of the heroes, the protagonists of the drama, are not only not caused, they are also not inevitable. Eve could have resisted the snake’s blandishments; nothing prevented her from doing so. Jacob could have defied his mother’s orders. On my reading, the brothers’ sale of Joseph, the sequence of events which are related in Gen. 37, verses 15 to 29, departs from this pattern. I propose that although when they sold Joseph into Egypt the brothers were acting freely, their sale of him was inevitable. How does that bear upon their moral responsibility for what they did? In his seminal article, “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,” Frankfurt argues that inevitability, in and of itself, is not incompatible with moral responsibility.7 Frankfurt distinguishes, with respect to moral responsibility, between conditions which render an action inevitable and conditions which cause an action. Conditions which cause an action preclude the agent’s moral responsibility for that action. Conditions which render an

152 Who sold Joseph into Egypt? action unavoidable, but do not cause the action, do not preclude the agent’s being morally responsible for performing the action. To illustrate this distinction Frankfurt provides what is now known as the Frankfurtian example of the “counterfactual intervener.” Suppose someone—Black, let us say—wants Jones to perform a certain action. Black is prepared to go to considerable lengths to get his way, but he prefers to avoid showing his hand unnecessarily. So, he waits until Jones is about to make up his mind what to do, and he does nothing unless it is clear to him (Black is an excellent judge of such things) that Jones is going to decide to do something other than what he wants him to do. Whatever Jones’s initial preferences and inclinations, then, Black will have his way.8 Frankfurt’s account serves as the basis for my reading of the Joseph story. On my reading, it was inevitable that the brothers sell Joseph into Egypt, and yet they are morally responsible for doing so. I go on now to take a closer look at the details of the Joseph narrative and indicate those features which, I propose, point to the inevitability of the sale. On my reading, God, who does not appear in the story, is present, nevertheless, as the “counterfactual intervener.” His presence, behind the scenes makes it inevitable that the brothers sell Joseph to the Ishmaelites. I argue that Frankfurt’s account of moral responsibility can provide for a persuasive rendering of the story.

Joseph exonerates his brothers When Joseph reveals himself to his brothers, it is not only his identity that he reveals to them but also the truth about the drama of which they have been a part for many years: And now, do not be pained and do not be incensed with yourselves that you sold me down here, because for sustenance God has sent me before you. Two years now, there has been famine in the heart of the land, and there are yet five years without plowing and harvest. And God has sent me before you to make you a remnant on earth and to preserve life, for you to be a great surviving group. And so, it was not you who sent me here but God, and He made me father to Pharaoh and lord to all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. (Gen. 45:4–8) They have been deluded as to the real author of the acts they performed, Joseph tells them. It is not they who sold him into slavery, but God. They should not feel dismay and remorse because they are not responsible for his having been sold into Egypt. Joseph is evoking an intuitive libertarian notion of moral responsibility, whereby a necessary condition thereof is the absence

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of causal determination. A person who is caused to do something did not do it freely and therefore can be neither credited nor blamed for what he did.9 Apparently, Joseph’s assurances do not put his brothers completely at ease. Later, upon their father’s death, they fear lest Joseph now seize the opportunity for revenge. They do not deny their culpability. Rather, they beg Joseph to forgive their “offense and guilt.” Now Joseph brings other considerations to allay their anxieties. Fear not, for am I instead of God? While you meant evil toward me, God meant it for good, so as to bring about at this very time keeping many people alive. And so fear not. I will sustain you and your little ones. (Gen. 50:19–21) Here Joseph stops short of shifting the responsibility for his presence in Egypt to God, as he did earlier. His story here is, rather, that the evil that the brothers intended God meant or intended for a good purpose—the survival of many people. That is, the brothers’ sale of Joseph into Egypt was part of God’s plan to save the peoples of the area from famine. While the happy ending is good grounds for mitigating the brothers’ anguish, it is not clear how it lightens the burden of their guilt. So far as the brothers are concerned, the ultimate turn of events is accidental. That God intended what happened, however, raises questions about the brothers’ responsibility even if Joseph himself does not raise them on this occasion.

How authoritative is Joseph’s account? Is Joseph’s understanding of how he has come to occupy his present position in Egypt borne out by the story as the Bible relates it?10 If God caused Joseph’s brothers to sell him, what sense are we to make of the elaborate psychological matrix in which the act is embedded? Is it only epiphenomenal? The brothers are overcome with jealousy and a desire for revenge. They believe that these moved them to plot to kill Joseph, throw him into a pit, and then sell him as a slave. Joseph tells them they are wrong, that their perception that they did what they did because of their resentment towards Joseph is an illusion. God moved their hands. Alternatively, the brothers sold Joseph because they hated him, but they were compelled to do so by God who imbued them with a passion for revenge which they could not resist. Although either of these is a possible reading of the story neither does justice to the drama we are following. It is not simply that we know the brothers hated Joseph “and could not speak a kind word to him” (Gen. 37:3), and that they harbored murderous intentions towards him. Their intense jealousy and resentment towards Joseph is also convincingly motivated by Jacob’s favoritism and Joseph’s conceit, the former represented so vividly by

154 Who sold Joseph into Egypt? the coat of many colors, the latter by the dreams, that we cannot fail to see the heroes as agents rather than puppets. Our understanding of the family dynamics is not based just on the Joseph story. It is also rooted in the earlier family history. We see Laban foisting Leah upon Jacob when Jacob was in love with Rachel and she was the one he wanted to marry. Laban thereby sets the stage for an ongoing rivalry between the two sisters for Jacob’s affections, which for Leah was a hopeless contest in which she was defeated from the outset. Even if the boy Joseph were not the pampered and conceited troublemaker he appears to be in the opening of the story, we would expect relations between him, the son of the favorite wife, and his brothers, the sons of the unloved one, to be strained. Confronted with Jacob’s undisguised preference for Joseph, the brothers no doubt were reminded of the humiliation their mother had suffered in her marriage, and this compounded their own. Do these have no effect on their behavior? Is it simply that God is pulling the strings? To see this drama as a puppet show is to turn a blind eye to its most poignant features. Furthermore, it should be clear to the reader that Joseph is wrong on at least one point. The famine, augured by Pharaoh’s portentous dreams, seems not to be a mere brute natural phenomenon, for which God in his mercy provides a solution in the guise of Joseph, but a device enlisted by God for the purpose of carrying out his plan. Although Joseph may delight in imagining himself to be God’s instrument of salvation, in fact the divine plan Joseph serves is that of securing the descent of the Children of Israel into Egypt. That Joseph is inclined to present himself in a more flattering light is consistent with what we know of his character from elsewhere in the story. All the same, Joseph’s belief that he is in Egypt because it is called for by the divine plan is quite reasonable. He looks back at the remarkable conjunction of events that led to his stunning rise in Pharaoh’s court. He is promoted in Potiphar’s house from which later, despite his exemplary behavior, he is removed to the prison house, where he meets up with Pharaoh’s courtiers whose dreams he interprets. One of them recommends him to Pharaoh to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams. His appointment to the position of viceroy soon follows. On his first meeting with his brothers in Egypt, Joseph remembers his youthful dreams of grandeur. Their fulfillment—that his brothers are now at his mercy—confirms his sense that a heavenly hand is guiding his fate. He repeatedly credits God for his success at the various junctures of his career. Aside from the chain of events which led to his viceroyship, the specific circumstances surrounding his brothers’ selling him are good reason for Joseph to think that God’s plan called for them to do so. As he saw it, the sale was facilitated by two notable happenstances. A man found him wandering in the field in Shechem and asked him what he wanted there. That the man stumbled across him and wanted to be of help to him is noteworthy. More remarkable, however, is that when Joseph told him he was looking for his brothers, it turned out that the man had overheard his brothers planning to

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go down to Dothan and told Joseph where they were. Afterward, when his brothers flung him into a pit in Dothan, he had reason to believe that they were leaving him there to die. And then the brothers pulled him out of the pit and sold him to a caravan of Ishmaelites who happened to be passing along on their way to Egypt. The caravan brought Joseph to Egypt, so that he was in place to carry out the providential plan. From Joseph’s vantage point at the time he reassured his brothers, it was natural to assume that everything that happened was engineered by God.

God’s plan and the contingency of human actions That Joseph’s brothers were destined to go down to Egypt is confirmed by the larger saga of the forefathers recounted in Genesis. The design God revealed to Abraham in the Covenant of the Pieces is for Abraham’s descendants to become God’s chosen people whose mission will be to spread His word among the nations of the earth. An overall view of the Genesis narrative shows the divine plan evolving towards that end. I distinguish, however, between the overall trajectory of events, which is inevitable, and the actions or sequences of action which move the plan along. On my reading, it is not only the case that the agents’ actions are, on the whole, free, that is, that the agents’ actions are their own and not caused by outside forces. It is also the case that, for the most part, the actions in the chain are not inevitable, that is, with respect to any particular action in the chain, the agent could have avoided performing it. I have argued that it was God’s plan that Adam and Eve sin and as a result be banished from the Garden of Eden.11 To begin with, however, Eve beholds the Tree of Knowledge in the middle of the Garden but resists its allure. When the serpent first accosts her, she holds her ground. The serpent continues to wage his campaign; his success is not guaranteed. At some point Eve succumbs. As she refrained at first, however, she could have continued to resist instead of giving way when she did. We have no reason to think God would have intervened. Had she continued to resist He could have granted Adam and Eve other opportunities to defy His prohibition. That God’s plan does not preclude the contingency of a particular human action is dramatically evident in the story of the binding of Isaac. God subjects Abraham to the test after He made His covenant with him, after He promised that He would make him into a great nation and that Isaac would carry forth his seed. God now commands Abraham to bring up Isaac as a burnt offering. Abraham’s compliance with God’s order is not inevitable. God wants to see if Abraham will obey. The order is rescinded only when God is satisfied that Abraham is prepared to offer up his son to Him.12 What would have happened had Abraham failed the test? Would God have given Abraham a chance to redeem himself? Or, would God have chosen someone else to father His chosen people? The narrative is silent on these questions.

156 Who sold Joseph into Egypt? Similarly, many features of the Jacob story show that Jacob rather than Esau is God’s chosen. Jacob is the one destined to receive the blessing, but it is not inevitable that he receive it by stealth. Rebecca instigates the scheme, but Jacob hesitates. When Rebecca reassures him, Jacob accedes, but his initial reluctance might not have been overcome so easily. That Jacob believes that he could have avoided obeying his mother is confirmed by the fact that, as I have argued, he later feels guilty for not having done so.13 The brothers’ sale of Joseph, in addition to its being a link in the larger drama which follows upon the Covenant of the Pieces, is embedded in the more tightly woven account of Joseph’s rise to power in Pharaoh’s court and the descent of Jacob’s family into Egypt. Throughout the story the heroes’ actions are influenced, affected, shaped, or constrained by unanticipated and often extraordinary circumstances or coincidences. My reading takes the unusual confluences of circumstances and striking coincidences as signals that the eventual sale is inevitable. For the most part the narratives here leave the details of God’s involvement obscure. In the sequence of episodes we are examining, God’s direct involvement is not shown or noted explicitly; often what His role is in achieving a particular end is left mysterious. Some of the sequences of action in the larger Joseph story, such as when Joseph incriminates his brothers in Egypt, seem open-ended, the progression of events contingent upon human initiative, impulsiveness, or inconstancy. In others, circumstances seem to be prompting or steering the protagonists towards actions which they cannot avoid performing. We are sometimes led to infer that a particular action was inevitable from the presence of forceful impediments which had to be overcome for the action to take place. Sometimes it is the agent’s reluctance which must be overcome. With respect to any particular action, whether or not it was inevitable is often left unclear. However, the question of whether or not an agent’s performance of a particular action is inevitable is not, during much of this story, integral to the plot and the reader is not troubled by it. It is my thesis that the story of the sale is striking in two respects. One is that the brothers’ act of selling Joseph is clearly inevitable. The other is that its inevitability bears upon the plot in a way that questions of inevitability do not affect the other episodes—it raises the question of moral responsibility. The distinctiveness of the sale story becomes evident from a comparison of the story with the stories that surround it. I turn now to the latter.

Joseph’s rise to power in Egypt In order to do his part in fulfilling God’s plan Joseph must be strategically situated in Egypt. The route which leads him to his powerful position as Pharaoh’s viceroy, to being “the provider to all the people of the land” (Gen. 42:6), begins in Hebron. There Jacob bids him go to Shechem to see how his brothers fare. The midrash draws attention to the connection between God’s

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promise to Abraham and the fateful step in its fulfillment, Jacob’s sending Joseph to Shechem. We read in the biblical text that Jacob sent Joseph from “the valley of Hebron” (Gen. 37:14). The midrash points out that the city of Hebron is in fact located in the mountains, and explains that the text identifies it here as a valley in order to tell us that Joseph “went to fulfill the deep design” that God revealed to Abraham who is buried in Hebron.14 That Jacob sent Joseph to Shechem should put the reader on his guard. Jacob had very good reason to believe that Joseph’s brothers might be resentful of him. Earlier, Joseph had spoken ill of his brothers to Jacob. This should have been a warning to Jacob that there were tensions among them. Jacob knows that he openly demonstrates his favoritism towards Joseph, which he should expect would embitter his other children. Jacob also knows that Joseph told his brothers about the dreams he had in which he figures as their ruler. Jacob should have at least suspected that Joseph’s brothers are not inclined kindly towards him. Yet Jacob sends the teen-aged Joseph off on his own to meet with his brothers—to Shechem, a place which for Jacob had very ominous associations.15 Jacob’s placing his favorite son at such risk is a bit surprising. Did God simply step in and directly cause him to do it, in order to further his plans? There is no hint in the text that he did. Moreover, one can think of other explanations which would point towards this being a free action on Jacob’s part. Perhaps Jacob is so concerned to learn about the welfare of his other sons that he overcomes his reluctance to send Joseph. Perhaps, although he should know that danger lurks for Joseph in Shechem, he does not appreciate the fact.16 Was Jacob’s ill-fated charge to Joseph to go to Shechem nevertheless inevitable? Later, when Jacob is presented with Joseph’s bloody tunic and takes it as evidence that Joseph is dead, Jacob rejects his children’s attempts to console him.17 If Jacob feels guilty for what he did, it would seem that he feels that he could have done otherwise. An agent’s perceptions on this score are not reliable, however. Joseph’s brothers feel guilty about what they did to Joseph, although on my reading, it was inevitable that they sell him. That an unlikely action on Jacob’s part plays so crucial a role in initiating this phase of God’s plan may suggest that God’s hand is at work here even though Jacob may be unaware of it.18 Perhaps, indeed, had Jacob shown signs of changing his intentions God would have intervened to cause him to send Joseph to Shechem. The narrative, I think, leaves us to speculate. Joseph responds to his father, “Here I am.” With these same words, Abraham responded to God’s instruction to leave his father’s home, and also to God’s command to bring up his son as a burnt offering. In both of Abraham’s responses the words connote an autonomous, deliberate decision. Abraham’s acquiescence to God’s summons is to his credit, especially in the latter instance. Joseph is also acting freely here, and we note his deference towards his father. The association with Abraham, whose response was markedly not inevitable, casts Joseph in the role of the dutiful son freely acceding to his father’s request, who could have done otherwise, but chose not to.19

158 Who sold Joseph into Egypt? Skipping ahead a bit in the story we see that God’s promise to Abraham continues to proceed towards its fulfillment after Joseph arrives in Egypt. He is bought by Potiphar to work as a servant in his home. There, Potiphar’s wife’s false accusations land him in prison, which eventually leads to his being summoned to Pharaoh’s court. Potiphar’s wife is moved to act as she does by her lust and depravity. She appears straightforwardly as a wicked, scheming woman; no one presumes to exonerate her. In the circumstances in which she brings her accusations against Joseph there is no hint that she could not have avoided doing what she did. The arrival of Pharaoh’s court officials in the prison-house where Joseph is held, where each of them is troubled by a dream for which Joseph provides a solution, holds out the prospect of Joseph’s release and his gaining access to Pharaoh. Joseph predicts that the cupbearer will return to his former position and appeals to him to mention him to Pharaoh to see to it that he is freed. Surely, this smoothly coordinated string of events has the earmarks of divine engineering. Then there is a setback, however. The cupbearer forgets Joseph and the link to Pharaoh is not forged. It seems as if Joseph will spend the rest of his life locked away. God’s plan has been arrested. Only temporarily, however. Two years later Joseph’s prospects are restored when Pharaoh himself is visited by unsettling dreams. He seeks in vain for someone to solve them. The fickle memory of the cupbearer, who now is ensconced in the palace, is jolted, and he tells Pharaoh about the success Joseph had at solving dreams. Pharaoh immediately sends for Joseph who not only explains the meaning of the dreams—that there will very shortly be seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine—but also presents Pharaoh with a plan of action for assuring that his people will have what to eat during the famine. Pharaoh straightaway sets Joseph over the Land of Egypt. Was Pharaoh’s act of appointing Joseph inevitable? Pharaoh had very good reason to appoint Joseph his Viceroy. It was Pharaoh’s own action—he did it because he wanted to. At the same time, Joseph’s appointment turns out to be a very integral part of God’s plan. Thanks to Joseph’s astuteness and wit, Egypt can provide food during the years of famine, and Joseph’s brothers must go down from Canaan to Egypt to procure sustenance for their family, which is on the brink of starvation. Since Joseph oversees the distribution of the grain, it is to him they have to appeal for food. Their encounter with Joseph at this juncture initiates the next step in the descent of Jacob’s family into Egypt. Would God have intervened had Pharaoh shown signs of not appointing Joseph? The appointment went smoothly, but it may leave us wondering.

Jacob’s descent into Egypt One of the last steps along the way towards the fulfillment of the Covenant of the Pieces is Jacob’s descent into Egypt. Jacob’s initial response to his children’s report that Joseph is still alive is incredulity. “And his heart stopped,

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for he did not believe them” (Gen. 45:26). Only at the sight of the wagons that Joseph sent to bring him to Egypt does he come around and agree to go. On the way to Egypt Jacob stops in Beersheba, however, and offers sacrifices to God. God appears to him and says: “Fear not to go down to Egypt, for there I will make you a great nation” (Gen. 46:3). Hizkuni observes that one does not urge someone not to be afraid unless that person is afraid. God knows that Jacob is afraid and gives him encouragement. In response to God’s urging, and because he yearns to see Joseph, Jacob resumes his voyage. God does not compel or coerce Jacob to go down to Egypt. Jacob has a strong incentive to go down to Egypt, and God helps him overcome his reluctance. This idea is captured in the passage in the Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 89b, that posits that Jacob should have been brought down to Egypt in chains of iron but was spared because of his merit. As the midrash has it, in the words of Hosea 11.4, God declared, “I drew them with the cords of a man, with bands of love.” Rashi explains that since Jacob’s descent into Egypt followed from God’s decree that Abraham’s children would be exiled to a strange land, Jacob should have gone down to Egypt against his will, as would an exile. Instead, Jacob went down to Egypt because he wanted to see Joseph. The midrash assumes that one way or another Jacob would have descended into Egypt. If Jacob could not avoid going down to Egypt, is the midrash suggesting that it was inevitable that Jacob accompany his children to Egypt on this trip? Perhaps Jacob could have avoided going down to Egypt just then; perhaps this act of descent was avoidable. Had God’s assurances not moved him to resume his journey from Beersheba, we may speculate that God might have resorted to coercive measures to bring him down to Egypt. As it happens, Jacob responds to God’s urging and succumbs to his longing to see Joseph.

The sale My thesis is that in contrast to the narratives we surveyed earlier, in many of which whether a particular action is unavoidable or not is not clear, from the time Joseph embarks upon his search for his brothers, the brothers could not have avoided selling him.20 The inevitability of their selling him is underscored by the impediments which they overcome in order to do so. Literary features of the passage detailing how Joseph was sold, such as the intense pace at which the events are related, and the use of strings of verbs in rapid succession—“they stripped Joseph,” “they took him and flung him into the pit,” “they sat down to eat,” “they raised their eyes and saw”—suggest that something unnatural is being related.21 In many of the episodes we examined earlier, contingencies in the unwinding of God’s plan were largely due to human choice and deliberation. Would Abraham obey God’s summons? Would Jacob agree to Rebecca’s scheme? Would God’s assurances allay Jacob’s fears of going down to Egypt? Freedom of action entails such contingency.

160 Who sold Joseph into Egypt? In the story of the sale we do not see the protagonists hesitating or deliberating. Joseph’s brothers do not ponder or agonize over whether to dispose of Joseph. Except for Reuben and Judah, they are of one mind in their determination to be rid of him. They agree to Reuben’s proposal without a struggle. As far as they are concerned, it seems, why not spare themselves the stain of Joseph’s blood on their hands if they can be rid of him just as well without it? In the same spirit, they agree to Judah’s proposal to sell him. What threatens the plan in the sale narrative is the chance concatenation of events, rather than human willfulness. What puts the plan back on track again is circumstantial happenstance. That Joseph in the end is sold into Egypt, despite and by way of these convolutions, bespeaks its inevitability.

The twists and turns Joseph sets out to see his brothers in Shechem, but his brothers are not there. The passerby tells Joseph that his brothers have moved on to Dothan. No reason is given for why the brothers moved on from Shechem to Dothan. Perhaps because the grazing there was better. The biblical city of Dothan is thought to have been located on the site of Tel Dothan, 100 kilometers north of Hebron. From there the brothers have a good view of the surrounding plains which Joseph traverses on his way from Shechem. They see him from afar and the sight of him arouses their long-standing hostility towards him. “Here comes that dream-master!” (Gen. 37:19), they say to each other. Watching him approach, they hatch a plan to kill him and throw him into a pit.22 The plan to kill Joseph is thwarted by Reuben, who, upon hearing his brothers’ murderous plan, urges the brothers not to shed Joseph’s blood but to leave him to die in the pit. Reuben harbors a different plan—to go back to the pit later, to retrieve Joseph, and to return him to his father. Reuben had his own good reasons for wanting to return Joseph to his father. After Rachel’s death, “Reuben went and lay with Bilhah, his father’s concubine, and Israel heard” (Gen. 35:22). Reuben may have had hopes of getting back into Jacob’s good graces. Joseph would have been killed by his brothers were it not for Reuben’s initiative, but had Reuben carried out his intention, Joseph would not have been sold into Egypt. Reuben returns too late to follow through on his plan. Were there circumstances which prevented Reuben from coming back on time? The narrative gives us no clue. After flinging Joseph into the pit, the brothers sit down to eat. As they eat, “they raised their eyes and saw and look, a caravan of Ishmaelites was coming from the Gilead, their camels bearing gum and balm and ladanum on their way to take down to Egypt” (Gen. 37:25).23 Judah takes advantage of this happenstance and urges his brothers to forego letting Joseph die in the pit and to sell him to the Ishmaelites24 instead. They agree. From the perspective of God’s plan, the brothers’ location in Dothan is fortuitous.25 The eastern fork of the International Highway sometimes called the Via Maris (or “Way of the Sea”), which runs from the Fertile Crescent to Egypt, passes through the Dothan Valley. Joseph’s path to Egypt is now clear.

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A caveat—I have been maintaining all along that the heroes in these narratives are for the most part acting freely. The previous analysis shows that this is true for the protagonists of the drama. Admittedly, however, the haphazard series of events which bring about the sale also include human actions. How is it that the man who directed Joseph to Dothan was at that very place at that very time? This question is implicit in the midrash, which identifies him as the angel Gabriel, God’s agent to keep Joseph on course.26 That he is on a divine mission explains how it is that he is so helpful. What about the camel drivers, however? How is it that they arrived where they did at exactly the moment they did? And what about Pharaoh’s courtiers who landed up in the prison where Joseph was being held and brought their dreams to him? These figures are supporting characters in our drama, and their backstories do not figure in the narrative. We are not concerned about why they acted as they did; their moral status is not at issue. By contrast, the question of the brothers’ moral responsibility does arise. Earlier I argued that Joseph’s brothers were not caused to act as they did, and that Joseph could not exonerate them on those grounds. If it was inevitable that they sell him, however, can they be held responsible? We find ourselves judging the brothers for what they did; it is hard to resist the inclination to condemn them. We see Joseph’s brothers selling Joseph for their own reasons. Later, they admit their guilt. We do not dismiss their admission—if anything, we credit them for it. We hold the brothers morally responsible for their actions because we understand their motives. Their actions emerge from their inclinations, emotions and desires. They sell Joseph because that is what they really want to do. Moreover, we are not inclined to be lenient towards them, to diminish their responsibility for what they did. They were not tempted to sin, as, I argued, were Adam and Eve. The role of the man in Shechem is only to enable Joseph to meet up with his brothers. No one induces or pressures the brothers to do harm to Joseph. On the contrary, whatever influences are brought to bear upon them are for the good—Reuben persuades them not to kill Joseph, and Judah prevents them from leaving Joseph to die in the pit. The brothers were neither compelled nor tempted to behave as they did. It may be fair to say, however, that they were provoked. We can sympathize with their frustration in light of the domestic hardships they endured. Romantic triangles, parental favoritism, sibling rivalries—these are afflictions with which we are familiar. We may deliberate over how harshly to judge Joseph’s brothers in these circumstances, but the factors we consider are of the same kind as those we would deem relevant to any case of human wrongdoing. We view the deed in the same terms as the brothers themselves view it.

Counterfactual intervention I return now to Frankfurt’s account of moral responsibility in order to provide a reading of the story which upholds our intuition that Joseph’s brothers are to blame for selling him and at the same time regards their sale of him

162 Who sold Joseph into Egypt? to be inevitable. Holding people to blame for actions which they could not have avoided performing is standardly precluded by what has come to be known, following Frankfurt, as, “The Principle of Alternative Possibilities” PAP—that a person is responsible for what he does only if he could have done otherwise. Frankfurt proposes replacing PAP by the principle that a person is not morally responsible for what he does if he does it only because he could not have done otherwise.27 In the typical situation, “the same circumstances both bring it about that a person does something and make it impossible for him to avoid doing it.”28 This need not be the case, however, as Frankfurt’s example of Black, the counterfactual intervener, illustrates. Recall that Black wants Jones to perform a certain act but does nothing to get him to do it, unless it becomes clear to him that Jones is going to decide to do something other than what Black wants him to do. Black simply watches and waits. If Black sees that Jones is going to decide to do something other than what Black wants, Black steps in to cause Jones to perform the act he wants. Whatever Jones’s initial preferences and inclinations, then, Black will have his way. Thus, Jones does not have the power to refrain from performing the action Black wants him to perform. Yet, Frankfurt argues, in the case where Black makes no move and where Jones performs the action for his own reasons, just as he would have had Black not been in the picture, Black’s waiting in the wings does not relieve Jones of the moral responsibility for his action. Jones could not have acted otherwise, but the reason for his acting as he did is not that he had no alternative. Likewise, Joseph’s brothers could not have done other than perform the action God wanted them to perform. Their reason, however, for selling Joseph was not that they had no alternative. Their reason was their hostility towards Joseph. God wants the brothers to sell Joseph into Egypt. Like Black in Frankfurt’s story, who did not show his hand, God refrained from directly causing the brothers to act as they did. What rendered their sale of Joseph inevitable was God’s determination to intervene, if necessary, to effect the sale. Because God did not know in advance how the brothers would behave, He had to wait to see what would happen. When Joseph missed his brothers in Shechem, He saw to it that Joseph would be re-routed to Dothan where he would fall into his brothers’ hands. Reuben takes advantage of a nearby pit to save Joseph’s life. Judah then seizes upon the passing caravan on the way to Egypt to save Joseph’s life once again, and with the result that Reuben does not return Joseph to his father as he had planned. The caravan arrived on the scene at exactly the right time to make it possible for Judah to convince his brothers to sell Joseph. God contrived a nexus of circumstances within which Joseph’s brothers acted freely. In Frankfurt’s example, Black will force Jones’s hand if he sees Jones deciding to do something other than what he wants him to do. I am arguing that the details of the narrative point to God’s determination that the brothers sell Joseph to the Ishmaelites. On my reading of the story of the sale,

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God is the counterfactual intervener. As Black monitors Jones in Frankfurt’s scenario, God monitors Joseph’s brothers. Were God to see the brothers deciding to do something incompatible with selling Joseph, like killing him, God would have stepped into the causal sequence, prevented their killing him and caused them to sell him. In the actual case, as it turned out, the brothers did what God wanted them to do without their freedom to act on their own having been compromised. Consider, for example, the story of Lot and the angels in the city of Sodom. The men of the city surround Lot’s house demanding that he deliver over his guests to them. We know that these men are angels of God, so there is never any question of harm befalling them. Note, however, how the story unfolds. To begin with, Lot attempts to persuade the townspeople into changing their minds. He begs them to desist from doing such a great wrong. In a further attempt to get them to agree, on their own, to forego his guests, he offers them, by way of inducement, his virgin daughters to do with as they please. Thus far, whether the townspeople go through with their evil design is up to them. Lot’s efforts at persuasion prove to be of no avail, and the enraged townspeople begin to threaten Lot himself. At this point, but only at this point, the guests, the angels of God, pull Lot back into the house and shut the door, and, “they struck the men outside with blinding light, so that they were helpless to find the entrance” (Gen. 19:11). Lot’s rescue, which we knew to be inevitable from the outset, is brought about by divine intervention only after Lot’s attempts to change their minds fail. Only then does God step in to prevent the Sodomites from carrying out their intentions. In keeping with Frankfurt’s revision of PAP, had the townsmen of Sodom responded to Lot’s appeal to desist from wrongdoing, even though their failure to carry out their evil intentions was inevitable, it would be counted in their favor. Had they agreed to Lot’s offer of his daughters, they would be morally credited for having changed their minds—much as Joseph’s brothers are blameworthy for selling Joseph, even though their selling him was inevitable. On the other hand, since in fact the only reason the Sodomites did no harm to Lot and his guests was because they were unable to do so, we think none the better of them for it, and indeed God destroys the cities.

Widerker’s defense of the principle of alternative possibilities My reading of the Joseph story and my dismissal of Joseph’s view that his brothers are not to be blamed for selling him depend on Frankfurt’s argument for the rejection of the Principle of Alternative Possibilities. Frankfurt’s argument, however, has not gone unchallenged. David Widerker has argued that Frankfurt has not given us good reason to reject PAP with respect to simple mental acts such as decisions, formings of intentions, or volitions— acts which are regarded as the foci of moral responsibility.29

164 Who sold Joseph into Egypt? For purposes of his argument, Widerker invokes a version of action theory, according to which acts such as killing, stealing, selling, and the like, are complex—they include the intention to bring about a certain event. For example, Jones’s act of killing Smith consists at least in part in Jones’s intention to bring about Smith’s death, which stands in an appropriate causal relation to the event of Jones’s killing Smith. On this view, a particular act includes, essentially, the volition or intention which causes the corresponding event. Widerker grants that in the Frankfurt example the agent does not have the power to bring about a different complex act from the one he performed. The counterfactual intervener, having waited until the agent was about to make up his mind what to do, was able to judge what the agent was going to decide. Were the intervener to detect that the agent was about to decide to do something other than what he wants him to do, he would have stepped in between the intention and the event and prevented the act. Thus, Widerker agrees with Frankfurt in rejecting PAP when applied to complex acts. He agrees that it is not the case that a person is morally responsible for performing a complex act only if he could have performed a different complex act instead. However, Widerker points out, the agent retains his power to avoid, or to bring about the non-occurrence of an intention. Since the intention is a simple act, there is no opportunity for the counter-factual intervener to intervene, no possibility of preventing the person from deciding otherwise. Thus, in the case of decisions, choices, or intentions when we hold a person responsible, it could very well be that he could have decided, chosen, or intended otherwise. Therefore, Frankfurt has not refuted the following: a person is morally responsible for his decision (choice, undertaking) to perform an action only if he could have decided otherwise. Since on the version of action theory invoked by Widerker, the intention is an essential part of the particular complex act in which it figures, if the agent has the power to bring about the non-occurrence of a particular intention, then he has it in his power to bring about the non-occurrence of the corresponding act. This leaves open the possibility that, where we hold the agent responsible in the Frankfurt example, it is because, even though he could not have performed a different act, his particular action was avoidable. So, Widerker argues, Frankfurt has not given us a good reason to deny that a person is morally responsible for performing a given act only if he could have avoided performing it. On this view, then, avoidability could be required for moral responsibility. In the previous section I held Joseph’s brothers morally responsible for selling him based on Frankfurt’s rejection of PAP. Suppose we were to grant, however, against Frankfurt, that a person is morally responsible for his decision to do a particular action only if he could have decided otherwise, and that a person is morally responsible for performing a particular act only if he could have avoided performing it. Does this remove responsibility

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from Joseph’s brothers? And is Joseph’s exoneration of his brothers thereby justified? I persist in maintaining that Joseph’s brothers are nonetheless blameworthy. To hold Joseph’s brothers blameworthy on the assumption that doing so requires avoidability calls for a reading of the Joseph story which specifies what exactly it is that God’s plan renders inevitable and what it does not. I suggest that what the divine plan required was that Joseph be sold by the brothers into Egypt. In his Frankfurtian role as counter-factual intervener, it is this that God seeks to render inevitable. Had the brothers decided not to sell Joseph, but instead, for example, to return him to their father, God would have stepped in. The inevitability of the sale, however, is entirely compatible with the possibility that their particular decision to sell him was avoidable. The brothers could have sold him as a result of any decision or intention whatever. In the story, the brothers’ decision is motivated by their resentment towards him, but God’s plan could have been satisfied had the brothers decided to sell him because the Ishmaelites offered them a good price. Now, in keeping with the “component” conception of action mentioned earlier, if the mental act which stood in the appropriate causal relation to their selling him was avoidable, so was their particular action of selling him avoidable. It follows, then, that even if moral responsibility requires avoidability, the brothers’ moral responsibility for selling Joseph may be maintained.

Conclusion Did Joseph not remember how his brothers hated him as a boy, how “they could not speak a friendly word to him” (Gen. 37:4)? Did he not perceive the connection between their resentment and jealousy and their sale of him to the Ishmaelites? How is it that he is so inclined to exonerate them? To begin with, we should note that Joseph’s initial behavior towards his brothers does not appear to be forgiving. He hides his identity from them, tricks them, and traps and maneuvers them into agonizing dilemmas. One could certainly describe his behavior towards them as vindictive.30 After causing his brothers a good deal of anguish, and only when Judah offers himself as a slave in place of Benjamin, does Joseph break down and reveal himself to his brothers and relieve them of blame for selling him into Egypt. Joseph’s assurances to his brothers were generous, but neither when he absolved them on the grounds that not they but God had sent him, nor when he absolved them on the grounds that God had intended his going down to Egypt, were his assurances well-founded. We can understand his readiness to forgive them, however. For, from Joseph’s perspective at the time when he reassures his brothers, the story has reached its denouement. Not only is the ending, so far as he knows, a happy one—he has good reason to think that it was inevitable. However true it may be that inevitability fails to exonerate, the thought that an action was inevitable may well, I suspect, blunt one’s

166 Who sold Joseph into Egypt? anger towards its perpetrator. Since, as Joseph correctly observes, he is not a substitute for God, it is not for him to call his brothers to task. Believing that whatever his brothers would have felt or intended, he would have ended up a slave in Egypt. Joseph is inclined towards reconciliation rather than revenge.

Notes 1 Much of this chapter draws, with the permission of the publishers, on my previously published studies, “Divine Causality and Moral Responsibility in the Story of Joseph and His Brothers,” Iyyun: The Jerusalem Quarterly 47 (1998): 21–40 and “The Selling of Joseph: A Frankfurtian Interpretation,” in David Widerker and Michael Mckenna, eds., Moral Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities: Essays on the Importance of Alternative Possibilities (Aldershot, Hants, England: Ashgate, 2003), 327–338. 2 For example, Michael V. Fox, “Wisdom in the Joseph Story,” Vetus Testamentum 51 (2001): 26–41. 3 Indeed, as David Shatz pointed out with respect to this issue, in his address to the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association in 1999, the identity of the nation which will enslave Abraham’s children is not specified here. See, however, Hizkuni’s comment on the phrase describing the Egyptians’ enslavement of the Israelites, “‫למען ענתו בסבלתם‬, to oppress them with forced labor” (Exodus 1:11), that the oppression was in order to fulfill God’s pronouncement in the Covenant of the Pieces that the foreign nation to which Abraham’s children will be enslaved will oppress them—‫( וענו אתם‬Gen. 15:13). Hizkuni points to the appearance of the same verb, ‫ ענה‬in both places. I have used the JPS translation to capture the linguistic connection. 4 This intuition is confirmed, for example, in the Midrash Harugei Malchut, the source of the well-known legend of the ten martyrs reproduced in poetic form in the piyyut, Ehle Ezkara in the Eastern Ashkenazic Yom Kippur Mussaf liturgy. For bibliography, see Daniel Goldschmidt, Mahzor Leyamim Hanoraim, Vol. 2: Yom Kippur (Jerusalem: Leo Beck Institute, 1970), 44, notes 11 and 12 (Hebrew). The roles of Reuben and Judah in the story differentiate them from the rest of the brothers, but for purposes of my analysis I am treating the brothers as a group. 5 In what follows I will elaborate upon the distinction between an action being caused and its being inevitable. 6 I shall address the further questions as to how it happened that the caravan passed through just when it did, as the brothers were eating and were able to catch sight of it. 7 Harry Frankfurt, “The Principle of Alternate Possibilities,” The Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969): 829–839, reprinted in David Widerker and Michael McKenna, eds., Moral Responsibility and Alternative Possibilities: Essays on the Importance of Alternative Possibilities (Aldershot, Hants, England: Ashgate, 2003), 17–25. 8 Frankfurt, “The Principle of Alternate Possibilities,” 835. 9 Cf. Abarbanel’s strategy for absolving the brothers of responsibility for selling Joseph while counting them as guilty parties in the story (ad Gen. 45:1. Warsaw 1862, 25b top). On Abarbanel’s account, God caused the brothers to choose to act as they did; thus, they are not morally responsible for this choice. The brothers, however, are blameworthy for the feelings of hatred and jealousy they harbored towards Joseph.

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10 The text allows for this question, in that the view I am targeting for revision is voiced by Joseph, not by the narrator. 11 I discuss this episode in Chapter 1. 12 See Chapter 3 for an analysis of this narrative. 13 I argue this in Chapter 5. 14 Bereshit Rabah 84.13. 15 See Rashi on Gen. 37:14. 16 I speculate that perhaps Jacob exposes Joseph to this danger as an unconscious act of denial. He desires not to believe that his favoritism towards Joseph had such a harmful effect on the relations among his children. 17 Gen. 37.35. Elchanan Adler suggests that Jacob rejects his children’s consolations because he knows very well that his children hated Joseph, and he believed they were not unhappy about his death. Hizkuni, ad loc., suggests that Jacob refused to be comforted because he felt guilty for having sent Joseph to see his brothers, although he was aware of their fierce hatred towards him. Hizkuni seems to be implying that Jacob suspected that the brothers had a hand in Joseph’s death. 18 The brothers do not know that their selling Joseph was inevitable. They feel guilty for what they did because they know very well that it was motivated by their hatred and jealousy of their brother. Similarly, if it was inevitable that Jacob send Joseph to Hebron, Jacob would not know that and might feel guilty because he had been negligent or reckless. 19 Admittedly, however, his agreement is a bit surprising since we may assume that he is well aware of his brothers’ hostility towards him. See Rashi on Gen. 37:13. 20 I am indebted to David Shatz’s comments in his address to the American Philosophical Association for helping me clarify the details of this analysis. 21 I thank Tova Cohen for bringing this to my attention. See Donald B. Redford, A Study of the Biblical Story of Joseph (Leiden: Brill, 1970), 71, for other literary features of the plot which reinforce the impression that the specific way it unfolds is of particular significance. Maimonides, Guide to the Perplexed II, 48, cites this passage as an example of divine authorship of human action. 22 In this respect, the brothers’ move from Shechem to Dothan proves fortuitous. The biblical city of Shechem, identified with Tel Balata, is one of the few biblical cities which is not built on a mountain top but rather on a relatively low elevation. It is located on the northeastern side of Mt. Gerizim just south of Mt. Ebal, between the two mountains. Had the brothers remained there it is likely that they would not have seen Joseph approaching from afar from Hebron. Mt. Gerizim might have obstructed their view of the road leading from Hebron. We will see that the brothers’ location at Dothan is fortuitous on other grounds as well. My thanks to Aryeh Routenberg for enlightening me about the topography of the route over which Joseph traveled. 23 The expression “raised his eyes and saw and, look” often indicates that the event was out of the ordinary or that what was seen was of special consequence. See, for example, when Abraham was sitting in the door of his tent “and he raised his eyes and saw, and, look, three men were standing before him” (Gen. 18:2), and after the angel of God told Abraham not to slaughter Isaac, “and Abraham raised his eyes and saw and, look, a ram was caught in the thicket by it horns” (Gen. 22:13). 24 The roles of the brothers, the Ishmaelites, and subsequently, the Midianites, in this scene is not clear, but this question does not bear upon my discussion. 25 Had the brothers remained at their original destination in Shechem they would not have been on the route of the merchants traveling to Egypt. 26 Midrash Tanchuma, Vayeshev 2. 27 Frankfurt, “The Principle of Alternate Possibilities,” 838. 28 Frankfurt, “The Principle of Alternate Possibilities,” 830.

168 Who sold Joseph into Egypt? 29 David Widerker, “Libertarianism and Frankfurt’s Attack on the Principle of Alternative Possibilities,” The Philosophical Review 104 (1995): 249–261. For a similar criticism of Frankfurt’s argument, see Robert Kane, The Significance of Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 142–144; and Carl Ginet, “In Defense of the Principle of Alternative Possibilities: Why I Don’t Find Frankfurt’s Argument Convincing,” Philosophical Perspectives 10 (1996): 403–417. 30 More favorable explanations of Joseph’s initial behavior towards his brothers abound. E.g. Yoel Bin-Nun, “Why Did Joseph Not Send a Messenger to His Father,” Megadim 1 (1986): 20–31 (Hebrew); and Yakov Medan, “In the Place Where Penitents Stand (The Story of Joseph and His Brothers),” Megadim 2 (1989): 54–78 (Hebrew), both reprinted in Yoel Bin-Nun, Chapters of the Fathers: Studies in Narratives of the Patriarchs in the Book of Bereshit (Alon Shevut: Tevunot Press, 2004), 165–214.

7

Changes of heart

We open the Book of Exodus to find Jacob’s children in Egypt, no longer just a family. They are a people—the Children of Israel. A new king is now ruling Egypt “who did not know Joseph,” and Egypt is no longer the welcoming place that Joseph’s father and brothers once enjoyed.1 The Israelites are abused, pressed into slavery, and eventually threatened with extinction. This, as we recall, is part of the plan God had announced to Abraham in the Covenant of the Pieces: “Know well that your seed shall be strangers in a land not theirs, and they shall be enslaved four hundred years” (Gen. 15:13). God had promised that when the time came, He would rescue them. We are about to witness the redemption. God’s plan does not simply call for the people to be released. Had God been intent upon simply liberating them He might have directly intervened in Pharaoh’s will and caused him to let them go at once. Alternatively, He might have subdued Pharaoh immediately with unbearable afflictions. Instead, God gradually displays His signs and portents before Pharaoh and torments him, and He hardens Pharaoh’s heart so that he does not yield. God causes Pharaoh to delay the people’s release so that He can multiply His signs and portents, thereby making His greatness known. In the Book of Genesis one of the key means by which God implemented His designs was by issuing commands and promises. In that they did what God told them, the heroes furthered God’s plans. God also commands the Israelites in the course of the exodus to perform certain actions—to sacrifice lambs and to put the blood of the lambs on their doorposts and lintels, for example. Now, however, God also has an objective of a different kind—to get the people to believe in Him, to acknowledge His greatness, and to trust in Him. He does not command either Pharaoh or the Israelites to believe in Him. Rather, He displays His unparalleled power to Pharaoh, and He hardens Pharaoh’s heart as part of His campaign to show His greatness to the Children of Israel. The story of the exodus is more than a story about liberation from bondage. It recounts the transformation of a people who do not know God into a nation that believes in Him and worships Him. The evolution of the story is marked by changes in people’s hearts. The hardening of Pharaoh’s heart is a crucial factor in effecting the transformation of the people.

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Moral responsibility and a hardened heart Before Moses had his first audience with Pharaoh, before he presented Pharaoh with his petition to free the Israelites, God told Moses that Pharaoh would refuse to listen to him. God told Moses that He would then visit upon Pharaoh a series of dreadful plagues, but, God affirmed, Pharaoh would not give way. God’s assurance that Pharaoh would defy Him was categorical, and subsequent events bear it out. God was not simply predicting what would happen; He was taking responsibility for making it happen. He would inflict upon Pharaoh one calamity after another, and Pharaoh would not yield because, when necessary, God would take control of Pharaoh’s will to prevent him from giving in. God brings harrowing plagues down on Pharaoh and his people, and, as God promised, Pharaoh does not yield. Pharaoh has no notion that he is not acting on his own. Like the brothers in the Joseph narrative, Pharaoh takes responsibility for his actions. When the fiery hail strikes all the land of Egypt, smashing everything in its way, Pharaoh declares “I have sinned this time” (Ex. 9:27). Pharaoh and his people cry out in their suffering, but Pharaoh does not plead his innocence nor protest God’s injustice. Yet the story troubles many. On a natural reading, when God inflicts such woes on Pharaoh and his people, He is punishing Pharaoh. It would appear, then, that Pharaoh is being punished by God for actions which God Himself caused Pharaoh to perform. This conflicts with the libertarian principle of moral responsibility, which we enlisted earlier in our analyses, namely, that a necessary condition of moral responsibility is the absence of causal determination. A person who is caused to do something did not do it freely and therefore can be neither credited nor blamed for what he did.2 Commentators and thinkers throughout the centuries, and up to the present, grapple with the challenge of reconciling God’s having hardened Pharaoh’s heart with his holding Pharaoh morally responsible for the deeds which Pharaoh subsequently performed. A well-known proposal is that when God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, He did not cause Pharaoh to resist the plagues but rather gave him the strength to resist them.3 Joseph Albo (Spain, fifteenth century) explains that God hardens the heart of an evildoer who has undergone adversity, in order to remove from his heart the softness it acquired because of the adversity, so that the person will remain in his natural state and his state of choice without anything compelling him. . . . The Lord leaves [the evildoer] to his free choice without any external compulsion, and he chooses a path for himself.4 Albo takes it that Pharaoh’s desire to hold on to Israel persists as the plagues continue, but his resolve begins to wear away. Had God not intervened,

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fear of the plagues might have compelled Pharaoh to give in and to free the Israelites. God enabled Pharaoh to endure the pressures by shoring up his will.5 God neutralized the effects of the plagues on him, restoring him to his natural state. Free of the fear of the plagues, Pharaoh could choose to release the Israelites, or he could choose to hold on to them. His decision was not determined, nor, on Albo’s reading, was it inevitable.6 Pharaoh chose to hold on to the Israelites for his own reasons, the reasons which, presumably had motivated him to hold on to them before God intervened. Thus, Pharaoh was morally responsible and deserving of punishment. The philosophical merits of this solution have been examined in detail by others,7 and I shall leave them aside here. On my assumption, however, that God does not know what people will freely do in the future, this solution gives rise to an exegetical difficulty.8 Taking Pharaoh to be choosing freely whether to hold on to the Israelites or to release them leaves the outcome in doubt, which conflicts with God’s repeated assurances to Moses that Pharaoh will continue to refuse. The exegetical difficulty becomes apparent from the following: in preparation for his first audience with Pharaoh, God instructs Moses to perform before Pharaoh all the signs with which He has provided him. God then adds: “But I on my part shall toughen his heart and he will not send the people away” (Ex. 4:21). Before the contest with Pharaoh has begun, God reveals to Moses His plan for the last in the series of the plagues—to kill Pharaoh’s firstborn. If Pharaoh had the choice to comply with Moses’s demand or to refuse it, God would not be able to give Moses His promise that Pharaoh will refuse. There could be no certainty of a tenth plague. God does, however, give Moses these assurances. He will harden Pharaoh’s heart, not to afford him alternative courses of action but to deny Pharaoh any other options. Like the psychologically plausible behavior of the brothers towards Joseph, which inclines the reader to see them as the authors of their actions, Pharaoh’s initial determination not to let the Israelites leave Egypt is understandable in naturalistic terms, as are his efforts to maintain his resolution in the face of the early plagues.9 Not so Pharaoh’s resistance in the later part of the drama, which is readily recognizable as God’s doing.10 Once his heart is hardened, Pharaoh, like Joseph’s brothers, cannot avoid doing what he does. Unlike the brothers, however, Pharaoh is caused to do as he does.

The purpose of the plagues God’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart is dramatically compelling and pivotal to the story. It assures Pharaoh’s stubborn defiance. Many readers, as we noted earlier, take the plagues to be God’s punishment of Pharaoh for his defiance, which they find morally perplexing. On Maimonides’s view, Pharaoh was punished by the plagues and by being drowned in the sea because he had, on his own, before God intervened, ordered the male Israelite newborns to

172 Changes of heart be thrown into the river and egregiously oppressed the Israelite slaves.11 God hardened Pharaoh’s heart to make sure that Pharaoh would get his due for the sins he had committed. Had God not done so, Pharaoh would have let the Israelites go free and would have escaped the fate he deserved. The catastrophe which befell Pharaoh was a punishment, then, but not for what he did with a hardened heart.12 Indeed, the death of Pharaoh and his people in the waters of the Red Sea recalls the Israelite babies being thrown into the Nile. God is meting out “measure for measure.” This would account for why we do not shed tears over Pharaoh’s misfortunes. It may also account for God’s allowing Himself to take advantage of Pharaoh, to make Pharaoh suffer.13 This is not to say, however, as Maimonides would have it, that God makes Pharaoh suffer in order to punish him. I propose that the plagues are not intended as a punishment for Pharaoh. God tells Moses the purpose of the plagues: “that you may tell in the hearing of your son and your son’s son how I toyed with Egypt, and My signs that I set upon them, and you shall know that I am the Lord” (Ex. 10:1–2). Part of God’s strategy, as He tells Moses, is to harden Pharaoh’s heart so that He will be able to multiply his signs and wonders in order to manifest His power and greatness even more. Granted, when Pharaoh refuses to release the Israelites, God threatens Pharaoh with the plagues.14 But the threats are not intended to motivate Pharaoh to obey Him for, as we know, God was committed to preventing Pharaoh from obeying Him. The threats come rather to make very clear to Pharaoh that the disasters that will befall him when he defies God are coming from God. Admittedly, even though the plagues, which, on my reading are not intended as punishment, cause him enormous suffering, we do not sympathize with Pharaoh. Pharaoh had proven himself a villain long before God hardened his heart. In the first chapter of the Book of Exodus, Pharaoh warned his people that the Israelites had become more numerous than they, and he enjoined them to “be shrewd with them lest they multiply and then, should war occur they will actually join our enemies and fight against us and go up from the land” (Ex. 1:9–10). Pharaoh is marked off clearly as an enemy of the Children of Israel. The extreme measures he adopts to protect the interests of himself and his people—putting the Israelites to work at crushing labor and ordering that the male Israelite infants be put to death at birth—call for redress. On my reading, the moral difficulties that arise from the assumption that God struck Pharaoh with the plagues in order to punish him do not arise. That in the story of the Exodus God is not called upon to defend His conduct supports my view that God’s justice towards Pharaoh is not at issue here. It is not Abraham’s protest to God, “Will not the judge of all the earth do justice?” (Gen. 18:25), that reverberates in this story, but Pharaoh’s challenge to Moses and Aaron, “Who is the Lord that I should heed his voice to send off Israel?” (Ex. 5:2). Pharaoh is not simply being insubordinate; he claims that

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he does not know who this God is who is demanding his obedience. Moses warns Pharaoh in God’s name: “For this time I am about to send all my scourges to your heart and against your servants and against your people, so that you may know that there is none like Me in all the earth” (Ex. 9:14). God will harden Pharaoh’s heart to resist His plagues, but the plagues are also intended to impress upon Pharaoh’s heart the knowledge of God.

So that they will believe A central motif in this narrative is God’s determination to gain the trust and loyalty of the people who have been estranged from Him and who have been enslaved for generations. Whereas in the Book of Genesis, God’s plan called for enlisting the loyalty of a chosen few, here God will rally an entire nation around him. This is a challenge of a different order and calls for a different strategy. God initiates the redemption of the Israelites in much the same way as He set the course of the Chosen Family in motion—He commissions a leader. The manner, however, in which He does this differs. When He enlisted Abraham, God appeared to him, and with no preliminaries, commanded him to leave the land of his birth for a land which He would show him. God’s first encounter with Moses does not open with a command. Moses’s attention is caught by a “great sight”—a burning bush that is not consumed—and Moses wants a closer look at the marvelous sight. Only when he turns aside to see it does God call to him. The change from enlisting His followers by exercising His authority over them to winning them over with signs of His greatness is presaged in this meeting with Moses. God then sends Moses to the Israelites to bring them the tidings of redemption. Moses objects, “But look, they will not believe me nor will they heed my voice” (Ex. 4:1). God is not angered by the prospect of their skepticism; He is determined to overcome it. He instructs Moses to perform a series of signs to inspire the Israelites’ confidence. Should they not be convinced by the first sign, they will be convinced by the second; and if not by that, then by the third. When Moses performed these signs before the Israelites, the people “believed and heeded” (Ex. 4:31). This is the first step in God’s long-range strategy for winning them over.

Reasons to believe As we noted earlier, God never commands the Israelites to believe in Him. In our earlier discussions, we invoked the principle of “ought” implies “can,” that a person’s being obligated to do something entails that he is capable of doing it.15 That God commands someone to believe in Him would entail, then, that the person had it in his power to obey him and believe in Him.16 It would entail that the person could come to believe in God by deciding to do so. It is generally agreed, however, that our beliefs

174 Changes of heart are not subject to our will.17 I cannot bring it about “just like that” that I believe something. William Alston challenges us to specify what button we might push in order to form the belief that the U.S. is still a colony of Great Britain.18 On his view, we lack control over our beliefs in much the same way as we lack control over our digestive processes or our cell metabolism; it is an empirical fact. Bernard Williams, on the other hand, takes there to be a conceptual impediment to believing at will. The concept of belief entails, on his view, that to believe a proposition is to regard it as “purporting to represent reality.” However, if I could acquire a belief at will, Williams points out, “I could acquire it whether it was true or not,” and I would know that I could. Williams goes on, “If in full consciousness I could will to acquire a ‘belief’ irrespective of its truth . . . I could not then, in full consciousness regard this as a belief of mine, i.e., something I take to be true.”19 Because we take our beliefs to represent reality, they are integrally linked to what we take to be our reasons for believing them to be true.20 To regard a mental state of mine as a belief, I must believe that I have reasons for believing it. Furthermore, if someone is forming a belief about a proposition and is attending to his doing so or deliberating about it, then if in full consciousness he judges that he has strong reasons to believe the proposition—that his reasons for holding the belief make it very likely to be true—then he believes the proposition.21 Pharaoh does not have it in his power to believe in God by deciding to do so. Rather, by means of the signs and plagues, God gives Pharaoh reasons to believe in His greatness. In the early encounters between Pharaoh and Moses and Aaron, Pharaoh does not come up against very strong evidence of God’s supremacy. In the first, Aaron flings down his staff and it becomes a serpent; Pharaoh’s soothsayers do the same with theirs. To be sure, Aaron’s staff swallows those of the soothsayers, but Pharaoh’s heart toughens against this show of mastery. Pharaoh’s heart toughens again following the plagues of blood and frogs, each of which was reproduced by his soothsayers. None of these tips the scales. The plague of lice creates more of a challenge for Pharaoh. The soothsayers try their spells to get rid of the lice, and finding themselves unable to do so, they say to Pharaoh, “God’s finger it is!” (Ex. 8:15). Nevertheless, once again, Pharaoh’s heart toughens. Pharaoh seems to be standing up to the early signs and plagues on his own.

To believe what one wants to believe God’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart against the later plagues conjures up the image of Him forcefully hijacking Pharaoh’s will. In contrast, in the face of the earlier plagues and signs, Pharaoh’s heart toughens on its own, and in one instance Pharaoh himself toughens his heart. In these, the picture is not of a hostile takeover of his will but rather of a process which takes place within Pharaoh’s own consciousness.

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How is it that Pharaoh was unmoved by what his soothsayers saw as the finger of God? The answer, I suggest, lies in the nature of the connection between our beliefs and our evidence—between our beliefs and our reasons for holding them. Our beliefs are linked to what we take our reasons to be, not to what our reasons really are. A person’s assessment of the significance of his data may not match its real significance. For a variety of reasons, he may not see it as it really is. In the account I put forth in Chapter 4 of Isaac’s bestowing the contested blessing on Jacob, I claimed that Isaac’s view of his evidence was skewed by his desires. Because he wanted to believe a certain proposition, he treated his evidence in a motivationally biased way in order to bring it about that he believe it. I suggested there that he focused on his evidence selectively, attending only to evidence which supported the conclusion he sought.22 Likewise, I suggest that Pharaoh’s view of his evidence here is motivationally biased. When someone’s view of his evidence is biased by his desires, it is not a result of a decision on his part to skew his perceptions. A person can no more decide how to assess his evidence than he can decide what to believe. The processes which result in motivated biases are unconscious and are triggered and sustained automatically by one’s desires and needs. Although a person cannot decide to believe, he can want to believe, and what he wants to believe may influence what he believes. Pharaoh did not see an epistemic reason to acknowledge God’s power because he wanted not to acknowledge it. With the plague of the horde, the dynamics become more complicated. His house having been invaded, the land of Egypt ravaged, Pharaoh calls Moses and Aaron and orders them to go sacrifice to their Lord. Once the horde is removed Pharaoh reneges. This time Pharaoh’s heart did not toughen on its own—Pharaoh “hardened his heart.” Apparently, to regain his staying power he had to exert some effort.23 When the plague of boils descends, striking not only man and beast but also Pharaoh’s soothsayers, we find, for the first time, that the Lord toughened Pharaoh’s heart. What with the mounting intensity of the plagues and his soothsayers struck down before his eyes, Pharaoh can no longer be counted on to avoid the true sense of the evidence. In order to keep His plan on course God must prevent Pharaoh’s premature collapse. He steps in to strengthen his resolve. Until now it was God’s earlier promise to Moses that rendered Pharaoh’s defiance inevitable. Now the reason Pharaoh cannot avoid defying God is that God is causing him to defy Him. Pharaoh’s response to the Plague of Hail seems to bespeak a genuine reappraisal. He calls to Moses and Aaron: The Lord is in the right and I and my people are in the wrong. . . . Let me send you off.” Moses, however, places no stock in Pharaoh’s declaration. “I know that you still do not fear the Lord God. (Ex. 9:30)

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And, indeed, after the plague is called off Pharaoh’s heart toughens all on its own. In the later plagues—locusts and darkness—the evidence of God’s power is stronger. As much as Pharaoh might want not to recognize its magnitude, he may not be able to avoid it. Again, God steps in to harden his heart—to assure that he will not surrender. With the Plague of the Firstborn, God greatly intensifies the pressure of the evidence and now allows matters to take their natural course—Pharaoh capitulates to all of Moses’s and Aaron’s demands. However, God’s plan has not yet come to fruition. This time He will manipulate both the beliefs and the desires of the Egyptians. First, he lays a trap for them: at His direction the Israelites turn back on their tracks and deceive the Egyptians into believing they have lost their bearings. This thought fires up the Egyptians’ desire to retrieve their former slaves. Having seen to it that the Egyptians are misled into thinking that the Israelites will be easy prey, God further sees to it that the Egyptians will act on their desire. “And the Lord toughened Pharaoh’s heart,” and he pursued the Israelites. Moses splits the waters of the sea, so that the Israelites walk through on dry land, “the waters a wall to them on their right and on their left” (Ex. 14:22). After Israel saw the waters close above the pursuing Egyptians and the Egyptians dead on the banks of the sea, they “feared the Lord, and they believed24 in the Lord and in Moses His servant” (Ex. 14:31), as God had promised Moses. God has subdued the powerful nation which had enslaved Israel. His doing so testifies not only to His power but also to His commitment to Israel as the people He has taken as His.

An inevitable finale Upon first revealing Himself to Moses, at the site of the burning bush, God had promised him, “When you bring the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain” (Ex. 3:12). The certainty that Israel will leave Egypt seems to be matched by the certainty that they will ultimately worship God. Whence the certainty? We know that Pharaoh’s behavior in this drama is inevitable. Pharaoh will be confronted with persuasive evidence of God’s greatness, but He will stand firm. Either he will stand firm on his own, or, if God sees signs of him yielding, God will step in to cause him to resist. We also know that Pharaoh will ultimately give way; God stakes His word on that happening. God’s plan assumes that Pharaoh will be unable, at some point, to avoid, on his own, the pressure of the plagues. When Pharaoh’s heart is “unhardened,” the plagues and signs take their course. The Israelites were treated to particularly convincing evidence during the course of the Exodus, in that they witnessed the signs and plagues, but they were spared the suffering the latter caused to the Egyptians “so that you may know how the Lord sets apart Egypt from Israel” (Ex. 11:6–7). Given such strong evidence, could the Israelites standing on the banks of the Red Sea

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avoid believing in God? On the view I have put forward of the link between evidence and belief, their evidence left them no possibility to harbor any doubts.25 As God steered the course of His plan in the Genesis narratives along an inevitable path by issuing commands to His heroes and by creating circumstances designed to further its enactment, He achieves His ends here, no less surely, by persuasion and demonstration. Is it the case that God manipulated the hearts of the Children of Israel to assure their coming to believe in Him? Did He “soften their hearts”? I propose that what God did to Pharaoh’s heart—He prevented it from responding accurately to Pharaoh’s evidence—God did not do to the Israelites’ hearts. He presented the Israelites with genuine evidence of His powers, on the basis of which they came to valid, true conclusions.26 He gave the Israelites very good reasons to believe that He was a great God and that He had done extraordinary things for them. They became convinced through the operation of their own rational faculties. Their hearts were neither hardened nor softened, but their hearts underwent a profound change thanks to God’s providence.

Epistemic luck and divine providence God’s promise to Moses is not only that the exodus of the people from Egypt will culminate in their believing in God but also in their knowing that He is their God. He instructs Moses to tell the People: And I will take you to Me as a people and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord who takes you out from under the burdens of Egypt. (Ex. 6.6–7) Knowledge is more than belief and more than true belief. For a person’s true belief to count as knowing it cannot be simply accidental—a matter of luck—that he believes it.27 Does true belief that was purposefully induced by means of signs and wonders count as knowledge? On a reliabilist theory of knowledge, a true belief that was acquired from a reliable source or produced by a reliable cognitive process may, on those grounds, be considered knowledge. In this instance it is God, the ultimate source of true beliefs, who induces the Israelites’ beliefs. On this theory the Israelites come to know His greatness. Evidentialist theories of knowledge distinguish between a true belief which the subject accidentally acquired, and an instance of knowledge, by imposing a justification condition.28 According to evidentialism, the justification requirement is satisfied if the subject has adequate evidence for his belief— good reasons to hold the belief.29 The way the subject came by his evidence is irrelevant to the epistemic status it confers on the belief it supports.30 A true

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belief may count as knowledge if, given the subject’s evidential situation, it is not a matter of luck that his belief is true, even if he is lucky to be in the evidential situation he is in. In this instance the evidence God provides to substantiate the belief in his greatness—the signs and wonders—are authentic and justify that belief. It is not merely a matter of luck that they are true. In the exodus narrative God reveals Himself to Moses and addresses him directly. The Israelites, however, come to know God not by His direct communication with them but through witnessing His signs and plagues. Their coming into their evidence is totally God’s doing, but given their evidence they are well justified in their belief in God.

Conclusion Although on both a reliabilist and an evidentialist notion of knowledge, God made good on His promise that the Israelites would know that He was the Lord, there is a sense in which the belief the Israelites come to in God’s greatness may yet fall short. The people had no control over their forming their beliefs; they passively submitted to the force of the evidence. Their coming to believe in God was not at all up to them. Drawing an analogy between luck in the moral sphere and luck in the epistemic sphere, Thomas Nagel asserts that just as the absence of control exempts what is done from moral judgment, it also disqualifies beliefs as instances of knowledge.31 If morality assumes autonomous agency, knowledge assumes autonomous reason. Nagel is assuming traditional notions of morality and knowledge which figure in contemporary discourse. Throughout the readings I have proposed in this work, I have tried to show how the biblical narrative diverges from these views of both morality and knowledge. The biblical narrative does not confine moral responsibility to actions which are unconditioned by factors external to the agent. People are held responsible for their actions even when the circumstances in which they found themselves played a significant role in their doing what they did. In the epistemic sphere, people in the Genesis narratives are primarily subjects rather than agents. Knowledge is not tied to initiative or effort, and what a subject knows is very much dictated by the circumstances which shape the instances of knowledge. Central to the religious sensibility in these texts is that divine control not only subdues chance but circumscribes human action and knowledge. Dominating this view is the belief in the ever-present and ubiquitous involvement of the divine in human affairs. Thus, the search for the unconditioned will, the autonomous, self-determined core of one’s being is misconceived. Our dependency on God for the gifts of true belief and knowledge follows from the limitations upon us placed by this view. Undoubtedly the Israelites had God to thank for their evidential situation as they stood on the shores of the Red Sea. They witnessed God’s miracles at that site and the plagues that preceded them; they had very good reason to believe

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in God’s power and majesty. That they came to know this was not to their credit but part of His goodness to them. Furthermore, it is not only they who are indebted to God for revealing Himself and His power—their indebtedness is shared with all of humanity. The God of Israel is the God of creation and the God of Adam and Eve. He brought down the plagues not only to change the hearts of Pharaoh and of Israel but also that His name “will be told through all the earth” (Ex. 9:13–16). Radical contingency and dependency on divine providence, alongside moral responsibility and genuine knowledge, is, in the biblical view I have singled out, the hallmark of the human condition.

Notes 1 Dru Johnson, Biblical Knowing: A Scriptural Epistemology of Error (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2013), 60ff., characterizes the new Pharaoh’s not knowing Joseph as, “creating one of the primary tensions to be resolved in Exodus” (page 66). He goes on to present an extended analysis of the exodus in epistemological terms. 2 This notion is mentioned in the Introduction and is referred to in several of the following chapters. See especially Chapter 6. There are other aspects of God’s hardening Pharaoh’s heart which are troubling—such as His depriving him of free will or of the ability to repent. I am confining myself to the question of moral responsibility. 3 See, for example, Nachmanides, Sforno, and Toledot Yitzhak (Yitzhak Caro, fifteenth century, Spain, Portugal, Constantinople) on Exodus 7:3. They describe hardening Pharaoh’s heart as giving him, “the strength to endure the plagues.” 4 Joseph Albo, The Book of Roots 4.25. I quote the translation of David Shatz, “Freedom, Repentance and Hardening of the Hearts: Albo vs. Maimonides,” Faith and Philosophy 14 (1997): 478–509 at 482. Many insights in this discussion are owed to Shatz’s careful and insightful analyses there. 5 In contrast to other commentators who think of God as manipulating Pharaoh’s desires in order to strengthen his will (see note 3), Albo renders the hardening in cognitive terms. God presents Pharaoh with naturalistic explanations of the plagues, “and therefore he says that this adversity came by accident and not because of divine providence.” In the Bible, the heart is the seat of the will and desire, and also of thought and understanding. See Alter, Five Books of Moses on Ex. 4:21. For the conative function of the heart, see Gen. 8:21; for the cognitive function see Ex. 31:6, and for an amalgam of the two, Proverbs 19:21. 6 Eleonore Stump, “Sanctification, Hardening of the Heart, and Frankfurt’s Concept of Free Will,” Journal of Philosophy 85 (1988): 395–420, proposes an interpretation of God’s hardening Pharaoh’s heart which allows for Pharaoh’s being morally responsible for the actions he takes after his heart has been hardened, even though he did not have alternative possibilities. David Shatz gives a detailed critique of her solution in “Hierarchical Theories of Freedom and the Hardening of Hearts,” in Peter A. French, Theodore E. Uehling, and Howard Wettstein, eds., Midwest Studies in Philosophy XXI: Philosophy of Religion (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 1997), 202–224. 7 See Shatz, “Freedom, Repentance and Hardening of the Hearts.” 8 Jerome Gellman points out to me that Albo thinks that God does know people’s future choices. His interpretation of God’s hardening Pharaoh’s heart does not come up against the exegetical difficulty on his view of God’s knowledge, then, as does mine.

180 Changes of heart 9 Whether Pharaoh is morally responsible for his defiance when God does not harden his heart may depend on how much control he exercises over the toughening of his heart. 10 J. H. Hertz, The Pentateuch and Haftorahs, 2nd edition (London: Soncino Press, 1981), on Ex. 4:21 offers a naturalistic account of God’s role in this story, however. As part of the divine scheme of things there operates a law of conscience which has it that “every time the voice of conscience is disobeyed it becomes feebler and feebler.” What actually happened was that every time Pharaoh refused, his better nature froze up more and more until it seemed as if God were hardening it. Hardening someone’s heart has been taken metaphorically by some modern commentaries to connote the occurrence of completely natural processes. See Nachum Sarna, The JPS Torah Commentary: Exodus (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991), 23, 64–65. Both these interpretations diminish the theological dimension of the drama. 11 Maimonides, Eight Chapters, Chapter 8. 12 In Mishneh Torah, Laws of Repentance 6.3, Maimonides proposes that by hardening his heart, God deprived Pharaoh of the possibility of repenting, as punishment for the sins he performed before his heart was hardened. See the discussion of Maimonides in Shatz, “Freedom.” 13 According to Gersonides (France, 13th century), with ordinary people God wants to preserve their free will. When it comes to kings, however, God sometimes takes control of their hearts because of the impact a king can have on history. He applies this insight to God’s hardening Pharaoh’s heart (Ex. 7:3). 14 See, for example Ex. 7:27. 15 See the introduction to this work. 16 I put aside the question of whether a person could do something which would bring about his believing in God indirectly, and whether the ability to do that could make it possible for God to command him to believe in Him. To answer the former question, which may be in part empirical, would take me too far afield from my topic, and the answer to the latter would at least in part depend upon the answer to the former. 17 For a dissenting view, see Carl Ginet, “Contra Reliabilism,” Monist 68 (1985): 175–187 at 183; Jerome Gellman, “Review of Jonathan Adler, Belief’s Own Ethics,” Iyyun: The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly 23 (2004): 107–117. 18 William Alston, Epistemic Justification (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), “The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification,” at 122. 19 Bernard Williams, Problems of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), “Deciding to Believe,” 148. 20 I confine this analysis to those beliefs of which we are aware and leave aside the issue of “unconscious beliefs.” The link of the former beliefs is to what we take to be our epistemic reasons for believing them to be true, and not to other kinds of reasons such as practical or moral reasons for believing them to be true. 21 See my discussion of this in Charlotte Katzoff, “Epistemic Obligation and Rationality Constraints,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 34 (1996): 455–470. There I do not restrict this linkage to a deliberative context. In Chapter 3, I discuss the link between judgment and belief in a non-deliberative context. See, especially, note 37. 22 See my discussion of motivational biasing in Chapter 4. Note that in Chapter 3, on my analysis of Abraham’s doxastic state, I do not take Abraham to be motivationally biasing his view of his evidence because I take his evidence to support either of the beliefs he holds during his journey. 23 He could not simply decide to adopt a dismissive attitude towards the evidence. Perhaps once the evidence was no longer present, he succeeded in causing a

Changes of heart

24 25 26

27 28 29 30

31

181

lessening of its impact on him by occupying his mind with some distracting occupation or thought. I am departing from Alter here, who translated here as “trusting” rather than believing to preserve the echo here of the earlier use of the word ‫ ויאמינו‬at Ex. 4:1. Even on the view that a person is sometimes able to choose what to believe, such strong evidence in favor of a belief would preclude being able to decide to believe otherwise. God did not, for example, plant the true beliefs, accompanied by good reasons for holding them, directly into the hearts of the Israelites. The beliefs would represent reality, but the reasons supporting them would have no connection with reality. I discuss the relationship of luck to knowledge in Chapter 2. See Richard Feldman and Earl Conee, “Evidentialism, Philosophical Studies 48 (1985): 15–34. Evidence for a belief is adequate on this theory if the subject’s reasons for holding the belief make it more likely to be true. See Peter Unger, “An Analysis of Factual Knowledge,” The Journal of Philosophy 65 (1968): 152–173; Mylan Engel, Jr., “Is Epistemic Luck Compatible with Knowledge?,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 30 (1992): 59–75; and Chapter 2. Thomas Nagel, “Moral Luck,” in Daniel Statman, ed., Moral Luck (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 57–71, reprinted from Thomas Nagel, Mortal Questions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979). For different views of the effects of luck on morality, see the articles collected in Statman, ed., Moral Luck.

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Index

Abarbanel, Don Isaac 45n4, 46n12, 48n55, 121–122, 145n7, 145n11, 166n9 Abel see Cain and Abel Abraham 5–8, 11, 13–19, 70–72, 88–89, 89n3–5; affirming the promise 81–83; because he did not withhold his only son 79–80, 91n34–35; belief vs. judgment 83–85; changes of heart 169, 172; the epistemic status of the covenant 85–87; fear of God 87–88; forgoing the promise 80–81; Gen. 21:12 48n42, 57, 80, 145n15; Gen. 22:4–5 70–74; God’s knowledge 21n23, 24n65; and Isaac 97–98, 105, 112–115, 116n11–15, 118n55; and Jacob 119–120, 123–124, 127, 132, 134, 144; and Joseph 150, 155, 157–159, 166n3, 167n23; and Ketura 147n31; and Kierkegaard 75–76, 90n26; killing an innocent child 76–78, 90–91n27–28; the knight of faith 74–75, 92n55; “light doublemindedness” 92n54; matriarchal knowledge 50–52, 55–59, 64–65, 67, 68n19; midrash 22n29, 23n54, 46n14, 80–82, 90n9, 91n40, 92n53, 127–128, 157–159; motivational biasing 91n46, 180n22; raising his eyes 55, 86, 92n52, 167n23; “right” belief 92n51; and self-deception 73, 83, 90n11, 90n13; his servant 10, 23n43–44; and Stump 78–79; temptation in the garden 29–31, 44; see also Blessing of Abraham Abrahamic blessing see Blessing of Abraham Abrahamic Covenant see Covenant of the Pieces

Adam see Garden of Eden agent-regret 138–139 Akedah 6–7, 18–19, 29, 55, 72–77, 80–81, 85, 155 Albo, Joseph 170–171, 179n5 Alter, Robert 3, 145n7, 149n82, 181n24 alternative possibilities see Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP) atonement 119; see also Jacob autonomy 16, 19, 35–38, 43, 113, 143 belief 6–7, 14–16, 23n52; and Abraham 72–76, 78–83, 86–89, 92n51, 92n54; to believe what one wants to believe 174–176; changes of heart 173, 177–178, 180n16, 180n20–22, 181n24–26, 181n29; and Isaac 97–111, 117n26, 117n38; and Jacob 122–125, 128–129; vs. judgment 83–85; matriarchal knowledge 53–54, 60–61, 65–66; reasons to believe 173–174 Benjamin 17, 40, 58, 133, 165 Bethuel 10 biblical narrative 4–6, 8–9 Bilhah 142, 160 Binding of Isaac see Akedah Blessing of Abraham 58; and Isaac 93–95, 97, 100, 113, 115, 115n5, 116n5, 116n8; and Jacob 120, 124 blessing, stolen (of Isaac) 94–98, 124; see also Isaac; Esau; Jacob; Rebecca Cain and Abel 16, 65, 76, 126, 128, 146–147n28–29 causality see dual causality changes of heart 169, 178–179; to believe what one wants to believe 174–176; epistemic luck and divine

192

Index

providence 177–178; an inevitable finale 176–177; moral responsibility and a hardened heart 170–171; the purpose of the plagues 171–173; reasons to believe 173–174; so that they will believe 173 Children of Israel 1, 15–16, 81, 150, 154, 169, 172, 177 circumstances: mitigating 40; providential 16–18; victims of 43–45 coming of age 31–32 competing values 135–137 conscience see under guilt contingency 20, 155–156, 159, 179 counterfactual intervention 161–163 Covenant of the Pieces 5, 7–8, 11, 16–19, 22n37; and Abraham 71–72, 79–81, 88–89; changes of heart 169; epistemic status of 85–87; and Isaac 93–97, 116n11; and Jacob 124, 127; and Joseph 150, 155–156, 158–159, 166n3; matriarchal knowledge 57 David (King) 19, 112, 149n78 DCM see Divine Command Theory of Morality deception 98–101, 105, 108–109, 113, 118n43; see also self-deception Descartes, René 60 destiny 19, 26, 44–45, 143–144, 149n74 dilemmas 18–20, 134–135 Dinah 141–142 dirty hands 64, 139–141, 144, 149n69 dirty work 64–65 Divine Command Theory of Morality (DCM) 130–132 divine plan 1, 5, 13, 19, 25, 33, 53, 62, 97, 125, 154–155, 165 divine providence 4, 9–10, 13, 150–151, 177–179, 179n5 divine revelation see revelation divine will 10, 19–20, 130, 133, 143 dual causality 8–12, 23n41 Dworkin, Gerald 42 Eden see Garden of Eden Egypt 150–152, 165–166; authoritativeness of Joseph’s account 153–155; counterfactual intervention 161–163; God’s plan and the contingency of human actions 155–156; Jacob’s descent into 158–159; Joseph exonerates his

brothers 152–153; Joseph’s rise to power in 156–158; the sale 159–160; Widerker’s defense of the principle of alternative possibilities 163–165 emotions 60–62, 84–88, 104–106, 113–115; emotional states of Abraham 74, 86, 89n5, 91n46, 92n51; and knowledge 58–60; see also guilt epistemic empowerment 53 epistemic luck 15–16, 177–178 epistemic status 27, 61, 66, 85–87, 177 epistemic success 65–66 epistemic virtue 65–66, 75 epistemology 51–53, 66–67; epistemological puzzle 98–99; and the theological quandary 111–113 Esau 11–19, 93–94; birthright 104, 115n3, 115n5, 117n30, 123–124; departure of 96, 116n12; dirty hands 139–140; and the elder shall serve the younger 127–128; the epistemological puzzle 98–99; an epistemological resolution of the theological quandary 111–113; the ethics of Isaac’s selfdeception 107–111; Gen. 25:28 149n82; Gen. 27:19 143, 146n20; Gen. 27:34–39 95, 117n30, 121, 149n77; Gen. 33:4 145n4; guilty conscience 121–122; the interrogation 99–100; Isaac casts the die 100–102, 117n22; Isaac’s insight 113–115; Isaac’s mixed motives 104–105; Isaac’s self-deception 102–104; Isaac’s strategy 105–107; Jacob’s conduct 143; Jacob’s gift to 120–122, 125, 143, 145n7; matriarchal knowledge 51, 53–55, 58–59, 61–62, 65; the meeting between brothers 119–121; a more modest reading of the stolen blessing 94–98; the puzzle 122–126; survivor guilt 128–129 ethics 3–5, 74–77; of Isaac’s selfdeception 107–111 Eve see Garden of Eden evidence 15–16; and Abraham 73–75, 83–88, 91n46, 92n51; changes of heart 174–178, 180n22–23, 181n29; and Isaac 97, 99–103, 106, 109, 113, 117n26 evidentialism 15, 102, 177 exoneration 1, 152–153, 158, 161, 165 externalist theories of knowledge 53–55, 68n8

Index faith 74–76, 78–80, 82–83, 87–89, 121 fear of God 39, 87–88 Frankfurt, Harry 4, 16, 18, 37–39, 151–152, 161–165 free will 1, 4 19, 22n33, 28 freedom see human freedom Friedrich, James 109 Garden of Eden 45n2, 46n12, 46n20, 47n30, 48n55; a coming of age story 31–32; the crime and its punishment 33–35; Gen. 3:13 35–37; a jealous God 27–29; Lev. 19:14 40–43; temptation 37–40; a test 29–31; victims of circumstances 43–45 Gellman, Jerome 92n54, 179n8 Grossman, Jonathan 4, 46n20, 95–97 guilt 125, 140–141, 144, 153; guilty conscience 121–122, 140; survivor guilt 128–129 Haamek Davar 49n63, 145–146n15 Hagar 51, 55–56, 58, 64–65, 71, 127 Hamor 141–142 hardened heart see changes of heart Hazony, Yoram 4–5 Hebrew words 13, 45n2, 47n38, 89n3, 91n30, 118n54, 146n16 human actions 22n31, 25–26, 143, 150, 155–156, 161 human freedom 1, 4, 6–8, 22n37, 26 inevitability 8, 17–18; changes of heart 175–177; and Joseph 151–152, 155–163, 165, 167n18; temptation in the garden 32–33 insight 113–115 internalist theories of knowledge 53–55, 68n8 interpretation 1–4, 20–21n11, 26–28, 33–34, 75, 94–98 interrogation 99–100, 102, 105, 110 intervention, counterfactual 161–163 intuitive knowledge 15, 60–62, 65–66 Isaac 93–94; the epistemological puzzle 98–99; an epistemological resolution of the theological quandary 111–113; ethics of Isaac’s self-deception 107–111; the interrogation 99–100; Isaac casts the die 100–102; Isaac’s insight 113–115; Isaac’s mixed motives 104–105; Isaac’s selfdeception 102–104; Isaac’s strategy 105–107; a more modest reading

193

of the stolen blessing 94–98; see also Akedah; Esau; Jacob; Rebecca Ishmael 19; and Abraham 71; and Isaac 93, 95–97, 104, 112–113, 115; and Jacob 127–129; matriarchal knowledge 51, 56–58, 64–65 Jacob 119–144; agent-regret 138–139; Cain and Abel 126–128; competing values 135–137; dilemmas 134–135; dirty hands 139–141; a guilty conscience 121–122; Hosea 8:7 141–143; Jacob’s descent into Egypt 158–159; Jacob’s destiny 143–144; the meeting between the brothers 119–121; moral concerns in the Genesis narratives 132–134; moral obligation and divine command 130–132; the puzzle 122–126; survivor guilt 128–129; see also Esau jealousy 5, 27–29, 105–106, 165 Joseph 150–152, 165–166; authoritativeness of Joseph’s account 153–155; and counterfactual intervention 161–163; God’s plan and the contingency of human actions 155–156; and Jacob’s descent into Egypt 158–159; Joseph exonerates his brothers 152–153; Joseph’s rise to power in Egypt 156–158; the sale 159–160; the twists and turns 160–161; and Widerker’s defense of the principle of alternative possibilities 163–165 Judah 12, 19; and Isaac 95–97, 112; and Jacob 132–133; and Joseph 160–162, 165; matriarchal knowledge 56, 58; temptation in the garden 38–39 judgment 83–85, 87–88, 132–133, 178 Kaufmann, Yehezkel 8–9 Kierkegaard, Soren 74–76, 78–80, 82–83, 87, 90n20 Klitsner, Shmuel 143, 145n13 knowledge 13–15; and emotions 58–60; internalist and externalist theories of 53–55; intuitive 15, 60–62, 65–66; perceptual 55; see also matriarchal knowledge Laban 10, 98, 114, 120, 141, 154; matriarchal knowledge 55, 59 Leah 17, 98, 141–142, 149n76, 154; matriarchal knowledge 56, 58

194

Index

Levi 96, 142 luck 12–13, 54, 65, 128–129; epistemic 15–16, 177–178; moral 12, 19; religious 13, 18–20, 144n1 Luzzatto, Samuel David see Shadal Maimonides 171–172, 180n12 matriarchal knowledge 50–52, 66–67; and dirty work 64–65; and emotions and knowledge 58–60; and epistemic success and epistemic virtue 65–66; and internalist and externalist theories of knowledge 53–55; and intuitive knowledge 60–62; of the patriarchs 62–64; and perceptual knowledge 55; and recognitional capacities 55–58; and revelation 52–53 Mavrodes, George 4 Mele, Alfred R. 84–85, 102–103, 109 midrash 22n29, 80, 82, 91n40, 127–128, 156–157, 159, 161 moral concerns 57, 132–134 moral luck 12, 19, 144n1 moral obligation 129–132, 135–136 moral responsibility 16, 18, 48n46, 170–171, 178–179; and Jacob 137–138; and Joseph 151–152, 164–165 motivational impact 85–87 motives 103–105, 125–126 Nagel, Thomas 178 Noah 5, 12–13, 50, 54, 76–77 Nussbaum, Martha 3 obligation see moral obligation Onan 132 paradox 33–34, 75–79, 87, 109, 143 patriarchs 13–15, 50–54, 65–66, 93–94, 97–98, 111–115; matriarchal knowledge of 62–64; see also specific patriarchs by name Pears, David 106 perceptual knowledge 55, 58; hearing 15–16, 86–87; seeing 15–16, 55–58 Peretz 112 Pharaoh 16, 19, 62–64, 151–158, 169–177, 179n1–8, 180n9–13; see also changes of heart philosophy: and biblical interpretation 1–3; and narrative 3–5 Pike, Nelson 6–7

plagues 15–16, 170–179, 179n3, 179n5; the purpose of 171–173 Plato 60 possibilities see Principle of Alternative Possibilities Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP) 162–165 priorities 18–20 promise: and Abraham 70–74, 77–79, 85–89; affirming the promise 81–83; changes of heart 169–171, 175–178; forgoing the promise 80–81; and Isaac 94–96; and Jacob 120–121; and Joseph 157–158; matriarchal knowledge 56–57, 64–65; see also Covenant of the Pieces providence 9–11, 177–178; and luck 12–13 providential circumstances 16–18 punishment 32–35, 47n25–26, 121–122, 171–172 puzzles 13, 28, 94, 122–126, 128–129; epistemological 98–99 quandary see theological quandary Rachel 17, 56, 98, 141, 150, 154, 160 Ramban 22n33, 45n2–4, 147n46 Rashi 12–13, 121, 143, 144n3, 146–147n29, 149n82, 159 Rebecca 10–11, 17, 48n42, 80, 122; and Isaac 94, 97–101, 104, 108, 112–114; and Jacob 121–124, 127, 142–143, 146n15–18; and Joseph 156, 159; matriarchal knowledge 51, 53, 58–59, 61–62, 64–66 recognitional capacities 55–58 regret see agent-regret Rescher, Nicholas 12 Reuben 12, 38–39, 96, 142, 160–162 revelation 13–14, 52–54, 61–63, 65–66, 67n1, 122 Ross, David 135 Sarah 71, 97, 112–114, 127, 145n15, 146n24; matriarchal knowledge 50–54, 56–59, 61–62, 64–66 Scanlon, Thomas 85–86, 88, 92n51 Schnall, Ira 69n35, 146n18, 149n76 self-deception 98–99, 105–107, 113, 117n26, 117–118n41; the ethics of Isaac’s self-deception 107–111; Isaac’s self-deception 102–104

Index Shadal (Samuel David Luzzatto) 95–96 Shah, Nishi 84 Shatz, David 4, 166n3 Shechem 141–142 Shelah 56, 132–133 Simeon 40, 96, 142 Sternberg, Meir 3 stolen blessing (of Isaac) 94–98, 124; see also Esau; Isaac; Jacob; Rebecca strategy 105–110, 172–173 Stump, Eleonore 2–4, 74–75, 78–80, 82–83, 87 success, epistemic 65–66 survivor guilt 128–129 Swinburne, Richard 7 Tamar 19, 56, 112, 132–134 temptation 30, 33, 37–40, 42–44, 47n38, 48n47–48 test 29–31; see also Akedah theological quandary 111–113

195

translation 21n23, 36, 45n3, 56, 149n82, 181n24; see also Hebrew words Tree of Knowledge 25–31, 33–37, 40–41, 45n2, 45n4, 50–51 Tree of Life 25, 27–28, 45n2 values, competing 135–137 Velleman, J. David 84, 122, 128–129 victims: of circumstances 43–45 virtue, epistemic 65–66, 75 Walzer, Michael 4, 140–141 Weingarten, Susan 89n5 Weiss, Shira 5 Wettstein, Howard 4 Widerker, David 163–165 Wolterstorff, Nicholas 4 women see matriarchal knowledge; and specific women by name Zerach 112