First, I want to express my appreciation that you gave this some thought and made the key distinction I was aiming for: that a gesture like bowing (as well as genuflecting, kneeling, kissing, etc) has different meanings in different contexts. It is not to be thought of as latria, the supreme adoration given to God alone.
So thank you for that!
"...do you see the "veneration" that Catholics give to Mary as no more than the "respect" that Jacob gave Esau as he approached him?"
Think of it as being on a spectrum. The fraught relationship between Jacob and Esau is not a model of the relationship between Christians and Christ's mother. I think it is more adequately imaged in Revelation 12, especially the first and last verses of that chapter:
So the better foreshadowing of Mary in the OT is maybe that glimpse of how King Solomon treated Bathsheba. This gives us a royal Biblical cultural orientation on what sort of honor was considered apt and right for a Queen Mother:
1 Kings 2:19Here’s the King bowing to his mother. Does that mean she’s equal to God? No. It doesn’t even mean she’s equal to the King. It means he’s pleased to honor her because of her royal dignity, her relationship as Queen Mother.
When Bathsheba went to King Solomon to speak to him for Adonijah, the king stood up to meet her, bowed down to her and sat down on his throne. He had a throne brought for the king’s mother, and she sat down at his right hand.
If such is true even of Solomon, it is true to an even fuller degree of Christ, Who is the King, and whose Mother is worthy of greater honor, surely,than was Bathsheba.
There's no question that in Solomon's time, the most highly favored women in the Kingdom would have been his royal mother, who sits on a throne at his right hand. (He may have had 700 wives, but a man has only one mother. This is why the King's mother--- not his wife --- is generally singled out for honor.)
Similarly, Mary is the "most highly favored" --- the Angelic Salutation tells us at least that much. Hence the Catholic term for the honor accorded her, "hyperdulia," which means the highest degree of honor given to a human person.
She who was, and is, His lowly handmaid. A lovely scene is before us: the last being first, the humble one being exalted by her Savior, her Son.
Good grief! Project much?
Well, THIS sure has to be tradition, because the bible records no such EXALTATION.
This is something that Rome has created.
Evidently, as much as Catholics would like to honor Mary, the fact remains that she required, as you noted, a Savior...and thus was simply a human sinner like the rest of us. This unavoidable conclusion makes veneration a tragic, overworked error on Rome's part. Sorry.