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Prime Suspect

All the old knives that have rusted in my back, I drive in yours.

PHAEDRUS (c 15 BCE–50 CE)

All detectives know that people are nothing if not predictable in their motives for murder. Every police archive testifies to the power of greed, revenge, jealousy, and lust to create havoc. Cases of violence committed in the name of eradicating an enemy, enforcing blind dogma, or satiating the psychopath’s compulsion to kill, choke the justice system.

Revenge was the fire that consumed our prime suspect. Reuel, whose name meant “god’s friend,”¹ a title he wore with increasingly devious intent, would never be satisfied until he’d eradicated Moses and fulfilled the biblical mandate of “an eye for an eye.”² But what diabolical wrong had this man suffered that drove him to commit such a brutal, history-changing crime?

THE VENDETTA

The Godfather movie seared the image of the Sicilian vendetta into modern consciousness. In just one of many iconic scenes from the movie, Michael Corleone strolls through a quiet village and wonders aloud about the scarcity of men in the dusty streets. “They’re all dead from vendettas,” says his bodyguard. But the history of blood feuds reaches much further back in time than the vicious tempers and tantrums of the Cosa Nostra. A lethal mixture of dishonor and vengeance has fueled violence throughout many cultures and across thousands of years.

The ancient Greeks routinely destroyed enemies in the name of dishonor, and during the Middle Ages revenge was touted as a sacred duty. The rival clans of Ireland and Scotland never missed an opportunity for a good fight to the death, preferably over someone’s insulted honor. Citizens of the Byzantine Empire lived in fear of gang warfare and street violence precipitated by vengeance-seeking mobs. And Japan’s legendary Samurai were charged with upholding at any cost the honor of an individual, an entire tribe, and of course, their leader. Countless societies have been compelled to practice their own finely tuned or crude traditions of retaliation over real or imagined wrongs.

In the biblical age, an impressionable youth named Reuel had been weaned on the often-repeated tale of his villainous uncle’s theft of his family’s birthright—an uncle who had not only gotten away with his crime but had added salt to the wound by assuming a position of great power and prestige. The seed of this vindictive blood feud was planted on the day that twin boys Esau and Jacob, fathered by Isaac, the founder of the Jews, were born.

The reason behind one of the most significant of all vendettas was bizarre in its simplicity. One twin had to be anointed as the firstborn. That older twin, Esau, was to become Reuel’s father. Esau was later betrayed by his younger twin, Jacob (later known as Israel), when he stole Esau’s identity at a critical moment, ensuring that neither Esau nor his son Reuel would ever inherit their rightful role as leader of the Hebrew people.

Reuel grew to adulthood obsessed with avenging this far-reaching wrong. It didn’t help that the torment was constantly exacerbated by jealousy of Israel’s children, his cousins. Because of Jacob’s dramatic deception they now enjoyed great privilege in their unwarranted positions as leaders of the dominant tribe. Reuel plotted day and night to seize back the control his father had lost. Thus, a biblical vendetta was born.

HUNGER

Esau and his twin were at odds from the beginning. Esau was a hunter and warrior and the apple of his father’s eye. As the firstborn son he was automatically granted a birthright, a tangible inheritance. The second born, Jacob, was something of a mommy’s boy: a dreamer who preferred the solitude of camp to the dangers of hunting, but a young man realistic enough to know that he held distant second place in his father’s esteem. He also knew only too well that the priceless birthright was his older brother’s by tradition. Nevertheless, the toxic seed of resentment was sown early. After all, Jacob was only the younger by a minute or two.

That resentment erupted one day after Esau returned to camp from a long, futile hunt. Exhausted and ravenous, he found Jacob cooking a savory meal of red lentils. Esau was “faint” with hunger and begged his brother to fill a bowl for him. Never one to miss an opportunity, Jacob refused and instead offered a sly bargain, “Sell me this day thy birthright,” he demanded.

His mouth watering, Esau responded, “Behold, I am at the point to die.”³

Jacob tantalized Esau with the pot of steaming food. It had the desired effect.

Esau asked himself—if he was going to die from hunger anyway—“What profit shall this birthright do to me?” Probably not taking the contract seriously in that moment, Reuel’s father impulsively traded his precious birthright for a pot of red lentils.

Extortion won the day for Jacob. From this point on the brothers already tenuous relationship quickly deteriorated into enmity, reaching its nadir when their father decided that he would ignore the shabby agreement between the twins and bestow his final blessing on Esau despite his foolish loss of the precious birthright. But Isaac was naive about the degree of his second son’s disappointment and the strength of his will. He also underestimated the sheer determination of his wife, Rebekah, on behalf of her favorite twin. As a result, when the decisive moment came . . . something went terribly wrong.

And it came to pass, that when Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim, so that he could not see, he called Esau his eldest son, and said unto him, My son: and he said unto him, Behold, here am I. And he said, Behold now, I am old, I know not the day of my death: Now therefore take, I pray thee, thy weapons, thy quiver and thy bow, and go out to the field, and take me some venison; And make me savoury meat, such as I love, and bring it to me, that I may eat; that my soul may bless thee before I die. And Rebekah heard when Isaac spake to Esau his son.⁴

Isaac’s weak eyesight made him vulnerable to Rebekah’s manipulations. When Esau left the camp to go hunting his mother laid a trap on behalf of Jacob.

And Rebekah spake unto Jacob her son, saying, Behold, I heard thy father speak unto Esau thy brother, saying, Bring me venison, and make me savoury meat, that I may eat, and bless thee before the LORD before my death. Now therefore, my son, obey my voice according to that which I command thee. Go now to the flock, and fetch me from thence two good kids of the goats; and I will make them savoury meat for thy father, such as he loveth: And thou shalt bring it to thy father, that he may eat, and that he may bless thee before his death. And Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man: My father peradventure will feel me, and I shall seem to him as a deceiver; and I shall bring a curse upon me, and not a blessing. And his mother said unto him, Upon me be thy curse, my son: only obey my voice, and go fetch me them.⁵

Rebekah’s resolve would not be stymied by Jacob’s practical fears. She covered his hands with gloves made from goat’s hair to delude her failing husband that Jacob was hairy like Esau. Relying on Isaac’s deteriorating state and the power of suggestion she was confident that she could pull off her bold coup. Jacob still feared that the disguise would fail. But urged on by his mother he forced himself to go through with the dangerous gamble. There was no doubt that the ultimate prize of leadership was worth the risk.

And Jacob said unto his father, I am Esau thy firstborn; I have done according as thou badest me: arise, I pray thee, sit and eat of my venison, that thy soul may bless me. And Isaac said unto his son, How is it that thou hast found it so quickly, my son? And he said, Because the LORD thy God brought it to me. And Isaac said unto Jacob, Come near, I pray thee, that I may feel thee, my son, whether thou be my very son Esau or not. And Jacob went near unto Isaac his father; and he felt him, and said, The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau. And he discerned him not, because his hands were hairy.⁶

Jacob had succeeded! He’d stolen the final blessing literally from under Esau’s nose through a cold, calculated act of impersonation. “And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing wherewith his father blessed him: and Esau said in his heart, The days of mourning for my father are at hand; then will I slay my brother Jacob.”⁷ Aware of Esau’s rage, Rebekah, the mastermind of the scheme, beseeched Jacob to flee to her brother’s land.

Esau’s anger burned unabated, but he resolved to take his fate into his own hands. Eventually, he conquered the mountainous desert country of Seir where he installed himself as king. By coincidence, the names Esau and Seir both mean “hairy,”⁸ an unfortunate reminder to Esau of the betrayal of both his mother and his twin. He renamed the subjugated land Edom, the Hebrew word for red, possibly to mark the infamous red lentils incident^*2 when he first tasted the extent of his brother’s ruthless ambition.

In the meantime, Jacob had made his way safely to his uncle’s home. Laban had two daughters, Rachel and Leah. Jacob met Rachel beside a well where he helped her haul heavy loads of water for the family’s thirsty flock. Smitten, he asked Laban for her hand in marriage. Laban drove a hard bargain—imposing the condition that Jacob work for him without pay for seven years. The seven years seemed to Jacob “but a few days, for the love he had to her.”⁹ But Laban had set in motion a monumental plot of greed and deceit; its true nature to surface much later.

After Jacob fulfilled his obligation of service, Laban arranged a wedding party and celebration for his son-in-law. But when it came time for the marriage to be consummated Laban slipped his older daughter, Leah, into Jacob’s tent. No doubt a generous flow of alcohol helped complete the cruel deception. In his drugged state Jacob fell for the ruse, bedded Leah, and sealed his fate. He was now trapped in a marriage with his beloved Rachel’s older sister. Jacob would never fully forgive Leah, but the real sting of his bitterness was saved for his uncle. Oblivious to the many guests still lingering at the celebration he shouted at Laban, “What is this thou hast done unto me? Did not I serve with thee for Rachel? Wherefore then hast thou beguiled me?”¹⁰

Laban calmly reiterated the custom of the times, “It must not be so done in our country, to give the younger before the firstborn.”¹¹ Jacob was forced to bite his tongue. The great deceiver had been deceived by the same ploy he had used against his own father—impersonation.

Jacob agreed to serve another grueling seven years so that he could take Rachel as his second wife. Leah was a loving and loyal partner who bore him seven children. But it was clear that her husband’s heart belonged to her sister. His happiness when they finally married was tempered by Rachel’s long years of infertility, which were finally broken when they rejoiced in the arrival of a son, Joseph.

THE TALISMAN

After twenty years of servitude to Laban, Jacob finally rebelled against his father-in-law. Fleeing with Leah and Rachel, their eleven sons^*3 and their daughter, Dinah, he hastily decamped without telling Laban. Laban was furious when he realized that they had slipped away from his authority. Especially when he discovered that a precious teraphim, an ancient family relic used in ritualistic magic and described by the Torah as “images,” was missing. The teraphim was so precious to Laban that he worshipped it as a god. His daughter, Rachel, aware of its value and perhaps seeking some form of compensation for her husband’s long years of slavery, had stolen the talisman.

Jacob, unaware of his wife’s daring theft, was oblivious to the danger charging the air when Laban, accompanied by a small army, caught up with the small, rebellious troop. Laban lashed out, accusing Jacob of being a thief.

Scoffing at the charge, Jacob taunted his father-in-law, “With whomsoever thou findest thy gods, let him not live.”¹²

The family was held hostage while Laban turned over every tent in a frantic search for his prized idol. But the wily Rachel had hidden the teraphim under the saddle of her camel. She refused to dismount, protesting, “Let it not displease my lord that I cannot rise up before thee; for the custom of women is upon me.”¹³ It was a clever ploy. Spinning the prejudice that menstruating women were unclean and not to be touched, she concealed her theft and foiled Laban. Eventually, he reluctantly accepted the loss of the teraphim and blessed his daughters before leaving.

Why was Laban so disturbed about losing this mysterious item?

The scholar Elias Auerbach (1882–1972) presents a convincing case that Laban’s teraphim was in fact a mask. It is implied in 1 Samuel 19 that the object resembles a human head. When Saul sends bailiffs to seize David, his wife places a teraphim on his pillow as a ruse to trick the authorities into thinking he is sick in bed. Auerbach concludes that the mystery object is “a face mask” because it gives “the appearance of a man and can also be placed beneath the saddle of a camel.”¹⁴

If Laban’s talisman was a mask it makes sense of one of the strangest episodes in Genesis—an incident that occurred shortly after this heated confrontation in the desert over a missing teraphim.

WRESTLING WITH GOD

Why Jacob would take his family to Edom where his estranged brother, Esau, who hated him, now ruled, is one of the unexplained mysteries of the Torah. Perhaps he had deluded himself that the passage of time had cooled his brother’s fury and that he would be forgiven for stealing the final blessing. But doubt plagued him and as soon as his feet touched Edom’s soil he fell to his knees praying fervently, “Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau: for I fear him, lest he will come and smite me, and the mother with the children.”¹⁵

Jacob knew that, accompanied by his sons and four hundred armed men, Esau was riding to confront him. To mollify his brother, Jacob sent servants to intercept him bearing the valuable gift of five hundred domestic animals. They also brought the appeasing message that Jacob was offering himself as Esau’s loyal servant.

While enduring the excruciating wait for a response Jacob took his small tribe across the Jabbok River to set up camp. That night, he wandered away from his family into the wild where he was ensnared in a violent encounter that is considered one of the most puzzling stories of the Bible and still baffles biblical scholars:

And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him. And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me. And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed. And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there.¹⁶

So, what is going on during this strange encounter? The text is unclear about who is blessing whom. And who is the antagonistic stranger? A man? Or are we supposed to believe that God has lowered himself to grapple with Jacob? The prophet Hosea offered a compromise: “And he fought with an angel and prevailed.”¹⁷

It’s odd that the text is so vague considering that this was the notorious exchange that led Jacob to change his name to Israel, meaning “one who struggles with God.”¹⁸ Richard Elliott Friedman notes, “The curious thing is that several of the biblical stories involving angels contain confusions such as this, that is, confusions between when it is the deity and when it is the angel who is speaking or doing something.”¹⁹ He adds, “We are never told why they are struggling.”²⁰

It seems unlikely that God, or even an angel, should seek the blessing of a mere mortal. Unless, of course, this deity was neither angel nor deity but instead an impostor who had everything to gain by convincing Jacob that he was in the grasp of God himself. But who craved Jacob’s blessing the most?

Circumstantial evidence points to Jacob’s nephew, Reuel, as the mysterious stranger. The encounter took place in Edom, the land of his father, Esau. Reuel would have accompanied his father as part of the four hundred men gathered to ride against Jacob. It would seem poetic justice to Reuel for Jacob to be forced to bless him. His uncle had received his blessing by impersonating Esau. Now Reuel, Esau’s son, could reclaim that all-important blessing by impersonating God.

This would not be the last time that Reuel would exhibit hubris enough to take on the very mantle of God.

THE FACE OF GOD

Jacob was convinced that his adversary in the dark had been no mere mortal. “And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.”²¹ It seems that a powerful combination of fear and suggestibility had convinced Jacob that he had stared into God’s face. Not likely. The taboo surrounding the idea of even glimpsing the features of the Almighty was deeply entrenched. The Israelites believed that even a glimpse of God was sufficient to kill them. This suggests that the stranger’s face was hidden from Jacob; all the better to deceive him.

Was the clever Reuel wearing a mask?

As we’ve seen (Genesis 31) a teraphim, probably a mask, caused a serious conflict between Jacob and Laban when Laban accused Jacob of stealing it. Innocent of the original theft, Jacob had nevertheless immediately grasped its value and had taken the teraphim from Rachel and buried it beneath an oak tree. Did Reuel or one of Esau’s spies see Jacob hide the sacred mask? If Reuel had dug it up from its burial place, then its miraculous appearance on the stranger’s face would have added a dimension of horror for Jacob who believed that the precious talisman was safely hidden.

The wrestling episode carries the whiff of an elaborate act of illusion. The kind of trick that would be the specialty of an Egyptian-trained master magician. We can’t return to the scene of the crime and dust for fingerprints but there is compelling evidence that points to Reuel as the only man arrogant enough to take on the role of God.

VOICE PRINT

Modern criminology utilizes the eccentricities of language and the unique way people express themselves to track criminals. Individuals can be identified not only by the words they use but by the way they express themselves. What we say not only reveals what we mean but also who we are. Richard Elliott Friedman translates the relevant passage in the Torah, “he prevailed not against him” as “he saw that he was not able against him.” He notes that this combination of the verbs to be and able occurs in only one other passage in the Torah.²² This unique grammar (to be able) is used by Reuel (as Jethro) at the foot of the Mountain of God when he tells Moses that he is not able to lead his people alone because the duty is “too heavy” for him.

Reuel’s unique voiceprint betrays his identity.

The wrestling match with God was only the opening act in the drama of Reuel’s obsession with revenge; a brief bow as he readies to step on stage to play out each act leading to a long-awaited finale. Leading to the day that he can slip into Moses’s role and seize the leadership of the children of Israel: the day that he dons a mesmerizing mask and transforms himself into a second Moses.

MURMURINGS

The constant murmurings that emerged against Moses after Reuel stole his identity suggests that some of the tribe suspected that the new Moses, the prophet who hid his face behind a veil, was someone other than their true leader. But for most of the people his transition from a mild-mannered, stuttering shepherd to a terrorizing, ranting egomaniac was accepted with unquestioning resignation.

Reuel was so talented and eliminated Moses by such clever means that most didn’t realize that their prophet had been replaced by an impostor. How was he able to murder and then impersonate Moses without the people rising in rebellion? The answer lies in the elaborate set of skills he acquired as an apprentice magician in Egypt, the center of illusion and magic. This was where Reuel finely tuned the elaborate arts he needed to enact his coup. His masterful plot was played out with a series of illusions that wound around what, in their day, were extremely sophisticated tricks.

Jewish folklore testifies that Reuel was so talented that he rose to the sacred position of master magician in that advanced civilization. He made dark use of the secrets skills that the Egyptian priests had honed for thousands of years. It is to the ancient land of the Nile that we must travel to uncover the true source of Reuel’s success.