Vayetze (Haftarah)

“And Jacob fled to the field of Aram”

From the last of the prophets, we turn this week to the final chapters of the first prophet, Hosea: the first of the Terei Asar (Twelve Minor Prophets) and, according to most views, the earliest of the “literary” prophets, who prophesied during the reign of Jeroboam II, shortly before the exile of the northern kingdom in 721 BCE.

This weeks’ Torah portion begins with Jacob fleeing his parental home to avoid his brother’s fury, and describes the events of the twenty years that he spent as part of the household of Laban, concluding with the rather acrimonious parting of the two men at Yegar-sahaduta. These events are succinctly summarized in the opening verse of the haftarah (Hosea 12:13): “And Jacob fled to the field of Aram, and Israel worked for a woman, and for a woman he guarded [i.e., as a shepherd].” But this historical reference, whose pertinence to the haftarah we will address a bit later, is not developed; the body of the haftarah, like most prophetic passages, is more concerned with rebuke and exhortation addressed to the people who lived in Hosea’s own time, ending with the famous call to repentance read also in Shabbat Shuvah, the shabbat in the middle of the Days of Awe: “Return, O Israel, to/until the Lord your God” (14:2).

The entire book of Hosea centers around the image of God’s freely given, unconditional love for Israel (=Jacob=Judah=Ephraim, in the specific sense of the northern tribes), and their unfaithfulness to Him. It fluctuates between recollection and nostalgia for the early days in the wilderness, and images of Israel’s present abandonment of God for other “lovers.” Hence the powerful image with which the book opens, and which in one way or another echoes throughout: the prophet is commanded to marry a whoring woman, “for the land shall whore, forsaking the Lord” (1:2). Images from the early days of Israel are constantly invoked to recall the freshness of Israel’s dependence on and loyalty to God, before they “became satiated, and their hearts became haughty, and they forgot me” (13:6). The prophet expresses his wish for return to those days: “I will again make them dwell in tents” (12:10).

Scenes of the wilderness days appear in other prophets too (e.g. in Jeremiah 2:2, “I have remembered for you the love of your youth… following me in the desert, in an unsown land”), but none with quite the same intensity as Hosea. It is in this context, of recalling God’s kindness in the early days of Israel, that he invokes an even earlier age: that of the patriarchs, and specifically of Jacob. In the first part of Chapter 12 (not included in the haftarah), the prophet recalls (the voice speaking here in the first person, as throughout almost the entire book, is that of God): “I have a quarrel with Judah, and will requite Jacob for his ways and his crooked doings. In the womb he overtook his brother, and in his manly strength he strove with God. He struggled with the angel and prevailed, so that he [the angel] wept and beseeched him. He [God] found him at Beth-el and spoke with him there” (12:3-5). Later, the prophet invokes the numerous prophets who spoke with Israel, attempting to return them to the right path—pretty much to no avail (v. 11). It is within this context—of recollecting the early events in Israel’s history, centered around the figure of Jacob and of the prophets who spoke to them (Moses, interestingly, is alluded to—“I brought Israel out of Egypt by a prophet”; v. 13—but not mentioned by name)—that our haftarah begins.

Is there any essential connection between the contents of the haftarah and those of the parshah, apart from the external association of the opening verse? Can this verse be viewed as a kind of leitmotif, similar to the verse about Esau in last week’s haftarah? Perhaps I’m belaboring the obvious, but there is a profound difference between preaching and exhortation based upon abstract moral principles, such as that in which a modern moral philosopher or theologian might engage, and one based upon relationship and its betrayal, such as found in the Bible, and particularly in Hosea. The latter makes a powerful and immediate claim, not so much on the private conscience and reflective moral intellect, but to deeper levels of connection, very much like those a person feels to his family. The whole love-hate relationship between Israel and God feels here very much like that within a family, between husband and wife, or between parents and children, with claims based upon memories of past favors and caring deeds, creating a sense of debt and obligations. The recollection of the Exodus and, before that, of the age of the patriarchs, lends to all this a very concrete reality.

The invocation of Jacob, and of the prophets of olden times, is followed by a harsh picture of Ephraim’s stubbornness and transgressions. Here, again, God is pictured as a disappointed, angry husband; after knowing them in the wilderness, where they have no other god or protector but him, they throw him over for other gods. He waits for them like a wild animal at every turn—a lion, a leopard, a ferocious mother bear—forcing his kingship upon them, whether they like it or not! But the haftarah closes with a passage showing the sweetness of true repentance (a section that is also read on Shabbat Shuvah, the Shabbat before Yom Kippur) : “Return O Israel… take with you words and return to the Lord. [Acknowledge that] Assyria will not save us, … we will no longer call gods to the work of our hands.” Then, God says, “I will be like dew to Israel, they shall bloom like a rose, like the olive tree their grandeur. He that is wise will understand and know these things: that God’s ways are just and upright and righteous walk in then, and [only] the foolish and wicked stumble in them.”