Spare a thought for Esau, just like Harry
A story of in Genesis shows nothing changes in sibling rivalry, writes George Pitcher
Scripture offers plenty of sage counsel for the settlement of the British royal family’s blood feud between the princes of Sussex and Wales – in tabloid terms Harry and Wills respectively.
The Christian bible’s epistles expound an irresistible theology of universal inheritance of the Kingdom of Heaven. The apostle Paul declares in Romans that “we are heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ”. No heirs and “spares”, therefore, just heirs. I would only presume to add that the Anglican church has concluded its Eucharist in the prayer book since the 17th century with the statement that we are “heirs through hope of thy everlasting kingdom.”
Genesis
But I’d like to go rather further back, to the first book of the Hebrew Bible, Genesis, to find some serious sibling rivalry. There’s Cain and Abel, of course. But, while William may have cause to mutter Cain’s rhetorical question “Am I my brother’s keeper?”, the murderous fratricide at the heart of that story surely rules it out as a guide for the troubled Windsor boys. In any event, we must hope so.
The story I’d like to revisit comes later in that book. And it’s the story of Jacob and his twin brother Esau. The briefest of synopses goes that Jacob swindles his brother out of his birthright by fooling their father, the visually-impaired Isaac, into giving him his blessing, through the basic trick of donning animal skins (Esau was “an hairy man”) to pretend to be his brother.
Unpacking the story as we go along, it’s probably best to dispose of the whimsical similarities to William and Harry first. They don’t mean anything at all, but they’re fun.
Follically challenged
Esau is not only hirsute, he is a red-head. Harry is disproportionately proud in his book, Spare, that he is far from as follically challenged as his elder brother. As I say, there is nothing to be made of this coincidence of coiffure, only perhaps that this preacher can observe, along with the one in Ecclesiastes, that “all is vanity.”
But there are more serious comparisons to be made. We can start with the injustice of Jacob being the winner who takes all. The injustice is the dishonesty with which Jacob diddles their father. And injustice and dishonesty are the main charges that Harry seeks to make against his family. Sometimes over serious matters, such as allegations of racism against his wife; sometimes less seriously, over the relative size of bedroom allocations with his brother.
Burden of guilt
Jacob, the corrupt brother, is the one who flees his homeland to protect himself. He comes to bear his burden of guilt. He marries Rachel (who, interestingly enough, has a dubiously behaved father) and lives abroad. But he’s aware that one day there has to be a reckoning with his brother.
There is an issue of historicity to deal with here before moving on. Rachel is highly manipulative, turning Jacob against her father, Laban, and stealing some of her father’s treasure because (inheritance again) she feels hard done by. And it was Jacob’s mother, Rebekah, who first came up with the idea of defrauding her husband and Jacob’s father, Isaac, of Esau’s birthright.
The resonances of scheming wife and wicked (step)mother with Prince Harry’s wife and Queen Camilla are too loud to pass by. The patriarchy that portrayed these women (not so long after Eve’s betrayal of Adam), in perhaps the 19th century BCE, is not so different from the misogynistic perspective of tabloid journalists who blame the women who marry into the Windsors today. The temptation is to say that nothing changes.
Redemptive
Ultimately, though, our narrative is redemptive. Jacob, travelling back towards his wronged brother in Canaan, sends gifts of livestock ahead of him, in the hope of appeasing his twin’s rage.
It works. Esau greets his long-lost brother in an emotional reunion. And we can reasonably conclude that this isn’t simply about Esau’s inflated headcount of cattle and sheep.
Jacob has risked himself, emotionally and physically, to be reconciled with brother. Esau values his blood bond of the present and future over the wrong he was done in the past. This is about forgiveness and its ensuant redemption. But it’s also about hope. And it offers hope that there may be a healing for the bitter wounds that separate William and Harry.
Wrestling with angels
On the night before his remedial confrontation with Esau, Jacob wrestles with an angel of God, whom we can take to be his conscience, or even God himself. In the struggle, the angel dislocates Jacob’s hip, a rather more serious injury than Harry suffered from his dog bowl when William became physical with him.
It’s a reminder that the primacy of conscience isn’t painless. But the redemption of contrition and forgiveness makes it worth it.
It’s the story of Jacob and Esau that William and Harry – and all of us – could usefully take aboard. And, along with the way those women are portrayed in Genesis, we might offer a “plus ca change” shrug. As the poet of Ecclesiastes also puts it: “There is nothing new under the sun.”
George Pitcher is a visiting fellow at the LSE