Anxiety over Twins: Anthropological Insights into the Story of Jacob and Esau

Tikvah Frymer Kensky, Reading the Women of the Bible (New York: Schocken Books, 2002), 16.

Jeroen Smith and Christiaan Monden, “PLOS ONE: Twinning across the Developing World” published 9/29/2011, n.p. [18 May 2016]. Online: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/artivle?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0025239.

Beth Alpert Nakhai, “Mother-and-Child Figurines in the Levant form the Late Bronze Age though the Persian Period,” in Material Culture Matters (ed. John Spencer et al.; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2014), 165-98.

Erle Leichty, The Omen Series Šumma Izbu (Locust Valley, NY: J. J. Augustin Publisher, 1972), 17.

Ethnographic studies show multiple ways that societies adapt to deal with the presence of twins, from acceptance, to death, to deification, to seeing them as a mediator between the animal world (where births of multiples are common) and the human world (Victor Turner,The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure [Chicago: Aldine, 1969], 44-62).

E.S. Drower, “Women and Taboo in Iraq,” Iraq 5 (1938): 109-10.

The description of Esau as “red” may be related to the Ugaritic myth recounting the birth of the twin deities Shahar and Shalem/Shalim, whose names mean Sunrise and Sunset respectively. This myth presents boys with a common father (El) and a common nurse (“The Lady” likely Anat or Ashera). While mothered by two different women, the two are still considered twin deities and are perceived as fraternal twins. See Karel van der Toorn et al.,Dictionary of Deities and Demons (Grand Rapids, MI: Eeerdmans, 1999), 755-56. Othniel Margolith notes the parallels with the birth-of-twins stories in Genesis:

In the Bible, this motif may be reflected in the stories of Jacob and his twin Esau the Red, and of Jacob’s grandsons Perez (break through) and Zerah (“Sunrise,” wearing the red thread).

See, Othniel Margalith, “A New Type of Ashera-Figurine?” VT 44.1 (1994), 113. Admittedly, the connection between the Bible and the Ugaritic myth is stronger with the Perez and Zerah story, but the use of “red” in both implies that this is purposeful. The association with deities alludes to a positive perception of fraternal twins.

Turner, The Ritual Process, 45.

Esau references the sale in Gen 27:36a but this seems artificial, since if he acknowledges that he sold the birthright, shouldn’t that mean that Jacob should be getting the blessing.

Taiwo Oruene, “Magical Powers of Twins in the Socio-Religious beliefs of the Yoruba,”Folklore 96.2 (1985): 211.