By Rabbi Moshe Pogrow
Not for no reason does the Torah stress that Eisav was Rivka’s bna hagadol, and Yaakov bna hakatan. Similarly, at the end of the story, it tells us again: Rivka, eim Yaakov v’Eisav. This reveals the pure spirit of Rivka and Yaakov.
If a person of base character wrongs someone, he then becomes even more ill-disposed toward that person, and seeks all sorts of pretexts and excuses by which to justify his action. After wronging someone, a person of base character becomes even more inconsiderate than before.
What about Rivka and Yaakov? Rivka finds it only natural that Eisav is angry after all that has happened. After all, Eisav could never be expected to understand her reasons, much less justify them. As for Yaakov, did he ever in any manner exploit the bracha or the bechora? Not in the least. On the contrary, Yaakov emerges disadvantaged in every way.
Yaakov and Eisav are twins. Eisav marries when he is forty, brings into the home two daughters-in-law (to whom he later adds a third), and takes a share in his father’s establishment and household. Yaakov, on the other hand, leaves poor and empty-handed, and to establish a family he must hire himself out as a servant.
Many commentators have wondered why Yitzchak—who, by inheritance and by the blessing he attained on his own, was a very wealthy man—should have sent his son off in this manner, empty-handed, with nothing but the staff in his hand. The answer to this question is deeply rooted in the motives underlying the events described here.
After Yaakov—at Rivka’s investigation and command—had attained the bracha and the bechora, it had to be made perfectly clear that neither Yaakov nor Rivka had been motivated by greed. After Yaakov’s departure, Eisav should not be able to report so much as a pin missing. This is a remarkable testimonial to the noblemindedness of Rivka and Yaakov.
The words eim Yaakov v’Eisav are Rivka’s epitaph, as it were, for this is the last time she appears as an active character. In all her actions she was “the mother of Yaakov and Eisav”; to the end of her days she acted as a mother.
Had Rivka been an ordinary woman, she would have gladly seized this opportunity to disclose to her husband Eisav’s plan to murder Yaakov. In this way she could have shown Yitzchak how right she had been all along, that Eisav was bound to become a second Kayin, and so forth. But she does not do this. Instead, she makes Yaakov’s journey to Padan Aram appear quite natural and justifiable.
Based on the commentary of Rav Shamshon Raphael Hirsch zt”l on Chumash, with permission from the publisher.
