Note 31 — NEW LIFE OF JACOB
Reading edition
The Talmud says: “Read not ‘and he kissed him,’ but read ‘and he bit him’” (Pirke d’Rab Eliezer, chap. 36); and Rabbi Yanai says: “Esau did not come to kiss him, but to bite him; only the neck of Jacob our father became as hard as marble, and this blunted the teeth of the wicked one. And what is taught by the expression ‘And they wept?’ ‘The one wept for his neck, and the other for his teeth” (“Midrash Rabbah,” c. 68). Aben Ezra says that this exposition is only fit for children.