Musar zu Mischlej 8:12

Let us now explore the mystical dimension of the name יעקב. In Genesis 27,35 Isaac says to Esau: בא אחיך במרמה, "Your brother came with wisdom to take the blessings." This means that Jacob came to outwit Esau. Isaac referred to Jacob having outwitted what Esau stands for, i.e. Satan, the pollutant of the original serpent, seeing Esau is also Edom, the classic symbol of all that is polluted and cursed. This original serpent had been described in the Torah as ערום, sly (Genesis 3,1). This being so, Jacob had to resort to a wily strategy to outwit such an opponent. He had to counter with ערמה, slyness, in order to defeat the serpent or its representative at its own game. We find something similar when Rashi explains (Numbers 31,8) that the reason the Torah stresses that Bileam was killed by the sword was because the sword was his stock-in-trade. He should have stuck to his trade. Isaac had told Esau that he would live by his sword (27,40), whereas the traditional weapon of Israel is the mouth, i.e. prayer. Since Bileam perverted his function by using Israel's weapon, the mouth, Israel used his own traditional weapon against him. In order to best him absolutely, he had to be killed by the weapon that he had once considered himself a champion of. The Zohar goes as far as to say that the only way it was possible to kill Bileam was by the sword. Onkelos explains the meaning of יודע ציד in 25,27 as being "Esau was shrewd." The Tziyoni derives from that word נחשירכן (the word Onkelos uses to explain יודע ציד), that the mystical dimension of the serpent is contained in the ירך, reproductive organ, thigh, and that Esau had the likeness of a serpent tatooed on his thigh. This was the reason that Samael, or the spiritual representative of Esau, tried to injure that organ of Jacob's during the nocturnal confrontation. The reason he did not succeed was that Jacob did not contain any residual pollution of the serpent. Bileam alluded to this when he said in Numbers 23,23: כי לא נחש ביעקב, that Jacob was not infected by the serpent. Esau is rooted in the cursed serpent. Jacob and his descendants ירך יעקב, are of blessed origin. Jacob had to come with עקבה, trickery, the craft of the serpent, and he wrested the blessing from the clutches of the unworthy. We know from Proverbs 8,12 that חכמה and ערמה are used interchangeably, i.e. אני חכמה, שכנתי ערמה, "I, wisdom, am neighbor to ערמה.” Later on, when he had established a hold in the Celestial Regions, the source of all blessings, he is referred to as ישראל, since he had ascended to these "higher" regions. The level of ישראל in those regions is very high, seeing that Israel surpassed the level of the angels during his ascent. He occupies a position there that is not even accessible to the angels. He proceeds to rise higher and higher until he even surpasses the region of the ministering angels, the most highly placed angels. It is this that Onkelos referred to when he described Israel as "you are a great lion before G–d and men."