Jacob and Esau, Saul and Chuck: Am I My Brother's Keeper?

At the outset of post-Edenic human history, the book of Genesis records the story of two brothers, Cain and Abel. After Cain slays his brother, God asks him, “where is your brother, Abel?” and Cain gives a famously sardonic reply, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” The rest of Genesis is in some respects an echo of this question with most of the “cycles,” or narrative blocks, dealing with the complicated and tense relationships among brothers. Yet, the final cycle in Genesis narrates the story of Joseph (Gen 37-50), who most perfectly fulfills the role of his brother's keeper and thus answers Cain’s question in the affirmative.[1] Yes, we are our brothers’ keepers.

At a conference focused on the shows Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, I heard a paper by the moral theologian and economist, Mary Hirschfeld. Her paper explored the relationship between Charles (Chuck) and James (Jimmy) McGill, two brothers in Better Call Saul, framing the hostilities between them through the lens of the brothers in the parable of the prodigal son (Lk 15:11-32). She noted at the beginning of her paper the Biblical trope of brothers who are at odds with one another, often with one brother being the beloved and the remaining brother as the outcast. Indeed, as soon as there are brothers in Scripture, there is sibling rivalry.[2] Cain kills Abel over Abel’s sacrifices being accepted by the Lord while his own were not. Sarah sends Ishmael and Hagar away when she sees Ishmael “mocking” her son Isaac.[3] Joseph’s jealous brothers first think of killing him, then figure they can make money off him and sell him into slavery. It may be safe to say that fraternal relations in Genesis are often fraught, as they very often are in our own lives.

What I left pondering after hearing Dr. Hirschfeld’s paper are the ways in which we are complicit in each other’s moral development. In light of her talk, I could not help but think of another pair of Biblical brothers, Jacob and Esau, who provide a foil for the dynamic between Jimmy and Chuck. The story of Jacob and Esau demonstrates the necessity of our active desire for the good of those in our lives. While the Bible shows that we are implicated in each other’s moral development, Chuck and Jimmy show us what happens when both parties renege on the responsibility.

There are two scenes from Better Call Saul that capture the dynamic I am hoping to describe, both of which come from Season 3. The first, from episode 5, shows Chuck McGill, a Georgetown-trained lawyer, testifying against his brother in front of the New Mexico bar association, who are deciding whether to reinstate Jimmy and allow him to continue to practice law. From Chuck a litany of Jimmy’s failures are poured out all over the courtroom. Desperate for Jimmy to finally face justice after a lifetime of failures that went unpunished, Chuck says, “You think this is bad? This, this chicanery? He’s done worse!” He lists Jimmy’s failures, most of which show Jimmy’s own propensity for self-sabotage, and then Chuck says something really horrible:

He’ll never change. He’ll never change. Ever since he was nine, always the same . . . Not our Jimmy, never our precious Jimmy, stealing them [their parents] blind. And he gets to be a lawyer? What a sick joke. I should’ve stopped him when I had the chance. You, you have to stop him.

Chuck’s resentment over the fact that Jimmy was the chosen and beloved son, despite Chuck’s moral uprightness, is palpable. Chuck spent his life playing by the rules and had done everything right, technically speaking, and yet Jimmy, precious Jimmy, the screwup, is beloved by his parents and, perhaps an even worse fact for Chuck, gets to enter the legal profession through the backdoor of a correspondence law degree, which certainly did not meet Chuck’s Georgetown Law standards. Considering Chuck’s black-and-white sense of right and wrong, there is little wonder that Chuck went into law, a system built on the notions of fairness and merit, that ostensibly rewards the better and truer person. To Chuck, it seemed a mockery that someone like Jimmy could be allowed to practice law because Jimmy does not live according to the law. From Chuck’s point of view, Jimmy is fundamentally bad because he does not follow the law.

Yet Chuck’s story illustrates that one may operate well within their own rights, well within the boundaries of the law, and yet come up terribly short in the mandate given by God to humanity. Chuck acts strictly within his legal rights towards Jimmy and it ruins his relationship with him, because rights alone are not enough to govern healthy human relationships. As St. Paul reminds us: all things are lawful, but not all things are profitable (1 Cor 6:12).

To understand the dynamic between these brothers, one must understand that Chuck cannot imagine Jimmy to be anything other than a failure and thus invests no time in his becoming a better person. Jimmy’s potential growth is beyond Chuck’s horizon of imagination. Although Chuck gives Jimmy a job at the law firm where he is a named partner, the job is only in the mailroom. Even after Jimmy completes law school and passes the New Mexico state bar, Chuck does not consider him worthy of the status of a lawyer at the firm. In Chuck’s mind, Jimmy is and will always be someone who belongs in the mailroom, away from what Chuck considers to be consequential work. Chuck’s judgment sounds horrible, but there is at least a consistency to his thinking. For Chuck, the law is, in his own words, “sacred.” He is an officer of that sacred law and his admission into such a vocation came at a high cost, as all true priesthoods do. But Jimmy’s admission came through a much easier route, which is paradigmatic of the way Jimmy has lived his life, at least in Chuck’s estimation.

In an earlier scene from another episode, Jimmy discovers that Chuck ruined his chances of working as a lawyer at the firm when Chuck called one of the other partners in the firm and sabotaged Jimmy. The younger brother only wants to know why his older brother has done this and Chuck justifies his malice by, again, appealing to Jimmy’s incommutable character. He is always “slippin’ Jimmy” and Chuck imagines that is what he will always be. It does not seem to occur to Chuck that Jimmy’s passing of the bar is genuine progress. It is only understood within the narrow framework of Jimmy’s earlier transgressions and those same transgressions provide Chuck an immutable hermeneutic for any future action.

In another scene, in the final episode of the third season, Jimmy comes to Chuck and admits that, in hindsight, he could have made “different choices.” Chuck responds coldly: “Is that so?” When Jimmy admits to having regrets, Chuck asks, “Why?” He presses Jimmy: “Why have regrets at all? What’s the point?” At this point, Jimmy is on the threshold of real contrition with genuine self-knowledge of his wrongdoings, seeking absolution of sorts from his brother, but is told by Chuck not, “I absolve you of your sins, go and sin no longer,” but rather, “What’s the point? You’re just going to keep hurting people.” When Jimmy protests, Chuck says, “Jimmy, this is what you do. You hurt people.” Chuck continues the tirade: “If you’re not going to change your behavior, and you won’t.” Jimmy protests, “I can change,” but Chuck is in the middle of his monologue and rides roughshod over Jimmy’s words. “In the end, you’re going to hurt everyone around you. You can’t help it.”

Jimmy desperately appeals to Chuck’s own failures, seeking some kind of common experience, and Chuck tells Jimmy he will put his mind at ease and says that no reconciliation is necessary—or even possible—because “things are fine the way they are.” In a final, devastating admission, Chuck tells Jimmy, “The truth is, you’ve never mattered all that much to me.” Five days later, Chuck tragically takes his own life in a house fire. The rest of the series shows the moral decline Jimmy undergoes, the transformation from Jimmy McGill to Saul Goodman and later, to Gene Takavic. Both brothers are worse off for this dynamic between them.

Chuck is wrong in thinking that Jimmy cannot change. He is wrong in principle, because we are all capable of moral conversion and growth into greater authenticity, which includes that we become more loving. But he is wrong about Jimmy in particular, who stood on the brink of change. Had Chuck loved him and fostered this spark of contrition that could have been blown into the flame of real love, Jimmy no doubt would have had at least the possibility of change with the necessary moral support to effect it. Instead, Chuck snuffs out the spark with his grandstanding and Jimmy spirals further into moral decline throughout the series, convinced by Chuck’s judgment that he is invariably a bad person. Chuck foreclosed on the possibility of Jimmy’s moral growth because he viewed Jimmy’s cumulative misdeeds as proof of Jimmy’s static identity as a failure, while he believed himself to be equally unchanging and, at the very least, lawful.

Consider a different set of brothers: the twins, Jacob and Esau, born to Abraham’s own beloved son, Isaac. Unlike Chuck and Saul, born years apart, Esau and Jacob are twins, which effectively erases any discernible reason for one to be the elect and beloved son. Though Esau is technically born first, Jacob grasping at his ankle, even his slight advantage is to no avail.[4] All throughout Genesis, the reader finds God choosing someone who is not the firstborn son, despite the customs in the ancient Near East, which signals that the criteria upon which God decides are not the sorts of criteria the world uses. God says, on the basis of no antecedent merit, that the second-born Jacob is the one whom he loves. The reader finds few reasons to justify God’s choice as they continue to read about the brothers. Esau is a hunter, whereas Jacob, whose name means something like “trickster,” is described as a man who “likes to live indoors” (Gen 25:27).[5] At this point, the score is: lazy trickster vs. the hunter. Neither are exceptional, but at least Esau hunts!

Jacob takes advantage of Esau’s exhaustion from hunting, offering Esau some stew in exchange for Esau’s birthright, an absurd deal made all the more absurd by the fact that Esau accepts. The story makes Esau look careless and Jacob look conniving (Gen 25:29-34). Later with the assistance of the twins’ mother Rebekah, Jacob tricks his father into giving him the blessing he meant for Esau. The main part of the blessing that concerns us is when Isaac says to Jacob, who is disguised as Esau: “Let peoples serve you, and nations bow down to you. Be lord over your brothers, and may your mother’s sons bow down to you” (Gen 27:28-29).

When Esau returns from hunting game for his father only to discover that he has been swindled out of his father’s blessing, he says to his father Isaac, “Have you only one blessing, father? Bless me as well!” Any sympathetic reader should feel heartbroken by Esau’s desperation to gain the crumbs of whatever paternal blessing he can find. However, once the blessing has been conferred, it is both complete and irrevocable. These patriarchal blessings are similar to divine speech-acts throughout the Bible, such as when God says for there to be light and light exists. They mirror the authoritative divine speech acts of God, both in their efficacy and permanence.

Having been duped and swindled, Esau vows to kill Jacob. The trickster is tipped off and flees on the counsel of his father, heading into the land of Paddan-Aram, the ancestral homeland of Abraham’s family, in order to marry a woman of the same family. In the words of Wisdom 11:16, inherent in the act of sin is its own punishment, and the emotional distance created by Jacob’s deceit is enacted as geographical distance from his birthplace.

Many years later, while fleeing from his father-in-law Laban, and the consequences of his own “chicanery,” Jacob sets out to go back to his childhood home. However, he realizes he can no longer avoid Esau, and the meeting will either be confrontation or reconciliation. Scripture shows Jacob attempting to mollify his brother with gifts and flattery, as if such things could repair the rift between the two of them. Twenty years had passed and Jacob could not be certain about whether time had fostered or diminished Esau’s resolve to murder him.

Yet, when the brothers meet, we see that Jacob and Esau have both changed. As Jacob approaches his homeland, he receives word from his servants that Esau is coming with 400 men. With no other information, Jacob interprets the fact as a threat, and one that he cannot overcome with his own resources. Since he was incapable of placating Esau with his wealth, Jacob finally appeals to the God of his fathers in prayer for the first time in the book of Genesis. There is still some characteristic distance in the prayer Jacob offers, calling God the God of “my father Abraham and my father Isaac.” Nevertheless, he pleads with this God to spare him from Esau’s wrath, reminding God that he has promised Jacob to do good to him and to make his “offspring as the sand of the sea” (Gen 32:12). After his prayer of protection, Jacob divides his people and animals into two camps, his wives and servants and children and livestock, and sends them away separately, leaving him alone on the banks of the Jabbok.

It is there that he wrestles with a mysterious “man” by night, traditionally understood in Christian and Jewish thought to be an angel who mediates God’s presence.[6] Incredibly, the angel does not win the fight despite his overwhelming power. This should give the reader pause—how does an angel lose a fight against a human being? Despite the radical disparity in power, the angel loses and gives Jacob a new name, a better name, in light of his victory. No longer is Jacob the trickster, but he is called Israel, the one who has striven with God and survived. In turn, Jacob names the place where he wrestled with this angel “Peniel,” because he has seen God face to face (Peniel = the face of God) and his life has been preserved.

As if angel wrestling were not enough for one story, immediately following his victory, Jacob faces another challenger: his brother Esau. He is once more outmatched considering Esau’s cadre of 400 men, but the story does not play out as Jacob expects. Jacob’s entire family comes out to bow before Esau and Jacob identifies his family as “the children whom God has graciously given your servant.” When Esau asks what Jacob means by these acts of deference, Jacob answers, “To find favor with my lord” (Hebrew: adōn). Perhaps surprisingly, Esau has no desire for this submission. One might expect that he would delight in Jacob’s groveling—finally the trickster has gotten what is coming to him! Esau has not spent the last twenty years nursing a grudge. Instead, he has matured to the point that he can say to Jacob, “I have enough; keep what you have” (Gen 33:9).

But Jacob insists upon a gift to Esau, and not only a gift, but his “blessing” (berakah), which is what Jacob had stolen away from Esau. The text reads: “Please accept my gift (berakah) that is brought to you, because God has dealt graciously with me, and because I have everything I want” (Gen 33:11). All that the blessing of Gen 27 entailed is given to Esau, its intended recipient. Jacob bows, identifies himself as Esau’s servant, and returns the blessing taken from him. Jacob sets the situation with Esau right by giving to Esau what he was originally due.

However, even more shocking than all of this, Jacob tells his brother that “seeing you is like seeing the face of God.” This startling statement is unique in the Hebrew Bible, never said again about anyone else. In what respect is seeing Esau like seeing the face of God? Perhaps because, while Esau has the manpower and the right to obliterate Jacob, he does not think it the best course of action. He is like God, who is merciful. What is within one’s rights may not be profitable for one’s soul if the goal of one’s life is to be more like the Lord.

Instead of seeking retribution, Esau invites Jacob to journey “side by side” (33:12). Jacob declines, explaining that his flocks are worn out from their journey and he worries about their health. Esau then, in an act of generosity that supersedes any expectations, offers Jacob some of his own men to stay behind and tend to the flocks.

Esau could have been like Chuck, swearing that Jacob will never change, and would have had every reason to assume Jacob’s obstinacy. His very name is trickster, after all, and it is notoriously difficult to outrun one’s identity. Esau instead has, for no antecedent reason, elected to love Jacob, clearly already having forgiven him long before the idea entered Jacob’s mind to put on such an obsequious display for Esau.

What is perhaps more striking, and serves as yet another contrast with Chuck, is that Esau has also changed for the better. He is the proof of concept that moral progress is possible and, if it were possible in him, surely it could be possible in his brother. Esau has everything he needs and does not want to take away from Jacob, whereas Chuck had everything he could want and nevertheless wanted to take from Jimmy even the smallest tokens of his success and respectability. Chuck could easily have journeyed side by side with Jimmy and elevated Jimmy thereby, but Chuck was not himself converted to love, nor could he see the potential effects of his love for his brother. In Genesis, Esau could very well have stewed in his being a victim of one of Jacob’s schemes, focusing on the furtive theft of his rightful blessing from Isaac. One could say that Esau would be well within his rights to do so, but what is lawful is not always profitable and his life would have been considerably impoverished had “lawfulness” been the only operative category in his decision-making.

While there is much to praise about Esau, his conversion is not the central theme of the story. The focus of the story is Jacob’s transformation, his growth into the kind of person who actually deserves Isaac’s patriarchal blessing. Before encountering Esau, Jacob had already begun to change for the better and Esau’s love gave Jacob the space for that change to grow into something greater than it had been. For instance, Jacob’s concern for his wives and children’s safety shows that he can look out for others (Gen 32:7-8). His prayer to God reveals cracks in Jacob’s imagined autonomy, allowing the love of God to work on him. However, the ultimate sign of his change occurs not in Genesis 33, when he encounters Esau, but in Gen 35 when Jacob returns to Bethel. Years earlier, while fleeing from Esau, he visited Bethel and beheld in a dream a vision of a ladder upon which were angels ascending into and descending from Heaven. When he awoke from his dream, he did not build an altar, but a mere monument (Hebrew: matzebah) to mark the divine power he encountered there.

This is out of step with the pattern one sees in Genesis. Figures throughout the book typically erect altars (Hebrew: mizbeah) as places upon which to offer sacrifices—as in Noah’s altar in Gen 8:20 or Abram’s in Gen 12.8.[7] Jacob, however, acknowledges the power in Bethel, without offering thanks or worship to the God who revealed himself there. One sees clearly the distance between Jacob and the God of his fathers, who is not yet his God. When Jacob returns to Bethel in chapter 35, having encountered a twofold mercy from both the angel at Peniel and Esau, he builds an altar (mizbeah) there in Bethel, which replaces the simple monument he had built earlier. The altar as a place of sacrifice is a sign of gratitude and recognition not only that God is powerful, but also that he is good and for this goodness one ought to be thankful. Seeing the magnanimity of Esau afforded Jacob the possibility of a vision to see God similarly and to be grateful in that vision.

Esau gives everything to Jacob—far more than he deserves—much as the divine figure with whom Jacob wrestles does. Esau could have exacted revenge or taken a portion of his livestock and servants as retribution and been well within his rights, but the calculus of human moral action cannot be reduced merely to what can be adjudicated in a small claims court. Esau, though the unchosen brother, the allegedly unloved brother, the brother who should bow to Jacob on the basis of Isaac’s patriarchal blessing, serves his brother Jacob in an unexpected way by his generosity, which allows Jacob to grow into the sort of person who ought to be blessed. Love which is not based on antecedent merit can nevertheless be the cause of subsequent merit and this has the curious effect of working backwards, working out the good of actions whose ends were misguided and intended for evil.

Just as the angel with whom Jacob wrestles, Esau holds everything Jacob has in his hands and he gives it back to him with no resentment and no penalty, and then dares to increase what Jacob already has. It would be a mistake to think of this gift and increase only materially. Esau’s action affords Jacob the space for and possibility of genuine moral conversion. Esau’s belief that Jacob could be someone better than he had been is nearly causative. When we believe people to be better than they are, which can be regarded simply as loving them, it is sometimes efficacious. God, for his part, does this in a maximally efficacious way that we call conversion.[8] He gives grace to the soul that grants it the power to orient itself towards him. In our own human ways, as reflections of God’s love and power, we too can love people into being better. Our love is not always efficacious and certainly not in the primary, causative way that God’s love is. Our love is a reflection of his, not entirely as powerful, but not without its own dynamism.

The seed of Jacob’s conversion is given the right soil in which to flourish into genuine love and gratitude, all because of what Esau allows to Jacob. This radical act of mercy on Esau’s part has no corollary with what one finds between the brothers in Better Call Saul. Rather, Jimmy/Saul encounters just the opposite from Chuck and is the reason he persists as the worst parts of himself.

When I preclude the possibility of moral progress in another, I have very likely done the same to myself. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to give what you do not have, and when one does not allow grace to work on one’s own soul, it is hard to be gracious to others. Chuck does not merely name Jimmy’s reprobate behavior, he fuels it. Human beings do not live and make choices in a vacuum. As social creatures, we are conditioned, for better or worse, by the influence of those around us. We are especially conditioned by those whose love and approval we seek.

This is not entirely a bad thing, but it can be misused and twisted, as in Chuck’s case, who believes that he is not causing anything, but merely recognizing what others do not appear to see in Jimmy. In Genesis, because Esau underwent his own growth and knew that human beings can change for the better, he could conceive of the possibility of Jacob’s conversion. Like God choosing Jacob, Esau chose to love his brother long before he knew the state of his soul and whether he had become a different person. Jacob, barely on the journey of moral improvement in Genesis 33, is given the opportunity to grow further into the hope Esau no doubt had for his brother.

He is forgiven, loved, and treated with respect. This allowed the sparks of contrition and thoughtfulness to be blown into a fire of love for others and for the Lord. In the beginning of Genesis, Cain sarcastically asks God, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Esau shows that the only right answer to this question is “yes.”