בס”ד
In this week’s Torah reading we find Eisav, the son of Yitzchak deceiving his father by marring a good woman. It is very hard to finght with this type of deceving.
Based on Likkutei Sichot, vol 35, p. 113
The Three Faces of Evil: When Evil Disguises Itself as Good
What is the worst kind of evil? The Torah teaches us that not all evil is obvious. Some forms are easy to recognize, while others hide behind a mask of goodness. The most dangerous form is the one that looks righteous on the outside but remains corrupt within.
Esau’s Marriage: A Lesson in Hidden Evil
This week’s Torah portion, Toldot, tells us about Isaac and his wife Rebecca and their two sons, Jacob and Esau.
At the end of the Torah portion, we read that Esau married Mahalath, the daughter of Ishmael, the son of Abraham.
The Torah describes this marriage as another wicked act on Esau’s part. Rashi, the famous Torah commentator, explains that Esau added wickedness to the wickedness he had already committed by marrying another woman without divorcing his previous wives.
But this raises an interesting question.
At that time in history, a man was permitted to marry more than one wife. So what exactly was wrong with Esau marrying another woman? Why was this particular marriage considered an additional act of wickedness?
The answer lies in understanding the difference between genuine goodness and the appearance of goodness.
Mahalath: A Righteous Woman
Rashi’s explanation becomes clearer when we look at Mahalath herself.
Mahalath was actually a good and righteous woman. She was the daughter of Ishmael, who had repented towards the end of his life. We see this when Ishmael gave his father, Abraham, the honor of walking ahead of him at Abraham’s burial, despite being thirteen years older.
Mahalath was therefore the daughter of a man who had done Teshuvah (repentance) and the granddaughter of Abraham, one of the greatest righteous figures in Jewish history.
Our Sages also teach an interesting lesson from her name. Mahalath is associated with the Hebrew concept of forgiveness. From this, we learn that when a person gets married, their sins are forgiven, and they are considered like a completely new person.
Clearly, Mahalath was a woman of merit.
But Esau did not divorce his previous wives when he married her. Those marriages had brought great suffering and anguish to his parents, Isaac and Rebecca.
By marrying a righteous woman without ending his previous relationships, Esau was not genuinely changing his ways. Instead, he was creating the appearance of being a better person.
He wanted his father to see him as someone who had chosen a good and righteous wife, while in reality he continued living exactly as before.
That is why this marriage represented an additional level of wickedness: Esau was using goodness as a disguise for evil.
The Three Types of Evil
From this story, we can learn that there are three different forms of evil, each more difficult to recognize and overcome than the previous one.
1. Open Evil: Esau’s Confrontation with Jacob
The first type is obvious evil.
We see this in Esau’s relationship with his brother Jacob. In the Torah portion Vayishlach, Esau approaches Jacob with four hundred armed men.
Esau makes no attempt to hide his intentions. His behavior clearly reveals his hostility and aggression.
This type of evil is relatively easy to recognize. You can see that something is wrong, understand the danger, and choose not to follow that path.
When evil presents itself openly, at least we know what we are dealing with.
2. Hidden Evil: Laban’s Deception
The second type of evil is much more subtle. It is represented by Laban, Jacob’s father-in-law.
Laban was a master deceiver. Unlike Esau, he did not appear to be an openly wicked person. He seemed like an ordinary individual.
However, whenever Jacob made an agreement with him, Laban would change the terms. He would promise one thing and do something completely different.
For example, Jacob worked for seven years to marry Rachel, only to discover that Laban had given him Leah instead.
Laban repeatedly manipulated situations, changed agreements, and attempted to deceive Jacob.
This is a more difficult type of evil because it does not immediately reveal itself. You do not necessarily see someone acting wickedly. You simply notice that something is not right.
Consider the difference between Jacob’s experiences with Esau and Laban.
Jacob confronted Esau and his angel in a single night. But dealing with Laban required twenty years of hard work.
This teaches us that hidden deception can be much harder to overcome than open confrontation.
3. Evil Disguised as Good: Esau’s Greatest Deception
The third type is the most dangerous of all: evil that presents itself as goodness.
This is the deeper meaning of Esau’s marriage to Mahalath.
On the surface, everything looked wonderful. Esau had married a righteous woman from a respected family. He appeared to be making a positive change in his life.
But underneath that appearance, nothing had changed.
He had not divorced his previous wives, nor had he abandoned his wicked lifestyle. He simply added a righteous-looking element to a life that remained unchanged.
In other words, Esau wanted to look good without actually becoming good.
Our Sages offer a powerful metaphor to explain this kind of behavior: the pig.
The Pig: A Symbol of False Goodness
According to the Torah, land animals must have two specific signs to be kosher:
- They must have split hooves.
- They must chew their cud.
The pig has split hooves, but it does not chew its cud.
The Midrash describes the pig as an animal that stretches out its feet, almost as if to announce:
“Look! I have split hooves. I am kosher. I am pure!”
But on the inside, it does not meet the requirements of a kosher animal.
The pig displays one external sign of purity while lacking the internal qualities that would make it genuinely pure.
This is precisely the symbolism of Esau.
He presented himself as someone who had made a positive and righteous choice by marrying Mahalath. But internally, he remained the same person.
He had the appearance of goodness without the substance of goodness.
And this is perhaps the most dangerous mixture of all: when good and evil become so intertwined that it is difficult to distinguish between them.
Living in a World of Falsehood
The Zohar and the mystical teachings of Judaism describe our world as Alma de-Shekra — a world of falsehood.
Why?
Because things are not always what they appear to be.
Something may look good on the outside, but when we examine it more deeply, we discover that its true nature is quite different.
This is particularly challenging because we naturally tend to judge things by what we can see. We are impressed by appearances, words, and external signs of goodness.
But genuine goodness is not determined by appearances. It is determined by what lies beneath the surface.
Esau’s marriage to Mahalath is a powerful reminder of this lesson. Although Mahalath herself was righteous, Esau used the marriage to create a misleading impression of himself. He wanted to appear transformed without making any real changes.
The Challenge: Looking Within Ourselves
This Torah lesson is not only about Esau, Laban, or the characters in the Torah. It is also about us.
We need to ask ourselves some difficult questions:
- Are there areas in our lives where we are more concerned with appearing good than actually becoming good?
- Do we sometimes use positive actions to cover up behaviors that we know are wrong?
- Are we able to recognize deception when it comes disguised as something positive?
- Do we judge people and situations by their external appearance, or do we take the time to look deeper?
The three types of evil teach us an important progression.
Open evil is easy to recognize.
Hidden evil requires awareness and discernment.
But evil disguised as good requires something even deeper: honesty, inner strength, and the willingness to examine what is really happening beneath the surface.
The greatest challenge is not simply to avoid doing evil. It is to make sure that the goodness we display on the outside is also genuine on the inside.
True goodness is not about looking righteous. It is about becoming righteous.
Good Shabbos.
Talk from Rabbi Tuvia Serber
The above is a representation of the spoken text converted to written text.
Footnotes
- Genesis 18:11. Please check the verse, because the speaker names the earlier portion unclearly in the recording.
- Genesis 24:1. The verse says Abraham was zaken ba bayamim.
- Genesis 25:1-2. Abraham took Keturah, who bore him six sons.
- A reference to the saying “a five-year-old is ready for Scripture” (Mishnah Avot 5:21), which the speaker uses to explain how Rashi writes.
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