Throughout the book of Genesis, that is to say, the pattern of God’s election is persistently, even perversely antinomian: Ever and again, the elder to whom the birthright properly belongs is supplanted by the younger, whom God has chosen in defiance of all natural “justice.” This is practically the running motif uniting the whole text, from Cain and Abel to Manasseh and Ephraim. But—and this is crucial—that pattern is one not of exclusion and inclusion, but rather of a providential delay and divagation in the course of the natural “justice” of primogeniture, as a result of which the scope of
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