Endnote 3 – Jacob’s Terrible Burden

The Rabbis later read this phenomenon into a biblical verse in Ecclesiastes (10:5), which they understood (more literally than they might have) as speaking of “an error which issues from a ruler.” Although it is not the contextual meaning of the verse, it is true to the biblical mindset. According to this mindset, Jephthah must sacrifice his daughter to fulfill his vow: “If you deliver the Ammonites into my hands, then whatever comes out the door of my house to meet me on my safe return…shall be the Lord’s and shall be offered by me as a burnt offering” (Judges 11:30, 31), and even Ahasuerus’s misbegotten genocidal decree to permit the nations to “destroy, massacre and exterminate” the Jews (Esther 3:13) cannot be revoked, but only counteracted (Esther 8:8). The Rabbis not only understood the biblical point of view here, but themselves subscribed to some version of it, at least to the extent that it appears as a motif in some legends in the Talmud and Midrash (for example, Palestinian Talmud Shabbat 14d and Babylonian Talmud Ketubot 23a).