The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

312 The Aramaic Bible: Tar gums in their Historical Context
For the Lord did not draw Ishmael and his sons and his brothers and Esau
near to himself, and he did not elect them because they are the sons of
Abraham, for he knew them. But he chose Israel that they might be a
people for him.
Also 16.17-18 evince a similar segregation.
Also regarding Esau, the attitude of Jubilees as a whole is ambivalent.
He is talked of as 'a fierce man' (19.13), 'unjust' and 'violent' in
his ways (35.9), 'enemy', 'adversary' (38.1) and so on. Furthermore,
he is said to have harboured since his youth an 'evil inclination'
(Hebrew ye^er, 35.9) and he is chided for having left his father alone
and robbed him of his possessions and flocks (35.10-11). His
marriages to Canaanite women were acts of wickedness (25.9).
Jubilees 26 recounts the blessing of Isaac in Genesis 27; his blessing
for Esau eventuates in a curse:
Behold, apart from the dew of the land shall be your dwelling, and apart
from the dew of heaven from above. 6 And by your sword you shall live,
and you will serve your brother. And it will happen when you become
great, and you will remove his yoke from your neck, that then you will
surely sin completely unto death, and your seed will be rooted out from
under heaven (vv. 33-34),
However, such outbursts and condemnations are tempered by other
passages, such as 35.18-20 where Rebecca entreats her sons to love
each other and keep the peace between them. In chapter 36 Jacob and
Esau are blessed once more by Isaac, this time in obvious analogy
with chapter 20. Isaac too urges them to live in fear of the Lord and
in mutual love. He then proceeds to distribute his possessions between
them. But, as he intends to give more to 'him whose birth was first',
that is, evidently Esau, the latter politely points out to him that
seniority no longer belongs to him and passes on his share to Jacob.
From ch. 37 the tone again changes to become almost totally
negative. Esau, after some hesitation and inducement from his sons,
decides to make war on Jacob and breaks his earlier promise: 'there is
no observing of fraternity with you' (37.19). In the ensuing combat,
Esau is defeated and killed by Jacob together with his troops. His
6. Mendels, Land of Israel, p. 75, asserts this to be in contradiction to
Gen. 27.39. This is true if the preposition in '3Dcn and "?J>D is taken as a privative,
so C. Westermann, Genesis 12-36 (BKAT 1.2; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener
Verlag, 1981), p. 539, but cf. translations ad. loc.