So t- tell me a little bit just first of all what are the lexical points that you see from that, and what is really going on? I mean, obviously neither of them heard the oracle, so what is really going on there? So tell us about what, what the, what the points of contact are between this, this story of Jacob and Esau and, and the, uh, the oracle, and what it means that we're finding these echoes.

You have these amazing word plays later on.

So, um, uh, in, in 27, um, Jacob, uh, steals- Uh, Esau's blessing, and, uh, and Esau cries out in, in, uh, in anguish, "He, he took my blessing." And then when they finally meet again after Jacob's adventures, uh, in the East, and Jacob is trying to get on Esau's, uh, good side, he's really doing whatever he can to, to, to placate him, and he gives him all these presents, and he says, "Take these presents." But one of the words for present in Biblical Hebrew is a blessing, and so the text has him say, well, it has Jacob say to Esau, "Take my blessing," which is, uh, this great, uh, echo of when Jacob took, uh, Esau's blessing.

We have ambiguity there, too, about who are Esau's 400 people.

Jacob sends, uh, spies who end up being the most incompetent spies in history because they come back and say, "Oh, well, we saw your brother, and he's coming towards you with 400 men." And so, okay, did you check whether they're armed, for example? What are these 400 men here? Are they coming to kill me? Are they coming to roll out a, a red carpet? And it, it's, it's just an amazing story.

It's very, very well told.

So a- a- again, getting back to your question, i- in, in 27, wh- where Isaac, uh, blesses one of the sons, he does say to Esau, "You will serve your brother." So you might think that the ambiguity has been resolved there, that it's gonna be Esau who's gonna be serving Jacob, but it hasn't been because the story doesn't actually assume that a blessing will happen for whoever i- is, is, is physically in the room when it's uttered and not towards the person who it was meant to be uttered for.

Uh, why don't you run on just to finish us off? Tell us a little bit about that.

So why does God command Moses and Aaron to, to take Aaron's flowering staff to the rock if they're in, if they're not instructed to use it? And your take on this staff symbolism and how its presence really shapes the understanding of this miracle that we encounter in this week's Parsha.

Okay.

Uh, great to be here.

Thanks for having me.

Um, so you kind of gave away the ending a little bit, uh, by calling it Aaron's flowering staff.

Uh, the story of, uh, Mei Merivah, uh, which we, we can translate into English as, uh, strife water, uh, as strife water, um, this is, uh, you know, it's an age-old, uh, crux, uh, the commentary, uh, on Numbers, Bamidbar, by, uh, by Jacob Milgrom in the JPS series.

I think he, he lists 12 different, uh, answers that have been given, uh, since the Middle Ages.

What, what does it, what does it suggest, um, really about the responsibility of, of, of leaders and, and, and what is it that, um, that the priestly authors like had in, had in mind, um, with this?