5:4 With ten tests our father Abraham was tested and he passed them all, to make known how great was our father Abraham's love [for God].
Abraham is the only one of the three Patriarchs to feature in Avot at all; there is no mention of Isaac or Jacob, notwithstanding their importance and notwithstanding the many lessons we learn from studying their lives in the Torah and in midrash. God speaks to all three and there is no reason to doubt either His love for them or their love for Him. We know relatively little of Isaac’s life, but Jacob is by far the best-chronicled Patriarch. Though he lives for rather less time than his grandfather Abraham, the narrative of his life and death occupies more than half the Book of Genesis, rather more than twice as much space as is given to the Torah’s account of Abraham.
From the Biblical narrative alone it is clear that Jacob faced at least ten tests of his own. These are, in chronological order:
(i) having to masquerade as Esau in order to obtain the latter’s blessing from Isaac;
(ii) having to flee from his home to escape the threat of being murdered by Esau;
(iii) having to work a full seven years for the hand of his promised bride Rachel;
(iv) waking up the morning after his marriage to discover that he had married not Rachel but her sister Leah;
(v) having his wages constantly changed by Laban;
(vi) having to face Esau and his militia after leaving Laban,
(vii) Rachel’s death in the course of his travels;
(viii) the abduction and rape of his daughter Dinah;
(ix) the loss, presumed dead, of his favourite son Joseph;
(x) having to part with his youngest son, Benjamin, in exchange for food.
One can add even more tests that are based on the Torah text, without the need to draw on midrashic teachings: for example, Jacob’s fight with the angelic stranger and his being told to leave Israel in the knowledge that he would not see his Promised Land again. Yet none of this is mentioned in Pirkei Avot or in the usual commentaries. Why should this be?
In the absence of guidance from our Sages, we can offer some rationalizations to explain away the fact that Avot does not teach us anything about the tests that Jacob had to surmount. Possible explanations are that
(i) what applies to Abraham's tests applies equally to Jacob, so there is no need to repeat the lesson;
(ii) the reason why Jacob passed his ten tests was because, in some way, his task was made easier by the knowledge that his grandfather had been tested ten times and had come away successful;
(iii) Jacob did not pass his tests with the same high level of trust in God as Abraham possessed and his tests therefore provided a less powerful lesson;
(iv) while, from our perspective, Jacob passed all his tests, God in some way expected more from him.
Looking at the Patriarchs at a distance of three millennia or so, it is easier for us to recognize and admire the high level of faith, love and confidence in God that Abraham possessed, but nonetheless to identify with Jacob – a physically strong but more emotionally frail and troubled personality, whose anxieties and life experiences more closely resemble our own. Reading the Torah, one never expects Abraham to fall short of the mark. Jacob however stumbles through from crisis to crisis, much as so many of us do in our own lives.
If we subscribe to the notion that every one of us will have our own “ten tests” to cope with in our own lives, Jacob epitomizes the fate we share with him. We have to cope with trials and tribulations, whether forced upon us or of our own making – and none of us can expect to be praised and held up as examples from whom later generations can learn. Even so, as Avot reminds us (at 5:26), the rewards we receive for passing our tests are commensurate with our struggle to pass them, as was the case with Jacob himself.
