Outwardly, the material world opposes and objects to all spiritual things; but trapped within it are the most sublime spiritual potentials. When Esau heard his father's words, he cried out with a great and bitter outcry; and said to his father, "Bless me, also, my father!" And [Itzaak] said [to Esau], “Your brother came, with cunning, and took away your blessings
-- Bereshit 27.34-35
Jacob, as the Torah testifies, was "a man of integrity, a dweller in the tents [of study]," in contrast to his twin brother, Esau, who is described as "a skilled trapper, a man of the field [of hunting].".
Thus, we can appreciate the depth of Esau's anger when Jacob outmaneuvered him at his own game, obtaining the blessings of "The dew of heaven and the fat of the earth" through sneaky cunning.
The story of the stolen blessings is often understood as the competition between the two brothers for the legacy of Abraham and Isaac, with Isaac mistakenly taking Esau as the worthy heir, while Rebecca, knowing the true nature of her eldest son, devises the plan that would put Jacob by Isaac's bedside at the crucial moment.
However, a closer reading of the Torah account indicates that Isaac was well aware of the difference between his two sons, and that the blessing he intended to bestow upon Esau was not that of Abraham's spiritual inheritance.
A particularly revealing passage is where Esau discovers that Jacob has received the blessings and pleads with Isaac, "Bless me too, my father!" "But I have made him your master," Isaac says. "I have given him the blessings of grain and wine. What can I do for you now, my son?" "You have only one blessing, my father?!" Esau sobs. "Bless me too, my father!""
Finally, Isaac blesses Esau that "Your dwelling place will be the fatness of the earth, and the dew of heaven above" (the fatness of the earth and the dew of heaven themselves having already been bestowed upon Jacob), and promises him that in case Jacob's descendants should sin and become unworthy of his blessings, they will frustrate his dominion over Esau's descendants in material matters.
But in the very next chapter we read how Isaac quotes Jacob, and... blesses him. "May the Almighty God bless you; make you fruitful and multiply you, and you shall become a very numerous nation. And may He grant you the blessing of Abraham, to you and to your descendants, so that you may inherit the land of your dwelling, which God has given to Abraham.".
So Yitzchak never intended to make Esau the father of the people of Israel, he never thought of bequeathing him the Holy Land, he never considered him heir to "the blessing of Abraham".
There were two distinct blessings on Isaac all the time (Isaav seems to have perceived this when he exclaimed, "Do you have only one blessing, my father?!"), intended for his two sons: Jacob was to be given the spiritual legacy of Abraham, while Isaav was to be granted the blessings of the material world.
In light of this, Jacob's behavior seems even more out of place. Not only did he resort to deceit and artifice to receive his father's blessing, but he did so for purely material gifts, tailor-made for his physical brother, while a second, spiritual set of blessings had been reserved for him all along. Why couldn't Jacob reconcile himself to this division of roles and resources? Why did this "upright" man wear Esau's clothes, covering his skin with goatskin to give the impression of being his hairy brother when touched by his blind father, and deceive Isaac into granting him the material world as well?
Originally, "God made man upright" and placed him in an upright world: good was good and evil was evil, and Eden was a place on earth with clearly defined boundaries. There was no shame in this world, no doubt, nor any of the other attendants of ambiguity.
A serpentine creature inhabited this straight world. "The serpent... the most cunning of all the animals of the field that God created, induced the first human couple to taste the fruit of the 'tree of knowledge of good and evil' so that they could 'be, like God, knowing good and evil.'".
But what in God is the highest sublimation, in mortal man is confusion. In God, the "knowledge of good and evil" is the knowledge of His singular essence, of the Divine goodness that permeates the realm of good and hides behind the facade of evil; in man, trying to know both good and evil is to mix the two, so that good gets lost in evil and evil infiltrates good.
Adam's sin necessitated his expulsion from the Garden of Eden, the sanctuary of unadulterated good reserved for original man. It also signified the collapse of the original structure of Creation. "Good" and "evil" lost the absolute demarcations they possessed before man tasted the knowledge of evil. The holiest and purest things became susceptible to the baseness and selfishness of the animalistic nature within man, as sparks of holiness were scattered throughout the profane realm.
From that moment on, the material world has been both a prison and a channel of life for the soul of man, both a quagmire and a treasure.
Materialism, with its bleakness, temporality, and self-absorption, is the crudest of veils obscuring Divine truth and distancing the soul from its source; but it is also home to the "sparks of holiness" that fell and became integrated within it when the primordial serpent made our world a mixture of good and evil. Outwardly, the material world opposes and objects to all spiritual things; but trapped within it are the most sublime spiritual potentials.
""The countenance of Jacob," the Talmud tells us, "resembles the countenance of Adam." For Jacob's mission in life was to rectify Adam's sin, restore the broken cosmic order, and release the sparks of holiness from their corporeal captivity.
So Jacob could not be content with the spiritual blessings Isaac had reserved for him. It was imperative that he obtain the dew of heaven and the fat of the earth, that he receive the blessings of grain and wine. It was essential that he, not his material brother, be made master over the material world.
Originally, Esau was meant to be Jacob's partner in the endeavor to redeem the "sparks of holiness." Esau's cunning and hunting skills were to be employed in the task of outmaneuvering the primordial serpent and diverting the earth's material resources to support Jacob's spiritual endeavors, thereby harnessing its holy potential for holy purposes.
But Esau failed in his mission. He entered the realm of worldly pursuits and became a materialist instead of a hunter of material things. Therefore, Jacob had to assume both roles. He had to become both a trapper and a sublimater, both the shrewd procurer of material things and the upright tzaddik who uses them solely to serve God.
To gain the material blessings Isaac had intended for Esau, Jacob had to wear Esau's clothes and adopt Esau's deceitful ways. His own righteous nature could not have snatched material dominion from the serpent's grasp, just as a straight arrow cannot pierce the heart of a complex labyrinth. "With the pure, be pure," the Psalmist advises, "and with the wayward, be crooked.".
Such is the authentic Jewish approach to the material world. This is a world that recognizes no master or authority, that considers itself to have no other function or purpose than its own perseverance and growth. Therefore, whoever enters this world—and they must, by decree of Him who invested our souls in a body and material environment—must master the "Eisaurian" artifices of duplicity and deceit. They eat and drink, ostensibly to nourish their physical life; they engage in business, ostensibly to increase their material wealth; they build a career and a position in the community, ostensibly to accumulate prestige and power. For all intentions and purposes, they are a full participant in the give and take of material life.
But it is only the "take"—bringing matter into the realm of the spirit—that he is seeking; when the time comes for the "give"—making matter more materialistic—he is unwilling to pay the price. Here he becomes a shameless manipulator, claiming the choice portions of the material kingdom for himself, but refusing to relate to the material on its terms, the terms of the material: refusing to care, refusing to get involved, refusing to pursue it without ulterior motives.
The Jew wears the garments of Esau, but refuses to let the garments define him. He disguises himself as material, but this is merely a ruse, a trick by which to capture the physical and exploit it toward a divine end.
Based on Likutéi Sijot, Vol. 1, pp. 55-56
Extracted from "The Rebbe Teaches" Lubavitch South American Publishing House