Parashat Toldot (Genesis 25–28): Summary and Commentary

Parashat Toldot (“generations,” “stories”) is the sixth portion of the book of Bereshit (Genesis 25:19–28:9) and is read on the Shabbat of November 14, 2026. It is also spelled Toldos, Toledot or Toledos. It takes its name from the first sentence: “These are the generations of Yitzchak, son of Abraham” (25:19).

The tradition proposes reading each portion in four steps: what the text says, what it hints at, what the sages explain and what it conceals. Let us take them in turn.

Peshat: the simple meaning

Let us begin with what the text says, adding nothing to it.

First, the wait. Yitzchak is forty years old when he marries (25:20) and sixty when his children are born (25:26). Between those two figures, the text tells that “Yitzchak prayed to Hashem for his wife, because she was barren,” and that Hashem heard him (25:21).

Then, the pregnancy. The children “struggled within her,” and Rivkah asks: “If so, why am I?” She goes to inquire of Hashem, and the answer takes the form of a poem: two nations, two peoples who will separate, one stronger than the other, “and the older shall serve the younger” (25:22-23).

The names tell something about each. Esav comes out ruddy and hairy, “like a hairy mantle”; Yaakov comes out with his hand grasping his brother’s heel, and that is why he is so named (25:25-26). They grow up different: Esav is a “man of the field” and a hunter; Yaakov, “a simple man who dwelt in tents” (25:27). And the text gives a very human reason for their affections: Yitzchak loves Esav “because game was in his mouth”; Rivkah loves Yaakov (25:28).

The sale of the birthright is a brief scene. Esav returns exhausted and asks: “Let me swallow some of that red, red stuff”; that is why he was called Edom (25:30). Yaakov first demands the birthright, and Esav answers: “I am about to die, what use is a birthright to me?” (25:32). The text ends the scene with a dry sentence: he ate, drank, got up and left, “and Esav despised the birthright” (25:34).

Chapter 26 has Yitzchak as its protagonist, and it closely resembles Abraham’s life. There is famine, “besides the first famine that was in the days of Abraham” (26:1); Yitzchak says that his wife is his sister (26:7); Avimelech appears again (26:8-11). But there is also something of his own: he sows and reaps a hundredfold (26:12), and reopens the wells that the Philistines had stopped up (26:18). To the new wells he gives names that tell their story: Esek (“contention”), Sitnah (“hostility”) and, for the third, Rechovot (“open spaces”), with a sentence that explains it: “Now Hashem has made room for us” (26:20-22).

In the blessing, the text underlines Yitzchak’s doubt: “The voice is the voice of Yaakov, but the hands are the hands of Esav” (27:22). When Esav enters, “Yitzchak trembled with a very great trembling” (27:33). And he says: “He shall also be blessed.” Esav cries out: “Have you not reserved a blessing for me?” (27:36), and says that his brother has supplanted him twice already.

Remez: what the letters hint at

Remez means “hint.” Here the reading pauses on letters and numbers: on how a word, when the value of its letters is added up (gematria), coincides with another that illuminates its meaning. The great collector of these hints is the Baal HaTurim, Rabbi Yaakov ben Asher (13th–14th centuries), author of the Arba Turim. In Toldot he points out, among others, these eight.

The first, in Rivkah’s inquiry. “Lidrosh” (לדרוש), “to inquire” (25:22), adds up to 540, the same as “min Shem ben Noach” (מן שם בן נח), “from Shem, son of Noach”: whom she went to consult.

The second, in the answer she receives. “Shnei goyim bevitnech” (שני גוים בבטנך), “two nations are in your womb” (25:23), adds up to 502, the same as “zeh Rabbi Yehudah ve-Antoninus” (זה רבי יהודה ואנטונינוס): “these are Rabbi Yehudah and Antoninus.”

The third, in Esav’s name. “Esav” (עשו, 25:25) adds up to 376, the same as shalom (שלום), “peace.” The Baal HaTurim explains that, were it not for that name, Esav “would destroy the world.”

The fourth, in the bowl of lentils. “Nazid” (נזיד), “stew” (25:29), adds up to 71, and “el avelo” (אל אבלו), “for his mourner,” adds up to 70, which with the kolel matches: the stew that is cooked for the one in mourning.

The fifth, in Esav’s request. The initial letters of “hal’iteni na min” (הלעיטני נא מן, 25:30), “let me swallow some of,” form, rearranged, Haman (המן). The Baal HaTurim relates it to Mordechai’s buying Haman as a servant for a piece of bread, just as Yaakov bought the birthright.

The sixth, in the hunt. “Latzud” (לצוד), “to hunt” (27:3), adds up to 130, the same as min gazel (מן גזל), “from robbery”: Esav’s hunting, in this reading, was by plunder.

The seventh, in the aroma. “Vayarach” (וירח), “and he smelled” (27:27), adds up to 224, the same as “yom Pesach hayah” (יום פסח היה), “it was the day of Pesach”; and “reach” (ריח), “aroma,” adds up to 218, the same as “leil Pesach” (ליל פסח), “the night of Pesach.” The Baal HaTurim also recalls that, with Yaakov, “the aroma of the Garden of Eden entered.”

The eighth, in the trembling. “Ifo” (איפוא), “who, then?” (27:33), adds up to 98, the same as gehinnom (גהנם): Gehinnom “entered with him.” It is what Rashi also says, as we shall see.

Drash: the teaching of the sages

Rashi, with the Midrash and the Talmud, gathers here the lessons of the sages.

Two worlds in the womb. When the children “struggled” (25:22), the sages read rutz, “to run”: when Rivkah passed by the doors of Shem’s study, Yaakov ran and stirred to come out; when she passed by the doors of idolatry, it was Esav. And another reading: they were fighting over the inheritance of the two worlds.

Whom she consulted. “She went to inquire” of Hashem (25:22); for Rashi, she went to Shem’s house of study. And “two nations” (25:23) are, for the sages, Antoninus and Rabbi, “at whose table neither radish nor lettuce was ever lacking, neither in summer nor in winter” (Avodah Zarah 11a). Both are born of the same womb: “one for his wickedness and the other for his integrity.”

When they grew up. Rashi relates that, while they were small, no one examined their deeds; when they turned thirteen, one went to the houses of study and the other to idolatry. Of Esav he says that he knew how to “hunt” with his mouth: he would ask his father, “Father, how do you tithe salt and straw?”, and Yitzchak believed that he was meticulous in the commandments. By contrast, the tam (“simple”) is “one who is not skilled at deceiving”; and Yaakov’s tents were that of Shem and that of Ever.

The lentils. Rashi says that on that day Abraham died, so as not to see his grandson Esav go out on an evil path, and that Yaakov cooked lentils to comfort the mourner. Why lentils? Because they are round, like a wheel: mourning is a wheel that turns in the world. And because they have no mouth, like the mourner, who cannot speak.

Yitzchak’s eyes. To explain why his eyes dimmed, Rashi gives three reasons: because of the smoke of the incense that Esav’s wives offered to their idols; or because, when he was bound on the altar, the angels wept and their tears fell upon his eyes; or so that Yaakov would receive the blessings.

The trembling. “And Yitzchak trembled” (27:33): for the Midrash, he saw Gehinnom open beneath him. But Rashi adds a surprising reading: Yitzchak had asked himself whether he had sinned in blessing the younger before the elder; when Esav cried out that his brother had taken the birthright from him, he understood that it had not been a mistake and said: “he shall also be blessed.” And Rashi clarifies that he said it in accordance with his will, so that it would not be thought that Yaakov received the blessing only because he had deceived.

Sod: what is hidden

The Zohar

The Zohar opens the story of Yitzchak with an image of the three patriarchs and the moon. When Abraham came, he embraced the moon and brought it near. When Yitzchak came, he took it and held it as is fitting, and drew it with love, as the verse says, “his left hand under my head.” And when Yaakov came, the sun joined the moon and she shone: Yaakov was complete on all sides, and the moon was set in order in the twelve tribes. (The moon is, in the language of the Zohar, the image of Malchut.)

On the sentence “and Yitzchak was forty years old when he married,” the Zohar asks why it counts his age, and answers that Yitzchak was included in the north and the south, in fire and water. And it pauses on how Rivkah is presented: “daughter of Betuel the Aramean, from Padan Aram, sister of Lavan the Aramean.” Why so much detail? Because she was among the wicked and did not do what they did. Rabbi Yehudah adds that she was only three years old when she did, with the servant, all that she did.

The columns: right and left

The Zohar itself clarifies that the south is “the right.” To say that Yitzchak is included in the north and the south is to say that he gathers the two sides of the tree of the sefirot, right and left, mercy and severity. You can see how those columns are distributed in the guide to the sefirot.

More weekly commentary in the list of parashiot.