No Canaanite Women

The end of Parshat Toldot has Yitzchak giving final instructions to Yakov as he is ready to leave home.

He is told that he must not marry a woman from the daughters of Canaan. He is also told to go to Padan Aram, to the house of Betuel, and to take a wife from the daughters of Lavan.

If he obeys his orders, he will be blessed with the blessing of his grandfather, Avraham. HaShem will bless him and he will be fruitful and multiply.

What is striking about the story is how Eisav draws conclusions from the realization that his father is strongly against marrying Canaanite women.

Rashi tells us that at that point, Eisav already was married to several women from Canaan. He added evil to his evil, as Rashi puts it. Instead of divorcing his undesirable wives in order to show his father that his wishes mattered, he keeps his wives and goes and marries Machlat, the daughter of Yishmael.

This is a reminder that when one chooses the path of evil, it overtakes and envelops him. Even when he tries to do something good, somehow these intentions are tainted.

Eisav wanted to show some respect towards his father by marrying a woman not from Canaan. But it didn’t occur to him that he needed to get rid of the women he already married from Canaan.

Unless someone goes through a serious Teshuva process, it will be very difficult to shake off all of the acquired negative traits.