Concepts of Scripture in Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig 193the blessing meant for him, he cries out bitterly to Isaac and asks Isaac to
bless him as well. Isaac, however, says (Genesis 27:36), “Your brother came
with deceit [from the root rmh] and took away your blessing.” Th e second-
born has been awarded the blessing instead of the fi rst-born, yet Isaac
declares that the situation, terrible as it is, is irreversible. Jacob, however,
later becomes not just the perpetrator of deceit but also its victim when,
at Jacob’s wedding party, Laban slips Jacob his fi rst-born daughter, Leah,
instead of the second-born, Rachel, whom Jacob had contracted to marry
in recompense for the seven years he tended Laban’s fl ocks. At that point,
the narrative has Jacob exclaim (Genesis 29:25), “What is this that you have
done to me! Was it not for Rachel that I served you? Why have you de-
ceived me [from the root rmh]?” In Rosenzweig’s words, “Just at the mo-
ment when Jacob must fi rst acknowledge how scornfully his father-in-law
and employer Laban is exploiting him in this strange land, the crucial word
occurs again for the fi rst time in a long while. . . . We become suddenly
aware of the narrator’s linkage of doing and suff ering; and yet not once has
the narrator stepped out of his role. Th e betrayed Isaac has unconsciously
given the stimulus that his betrayer, now himself betrayed, unconsciously
takes up.”32 Th e reader experiences a sudden illumination that constitutes
a revelatory moment. Th e reader’s question, generated when the key word
was used for the fi rst time, is addressed here, when the key word is played
on for a second time. He or she has suddenly been awarded the insight
that those who wrong others on the way to inheriting God’s “way” will not
escape redress. Th ey must experience the same kind of suff ering that they
infl icted on the other, in order that they no longer close themselves off to
their brother’s cry (a similar insight is generated by the intricate plot of
the Joseph story). Harmony, however, is not totally restored, and a sense of
uneasiness persists at the act, “done under the authority of God,”33 of the
painful disenfranchisement of Esau — a seemingly unavoidable concomi-
tant of the choice of Jacob and of any choice of brothers or peoples for a
special destiny. God’s coming to be known in the world would seem to in-
volve both a revealed dimension (wherein a defi nite correlation between
divine justice and humanly intelligible justice is vigorously proclaimed)
and a “mysterious” dimension (wherein the course of events guided by
God issues in consequences that “defy our understanding.”)34
In biblical narrative, then, a revelatory, “lyric” moment — a dialogi-
cal response to a question — is planted within an “epic” story. Th e key
word both arrests the plot and contributes to its continued unfolding. A
“secret dialogue” is “extended”35 through the narrative, without undoing