Esau, a red bear in the Bible
We don’t need to be very clever to realize that the Bible is replete with experiences of men and women who for one reason or another were out of the ordinary. People who did not fit in with what at the time was considered normal. We don’t need to think hard to know why we don’t talk about them at the church today. It’s much easier to use acceptable and harmless stereotypes that won’t take us anywhere. But it is clear that not everyone can accept such manipulation, and LGBTIQ people who live their faith from what they are need to know that those muted or whitewashed biblical characters can say something to them.
In the book of Genesis we find one of the queerest characters of the Bible: Esau[1]. It is clear that the firstborn of Isaac was not well seen by the authors of the legend because they unload on him all their prejudices before he was even born. It is said that he was Jacob’s twin,[2] a secondary way of coming into the world, a bad omen anticipating a bad ending. Surprisingly, he was also red-haired, just like the succeeding Christian tradition says of Cain, Delila, Caiaphas, and Judas, to name a few. Another redhead, according to the rabbinical interpretation, was Lilith, the first wife of Adam who left Eden because she refused to lie beneath Adam arguing that both were created equal. The redheaded Esau was too different from the rest. At least that’s what the story seems to convey.
But it goes on to say that he was born with a lot of hair all over his body. And at that time, hairy men were not seen as attractive but as foreign yokels. In Von Rad’s words, “this is how hairy and coarse the Barbarian neighbors looked to the urban Israelites.”[3] Being a hunter didn’t help his case. Of the two ways of life in Palestine, hunters were seen as wild and outdated, while farmers were perceived as educated people.[4]
In sum, even before coming back tired and hungry from the hunt, Genesis explains that Esau did not meet the positive stereotypes of the good Israelite of the time. So when he comes home and asks his brother to serve a bowl of the red stew he is cooking because he is starving, we do not see his need. We no longer remember how many times we had been hungry and we are unable to identify ourselves with him. This is how prejudices work, dehumanizing and making us believe that we have nothing to do with the person in front of us. But as LGBTIQ people, we have a certain advantage in this and we know what it means to be caricatured and to have people perceive what we’re asking for, though it is only basic human decency, as a touchy subject which may end in a conflict. And that’s why it’s easy for us to see the danger in the eyes of the cook while he looks us up and down, planning to take advantage of our need.
The red stew is served and Esau sits at the table. Jacob’s opportunity is right there and he asks his brother something in return: to surrender his inheritance rights as firstborn. Esau doesn’t know it yet, but accepting that dish means that he will not become the third patriarch of the people of Israel, and that he will be excluded from the promise of being blessed by God and being a blessing to others.[5] He doesn’t care about any of that now, he’s hungry. Jacob really has managed to play his cards very well.
Many people, families and religious communities still use that deck to play with the LGBTIQ today. The red stew always appears in front of us when we are hungry, and we usually eat it without thinking about our dignity and the promises God has given us. We prefer to give up a full life so that the people we love don’t suffer. We choose silence in our work to prevent conflicts. We accept not being recognized in our communities in exchange for being part of them... Plates of stew from those who call the shots in exchange for dignity. No matter how much we try to hide it, this is actually what we face most of the time. And I sincerely believe that, like Esau, we are selling ourselves short, and in most cases, if we had been braver, we could have done everything very differently.
In the end he ate the red stew, and it was not what he expected. Maybe the hunter Esau thought it would be a meat stew, but it just included what a farmer could give: vegetables and lentils. That’s why he felt double cheated.[6] We know it very well, it is not the first time it has happened to us, people take advantage of our longing for acceptance and they end up fooling us. These deals do not get us anywhere, they just make us lose what we had from the beginning: the love with which our Father looks at us, and being divinely chosen since before we were born. They constantly yell and scream at all times that we don’t have that anymore, they ridicule and caricature us to make us believe that we have lost it, and they explain in sweet words that we cannot enjoy it in the same way as other human beings. But let’s be clear, this is just another stratagem to make us sit in front of their bowl of lentils. We are hungry, but we better return it to them, let them eat it if they want. Acting with dignity and sincerity is the only way of living what God has in mind for us. To sell ourselves short is to lose everything.
We are not the first people to lose our families, fellows, and community because we reject this kind of blackmail. And as hard as it may be, we are not the first people to build a new family, a new world and a more Christian community. All that we have, and which we sometimes forget, will help us to do so. If we know that God is on our side, if we know that God is against all kinds of homophobia, including that which is promoted on Their behalf, then let’s not throw it all away for acceptance. Being at peace with God sometimes has a price, but if you’re willing to pay, our hunger will be satisfied sooner rather than later by the one who has never deceived us.
Carlos Osma
You can find more articles like this in my book "Only a faggot Jesus can save us" here:
[1] Genesis 25:19-34.
[2] It is true that the author of this legend could be simply indicating closeness between the Edomites and the Israelites, the people represented by both brothers, but I think he wants to express something else, since the relationship between both groups had always been very conflictive.
[3] Von Rad, El libro de Génesis, 327.
[4] Ibid., 328.
[5] Genesis 12:2.
[6] Von Rad, El libro de Génesis, 329.
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