Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Genesis 27:1

Isaac Prepares to Bless Esau

v. 1. And it came to pass that when Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim, so that he could not see, he called Esau, his eldest son, and said unto him, My son; and he said unto him, Behold, here am I. Isaac was by this time one hundred and thirty-seven years old, and the infirmities of old age were beginning to show themselves in his failing eyesight; literally, in his eyes becoming weak away from seeing. He now, in a formal and solemn manner, called for Esau, his favorite son.

v. 2. And he said, Behold now, I am old, I know not the day of my death. As a matter of fact, he lived another forty-three years, but the preparations which he made showed the prudence which characterized him. Every believer should set his house in order betimes and be ready to meet death when it comes.

v. 3. Now, therefore, take, I pray thee, thy weapons, thy quiver and thy bow, and go out to the field, and take me some venison;

v. 4. and make me savory meat, such as I love, and bring it to me, that I may eat; that my soul may bless thee before I die. It was not the sudden whim of an old man which was here revealed, but a carefully prepared plan, according to which Esau was to obtain some game by chase and then to prepare the meat in a way of which he knew that it pleased his father. In spite of the divine utterance before the birth of the children, which was undoubtedly known to him, and the careless and almost contemptuous disposal of his birthright by Esau, in spite, also, of the latter’s objectionable marriage to the Canaanitish woman, Isaac persisted in his preference for Esau, even in the very important matter of transmitting the Messianic promise. Even in believers the weakness of the flesh will often grow into a sulky obstinacy in ignoring God’s manifest guidance.

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

EXPOSITION

Gen 27:1

And it came to pass, that when Isaac was old,according to the generally accepted calculation, in his one hundred and thirty-seventh year. Joseph, having been introduced to Pharaoh in his thirtieth year (Gen 41:46), and having been thirty-nine years of age (Gen 45:6) when his father, aged one hundred and thirty (Gen 47:9), came down to Egypt, must have been born before Jacob was ninety-one; consequently, as his birth occurred in the fourteenth year of Jacob’s sojourn in Mesopotamia (cf. Gen 30:25 with Gen 29:18, Gen 29:21, Gen 29:27), Jacob’s flight must have taken place when he was seventy-seven. But Jacob was born in Isaac’s sixtieth year (Gen 25:26); hence Isaac was now one hundred and thirty-seven. There are, however, difficulties connected with this reckoning which lay it open to suspicion. For one thing, it postpones Jacob’s marriage to an extremely late period. Then it takes for granted that the term of Jacob’s service in Padan-aram was only twenty years (Gen 31:41), whereas it is not certain whether it was not forty, made up, according to the computation of Kennicott, of fourteen years’ service, twenty years’ assistance as a neighbor, and six years of work for wages. And, lastly, it necessitates the birth of Jacob’s eleven children in the short space of six years, a thing which appears to some, it not impossible, at least highly improbable. Adopting the larger number as the term of Jacob’s sojourn in Mesopotamia, Isaac would at this time be only one hundred and seventeen (vide ‘Chronologer of Jacob’s Life,’ 31.41)and his eyes were dim,literally, were failing in strength, hence becoming dim (1Sa 3:2). In describing Jacob’s decaying vision a different verb is employed (Gen 48:10)so that he could not see,literally, from seeing; with the inf. constr, conveying the idea of receding from the state of perfect visionhe called Esau his eldest son,Esau was born before his twin brother Jacob (Gen 25:25)and said unto him, My son:i.e. my special son, my beloved son, the language indicating fondness and partiality (Gen 25:28)and he (Esau) said unto him, Behold, here am I.

Gen 27:2

And he (i.e. Isaac) said, Behold now, I am old, and know not the day of my death. Isaac had manifestly become apprehensive of the near approach of dissolution. His failing sight, and probably the recollection that Ishmael, his half-brother, had died at 137 (if that was Isaac’s age at this time; wide supra), occasioned the suspicion that his own end could not be remote, though he lived forty-three or sixty-three years longer, according to the calculation adopted, expiring at the ripe age of 180 (vide Gen 30:28).

Gen 27:3

Now therefore take, I pray thee, thy weapons,the word “weapon” signifying a utensil, vessel, or finished instrument of any sort (cf. Gen 14:1-24 :53; Gen 31:37; Gen 45:20). Here it manifestly denotes weapons employed in hunting, and in particular those next specifiedthy quiverthe , : from to hang, properly is “that which is suspended;” hence a quiver, (LXX.), pharetram (Vulgate), which commonly depends from the shoulders or girdle (Aben Ezra, Rosenmller, Keil, Kalisch, et alii), though by some it is rendered “sword” (Onkelos; Syriac)and thy bow (vide Gen 21:16), and go oat to the field,i.e. the open country inhabited by wild beasts, as opposed to cities, villages, or camps (cf. Gen 25:27)and take me some venisonliterally, hunt for me hunting, i.e. the produce of hunting, as in Gen 25:28.

Gen 27:4

And make me savory meat,”delicious food,” from a root whose primary idea is to taste, or try the flavor, of a thing. Schultens observes that the corresponding Arabic term is specially applied to dishes made of flesh taken in hunting, and highly esteemed by nomad tribessuch as I love (cf. Gen 25:28, the ground of his partiality for Esau), and bring it to me, that I may eat;”Though Isaac was blind and weak in his eyes, yet it seem-eth his body was of a strong constitution, seeing he was able to eat of wild flesh, which is of harder digestion” (Willet)thatthe conjunction followed by a future commonly expresses a purpose (cf. Exo 9:14)my soul may bless theenotwithstanding the oracle (Gen 25:23) uttered so many (fifty-seven or seventy-seven) years ago, Isaac appears to have clung to the belief that Esau was the destined heir of the covenant blessing; quoedam fuit coecitatis species, quae illi magis obstitit quam externa oeulorum caligo (Calvin)before I die.

Gen 27:5

And Rebekah (who, though younger than Isaac, must also have been old) heard when Isaac spakeliterally, in the speaking of Isaac; with the inf. forming a periphrasis for the gerund, and being commonly rendered by when (Gen 14:1-24 :30; Gen 31:18), the subordinated noun being changed in translation into the subject of the sentenceto Esau his son (to which the “her son” of Gen 27:6 stands in contrast). And Esau went to the field to hunt for venison,literally, to hunt hunting. (vide on Gen 27:3) and to bring iti.e. “the savory meat” or “delicious food,” as directed (Gen 27:4).

Gen 27:6, Gen 27:7

And Rebekah spake unto Jacob her son,i.e. her favorite, in contrast to Esau, Isaac’s son (Gen 27:5)saying, Behold, I heard thy father speak unto Esau thy brother, saying, Bring me venison (vide on Gen 27:3), and make me savory meat, that I may eat (literally, and I shall eat), and bless theethe lengthened form of the future in this and the preceding verb (cf. in Gen 27:4) is expressive of Isaac’s self-excitement and emphatic determinationbefore the Lord. The word Jehovah, by modern criticism regarded as a sign of divided authorship, is satisfactorily explained by remembering that Rebekah is speaking not of the blessing of God’s general providence, but of the higher benediction of the covenant (Hengstenberg). The phrase, though not included in Isaac’s address to Esau, need not be regarded as due to Rebekah’s invention. She may have understood it to be implied in her husband’s language, though it was not expressed (cf. Gen 14:20). That it was designedly omitted by Isaac in consequence of the worldly character of Esau appears as little likely as that it was deliberately inserted by Rebekah to whet her favorite’s ambition (Kalisch). As to meaning, the sense may be that this patriarchal benediction was to be bestowed sincerely (Menochius), in presence and by the authority of God (Ainsworth, Bush, Clericus); but the use of the term Jehovah rather points to the idea that Rebekah regarded Isaac simply “as the instrument of the living and personal God, who directed the concerns of the chosen race (Hengstenberg). Before my death. Since Rebekah makes no remark as to the groundlessness of Isaac’s fear, it is not improbable that she too shared in her bed-ridden husband’s expectations that already he was “in the presence of” his end.

Gen 27:8

Now therefore, my son,Jacob at this time was not a lad, but a grown man of mature years, which shows that in the following transaction he was rather an accomplice than a toolobey my voice according to that which I command thee. We can scarcely here think of a mother laying her imperative instructions on a docile and unquestioning child; but of a wily woman detailing her well-concocted scheme to a son whom she discerns to be possessed of a like crafty disposition with herself, and whom she seeks to gain over to her stratagem by reminding him of the close and endearing relationship in which they stand to one another.

Gen 27:9, Gen 27:10

Go now to the flock, and fetch meliterally, take for me, i.e. for my purposes (cf. Gen 15:9)from thence two good kids of the goats. According to Jarchi kids were selected as being the nearest approach to the flesh of wild animals. Two were specified, it has been thought, either to extract from both the choicest morsels (Menochius), or to have the appearance of animals taken in hunting (Rosenmller), or to make an ample provision as of venison (Lunge), or to make a second experiment, if the first failed (Willet). And I will make themprobably concealing any difference in taste by means of condiments, though Isaac’s palate would not be sensitive in consequence of age and debilitysavory meat for thy father, such as he loveth (vide Gen 27:4): and thou shalt bring it to thy father, that he may eat (literally, and he shall eat), and that he may bless thee , in order that, from the idea of passing over to that which one desires to attain; less fully in Gen 27:4before his death. Clearly Rebekah was anticipating Isaac’s early dissolution, else why this indecent haste to forestall Esau? There is no reason to surmise that she believed any connection to subsist between the eating and the benediction, though she probably imagined that the supposed prompt obedience of Isaac’s son would stimulate his feeble heart to speak (Rosenmller).

Gen 27:11

And Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man (vide Gen 25:25) and I am a smooth man, smooth (opposed to ,” hairy); the primary idea of which is to cut off the hair. Cf. , ; glacies, glaber, gladius, glisco; gluten, glatt, gleiten, glasall of which convey the notion of smoothness.

Gen 27:12

My father peradventure will feel me, and I shall seem to him as a deceiver;literally, shall be in his eyes as a scorer (Keil, Lange), with the idea of mocking at his aged sire’s infirmities (LXX.); or as a deceiver, an imposter, one who causes to go astray (Vulgate, Rosenmller, Ainsworth, Murphy); though perhaps both senses should he-included, the verb , to scoff, meaning primarily to stammer, and hence to mislead by imperfect speech, and thus to cause to wander or lead astray, ,and I shall bring a curse(from , to be light, hence to be despised) signifies first an expression of contempt, and then a more solemn imprecationupon me, and not a blessing.

Gen 27:13

And his mother said unto him, Upon me be thy curse, my son (cf. Gen 43:9; 1Sa 25:24; 2Sa 14:9; Mat 27:25). Tempted to regard Rebekah’s words as the utterance of a bold and unscrupulous woman (Aben Ezra), we ought perhaps to view them as inspired by faith in the Divine promise, which had already indicated that of her two sons Jacob should have the precedence (Willet, Calvin, Lange), and that accordingly there was every reason to anticipate not a malediction, but a benediction. Only obey my voice (i.e. do as I direct you, follow my instructions), and go fetch me themor, go and take for me (sc. the two kids I spoke of).

Gen 27:14

And he went (sc. to the flock), and fetched,or, rather, took (sc. the two kids as directed) and brought them (after slaughter, of course) to his mother: and his mother made savory meat, such as his father loved. All this implies that Rebekah reckoned on Esau’s absence for a considerable time, perhaps throughout the entire day.

HOMILETICS

Gen 27:1-14

The stolen blessing: a domestic drama.

1. Issac and Rebekah, or plotting and counterplotting.

I. THE SCHEME OF ISAAC.

1. Its sinful object. The heavenly oracle having with no uncertain sound proclaimed Jacob the theocratic heir, the bestowment of the patriarchal benediction on Esau was clearly an unholy design. That Isaac, who on Mount Moriah had evinced such meek and ready acquiescence in Jehovah’s will, should in old age, from partiality towards his firstborn, or forgetfulness of Jehovah’s declaration, endeavor to thwart the Divine purpose according to election affords a melancholy illustration of the deceitfulness of sin even in renewed hearts, and of the deep-seated antagonism between the instincts of nature and the designs of grace.

2. Its secret character. The commission assigned to Esau does not appear to have been dictated by any supposed connection between the gratification of the palate, the reinvigoration of the body, or the refreshment of the spirit and the exercise of the prophetic gift, but rather by a desire to divert the attention of Rebekah from supposing that anything unusual was going on, and so to secure the necessary privacy for carrying out the scheme which he had formed. Had Isaac not been doubtful of the righteousness of what he had in contemplation, he would never have resorted to maneuvering and secrecy, but would have courted unveiled publicity. Crooked ways love the dark (Joh 3:20, Joh 3:21).

3. Its urgent motive. Isaac felt impelled to relieve his soul of the theocratic blessing by a sense of approaching dissolution. If it be the weakness of old men to imagine death nearer, it is the folly of young men to suppose it farther distant than it is. To young and old alike the failure of the senses should be a premonition of the end, and good men should set their houses in order ere they leave the world (Gen 25:6; 2Ki 20:1; Isa 38:1).

4. Its inherent weakness. That Isaac reckoned on Rebekah’s opposition to his scheme seems apparent; it is not so obvious that he calculated on God’s being against him. Those who meditate unholy deeds should first arrange that God will not be able to discover their intentions.

II. THE STRATAGEM OF REBEKAH.

1. The design was legitimate. Instead of her behavior being represented as an attempt to outwit her aged, blind, and bed-ridden husband (for which surely no great cleverness was required), and to stealthily secure the blessing for her favorite, regard for truth demands that it should rather be characterized as an endeavor to prevent its surreptitious appropriation for Esau.

2. The inspiration was religious. Displaying a considerable amount of woman’s wit in its conception and execution, and perhaps largely tainted by maternal jealousy, Rebekah’s stratagem ought in fairness to be traced to her belief in the pre-natal oracle, which had pointed to Jacob as the theocratic heir. That her faith, however mixed with unspiritual alloy, was strong seems a just conclusion from her almost reckless boldness (Gen 27:13).

3. The wickedness was inexcusable. Good as were its end and motive, the stratagem of Rebekah was deplorably wicked. It was an act of cruel imposition on a husband who had loved her for well-nigh a century; it was a base deed of temptation and seduction, viewed in its relations to Jacobthe prompting of a son to sin against a father; it was a signal offence against God in many ways, but chiefly in the sinful impatience it displayed, and in the foolish supposition that his sovereign designs needed the assistance of, or could be helped by, human craft in the shape of female cunning.

III. THE RIVAL ACCOMPLICES.

1. The confederate of Isaac. The guilt of Esau consisted in seeking to obtain the birthright-when he knew

(1) that it belonged to Jacob by Heaven’s gift,

(2) that he had parted with any imaginary title he ever had to expect it,

(3) that he was utterly unqualified to possess it, and

(4) that he was endeavoring to obtain it by improper means.

2. The tool of Rebekah. That Jacob in acting on his mother’s counsel was not sinless is evinced by the fact that he

(1) perceived its hazardous nature (Gen 27:11, Gen 27:12),

(2) discerned its criminality, and yet

(3) allowed himself to carry it through.

Lessons:

1. The wickedness of trying to subvert the will of Heavenexemplified in Isaac.

2. The sinfulness of doing evil that good may comeillustrated by the conduct of Rebekah.

3. The criminality of following evil counsel, in opposition to the light of conscience and the restraints of Providenceshown by the conduct of both Esau and Jacob.

Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary

Gen 27:1. Was old, &c. Bishop Kidder, from several passages of the history laid together, proves, that Isaac was now one hundred and thirty-six or one hundred and thirty-seven years old; when his faculties being much impaired, and apprehending the approach of death, (though he lived forty years after,) he determined to “impart the solemn Abrahamic benediction” to his eldest son Esau, in which channel most probably he conceived that it was to pass, though his wife Rebekah knew to the contrary. Some have imagined, that as Isaac lived so many years afterwards, he was hastened to this act of blessing his son by an indisposition which threatened his death, and rendered more agreeable to his sickly appetite the favourite food procured by his son. As there can be no question, that the imparting this benediction was a high religious act, and evidently prophetic, (as in the case of Jacob also, see ch. Gen 49:1.) it is very reasonable to conclude, that something more than mere eating was intended; some religious ceremony, sacrifice, or feast; an opinion, for which, in the course of the chapter, we may probably find some countenance.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

SIXTH SECTION

Isaacs preference for the natural first-born, and Esau. Rebekah and Jacob steal from him the theocratic blessing. Esaus blessing. Esaus hostility to Jacob. Rebekahs preparation for the flight of Jacob, and his journey with reference to a theocratic marriage. Isaacs directions for the journcy of Jacob, the counterpart to the dismissal of Ishmael. Esaus pretended correction of his ill-assoried marriages

Gen 27:1 to Gen 28:9

1And it came to pass, that when Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim, so that he could not see,1 he called Esau his eldest son, and said unto him, My son: And he said unto him, Behold, here am I. 2And he said, Behold, now I am old, I know not the day of my death. 3Now therefore take, I pray thee, thy weapons [hunting weapons], thy quiver, and thy bow, and go out to the field, and take me some venison; 4And make me savory meat [tasty; favorite; festive dish. De Wette: dainty dish], such as I love, and bring it to me, that I may eat; that my soul may bless thee before I die. 5And Rebekah heard when Isaac spake to Esau his son. And Esau went to the field to hunt for venison, and to bring it.

6And Rebekah spake unto Jacob her son, saying, Behold, I heard thy father speak unto Esau thy brother, saying, 7Bring me venison, and make me savory meat, that I may eat, and bless thee before the Lord before my death. 8Now therefore, my son, obey my voice [strictly], according to that which I command thee. 9Go now to the flock [small cattle], and fetch me from thence two good kids of the goats; and I will make them savory meat for thy father, such as he loveth: 10And thou shalt bring it to thy father, that he may eat, and that he may bless thee before his death. 11And Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man: 12My father peradventure will feel me, and I shall seem to him as a deceiver; and I shall bring a curse upon me, and not a blessing. 13And his mother said unto him, Upon me be thy curse, my son: only obey my voice, and go fetch me them. 14And he went, and fetched, and brought them to his mother: and his mother made savory meat 15[dainty dish], such as his father loved. And Rebekah took goodly [costly] raiment of her eldest son Esau, which were with her in the house, and put them upon Jacob her younger son: 16And she put the skins of the kids of the goats upon his hands, and upon the smooth [part] of his neck; 17And she gave the savory meat and the bread, which she had prepared, into the hand of her son Jacob.

18And he came unto his father, and said, My father: And he said, Here am I; who art thou, my son. 19And Jacob said unto his father, I am Esau thy firstborn; I have done according as thou badest me: arise, I pray thee, sit and eat of my venison, that thy soul may bless me. 20And Isaac said unto his son, How is it that thou hast found it so quickly, my son? And he said, Because the Lord thy God brought it to me. 21And Isaac said unto Jacob, Come near, I pray thee, that I may feel thee, my son, whether thou be my very son Esau, or not. 22And Jacob went near unto Isaac his father; and he felt him, and said, The voice is Jacobs voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau. 23And he discerned him not, because his hands were hairy, as his brother Esaus hands: so he blessed him. 24And he said, Art thou [thou there] my very son Esau? 25And he said, I am. And he said, Bring it near to me, and I will eat of my sons venison, that my soul may bless thee. And he brought it near to him, and he did eat: and he brought him wine, and he drank. 26And his father Isaac said unto him, Come near now, and kiss me, my son. 27And he came near, and kissed him: and he smelled the smell of his raiment, and blessed him, and said, See, the smell of my son 28 is as the smell of a field which the Lord hath blessed: Therefore [thus] God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth and plenty [the fulness] of corn and wine: 29Let people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee: be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mothers sons bow down to thee [thy mothers sons shall bow]: cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee.

30And it came to pass, as soon as Isaac had made an end of blessing Jacob, and Jacob was yet scarce gone out from the presence of Isaac his father, that Esau his brother came in from his hunting. 31And he also had made savory meat, and brought it unto his father, and said unto his father, Let my father arise, and eat of his sons venison, that 32thy soul may bless me. And [then] Isaac his father said unto him, Who art thou? And he said, I am thy son, thy firstborn Esau. 33And Isaac trembled very exceedingly [shuddered in great terror above measure], and said, Who? where is he [who then was he]? that hath taken [hunted] venison, and brought it me, and I have eaten of all before thou camest, and have blessed him? yea, and he shall be blessed. 34And when Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with a great and exceeding bitter cry, and said unto his father, Bless me, even me also, O my father. 35And he said, Thy brother came with subtilty, and hath taken away thy blessing. 36And he said, Is he not rightly named [heel-holder, supplanter] Jacob? for he hath supplanted me these two times: he took away my birthright [right of the firstborn]; and, behold, now he hath taken away my blessing. And he said, Hast thou not reserved a blessing for me? 37And Isaac answered and said unto Esau, Behold, I have made him thy lord, and all his brethren have I given to him for servants; and with corn and wine have I sustained him [have I endowed him]: and what shall I do now unto thee, my son? 38And Esau said unto his father, Hast thou but one blessing, my father? bless me, even me also, O my father. And Esau lifted up his 39voice and wept. And [then] Isaac his father answered, and said unto him, Behold, thy dwelling shall be the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above; 40And by thy sword shalt thou live, and shalt serve thy brother: and [but] it shall come to pass when thou shalt have the dominion [in the course of thy wanderings], that thou shalt break his yoke from, off thy neck.

41And Esau hated Jacob, because of the blessing wherewith his father blessed him: and Esau said in his heart [formed the design], The days of mourning for my [dead] father are at hand, then will I slay my brother Jacob. 42And these words of Esau her elder son were told to Rebekah: and she sent and called Jacob her younger son, and said unto him, Behold, thy brother Esau, as touching thee, doth comfort himself, purposing to kill thee [goes about with revenge to kill thee].2 43Now therefore, my son, obey my voice; and arise, flee thou to Laban my brother, to Haran: 44And tarry with him a few days 45[some time], until thy brothers fury turn away; Until thy brothers anger turn away from thee, and he forget that which thou hast done to him: then I will send, and fetch thee from thence: why should I be deprived also of you both in one day? 46And Rebekah said to Isaac, I am weary of my life, because of the daughters of Heth: if Jacob take a wife of the daughters of Heth, such as these which are of the daughters of the land, what good shall my life do me [what is life to me]

Gen 28:1.And Isaac called Jacob, and blessed him, and charged him, and said unto him, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan. 2Arise, go to Padan-aram [Mesopotamia], to the house of Bethuel, thy mothers father; and take thee a wife from 3thence of the daughters of Laban, thy mothers brother. And God [the] Almighty bless thee, and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, that thou mayest be [become] a multitude3 of people; 4And give thee the blessing of Abraham, to thee and to thy seed with thee; that thou mayest inherit the land wherein thou art a stranger [of thy pilgrimage], which God gave unto Abraham. 5And Isaac sent away Jacob: and he went to Padan-aram unto Laban, son of Bethuel the Syrian, the brother of Rebekah, Jacobs and Esaus mother.

6When Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob, and sent him away to Padan-aram, to take him a wife from thence; and that, as he blessed him, he gave him a charge, saying, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan; 7And that Jacob obeyed his father and his mother, and was gone to Padan-aram; 8And Esau seeing that the daughters of Canaan pleased not Isaac his father; 9Then went Esau unto Ishmael, and took unto the wives which he had Mahalath [from root , Cecinit. Delitzsch derives it from , to be sweet] the daughter of Ishmael, Abrahams son, the sister of Nebajoth [heights, nabatha], to be his wife.

GENERAL PRELIMINARY REMARKS

1. Knobel, without regard to verse 46, and notwithstanding the word Elohim, verse 28, regards our section as a Jehovistic narrative. We have only to refer to the prevailing Jehovistic reference. Respecting the origin of our narrative Knobel has given his opinion in a remarkable manner, e.g., he cannot conceive how an old man may hear well, smell well, and yet be unable to see!!

2. The time. Isaac at that time was a hundred and thirty-seven years old, the age at which Ishmael, his half-brother, died, about fourteen years before; a fact which, in consequence of the weakness of old age, may have seriously reminded him of death, though he did not die until forty-three years afterwards. The correct determination of his age, given already by Luther, is based upon the following calculation: Joseph, when he stood before Pharaoh, was thirty years old (Gen 41:46), and at the migration of Jacob to Egypt he had reached already the age of thirty-nine; for seven years of plenty and two years of famine had passed already at that time; nine years had elapsed since the elevation of Joseph (Gen 45:6). But Jacob, at that time, was a hundred and thirty years old (Gen 47:9); Joseph, therefore, was born when Jacob was ninety-one years; and since Josephs birth occurred in the fourteenth year of Jacobs sojourn in Mesopotamia (comp. Gen 30:25 with Gen 29:18; Gen 29:21; Gen 29:27), Jacobs flight to Laban happened in his seventy-seventh year, and in the hundred and thirty-seventh year of Isaac. Comp. Hengstenberg: Beitr. iii. p. 348, etc. Keil.

3. The present section contains the history of the distinction and separation of Esau and Jacob; first introduced by enmity after the manner of man, then confirmed by the divine judgment upon human sins, and established by the conduct of the sons. This narrative conducts us from the history of Isaac to that of Jacob. The separate members of this section are the following: 1. Isaacs project; 3. Rebekahs counter-project; 3. Jacobs deed and blessing; 4. Esaus complaint and Esaus blessing; 5. Esaus scheme of revenge, and Rebekahs counter-scheme; 6. Jacob and Esau in the antithesis of their marriage, or the divine decree.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

1. Gen 27:1-4.And his eyes were dim.We construe with the Sept., since we are of the opinion that this circumstance is noticed as an explanation of the succeeding narrative.Thy quiver.The ., (lit. hanging), has by some been explained incorrectly as meaning sword (Onkelos and others).Savory meat., delicious food. But it is rather to be taken in the sense of a feast than of a dainty dish. It is praiseworthy in Isaac to be mindful of his death so long before-hand. That he anticipates his last hours in this manner indicates not only a strong self-will, but also a doubt and a certain apprehension, whence he makes the special pretence, in order to conceal the blessing from Jacob and Rebekah. [Notwithstanding the divine utterance before the children were born, undoubtedly known to him, and the careless and almost contemptuous disposal of his birthright by Esau, and Esaus ungodly connection with the Canaanitish women, Isaac still gives way to his preference to Esau, and determines to bestow upon him the blessing.A. G.]

2. Gen 27:5-17. Rebekahs counter-project.Unto Jacob her son.Her favorite.Two good kids of the goats.The meat was to be amply provided, so as to represent venison.As a deceiver (lit., as a scoffer).He is afraid to be treated as a scoffer merely, but not as an impostor, since he would have confessed only a mere sportive intention. Knobel. It may be assumed, however, that his conscience really troubled him. But from respect for his mother he does not point to the wrong itself, but to its hazardous consequences.Upon me be thy curse.Rebekahs boldness assumes here the appearance of the greatest rashness. This, however, vanishes for the most part, if we consider that she is positively sure of the divine promise, with which, it is true, she wrongfully identifies her project.Goodly raiment.Even in regard to dress, Esau seems to have taken already a higher place in the household. His goodly raiment reminds us of the coat of Joseph.Upon his hands.According to Tuch, the skins of the Eastern camel-goat (angora-goat) are here referred to. The black, silk-like hair of these animals, was also used by the Romans as a substitute for human hair (Martial., xii. 46). Keil.

3. Gen 27:18-29. Jacobs act and Jacobs blessing.Who art thou, my son.The secrecy with which Isaac arranged the preparation for the blessing must have made him suspicious at the very beginning. The presence of Jacob, under any circumstances, would have been to him, at present, an unpleasant interruption. But now he thinks that he hears Jacobs voice. That he does not give effect to this impression is shown by the perfect success of the deception. But perhaps an infirmity of hearing corresponds with his blindness.Arise, I pray thee, sit and eat.They ate not only in a sitting posture, but also while lying down; but the lying posture at a meal differed from that taken upon a bed or couch. It is the solemn act of blessing, moreover, which is here in question.How is it that thou hast found it so quickly.It is not only Jacobs voice, but also the quick execution of his demand, which awakens his suspicion.And he blessed him.

Gen 27:23. This is merely the greeting. Even after having felt his son, he is not fully satisfied, but once more demands the explanation that he is indeed Esau.Come near now, and kiss me.After his partaking of the meat, Isaac wants still another assurance and encouragement by the kiss of his son.And he smelled the smell of his raiment.The garments of Esau were impregnated with the fragrance of the fields, over which he roamed as a hunter. The scent of Lebanon was distinguished (Hos 14:7; Son 4:11). Knobel. The directness of the form of his blessing is seen from the fact that the fundamental thought is connected with the smell of Esaus raiment. The fragrance of the fields of Canaan, rich in herbs and flowers, which were promised to the theocratic heir, perfumed the garments of Esau, and this circumstance confirmed the patriarchs prejudice.And blessed him, and said.The words of his blessing are prophecies (Gen 9:27; Genesis 49)utterances of an inspired state looking into the future, and therefore poetic in form and expression. The same may be said respecting the later blessing upon Esau.Of a field which the Lord hath blessed.Palestine, the land of Jehovahs blessing, a copy of the old, and a prototype of the new, paradise.Because the country is blessed of Jehovah, he assumes that the son whose garments smell of the fragrance of the land is also blessed.Therefore God give thee.Ha–elohim. The choice of the expression intimates a remaining doubt whether Esau was the chosen one of Jehovah; but it is explained also by the universality of the succeeding blessing. [He views Ha-elohim, the personal God, but not Jehovah, the God of the Covenant, as the source and giver of the blessing.A. G.]Of the dew of heaven.The dew in Palestine is of the greatest importance in respect to the fruitfulness of the year during the dry season (Gen 49:25; Deu 33:13; Deu 33:28; Hos 14:6; Sach. viii. 12).And the fatness of the earth.Knobel: Of the fat parts of the earth, singly and severally. Since the land promised to the sons was to be divided between Esau and Jacob, the sense no doubt is: may he give to thee the fat part of the promised land, i.e., Canaan. Canaan was the chosen part of the lands of the earth belonging to the first-born, which were blessed with the dew of heaven and the fatness of the earth. As to the fruitfulness of Canaan, see Exo 3:8. Compare also the Bible Dictionaries; Winer: article Palestine. The antithesis of this grant to that of the Edomitic country appears distinctly, Gen 27:39. A two-fold contrast is therefore to be noticed: 1. To Edom; 2. to the earth in general; and so we have . But to a blessed land belong also blessed seasons, therefore plenty of corn and wine.Let people serve thee.To the grant of the theocratic country is added the grant of a theocratic, i.e., spiritual and political condition of the world.And nations.Tribes of nations. Not only nations but tribes of nations, groups of nations, are to bow down to him, i.e., to do homage to him submissively. This promise was fulfilled typically in the time of David and Solomon, ultimately and completely in the world-sovereignty of the promise of faith.Be Lord over thy brethren.This blessing was fulfilled in the subjection of Edom (2Sa 8:14; 1Ki 11:15; Psa 60:8-9).Thy mothers sons.His prejudice still shows itself in the choice of this expression, according to which he thought to subject Jacob, the mothers son, to Esau.Cursed be every one that curseth thee.Thus Isaac bound himself. He is not able to take back the blessing he pronounced on Jacob. In this sealing of the blessing he afterwards recognizes also a divine sentence (Gen 27:33). His prophetic spirit has by far surpassed his human prejudice. [This blessing includes the two elements of the blessing of Abraham, the possession of the land of Canaan, and a numerous offspring, but not distinctly the third, that all nations should be blessed in him and his seed. This may be included in the general phrase, let him that curseth thee be cursed, and him that blesseth thee be blessed. But it is only when the conviction that he had against his will served the purpose of God in blessing Jacob, that the consciousness of his patriarchal calling is awakened within him, and he has strength to give the blessing of Abraham to the son whom he had rejected but God had chosen (Gen 27:3-4). See Keil.A. G.]

4. Gen 27:30-40. Esaus lamentation and Esaus blessing.And Isaac trembled.If Isaac himself had not intended to deceive in the matter in which he was deceived, or had he been filled with divine confidence in respect to the election of Esau, he would have been startled only at the deception of Jacob. But it is evident that he was surprised most at the divine decision, which thereby revealed itself, and convinces him of the error and sin of his attempt to forestall that decision, otherwise we should hear of deep indignation rather than of an extraordinary terror. What follows, too, confirms this interpretation. He bows not so much to the deception practised upon him as to the fact and to the prophetic spirit which has found utterance through him. Augustine: De Civitate Dei, 16, Genesis 37 : Quis non hic maledictionem potius expectaret irati, si hc non superna inspiratione sed terreno more generentur.Who? where is he?Yet before he has named Jacob, he pronounces the divine sentence: the blessing of the Lord remains with that man who received it.He cried with a great and exceeding bitter cry.Heb 12:17.Bless me, even me also.Esau, it is true, had a vague feeling that the question here was about important grants, but he did not understand their significance. He, therefore, thought the theocratic blessing admitted of division, and was as dependent upon his lamentations and prayers as upon the caprice of his father.Thy brother came with subtilty.With deception. Isaac now indicates also the human error and sin, after having declared the divine judgment. But at the same time he declares that the question is only about one blessing, and that no stranger has been the recipient of this blessing, but Esaus brother.Is not he rightly named. ()?Shall he get the advantage of me because he was thus inadvertently named (Jacob=heel-catcher, supplanter), and because he then acted thus treacherously (with cunning or fraud) shall I acquiesce in a blessing that was surreptitiously obtained?He took away my birthright.Instead of reproaching himself with his own act, his eye is filled with the wrong Jacob has done him.Hast thou not a blessing reserved for me?Esau is perplexed in the mysterious aspect of this matter. He speaks as if Isaac had pronounced a gratuitous blessing. Isaacs answer is according to the truth. He informs him very distinctly of his future theocratic relation to Jacob. As compared with the blessing of Jacob he had no more a blessing for Esau, for it is fundamentally the greatest blessing for him to serve Jacob.Hast thou but one blessing?Esau proceeds upon the assumption that the father could pronounce blessings at will. His tears, however, move the fathers heart, and he feels that his favorite son can be appeased by a sentence having the semblance of a blessing, and which in fact contains every desire of his heart. That is, he now understands him.The fatness of the earth.The question arises whether is used here in a partitive sense (according to Luthers translation and the Vulgate), as in the blessing upon Jacob, Gen 27:28, or in a privative sense (according to Tuch, Knobel, Kurtz, etc.). Delitzsch favors the last view: 1. The mountains in the northeastern part of Iduma (now Gebalene), were undoubtedly fertile, and therefore called Palstina Salutaris in the middle ages (Von Raumer, in his Palstina, p. 240, considers the prophecy, therefore, according to Luthers translation, as fulfilled). But the mountains in the western part of Iduma are beyond comparison the most dreary and sterile deserts in the world, as Seetzen expresses himself. 2. It is not probable that Esaus and Jacobs blessing would begin alike. 3. It is in contradiction with Gen 27:37, etc. (p. 455); Mal 1:3. This last citation is quoted by Keil as proof of the preceding statement. [The is the same in both cases, but in the blessing of Jacob, after a verb of giving, it had a partitive sense; here, after a noun of place, it denotes distance, or separation, e.g., Pro 20:3. Murphy. The context seems to demand this interpretation, and it is confirmed by the prediction, by thy sword, etc. Esaus dwelling-place was the very opposite of the richly-blessed land of Canaan.A. G.] But notwithstanding all this, the question arises, whether the ambiguity of the expression is accidental, or whether it is chosen in relation to the excitement and weakness of Esau. As to the country of Edom, see Delitzsch, p. 455; Knobel, p. 299; Keil, p. 198; also the Dictionaries, and journals of travellers.And by thy sword.This confirms the former explanation, but at the same time this expression corresponds with Esaus character and the future of his descendants. War, pillage, and robbery, are to support him in a barren country. Similar to Ishmael, Gen 16:12, and the different tribes still living to-day in the old Edomitic country (see Burkhardt: Syria, p. 826; Ritter: Erdkunde, xiv. p. 966, etc.). Knobel. See Obadiah, Gen 27:3; Jer 49:16. The land of Edom, therefore, according to Isaacs prophecy, will constitute a striking antithesis to the land of Jacob. Keil.And shalt serve thy brother.See above.And it shall come to pass.As a consequence of the roaming about of Edom in the temper and purpose of a freebooter, he will ultimately shake off the yoke of Jacob from his neck. This seems to be a promise of greater import, but the self-liberation of Edom from Israel was not of long continuance, nor did it prove to him a true blessing. Edom was at first strong and independent as compared to Israel, slower in its development (Num 20:14, etc.). Saul first fought against it victoriously (1Sa 14:47); David conquered it (2Sa 8:14). Then followed a conspiracy under Solomon (1Ki 11:14), whilst there was an actual defection under Joram. On the other hand, the Edomites were again subjected by Amaziah (2Ki 14:7; 2Ch 25:11) and remained dependent under Uzziah and Jotham (2Ki 14:22; 2Ch 26:2). But under Ahaz they liberated themselves entirely from Judah (2Ki 16:6; 2Ch 28:17). Finally, however, John Hyrcanus subdued them completely, forced them to adopt circumcision, and incorporated them into the Jewish state and people (Josephus: Antiq. xiii. 9, 1; xv. 7, 9), whilst the Jews themselves, however, after Antipater, became subject to the dominion of an Iduman dynasty, until the downfall of their state.

5. Esaus scheme of revenge, and Rebekahs counter-scheme (Gen 27:41-46).And Esau said in his heart.Esaus good-nature still expresses itself in his exasperation toward Jacob and in the scheme of revenge to kill him. For he does not maliciously execute the thought immediately, but betrays it in uttered threats, and postpones it until the death of his father.The days of mourning are at hand.Not for my father, but on account of my father; i.e., my father, weak and trembling with age, is soon to die.Then, and not before, he will execute his revenge. He does not intend to grieve the father, but if his mother, his brothers protectress, is grieved by the murder, that is all right, in his view.These words were told.On account of his frank and open disposition, Esaus thoughts were soon revealed; what he thought in his heart he soon uttered in words.And called Jacob.From the herds.Flee thou to Laban.Rebekah encourages him to this flight by saying that it will last but few days, i.e., a short time. But she looked further. She took occasion from the present danger to carry on the thoughts of Abraham, and to unite Jacob honorably in a theocratic marriage. For, notwithstanding all his grief of mind arising from Esaus marriages, Isaac had not thought of this. But still she lets Isaac first express this thought. Nor is Isaac to be burdened with Esaus scheme of revenge and Jacobs danger, and therefore she leads him to her mode of reasoning by a lamentation concerning the daughters of Heth (Gen 27:46).Deprived also of you both.Bunsen: Of thy father and thyself. Others: Of thyself and Esau, who is to die by the hand of an avenger. But as soon as Esau should become the murderer of his brother, he would be already lost to Rebekah. Knobel, again, thinks that in verse 46 the connection with the preceding is here broken and lost, but on the contrary connects the passage with Gen 26:34 and Gen 28:1, as found in the original text. The connection is, however, obvious. If Knobel thinks that the character of Esau appears different in Gen 28:6 etc., than in Gen 27:41, that proves only that he does not understand properly the prevailing characteristics of Esau as given in Genesis.

6. Jacob and Esau in the antithesis of their marriage, or the divine decree (Gen 28:1-9).And Isaac called Jacob and blessed him.The whole dismissal of Jacob shows that now he regards him voluntarily as the real heir of the Abrahamic blessing. Knobel treats Genesis 28ch. 33 as one section (the earlier history of Jacob), whose fundamental utterances form the original text, enlarged and completed by Jehovistic supplements. There are several places in which he says contradictions to the original text are apparent. One such contradiction he artfully frames by supposing that, according to the original text, Jacob was already sent to Mesopotamia immediately after Esaus marriage, for the purpose of marrying among his kindreda supposition based on mere fiction. As to other contradictions, see p. 233, etc.Of the daughters of Canaan.Now it is clear to him that this was a theocratic condition for the theocratic heir.Of the daughters of Laban.These are first mentioned here.And God Almighty.By this appellation Jehovah called himself when he announced himself to Abraham as the God of miracles, who would grant to him a son (Gen 17:1). By this apellation of Jehovah, therefore, Isaac also wishes for Jacob a fruitful posterity. Theocratic children are to be children of blessing and of miracles, a multitude of people (), a very significant development of the Abrahamic blessing. [The word used to denote the congregation or assembly of Gods people, and to which the Greek ecclesia answers. It denotes the people of God as called out and called together.A. G.]The blessing of Abraham.He thus seals the fact that he now recognizes Jacob as the chosen heirAnd Isaac sent away Jacob (see Hos 12:13).When Esau saw that Isaac.Esau now first discovers that his parents regard their sons connection with Canaanitish women as an injudicious and improper marriage. He had not observed their earlier sorrow. Powerful impressions alone can bring him to understand this matter. But even this understanding becomes directly a misunderstanding. He seeks once more to gain the advantage of Jacob, by taking a third wife, indeed a daughter of Ishmael. One can almost think that he perceives an air of irony pervading this dry record. The irony, however, lies in the very efforts of a low and earthly mind, after the glimpses of high ideals, which he himself does not comprehend.To Ishmael.Ishmael had been already dead more than twelve years; it is therefore the house of Ishmael which is meant here.Mahalath.Gen 36:2 called Bshemath.The sister of Nebajoth.As the first-born of the brothers he is named instead of all the others; just as Miriam is always called the sister of Aaron. The decree of God respecting the future of the two sons, which again runs through the whole chapter, receives its complete development in this, that Jacob emigrates in obedience of faith accompanied with the theocratic blessing, to seek after the chosen bride, whilst Esau, with the intention of making amends for his neglect, betrays again his unfitness. The decrees of God, however, develop themselves in and through human plans.

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. The present section connects a profound tragic family history from the midst of the patriarchal life, with a grand and sublime history of salvation. In respect to the former, it is the principal chapter in the Old Testament, showing the vanity of mere human plans and efforts; in respect to the latter, it holds the corresponding place in reference to the certainty of the divine election and calling, holding its calm and certain progress through all disturbances of human infatuation, folly, and sin.
2. It is quite common, in reviewing the present narrative, to place Rebekah and Jacob too much under the shadows of sin, in comparison with Isaac. Isaacs sin does not consist alone in his arbitrary determination to present Esau with the blessing of the theocratic birthright, although Rebekah received that divine sentence respecting her children, before their birth, and which, no doubt, she had mentioned to him; and although Esau had manifested already, by his marriage with the daughters of Heth, his want of the theocratic faith, and by his bartering with Jacob, his carnal disposition, and his contempt of the birthrightthus viewed, indeed, his sin admits of palliation through several excuses. The clear right of the first-born seemed to oppose itself to the dark oracle of God, Jacobs prudence to Esaus frank and generous disposition, the quiet shepherd-life of Jacob to Esaus stateliness and power, and on the other hand, Esaus misalliances to Jacobs continued celibacy. And although Isaac may have been too weak to enjoy the venison obtained for him by Esau, yet the true-hearted care of the son for his fathers infirmity and age, is also of some importance. But the manner in which Isaac intends to bless Esau, places his offence in a clearer light. He intends to bless him solemnly in unbecoming secrecy, without the knowledge of Rebekah and Jacob, or of his house. The preparation of the venison is scarcely to be regarded as if he was to be inspired for the blessing by the eating of this dainty dish, or of this token of filial affection. This preparation, at least, in its main point of view, is an excuse to gain time and place for the secret act. In this point of view, the act of Rebekah appears in a different light. It is a womans shrewdness that crosses the shrewdly calculated project of Isaac. He is caught in the net of his own sinful prudence. A want of divine confidence may be recognized through all his actions. It is no real presentiment of death that urges him now to bless Esau. But he now anticipates his closing hours and Jehovahs decision, because he wishes to put an end to his inward uncertainty which annoyed him. Just as Abraham anticipated the divine decision in his connection with Hagar, so Isaac, in his eager and hearty performance of an act belonging to his last days, while he lived yet many years. With this, therefore, is also connected the improper combination of the act of blessing with the meal, as well as the uneasy apprehension lest he should be interrupted in his plan (see Gen 27:18), and a suspicious and strained expectation which was not at first caused by the voice of Jacob. Rebekah, however, has so far the advantage of him that she, in her deception, has the divine assurance that Jacob was the heir, while Isaac, in his preceding secrecy, has, on his side, only human descent and his human reason without any inward, spiritual certainty. But Rebekahs sin consists in thinking that she must save the divine election of Jacob by means of human deception and a so-called white-lie. Isaac, at that critical moment, would have been far less able to pronounce the blessing of Abraham upon Esau, than afterward Balaam, standing far below him, could have cursed the people of Israel at the critical moment of its history. For the words of the spirit and of the promise are never left to human caprice. Rebekah, therefore, sinned against Isaac through a want of candor, just as Isaac before had sinned against Rebekah through a like defect. The divine decree would also have been fulfilled without her assistance, if she had had the necessary measure of faith. Of course, when compared with Isaacs fatal error, Rebekah was right. Though she deceived him greatly, misled her favorite son, and alienated Esau from her, there was yet something saving in her action according to her intentions, even for Isaac himself and for both her sons. For to Esau the most comprehensive blessing might have become only a curse. He was not fitted for it. Just as Rebekah thinks to oppose cunning to cunning in order to save the divine blessing through Isaac, and thus secure a heavenly right, so also Jacob secures a human right in buying of Esau the right of the firstborn. But now the tragic consequences of the first officious anticipation, which Isaac incurred, as well as that of the second, of which Rebekah becomes guilty, were soon to appear.

3. The tragic consequences of the hasty conduct and the mutual deceptions in the family of Isaac. Esau threatens to become a fratricide, and this threat repeats itself in the conduct of Josephs brothers, who also believed that they saw in Joseph a brother unjustly preferred, and came very near killing him. Jacob must become a fugitive for many a long year, and perhaps yield up to Esau the external inheritance for the most part or entirely. The patriarchal dignity of Isaac is obscured, Rebekah is obliged to send her favorite son abroad, and perhaps never see him again. The bold expression: Upon me be thy curse, may be regarded as having a bright side; for she, as a protectress of Jacobs blessing, always enjoys a share in his blessing. But the sinful element in it was the wrong application of her assurance of faith to the act of deception, which she herself undertook, and to which she persuaded Jacob; and for which she must atone, perhaps, by many a long year of melancholy solitude and through the joylessness which immediately spread itself over the family affairs of the household.
4. With all this, however, Isaac was kept from a grave offence, and the true relation of things secured by the pretended necessity for her prevarication. Through this catastrophe Isaac came to a full understanding of the divine decree, Esau attained the fullest development of his peculiar characteristics, and Jacob was directed to his journey of faith, and to his marriage, without which the promise could not even be fulfilled in him.

5. Isaacs blindness. That the eyes of this recluse and contemplative man were obscured and closed at an early age, is a fact which occurs in many a similar character since the time of blind Homer and blind Tiresias. Isaac had not exercised his eye in hunting as Esau. The weakness of his age first settles in that organ which he so constantly neglected. With this was connected his weakness in judging individual and personal relations. He was conscious of an honest wish and will in his conduct with Esau, and his secrecy in the case, as well as the precaution at Gerr, was connected with his retiring, peace-loving disposition. Leaving this out of view, he was an honest, well-meaning person (see Gen 27:37, and Gen 26:27). His developed faith in the promise, however, reveals itself in his power or fitness for the vision, and his words of blessing.

6. Rebekah obviously disappears from the stage as a grand or conspicuous character; grand in her prudence, magnanimity, and her theocratic zeal of faith. Her zeal of faith had a mixture of fanatic exaggeration, and in this view she is the grand mother of Simeon and Levi (Genesis 38).

7. It must be especially noticed that Jacob remained single far beyond the age of Isaac. He seems to have expected a hint from Isaac, just as Isaac was married through the care of Abraham. The fact bears witness to a deep, quiet disposition, which was only developed to a full power by extraordinary circumstances. He proves, again, by his actions, that he is a Jacob, i.e., heel-catcher, sup-planter. He does not refuse to comply with the plan of the mother from any conscientious scruples, but from motives of fear and prudence. And how ably and firmly he carries through his task, though his false confidence seems at last to die upon his lips with the brief , Gen 27:24! But however greatly he erred, he held a proper estimate of the blessing, for the security of which he thought he had a right to make use of prevarication; and this blessing did not consist in earthly glory, a fact which is decisive as to his theocratic character. Esau, on the other hand, scarcely seems to have any conception of the real contents of the Abrahamic blessing. The profound agitation of those who surrounded him, gives him the impression that this must be a thing of inestimable worth. Every one of his utterances proves a misunderstanding. Esaus misunderstandings, however, are of a constant significance, showing in what light mere men of the world regard the things of the kingdom of God. Even his exertion to mend his improper marriage relations eventuates in another error.

8. Isaacs blessing. In the solemn form of the blessing, the dew of heaven is connected with the fatness of the earth in a symbolic sense, and the idea of the theocratic kingdom, the dominion of the seed of blessing first appears here. In the parting blessing upon Jacob, the term indicates a great development of the Abrahamic blessing.Ranke: Abraham, no doubt, saw, in the light of Jehovahs promises, on to the goal of his own election and that of his seed, but with regard to the chosen people, however, his prophetic vision extended only to the exodus from Egypt, and to the possession of Canaan. Isaacs prophecy already extends farther into Israels history, reaching down to the subjugation and restoration of Esau.

9. The blessing pronounced upon Esau seems to be a prophecy of his future, clothed in the form of a blessing, in which his character is clearly announced. It contains a recognition of bravery, of a passion for liberty, and the courage of a hunterThe Idumans were a warlike people.

10. When, therefore, Isaac speaks in the spirit, about his sons, he well knew their characters (Heb 11:20). The prophetic blessing will surely be accomplished; but not by the force of a magical efficacy; as Knobel says: A divine word uttered, is a power which infallibly and unchangeably secures what the word indicates. The word of God can never be ineffectual (comp. Gen 9:18; Num 22:6; 2Ki 2:24; Isa 9:7).The word of a prophetic spirit rests upon the insight of the spirit into the profound fundamental principles of the present, in which the future, according to its main features, reflects itself, or exhibits itself, beforehand.

11. The high-souled Esau acted dishonestly in this, that he was not mindful of the oath by which he had sold to Jacob the birthright; and just as Rebekah might excuse her cunning by that of Isaac, so Jacob might excuse his dishonest conduct by pleading Esaus dishonesty.
12. The application of the proverb, The end justifies the means, to Jacobs conduct, is apparently not allowable. The possible mental reservation in Jacobs lie, may assume the following form: 1. I am Esau, i.e., the (real) hairy one, and thy (lawful) first-born. But even in this case the mental reservation of Jacob is as different from that of the Jesuits, as heaven from earth. 2. Thy God brought the venison to me; i.e., the God who has led thee wills that I should be blessed.
13. However plausible may be the deceit, through the divine truth some circumstance will remain unnoticed, and become a traitor. Jacob had not considered that his voice was not that of Esau. It nearly betrayed him. The expression: The voice is Jacobs voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau, has become a proverb in cases where words and deeds do not correspond.
14. The first appearance of the kiss in this narrative presents this symbol of ancient love to our view in both its aspects. The kiss of Christian brother-hood and the kiss of Judas are here enclosed in one.
15. Just as the starry heavens constituted the symbol of the divine promise for Abraham, so the blooming, fragrant, and fruitful fields are the symbol to Isaac. In this also may be seen and employed the antithesis between the first, who dwelt under the rustling oaks, and of the other, who sat by the side of springing fountains. The symbol of promise descends from heaven to earth.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

See the Doctrinal and Ethical paragraphs. Upon the whole the present narrative is both a patriarchal family picture and a religious picture of history.Domestic life and domestic sorrow in Isaacs house.In the homes of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.The blind Isaac: 1. Blind in two respects; and 2. yet a clear-sighted prophet.How Isaac blesses his sons: 1. How he intends to bless them; 2. how he is constrained to bless them.Human guilt and divine grace in Isaacs house: 1. The guilt; Isaac and Rebekah anticipate divine providence. They deceive each other. Esau is led to forget his bargain with Jacob; Jacob is induced to deceive his father. Yet the guilt of all is diminished because they thought that they must help the right with falsehood. Esau obeys the father, Jacob obeys the mother. Isaac rests upon the birthright, Rebekah upon the divine oracle. 2. Gods grace turns everything to the best, in conformity to divine truth, but with the condition that all must repent of their sins.The image of the hereditary curse in the light of the hereditary blessing, which Isaac ministers: 1. How the curse obscures the blessing; 2. how the blessing overcomes the curse.The characteristics mentioned in our narrative viewed in their contrasts: 1. Isaac and Rebekah; 2. Jacob and Esau; 3. Isaac and Jacob; 4. Isaac and Esau; 5. Rebekah and Esau; 6. Rebekah and Jacob.The cunning of a theocratic disposition purified and raised to the prudence of the ecclesiastical spirit.Gods election is sure: 1. In the heights of heaven; 2. in the depths of human hearts; 3. in the providence of grace; 4. in the course of history.The clear stream of the divine government runs through all human errors, and that: 1. For salvation to believers; 2. for judgment to unbelievers.

To Section First, Gen 27:1-4. Isaacs infirmity of age, and his faith: 1. In what manner the infirmity of age obscured his faith; 2. how faith breaks through the infirmities of age.Isaacs blindness.The sufferings of old age.The thought of death: 1. Though beneficial in itself; 2. may yet be premature.The hasty making of wills.We must not anticipate God.Not act in uncertainty of heart.The preference of the parents for the children different in character from themselves.The connection of hunting and the enjoyment of its fruits, with the divine blessing of promise: 1. Incomprehensible as a union of the most diverse things; 2. comprehensible as a device of human prudence; 3. made fruitless by the interference of another spirit.Isaacs secrecy thwarted by Rebekahs cunning device.Human right and divine law in conflict with each other.Isaacs right and wrong view, and conduct.

Starke: It is a great blessing of God, if he preserves our sight not only in youth, but also in old age (Deu 34:7).Cramer: A blind man, a poor man (Tob 5:12).Old age itself is a sickness (2Sa 19:35).If you are deprived of the eyes of your body, see that you do not lose the eye of faith (Psa 39:5-6).A Christian ought to do nothing from passion, but to judge only by the word of God.Bibl. Tub.: Parents are to bless their children before they die; but the blessing must be conformed to the divine will (Gen 48:5). Doubtless Jacob, taught by Isaacs error, learned to bless his children better; i.e., in a less restricted manner.(The Rabbins assert that Jacob desired venison before his pronouncing the blessing, because it was customary that the son about to receive the blessing should perform some special act of love to his father.)Osiander: It is probable that Isaac demanded something better than ordinary, because this was to be also a peculiar day. To all appearance it was a divine providence through which Jacob gains time to obtain and bear away the blessing before him.Schrder: Contemplative men like Isaac easily undermine their health (?).Experience teaches us that natures like that of Isaac are more exposed to blindness than others. Shut in entirely from the external world, their eyes are soon entirely closed to it.The son, by some embodiment of his filial love, shows himself as son, in order that the father on his part also, may, through the act of blessing, show himself to be a father.Love looks for love.Thus the blessing may be considered not so much as belonging to the privilege of the first-born, but rather as constituting a rightful claim to these privileges.

Section Second, Gen 27:15-17. Rebekahs counter-scheme opposed to Isaacs scheme.Rebekahs right and wrong thought and conduct.Rebekah protectress of the right of Jacobs election opposed to Isaac the elect.Jacobs persuasion: 1. The mothers faith and her wrong view of it.The faith of the son and his erroneous view.Jacobs doubt and Rebekahs confidence.The defect in his hesitation (it was not a fear of sin, but a fear of the evil consequences).The defect in the confidence (not in the certainty itself, but its application).The cunning mother and the cunning son.Both too cunning in this case.Their sufferings for itGods commandment is of more weight than the parental authority, than all human commands generally.

Starke: Some commentators are very severe upon Rebekah (Saurin, Discours XXVIII; others on the contrary (Calvin and others), praise her faith, her cunning, her righteousness (because Esau as a bold scoffer, had sold his birthright), her fear of God (abhorrence of the Canaanitish nature). (We must add, however, that Calvin also marks the means which Rebekah uses as evil.)Rebekah, truly, had acted in a human way, striving by unlawful means to attain a good end.Bibl. Wirt: If the Word of God is on our side we must not indeed depart from it, but neither must we undertake to bring about what it holds before us by unlawful means, but look to God, who knows what means to use, and how and when to fulfil his word.Bibl. Tb: God makes even the errors of the pious to work good, if their heart is sincere and upright; yet we are not to imitate their errors.

Gerlach: Though staining greatly, as she did, the divine promise by her deception, yet at the same time her excellent faith shines out through the history. She did not fear to arouse the brothers deadly hatred against Jacob, to bring her favorite son into danger of his life and to excite her husband against her, because the inheritance promised by God stood before her, and she knew God had promised it to Jacob. (Calvin).Schrder: (Michaelis: The kids of the goats can be prepared in such a way as to taste like venison.) Isaac now abides by the rule, but Rebekah insists upon an exception (Luther).The premature grasping bargain of Jacob (Gen 25:29, etc.,) is the reason that God is here anticipated again by Rebekah, and Jacobs sinful cunning, so that the bargain again turns out badly.Luther, holding that the law is annulled by God himself, concludes: Where there is no law, there is no transgression, therefore, she has not sinned (!?)Both (sons) were already 77 years old. The fact, that Jacob, at such an age, was still under maternal control, was grounded deeply in his individuality (Gen 25:27), as well as in the congeniality which existed between Jacob and his mother. Esau, surely, was passed from under Rebekahs control already at the age of ten years.

Section Third, Gen 27:18-29. Isaacs blessing upon Jacob: 1. In its human aspect; 2. in its divine aspect.The divine providence controlling Isaacs plan: Abraham, Isaac and Esau.Jacob, in Esaus garments, betrayed by his voice: 1. Almost betrayed immediately; 2. afterwards clearly betrayed.Isaacs solicitude, or all care in the service of sin and error gains nothing.Jacobs examination.The voice is Jacobs voice, the hands are Esaus hands.Isaacs blessing: 1. According to its external and its typical significance; 2. in its relation to Abrahams promise and the blessing of Jacob.Its new thoughts: the holy sovereignty, the gathering of a holy people, the germ of the announcement of a holy kingdom. Isaacs inheritance: a kingdom of nations, a church of nations.The fulfilment of the blessing: 1. In an external or typical sense: Davids kingdom; 2. in a spiritual sense: the kingdom of Christ.

Starke: Jacob, perhaps, thought with a contrite heart of the abuse of strange raiment, when the bloody coat of Joseph was shown to him. To say nothing of the cross caused by children, which, no doubt, is the most severe cross to pious parents in this world, and with which the pious Jacob often met (Dinahs rape, Benjamins difficult birth, Simeons and Levis bloody weapons, Reubens incest, Josephs history, Judahs history, Genesis 38, etc.). For Jacob sinned: 1. In speaking contrary to the truth, and twice passing himself for Esau; 2. in really practising fraud by means of strange raiment and false pretences; 3. in his abuse of the name of God (Gen 27:20); 4. in taking advantage of his fathers weakness.Yet God bore with his errors, like Isaac, etc.

Gen 27:26 : a collection of different places in which we read of a kiss or kisses (see Concordance).That this uttered blessing is to be received not only according to the letter, but also in a deeper, secret sense, is apparent from Heb 11:20, where Paul says: that by faith Isaac blessed his son, of which faith the Messiah was the theme.

Gerlach: The goal and central point of this blessing is the word: be lord over thy brethren. For this implies that he was to be the bearer of the blessing, while the others should only have a share in his enjoyment.Lisco: Earthly blessing (Deu 33:28).Cursed be, etc. He who loves the friends of God, loves God himself; he who hates them, hates him; they are the apple of his eye.Calwer Handbuch: The more pleasant the fragrance of the flowers and herbs of the field, the richer is the blessing. Earthly blessings are a symbol and pledge to the father of divine grace.Power and sway: The people blessed of the Lord must stand at the head of nations, in order to impart a blessing to all.Isaac, much against his will, blesses him whom Jehovah designs to bless.Schrder: Ah, the voice, the voice (of Jacob)! I should have dropped the dish and run away (Luther).Thus also the servants of God sow the seed of redemption among men, not knowing where and how it is to bring fruits. God does not limit the authority granted to them by other knowledge and wisdom. The virtue and efficacy of the sacraments by no means depend, as the Papists think, upon the intention of the person who administers them (Calvin).(Esaus goodly raiment: Jewish tradition holds these to be the same made by God himself for the first parents (Gen 3:21), and it attributes to the person wearing them the power even of taming wild beasts.The inhabitants of South Asia are accustomed to scent their garments in different ways. By means of fragrant oils extracted from spices, etc. (Michaelis).Smell of a field. Herodotus says, All Arabia exhales fragrant odors.)Thus he wished that the land of Canaan should be to them a pattern and pledge of the heavenly inheritance (Calvin).Dew, corn, wine, are symbols of the blessings of the kingdom of grace and glory (Ramb.).That curseth thee. Here it is made known, that the true church is to exist among the descendants of Jacob. The three different members of the blessing contain the three prerogatives of the first-born: 1. The double inheritance. Canaan was twice as large and fruitful as the country of the Edomites; 2. the dominion over his brethren; 3. the priesthood which walks with blessings, and finally passes over to Christ, the source of all blessing (Rambach).Luther calls the first part of the blessing: the food of the body, the daily bread; the second part: the secular government; the third part: the spiritual priesthood, and places in this last part the dear and sacred cross, and at the same time also, the victory in and with the cross. In Christ, the true Israel of all times, rules the people and nations.

To Section Fourth, Gen 27:30-40. Esau comes too late: 1. Because he wished to obtain the divine blessing of promise by hunting (by running and striving, etc.) (Rom 9:16); 2. he wished to gain it, after he had sold it; 3. he wished to acquire it, without comprehending its significance; and, 4. without its being intended for him by the divine decree, and any fitness of mind for it.Isaacs trembling and terror are an indication that his eyes are opened, because he sees the finger of God and not the hand of man.Esaus lamentation opposed to his fathers firmness: 1. A passion instead of godly sorrow; 2. connected with the illusion that holy things may be treated arbitrarily; 3. referring to the external detriment but not to the internal loss.Esaus misunderstanding a type of the misunderstanding of the worldly-minded in regard to divine things: 1. That the plan of divine salvation was the work of Man 1:2. the blessing of salvation was a matter of human caprice; 3. that the kingdom of God was an external affair.Esaus blessing the type: 1. Of his character; 2. of his choice: 3. of his apparent satisfaction.Here Isaac and Esau are now for the first time opposed to each other in their complete antithesis: Isaac in his prophetic greatness and clearness opposed to Esau in his sad and carnal indiscretion and passionate conduct.

Starke: Gen 27:30. Divine providence is here at work.

Gen 27:33. This exceedingly great amazement came from God.Cramer: God rules and determines the time; the clockwork is in his hands, he can prolong it, and he can shorten it, according to his pleasure, and if he governs anything, he knows how to arrange time and circumstances, and the men who live in that time, in such a way that they do not appear before or after he wishes them to come. Christian, commend to him, therefore, thy affairs (Psa 31:17; Gal 4:4).Hall: God knows both time and means to call back his people, to obviate their sins, and to correct their errors (Heb 12:17).Lange: Isaac did not approve of the manner and means, but the event itself he considers as irrevocable, as soon as he recognizes that God, on account of the unfitness of Esau, has so arranged it. While, therefore, we do not ascribe to God any active working of evil, we concede that, by his wisdom, he knows how to control the errors of men, especially of believers, to a good purpose.

Gen 27:36. Thus insolent sinners roll the blame upon others.

Gen 27:37. The word Lord is rendered remarkably prominent, since it appears only here and Gen 27:29. Just as if, out of Jacobs loins alone would come the mightiest and most powerful lords, princes, and kings, especially the strong and mighty Messiah.Hall: Tears flowing from revenge, jealousy, carnal appetites, and worldly cares, cause death (2Co 7:10). Gods word remains forever, and never falls to the ground.Calwer Handbuch: Ver, 36. And still Esau had sold it.He lamented the misfortune only, not his carelessness; he regretted only the earthly in the blessing, but not the grace.

Schrder: Then cried he a great cry, great and bitter exceedingly. This is the perfectly (?) natural, unrestrained outbreaking of a natural man, to whom, because he lives only for the present, every ground gives way beneath his feet when the present is lost.

To Isaacs explanation that the blessing was gone. Here also a heroic cast is given to the quiet, retiring, and often unobserved love.The aged, feeble, and infirm Isaac celebrates upon his couch a similar triumph of love, just as the faith of his father triumphed upon Mt. Moriah, etc. (i.e., he sacrifices to the Lord his preference for Esau).The world today still preserves the same mode of thinking; it sells the blessing of the new birth, etc., and still claims to inherit this blessing (Roos).Esau, and perhaps Isaac also, thought probably by the blessing to invalidate the fatal bargain as to the birthright.He only bewails the consequences of his sin but he has no tears for the sin itself.The question here was properly not about salvation and condemnation. Salvation was not refused to Esau, but he serves as a warning to us all, by his cries full of anguish, not to neglect the grace of God (Roos).Esaus blessing. Esau appealed to the paternal heart, and with the true objective character of the God of the patriarch, Isaac neither could nor should drop his own paternal character.Now he has no birthright to give away, and therefore no solemn: and he blessed him, occurs here.(Descriptions of the Iduman country and people follow).

Section Fifth. Gen 27:41-46. Esaus hatred of Jacob: 1. In its moral aspect; 2. in its typical significance.Want of self-knowledge a cause of Esaus enmity.Esau inclined to fratricide: 1. Incited by envy, animosity, and revenge; 2. checked by piety toward the father; 3. prevented by his frankness and out-spoken character, as well as by Rebekahs sagacity.Rebekahs repentance changed into an atonement by the heroic valor of her faith.Rebekahs sacrifice.How this sagacious and heroic-minded woman makes a virtue (Jacobs theocratic wooing for a bride) of necessity (the peril of Jacobs life).

Starke: Gen 27:44. These few days became twenty years.

Gen 27:45. That Rebekah did this, is not mentioned in any place. Probably she died soon after, and therefore did not live to see Jacobs return (Gen 49:31; Mat 5:22; 1Jn 3:15; Pro 27:4).Cramer: Whatever serves to increase contention and strife, we are to conceal, to trample upon, and to turn everything to the best (Mat 5:9).Gerlach: Gen 27:41. This trait represents to us Esau most truthfully; the worst thing in his conduct, however, is not the savage desire of revenge, but the entire unbelief in God and the reluctance to subject himself to him. Whilst Isaac submitted unconditionally as soon as God decided, Esau did not care at all for the divine decision.Calwer Handbuch: He did not think of the divine hand in the matter, nor of his own guilt, self-knowledge, or repentance.Schrder: God never punishes his people without correcting grace is made also purifying grace at the same time (Roos).As Esau had only cries and tears at first, he now has only anger and indignation.

Gen 27:41. Repentance and its fruits correspond (Luther).All revenge is self-consolation. True consolation under injustice comes from God (Rom 12:19).And he forgets what thou hast done to him. With this she both acknowledges Jacobs guilt and betrays a precise knowledge of Esaus character.Let us not despair too soon of men. Are there not twelve hours during the day? The great fury and fiery indignation pass away with time (Luther).How sagacious this pious woman: she conceals to her husband the great misfortune and affliction existing in the house so as not to bring sorrow upon Isaac in his old age (Luther).

Section Sixth, Gen 28:1-8. Jacobs mission to Mesopotamia compared with that of Eliezer: 1. Its agreement; 2. its difference.Isaac now voluntarily blesses Jacob.The necessity of this pious house becomes the source of new blessings: 1. The feeble Isaac becomes a hero; 2. the plain and quiet Jacob becomes a courageous pilgrim and soldier; 3. the strong-minded Rebekah becomes a person that sacrifices her most dearly loved.How late the full self-development of both Jacobs and Esaus character appears.Jacobs prompt obedience and Esaus foolish correction of his errors.The church is a community of nations, typified already by the theocracy.

Starke: Concerning the duties of parents and children as to the marriage of their children.The dangers of injudicious marriages.Parents can give to their children no better provision on their way than a Christian blessing (Tob 5:21).Bibl. Tub.: The blessing of ancestors, resting upon the descendants is a great treasure, and to be preserved as the true and the best dowry.Calwer Handbuch: He goes out of spite (or at least in his folly and self-will) to the daughters of Ishmael, and takes a third wife as near of kin to his father as the one Jacob takes was to his mother. (But the distinction was that Ishmael was separated from the theocratic line, while the house in Mesopotamia belonged to the old stock.)Schrder: Rebekah, who in her want of faith could not wait for divine guidance, has now to exercise her faith for long years, and learn to wait.Isaac appears fully reconciled to Jacob.In the eyes of Isaac his father. He does not care about the mother.Thus natural men never find the right way to please God and their fellow-men whom they have offended, nor the true way of reconciliation with them (Berl. Bibel.).

Footnotes:

[1][Gen 27:1.Lange renders when Isaac was old, then his eyes were dim, so that he could not see, as an independent sentence, laying the basis for the following narrative.A. G.]

[2][Gen 27:42.Comforteth, or avengeth. The thought of vengeance was his consolation.A. G.]

[3][Gen 28:3., congregation.A. G.]

Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange

CONTENTS

This Chapter contains the history of Jacob’s craftily obtaining the blessing of the birth-right from his father Isaac, and thereby supplanting his brother Esau: a circumstance, which unless read with a spiritual apprehension, will be to us, as it is always to the carnal, a stumblingstone and rock of offence. In this Chapter the Holy Ghost also relates the sad conduct of the Patriarch Isaac, who, notwithstanding the open revelation God made to him before the birth of his two sons, Jacob and Esau, that the elder should serve the younger, in direct defiance of this will of God, sought to entail the covenant blessing on Esau. He gives directions to Esau! how to prepare for him venison, in order to receive this blessing; Rebekah contrives by stratagem to obtain it for her son Jacob: the success of Jacob, and the disappointment of Esau, are both related in this Chapter. Esau determines to be revenged of Jacob: and Rebekah in order to prevent it, contrives to send Jacob to her brother’s house by way of refuge.

Gen 27:1

I would earnestly beseech the Reader, before he enters upon the perusal of this chapter, to consult very carefully the following scriptures: First, Gen 25:23 . Here you see, that the appointment of Jacob to the birth-right was of the Lord. Also do not forget this one thing, that He, who thought proper to have this blessing given to Jacob, by a transfer, might, had he pleased, have as easily given it by birth-right. Next consult Gen 25:32-34 , and compare with Heb 12:16-17 . The construction which the Holy Ghost hath put on Esau’s conduct, clearly proves what that conduct was. He poured contempt upon the promised blessing of redemption; and how shall the soul that rejects that mercy, be made the rich partaker of it! Thirdly, consult Mal 1:2-3 . And if these scriptures need any farther comment, let the Reader turn to Rom 9:7 to the end; and these are enough, under the divine teaching, to explain this whole transaction.

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Music to the House of God (At a Musical Festival)

Gen 27:17

I. If we ask what is the true place of music in the Church of God, we can but answer that it has a wondrous power of creating and sustaining emotion and enthusiasm. The danger lies in our confusing music designed and executed for devotional purposes with music designed for other purposes. The devotion of the performer’s heart in spiritual penitence or praise must inspire the music of the Church if it is to be for the worship of God.

II. Music like all other gifts has two sides. Use it as God’s gift, praise God in it, let it preach to you higher things and it will be one of your best possessions. But do nothing with it except enjoy it, let it end in nothing more lasting than a beautiful feeling and it may be a sensual snare.

Bishop Yeatman-Biggs, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxix., 1904, p. 185.

References. XXVII. 33. C. Parsons Reichel, Sermons, p. 2. XXVII. 34. J. B. Lightfoot, Cambridge Sermons, p. 3. J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, p. 141. J. J. Blunt, Plain Sermons (2nd Series), p. 227. J. S. Barrett, Sermons, p. 33. Bishop Armstrong, Parochial Sermons, p. 1. XXVII. 37. R. Winterbotham, Sermons, p. 118. XXVII. 38. J. S. Barrett, Sermons, p. 33. Bishop Harvey Goodwin, Parish Sermons (2nd Series), p. 1. T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iv. p. 133. XXVII. F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis, p. 85.

Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson

The Deception of Isaac

Gen 27

The well-known story of the deception of Isaac has been so often misinterpreted, that it may be well to endeavour to get the key and meaning of the whole narrative. It has been made a puzzle to tender consciences and imperfect and uncertain minds not an intellectual puzzle only, for mysteries of that kind are innumerable; but a moral difficulty, a great and most painful wonder as to how such things could be, if not actually sanctioned, yet tacitly permitted, by the Judge of all the earth, whose distinguishing characteristic it is, in the estimation of holy minds, that he will assuredly do right. Let us endeavour to master the case, and to see exactly what amount of difficulty there is about it, and to show that this difficulty seems to be a necessary quality and incident in the development of all human life. It is often forgotten that Jacob was divinely appointed to be the inheritor of the blessing. The omission from the calculation or thought of that one fact is likely to lead not only to mental perplexity but to moral confusion. You find the proof of the assertion in Gen 25:23 . The Lord said unto Rebekah, in view of the birth of her children, “The one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.” The mystery, therefore, is Divine. The commentator cannot help us here; the light is too strong for his eyes. This is the mystery of today, in our own house, in our own consciousness, in the whole circle of our experience, observation, and knowledge. Read the solemn words again: “The one people shall be stronger than the other people Is that only a forecast, or is it a sovereign appointment? Is it an accident, or a fiat? The mind instantly says, Why should one people be stronger than any other people? But there is the fact. Were there no Bible the facts would still be there, plaguing the mind, challenging the imagination, and tempting the moral nature. “And the elder shall serve the younger.” Why this inversion of all presumably natural methods? But there is the fact. We might deny the sovereignty in theory, but there it is in actual history not the history that stands centuries away from us, and by its very distance in time becomes mythological; but the history of our own little life and our own small household. We cannot explain it. We see the mystery, and if we use it wrongly, it will but add to the confusion of our life; if we accost it obeisantly, as we might accost a visitant from the upper world, a tenderer solemnity will cover our life, a holier influence will lift up our souls to a bolder prayer. We shall do injustice to ourselves if we stumble at such mysteries: in the meantime, when the day is nearly all darkness, with just a glint of light here and there in the murky gloom, we shall do well to stand still, wonder, and remit the case to another occasion where we shall have more light and more time. In all life there is a kind of groping after destiny a dumb consciousness that we are being called in this or that direction. The voice says, “Samuel”! and we rise and go to our old friends under the dream that they have called for us. Our old friends were deep in sleep they knew not that a voice had fallen upon our ears, even the voice from on high; so that they slept on in peacefulness and in unconsciousness. A marvellous feeling is this pressure towards a given direction. We may not want to go in that special direction; but it seems to us as if we could not resist the influence that is bearing us with gracious violence in the line of a certain goal. We cannot calculate about it; we cannot take paper and pen and ink, and set down and add up reasons and bring them to the total of a logical conclusion. We are in the Spirit, we are caught up by the Spirit in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye: a trumpet has sounded and we are up where the morning is born. We do not understand the narrow and vulgar language of carnal reasoning and market-place reckoning, and calculation and conjecture. This is a mystery we must not omit from our view when we are looking out upon the whole scheme of things; nor must we regard it as a mystery belonging to other people. It is the presence of God in our own soul. This operation of destiny is seen in animal life, even of the lowest kind. Animals are born to their destiny: the ram butts before his horns are visible; there is a scent in the nostril of the beast which stands to him in place of education and training; the eye is made for the kind of work it has to do in the daytime or in the night season. From the very earliest throb of life there is some intimation of destiny had we but keenness of mind enough to see it So in morals and there the mystery becomes a pain: it does seem as if some people were made to be bad. The commentator must here hold his peace; he can but feel the pressure of a great mystery and explain his feeling in imperfect terms. There is a difference of men in this respect. It is easier for some men to pray than for others to bow the knee in homage and look up to the heavens in expectation. We do not know what going to church costs some people in the way of pain and sacrifice of spirit. Others long for the church-day, the church bell, and the church door; they are filled with joy on Sabbath mornings because the sanctuary will be opened and music divine will make the very air glad; great revelations will be spoken by human tongues, and mighty prayers will make heaven’s day brighter than the sun can make it; the whole time shall be a succession of festival hours, and the heart shall keep high jubilee, not knowing sin, or sorrow, or pain, or weakness, because of the absorption of the soul in God. What it costs another man even to stand up as if he were singing God’s praises cannot be told. There is more devil in him than divinity; he does not want to pray; if you persuade him to church, you cannot tell what a conquest you have won. In all this we have no explanation. The Bible does not make these mysteries, it recognises them and treats them in the only possible, the only just and wise way.

We find also this groping after destiny along intellectual lines. You plan a course of life for your sons say they are six in number but you really are doing what you have no right to do. Your business is to find out the way in which the child should go: then train up the child in the way in which he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it; there is something in destiny that confirms itself, something in consciousness and experience that says “This was the right way”; and the sunset shall be without a cloud. It is when parents seek to be the arbiters of their children’s destiny that they set themselves up above God, and are therefore doomed to mortification and bitterness of soul. The Lord sends every life into this world for a point, a purpose, a destiny. Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? I will have no will but thine. What is the angel within me painter, poet, merchant? Is mine to be a serving life, or a ruling one? Have I to give orders, or to obey them? Not my will, but thine be done. Then service is mastery, suffering is enjoyment, labour is rest.

Jacob was a destined man; Jacob was destined before he was born: what, then, was his error? Not in feeling, how mysteriously soever, the pressure of his destiny, but in prematurely taking it into his own hands. We must not force Providence. Is there not an appointed time to man upon the earth, in a much wider sense than in the sense of marking out the day of his death? Is there not a time for the rising of the sun and the going down of the same? Is there not a seed time in the year, as well as a harvest day? We are tempted to force Providence, thus to do the right thing in the wrong way, and at the wrong time. Right is not a question of a mere point; it gathers up into its mystery all the points of the case, so that it is not enough to be going in the right road; we must have come into that road through the right door, at the right hour, and by direct intervention and sanction of God.

It is tempting to natures like ours to help ourselves by trickery. We do like to meddle with God. Granted that the mother saw the religious aspect of this whole case, and knew the destiny of the boys, she had no right to force Divine Providence. “Isaac loved Esau because he did eat of his venison: but Rebekah loved Jacob.” She knew not why. We cannot tell the genesis of our love; it is the mystery of being. What if she knew all the time, without being told in words she could neither understand or explain that Jacob would be the possessor of the first blessing? It is a difficult thing to have a secret entrusted to the soul, and yet not to tell that secret to others, or force its realisation by some little act of cunning and knavery. We may go to church at the wrong time, and in the wrong way, and in the wrong spirit. It is not enough to be in the sanctuary: we must be there in the spirit of the house; then the roof will be heaven, and the walls rich as the jasper of the skies. A rough thinking says this or that is the right way, and that is enough; a correct, profound thinking says, “It is not enough to be substantially right: not only must you have a destiny to realise; you must have also a process of destiny a choice of equal value with destiny itself.” Is not this an address to our innermost experience? We will take things before the time. The vineyard is yours, every cluster of grapes is yours; but do not touch one atom of fruit till the sun has wrought out his ripening ministry upon it. We may not touch even things that are our own until the right time comes. We know this in the field; we know it in many mercantile transactions; but it seems impossible for us to carry up that knowledge into the highest religious applications. We cannot wait, because we are imperfect; we cannot stand still, because we are impatient; and our impatience is but one phase of our ignorance.

There was an apparent justification of the action of Rebekah in the previous action of Esau already considered, namely: “Esau was forty years old when he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite: which were a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah.” The mystery of that act we have already considered, and it did seem to justify Rebekah in taking the administration of Providence partially into her own hands. We are not so pitiful of one another as God is pitiful of us. Rebekah would have Esau punished almost instantaneously because he had married out of the law. It is better to fall into the hands of God than into the hands of man. No doubt Esau had forfeited the primogeniture by this act of marrying the Canaanitish women; no doubt he had become what the apostle centuries afterwards described as a “fornicator”; no doubt he had turned the stream of the blessing into wrong lineal channels; had there been no Divine sovereignty revealed even before that act he would by that act itself have forfeited his position in the family to which he belonged. How keen we are to make the faults of other people the reasons for excusing our own selfishness! Was Rebekah moved by the consciousness of destiny, or was she excited by the spirit of revenge? It is easy for us to mistake our revenge for religion. Some men pray out of spite; some men preach Christ out of envy; it is possible to build a church upon the devil’s foundation, and to light an altar with the devil’s fire. Whilst we have not spared Esau in our reading of his unlawful and unnatural marriages, we are bound now not to spare Rebekah in taking vengeance into her own hands. “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” But we like to handle judgment; the hand itches to bestow upon the evildoer some penalty or mark of discredit and degradation, on the plea that it is right to do so. What is right? It is impossible for us to know in that sense what “right” is, because it covers a space the eye cannot take in, and involves relations which defy imagination. Right it is God’s word; it is a word as large as God; it is a word that involves the very being of God; it is a term which shuts up God himself in a great necessity. What we have to do is to be patient, to be pitiful, to be kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another; and when the pain is very keen smarting like a sting of fire and when the avenging weapon lies close at hand, and we feel that our arm has yet strength enough to inflict the deserved chastisement it is then that we have to utter a prayer as from a cross: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do”! This is religion, the religion of Christ, the wine of the true heart and sacrament; this is the glorious Gospel of the blessed God. It is an awful thing to be a child of special destiny. It sets a man away from the common lines of things, and makes him the butt of every archer, the sport of every fool; it brings upon him rapid judgments, sharp censures, biting criticisms; he is unmanageable, impracticable, unintelligible; he cannot be set in the straight line and current of things. Jacob was pre-eminently a destined child, a man with a special mark upon him: how he will come out of this we shall see; but God will be King and Master, and right shall be done. What, then, is to be our attitude under the consciousness of destiny, and under the suggestion of tempting events? Our attitude is to be one of perfect resignation. I do not mine own will; the works that I do are not my works, they are the works of him that sent me; I am not creator but creature; I am not musician but instrument not my will, but God’s will be done. That being done, and being done in me and through me, I am in heaven; I am part of the great sum-total of things if not a pinnacle, yet a stone in the foundation; if not a stone in the front walls, yet a stone in the inner lining part of the temple, part of the holy building. God shall fix me where he pleases; I will do nothing of myself; be my future kingly, menial, triumphant, subservient, marked by a strength that never tires, or by a weakness that can scarcely pronounce its own name it is nothing to me; thy will, my God, be done. If I can say this with the soul, night shall have no darkness, day no cloud, death no sting, the grave no victory.

Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker

XXVI

ISAAC AND JACOB

Gen 25:19-28:9

We take up the story of Isaac and Jacob. The closing paragraphs of Isaac’s history are recorded in Gen 35:28-29 , his death and burial. There is an old saying, “Blessed is the nation which has no history.” History is devoted to extraordinary events. A thousand years of quiet and peace find no description in the pages of history. A few years of wars, pestilences, and earthquakes receive much attention. Isaac may be called the patriarch without a history.

I wish to refer first to his mother. An examination question will be: What New Testament passages refer favorably to Sarah? The answer in Heb 11 says that she is a woman of faith. By faith she was enabled to bear seed. 2Pe 3:6 , places her above the woman of Peter’s time as a model in subjection and obedience to her husband and the laws of maternal relation. The apostle Paul in Gal 4 makes Sarah the type of the Jerusalem which is above the mother of us all.

We have considered in previous lectures the things which went before Isaac’s birth. As early as Gen 12:3 , God had promised that in Abraham’s seed all the families of men should be blessed, but Abraham thought that could apply to an adopted child as well as a real child. When the promise is spoken a second time, it is expressly stated that it should be his own child. Then Abraham did not know who the mother would be. But the third statement was that it was not only to be his own child, but by his wife, Sarah. So according to Paul, Isaac comes into the world the child of promise, and by a miraculous birth. In this respect he is the type of all Christians who are regenerated, born of supernatural power.

In contrasting Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we find Isaac unlike his father and son in the following particulars: He was unlike them in age. He lived to be 180 years old; neither of them lived that long. In the matter of travel: Isaac never got out of the sight of the smoke that went up from the tent where he was born. With a compass you might draw a circle with a radius of 100 miles around his birthplace as a center, and he was never beyond that circle. He was never north of the city of Jerusalem; east of the river Jordan; south of the South country where Beersheba was; never west of the Mediterranean Sea. No man of his age and with his wealth traveled so little. Again, he was unlike both father and son in his marriage relations. He had but one wife, and she bore him only two children, both at one birth. He was as pure a man in the marriage relation as ever lived in the world. He was unlike both father and son in his passiveness, i.e., he had no spirit of aggression or self-assertion. He was never in a battle. There were very few stirring events in his history. But when you read the lives of Abraham and Jacob many mighty and thrilling events come up. Unlike father and son, he became blind in his old age and nearly helpless. You might say that Jacob’s life commenced with a struggle, and was under the clouds the early years, but about the middle of his life the sun shines out, and the sunset is unclouded. Isaac commenced life with laughter and ended with sorrow. The record tells of his building only one altar, though he may have built others. He offered only one prayer, the prayer for his wife. God appeared to him only twice, but to Jacob and Abraham many times. He was like Abraham in one fault, duplicity concerning his wife to the king of the Philistines. He was like both father and son in being a prophet of God.

The record passes over the happy years of his life, most of the 120 years. If you have read Thomson’s Land and the Book, or any modern book about the South country, you have a vivid description of the kind of land where he lived. No perennial streams, scarcely any trees, bleak mountains and plains, in the spring a beautiful country of flowers, but they last only a short time. I have seen at least forty varieties of them gathered from the fields where Isaac lived. The water question was a great question in his life, as of all the patriarchs, there being little rain and the streams entirely dry the greater part of the year. So they had to dig for water. And one may imagine the growing up of this boy under favorable and happy circumstances, loved by his father and mother, scarcely any troubles, quietly Jiving his life in a tent, amid flowers and flocks and herds.

The record does tell about his trials. I give you a list. They commenced when he was weaned, at three years old. At that time he wag very much persecuted by his big brother, Ishmael, who was fourteen years older. That strong wild boy, superseded by the coming of Isaac, persecuted the little fellow, and if I had to say under what sense of wrong my soul was most indignant in my youth, it would be in observing rude, big boys, being cruel to timid little fellows at school. Nobody can tell through what horrors a timid soul passes in going out in public life and coming in contact with rougher beings. Especially is this true in schools, and where hazing is permitted, it is perfectly awful. The next sorrow was when he was offered up. He was then about twenty and had lived in perfect peace about seventeen years. Next when his mother died. He could not be consoled for several years, because she was everything to him. He was the child of his mother. There is a legend I do not call it history that when Abraham took Isaac to offer him up he told Sarah and broke her heart and caused her death. You don’t get that out of the Bible, however. The next trial is one that a good many children come in touch with, the introducing of a stepmother into the family, but the record does not indicate that there was any trouble between Isaac and his wife and Keturah, the second wife of Abraham. The next, a very great sorrow, was that his wife bore no children. He had been married twenty years, and it troubled him much, knowing the promise of God. But instead of seeking to fulfill the prophecy as Abraham and Sarah had done, he carried the case to God in prayer. The Lord heard him and promised that children should be born to him. The next trial was the death of his father. His twin boys, Jacob and Esau, were about fifteen years old. So the grandfather lived long enough to know the boys thoroughly. The next trouble was when the famine came, and he had to go into the land of the Philistines, and he was afraid that Abimelech or some other ungodly man would kill him in order to get his wife. It does not always follow, however, that other people are as anxious to capture our wives as we think they are. But it nearly happened in this case.

We now come to the culminating period of Isaac’s life, Gen 26:12-28 . He is now in the country of Abimelech: “And Isaac sowed in that land . . . and there Isaac’s servants digged a well.” There Abimelech and Phicol made a covenant with him and from now on his sorrows multiply. The next sorrow arises from a little transaction concerning a mess of pottage. You remember the prophecy that the older child of Isaac should serve the younger. The mother was partial to Jacob. Esau, a man of the plains, and a great hunter, was loved by his father. The mother instructed her son to help out God’s prophecy. She watched her chance. The chance came when Esau returned from hunting, tired and hungry, and Jacob had Just made a pot of red pottage. Esau’s own name meant red-headed, and people don’t have red heads for nothing. Esau said to Jacob, “Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage, for I am faint.” And Jacob said, “I will give it to you if you will acknowledge that the birthright belongs to me.” That was driving a hard bargain, but Esau was so hungry that he sold the birthright. Isaac did not say a word, but in his own mind he determined to bestow the blessing on Esau, because he loved him most. The next trouble comes in Esau’s marriage. Esau married two idolatrous women, and the record states that it was a great grief to Rebekah and Isaac. The next calamity is that Isaac begins to go blind. Next the great deception was practiced on him by his wife and Jacob. Feeling that he might soon pass away he determined as a prophet to bestow the blessing on the firstborn, on Esau. So he told Esau to go out and kill venison and fix him a savory dish. Isaac liked Esau’s venison, somewhat of a sensual man. I am told that it is a characteristic of some preachers these days to like savory dishes, and woe to the preacher who has to preach at night after eating a big dinner of mince pie at twelve o’clock! Rebekah seemed to have a listening ear and heard Isaac talking to Esau. Now she is going to help God out. Isaac willed that Esau should have the birthright. Esau ran to kill the venison. Jacob and Rebekah plotted to defeat him. So she put Esau’s clothing on Jacob, as Esau was a hairy man. Rebekah told him to kill and dress a kid and tell the old man it was venison, and that he was Esau. It was a very villainous transaction. Jacob brought the kid and the father said, “Is this my son Esau?” and Jacob said, “Yes, father.” Isaac said, “Come here, let me feel.” He felt of the garment and said, “The touch is like Esau, but the voice is like Jacob.” Anyhow he ate the dish of kid and pronounced the blessing on Jacob. Here is that blessing in poetic form:

See, the smell of my son

Is as the smell of a field which

Jehovah hath blessed;

And God give thee of the dew of heaven,

And of the fatness of the earth,

And plenty of grain and wine:

Let peoples serve thee,

And nations bow down to thee:

Be lord over thy brethren,

And let thy mother’s sons bow down to thee:

Cursed be every one that curseth thee,

And blessed be every one that blesseth thee.

There Isaac gives Jacob power over his brother, thinking he was giving it to Esau. Now the question arises and Paul argues it in Rom 9 , how could God approve such fraud as that? Well, God did not approve it. Paul says, “It is not of him that willeth.” Isaac willed to give it to Esau. “It is not of him that runneth.” Esau ran to get the venison. It was not of Jacob and his mother, but of the election, God having decreed before the children were born, before either one had done good or evil, that the younger should be the one through whom the Messiah should come.

The most touching thing was when Esau came back: “And it came to pass as soon as Isaac had made an end of blessing Jacob, and Jacob was yet scarce gone out of the presence of Isaac, his father, that Esau, his brother, came in from his hunting. And he also made savoury food, and brought it unto his father; and he said unto his father, Let my father arise, and eat of his son’s venison, that thy soul may bless me. And Isaac, his father, said, Who art thou? And he said, I am thy son, thy firstborn, Esau. And Isaac trembled exceedingly, and said, Who then is he that hath taken venison and brought it me, and I have eaten of all before thou earnest, and have blessed him? Yea, and he shall be blessed. When Esau heard the words of his father, he cried, Bless me, even me, O my father. Jacob hath supplanted me these two times: he took away my birthright, and behold he hath taken my blessing.” And Isaac answered:

Behold, of the fatness of the earth shall be thy dwelling,

And of the dew of heaven from above;

And by thy sword shalt thou live, and thou shalt

serve thy brother;

And it shall be as thou rovest at will, thou wilt

shake off thine enemy.

In one of the old prophets it is said, “Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated.” That refers not to the persons of Jacob and Esau, but to the nationalities. Esau was heathen, and Jacob was Israel. None of this work of election in any particular had anything to do with the character of either. None of it with the wishes of the father and mother. It was God’s sovereign disposition of the case and touched the descendants rather than the two persons. Heb 12:16 brings out the character of Esau a little more plainly: “Lest there be any fornicator or profane person, as Esau, who for one mess of meat sold his birthright. For ye know that when he afterward desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected; for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.” That used to trouble me. It looked like Esau wanted to repent of his sin and God would not forgive him. I will read it to you according to the true rendering: “For he found no place for a change of mind in the father.” It was not Esau’s repentance, but Isaac’s repentance. Don’t ever misapply that scripture. That was a great trouble to Isaac. And as for the rascality of Jacob and Rebekah, they had to bear a heavy burden. Esau determined to kill Jacob and his mother seat him away and never saw him again.

The next thing was the death of his brother Ishmael; then the death of his wife; and afterward the departure of Esau. There he was alone, father, wife, brother dead, one son banished and another gone away. Then Jacob came and comforted him in his last illness. I have given you an outline of the sorrows of Isaac, but there are really two that I have not mentioned, viz.: Jacob had gotten to the Holy Land on his return, but had not reached his father’s house when Rachel died. Isaac was living, but he never got to see Rachel. Joseph was sold into slavery and Isaac never saw him, then comes the death of Isaac.

Let us look at the character of this man. He was intensely religious, domestic and peaceful; passive in his resistance to evil and in one event of his life a type of Christ; when he got to the mountain he carried the wood upon which he was to be offered as Christ bore his own cross until he fainted. A type of the Christian is his miraculous birth. When we come to consider Jacob and Esau further attention will be given to these details. In the grave of Machpelah, by the side of his father Abraham, and mother Sarah, Isaac and his wife Rebekah were buried. And to this day the Arabs point to the casket which contains the remains. This is the culminating period of the prosperity in the life of Isaac. So we now pass to the

HISTORY OF JACOB In the first of the chapter on Isaac we have necessarily considered somewhat the incidents of Jacob’s life up to the time that he left his father’s home. It was then said that those incidents would be examined more particularly when we studied Jacob’s own life. Oliver Wendell Holmes, in reply to the question, How early should the education of a child begin? replied, “Commence with his grandmother.” To a great extent certainly most lives are the mixed results of preceding forces. Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, are all in some degree reproduced in Jacob. Oliver Wendell Holmes also says, “A man is an omnibus in which all his ancestors ride.” Don’t forget these two quotations. This thought he embodies and illustrates in his book Elsie Venner. The object of that book was to show how conflicting ancestral traits struggled for supremacy in this girl. We might add that every life is a result of many forces, including the following: (1) God; (2) the devil; (3) heredity; (4) individuality; (5) environment; (6) opportunity; (7) education; (8) habits. We will be little prepared to analyze or comprehend Jacob’s life, if we lose sight of any one of these forces. So far in Jacob’s life individuality has bad but limited place, since he has been under the dominion, or domination, of his mother. Individuality comes most into play when we are thrown upon our own resources, and are responsible for our own decisions and have to make our own way. We will find in this history that Jacob appears to much greater advantage when his own individuality comes into play than when he was under the influence of another. We will find the value of his past habits in his taking care of himself and making a support, and that, too, under very adverse conditions, more adverse than that of any of you boys, hard as you think your lot is. We are going to like Jacob a great deal better as we get on in his history than we do at the start. It has been well said that no hunter is a good businessman. This holds good from Esau to Rip Van Winkle. The domestic habits of Jacob, and his training in caring for flocks and herds, serve him well in after life. From his mother and her family comes his shrewd business sense. Woe to the man who expects to get rich trading with Jacob. He is a prototype of all Yankees and modern Jews in driving close bargains. Hunter Esau was the first victim to “cut his eye-teeth” on that fact.

But before we study the individuality as manifested when thrown upon his own resources, we must refresh our minds with a backward glance at his history as given in previous chapters. His parentage, Isaac, son of Abraham, and Rebekah, granddaughter of Nahor, Abraham’s brother. But a mightier factor than parental influence or heredity touches him. Prophecies and mighty doctrines were on their way toward him before be began to be. God comes before parents. The divine purpose and the divine election touching his life will look far beyond the personal Jacob, and be far above and paramount over affection, will, weakness, or duplicity of parent or child, long after the earthly actors are dead. Yea, into thousands of years of the future the foreknowledge, predestination and election of God will project themselves until the whole human race becomes involved in Jacob, and until eternity and everlasting destiny comes. Deep and wide as may be this shoreless ocean of the divine purpose, we are permitted to look at it, so far as revealed, though it be unnavigable by the human reason. Prophecies: The first prophecy directly affecting. Jacob is God’s answer to the mother’s inquiry concerning the infants in her womb. “Two nations are in thy womb, and two peoples shall be separated therefrom, and one shall be stronger than the other people and the elder shall serve the younger.” This prophecy evidently refers not so much to the boys themselves as to their descendants. Indeed in its wider significance it concerns all nations more than the two nations. So referring, it considers neither parental bias, nor character of either child. It is not a divine decree fixing the eternal destiny of either child. For reasons sufficient to himself, God of his own will selects one of these nations to become his people and through whom he will savingly reach all other peoples. The second relevant prophecy appears in Isaac’s blessing on Jacob: “And God give thee of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth, plenty of grain and new wine.” That is temporal. “Let peoples serve thee and nations bow down to thee.” That is national. That refers to the primogeniture. “Cursed be every one that curseth thee and blessed be every one that blesseth thee.” That is the prophecy of the twenty-seventh chapter. This prophecy is restated and enlarged in the blessing on Esau, as follows: “And thou shalt serve thy brother, but it shall come to pass, when thou shalt break loose, thou shalt shake his yoke off thy neck” (Gen 24:40 ). These two prophecies, like the first, find their real meaning in the descendant nations, rather than in Jacob and Esau personally. Esau himself never served Jacob himself. Their application to the nations rather than to the brothers themselves appears in the last Old Testament book, Mal 1:2-5 : “Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? saith Jehovah, yet I loved Jacob, but Esau I hated, and made his mountains a desolation.” It is evident that Malachi in his day, thousands of years after Jacob and Esau, is not discussing the two men personally, but Jacob the people, and Edom, Esau’s people. This national application is also evident from Paul’s use of the Genesis and Malachi quotations in Rom 9:10-13 . He is there discussing God’s election of Israel to be his people, and how that nation, on account of infidelity, was cast off and the Gentiles took their places. He is proving that doctrine from this quotation from Malachi. All this prophecy, Paul says, illustrates God’s sovereign election. But so far it is the election of a nation. Personal election of an individual Christian is not so far discussed. The personal privilege conferred in this is the primogeniture conferred on Jacob. In what did this right consist? I am sure to ask that question on examination. The answer is: (1) Rule in family and tribe; (2) A double portion of the inheritance (Deu 2:17 ); (3) The priesthood of the family and the high priesthood of the tribe. In England the right of primogeniture still prevails to a large extent. The eldest son inherits the father’s estate, and in order to support that property they have the “Law of Entail,” that the property cannot be alienated, but must pass down to each first son. The income may be used in providing a portion for the other children, but the principal must remain intact. That is one of the special privileges our forefathers objected to. Jefferson and his colaborers determined to abolish both of these laws as far as they applied to America. The history of Virginia shows various steps of legislation undertaken by Jefferson, and aided particularly by the Baptists, in destroying these laws. A man may bequeath his property by will, but that will is subject to legal investigations. It can be broken if he unjustly deprive any child of a fair share of the inheritance. The original prophecy that the elder should serve the younger was never forgotten by the mother, and through her it was made known to her favorite son, Jacob. In both of them arose a desire to hasten the fulfillment of that prophecy. Like Sarah, their impatience could not wait for God himself to fulfill his word. Now comes another examination question, What was the first step taken to hasten its fulfillment? That mess of pottage business. I will not recite the history, but I will ask you on examination to analyze Jacob’s sin in that transaction, and Esau’s sin. The analysis of Jacob’s sin is: (1) Presumption toward God by human instrumentality to hurry up God’s purpose. (2) Unfilial toward Isaac. (3) Unfraternal and inhuman toward Esau to take advantage of his extremity by a sharp bargain. (4) It was snatching at a promise before it was ripe. The doctrine involved is: You may do evil to bring about a good thing. That is the doctrine of the Jesuits, abhorrent to God’s Word. This evil rather delayed matters. It brought on Jacob the intense hatred of Esau. The analysis of Esau’s sin is: (1) He was sensual; the satisfaction of present desire seemed greater than future blessing. (2) There was profanity in his sin; he despised the sacred primogeniture. How does the Old Testament characterize Esau’s sin? “He despised the birthright.” How does the New Testament? “He was guilty of profanity.” Any act of irreverence is profanity. There has come a proverb from that transaction: “Don’t sell your birthright.” Who has written a book entitled The Mess of Pottage You will find it in the book stores, but I do not recommend it to you. Ben Franklin has a similar proverb. When he was small, a man had a whistle which he made very attractive. Ben Franklin, so intense in his desire to get that whistle, gave the man everything he had. But when he walked off he felt very much dissatisfied; it did not whistle as well as he thought it would. It taught him this: Never pay too much for a whistle. John Bunyan, in Pilgrim’s Progress, has a picture hanging in the interpreter’s house: Two boys, Patience and Passion. Passion rushes up and says, “Father, give me all my goods right now.” The father gives him the goods and he soon spends all. But Patience waits for the right time. Many people are so governed by appetite that though they may know that the commission of an offense will wreck their future career, they forget the future in their lust.

What was the second step to hasten the fulfillment of the promise? It consists in the concerted action between Rebekah and Jacob to deceive blind old Isaac and have him bless Jacob, confirming the right of primogeniture. I shall now proceed to analyze the sin of Rebekah in this transaction. Rebekah’s sin consisted in presumption toward God in doing an evil thing and in the overweening power over Jacob’s character, who did.. not want to do it. “Honoring the mother,” was carried beyond the legitimate limit. Children ought not to obey their parents in committing a crime. Jacob’s sin consisted in making his mother’s desire greater than the promptings of conscience and regard for God’s will. This did not help the purpose a particle. How does the New Testament show that it did not help the purpose? “It is not to him that willeth, like Isaac, nor to him that runneth, like Esau, but it was of God.” It intensified Esau’s hatred against his brother: “He cheated me out of my birthright by trade, and now out of my father’s blessing. I will kill him.” Esau was the fellow to do it. He would boil over, and in anger would kill anybody. So to save the favorite child the mother sent him away and never saw him again. She did not make anything, “but it is true that both of these evil steps were overruled by the providence of God for good.

QUESTIONS 1. Why may Isaac be called a “patriarch without a history”?

2. What New Testament passages refer favorably to Sarah?

3. What three revelations to Abraham concerning the “child of promise” and of what is this child in his birth a type?

4. In what respects of life and character did Isaac differ from his father, Abraham, and his son, Jacob?

5. For what does the New Testament commend him? (Heb 11:20 .)

6. Describe the land where he lived. What was the great problem of his life?

7. Though the most of Isaac’s life was joyful and peaceful, he had some trials and sorrows. Tell them.

8. Cite scripture showing culmination of Isaac’s prosperity.

9. In which one of the trials was he a type of our Lord?

10. What prophecy was Jacob trying to have fulfilled in the “mess of pottage” translation? Was it right to seek its fulfillment in this way?

11. How did Isaac undertake to nullify the trade between Jacob and Esau and how was his plan defeated?

12. Did God approve such transaction and what Paul’s explanation of it?

13. What pathetic incident followed and what was the blessing upon Esau?

14. What is the meaning of the name “Jacob” and from what incident originated?

15. What is the meaning of “Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated”?

16. Give the character of Esau as interpreted in the New Testament and what other name had Esau?

17. In Heb 12:17 , was the blessing that Esau vainly sought salvation? Explain, then, the passage: “He found no place for repentance, though he sought carefully with tears.”

18. What two sad events after Jacob’s return to the Holy Land before he reached his father’s house?

19. Describe the character of Isaac and in what was he a type of Christ?

20. With whom, according to Oliver Wendell Holmes, must a child’s education begin?

21. What other saying of his bears on heredity?

22. What book did he write on ancestral traits?

23. What forces are factors in every human life?

24. When does individuality come most into play and the application to Jacob?

25. What was the mightiest force that touched Jacob, what was the prophecies concerning him and what is the application of these prophecies?

26. What was Paul’s use of the first of these prophecies together with Mal 1:2-5 ?

27. What was the personal privilege conferred on Jacob in these prophecies and blessings?

28. In what did the right of primogeniture consist and what traces of this in history?

29. Analyze Jacob’s and Esau’s sin in the “mess of pottage” transaction and what was the doctrine involved?

30. How does the Old Testament characterize Esau’s sin? The New Testament?

31. What is profanity and what proverb from the transaction? Illustrate.

32. What were the sins of Isaac, Rebekah, Esau, and Jacob, respectively, in the transaction about the blessing?

Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible

Gen 27:1 And it came to pass, that when Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim, so that he could not see, he called Esau his eldest son, and said unto him, My son: and he said unto him, Behold, [here am] I.

Ver. 1. Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim. ] Old age is of itself a disease, and the sink of all diseases. This Solomon sweetly sets forth Ecc 12:1-7 by a continued allegory, Ubi quot lumina imo flumina orationis exerit saith one. In general, he calls it “the evil day, the years that have no pleasure in them.” In particular, the senses all fail; the hands tremble; the legs buckle; the teeth cannot do their office, as being either lost or loosened; “the silver cord,” that is, the marrow of their backs, is consumed; “the golden ewer,” that is, the brainpan, broke; “the pitcher at the well,” that is, the veins at the liver; “the wheel at the cistern,” that is, the head, which draws the power of life from the heart; all these worn weak, and wanting to their office. So that sleep faileth; “desire faileth”; a neither spring nor summer (signified by the almond tree and grasshopper) shall affect with pleasure; “the daughters of music shall be brought low,” as they were in old Barzillai; “the sun, moon, and stars are darkened,” for any delight they take in their sweet shine; yea, “the clouds return after rain”; a continual succession of miseries, like April weather, as one shower is unburdened, another is brewed, and the sky is still overcast with clouds. Lo, such is old age. And is this a fit present for God? wilt thou give him the dregs, the bottom, the very last sands, thy dotage, which thyself and friends are weary of? “Offer it now to thy prince, will he be pleased with thee”? Mal 1:8 The Circassians, a kind of mongrel Christians, as they baptize not their children till the eighth year, so they enter not into the Church, the gentlemen specially, till the sixtieth year, but hear divine service standing outside the temple; that is to any, till through age they grow unable to continue their rapines and robberies, to which sin that nation is exceedingly addicted: so dividing their time between sin and devotion; dedicating their youth to rapine, and their old age to repentance. b But God will not be so put off. He is “a great King,” and stands upon his seniority. Mal 1:14 In the Levitical law, there were three sorts of firstfruits:

1. Of the ears of corn, offered about the Passover;

2. Of the loaves, offered about Pentecost;

3. About the end of the year in Autumn.

Now of the first two God had a part, but not of the last: to teach us, that he will accept of the services of our youth or middle-age: but for old age, vix aut ne vix quidem . Besides Abraham in the Old Testament, and Nicodemus in the New, I know not whether we read of any old man ever brought home to God.

a Sept., , quum et appetitum et Venerem irritat.

b Brerewood’s Enquiries, p. 135.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Gen 27:1-4

1Now it came about, when Isaac was old and his eyes were too dim to see, that he called his older son Esau and said to him, “My son.” And he said to him, “Here I am.” 2Isaac said, “Behold now, I am old and I do not know the day of my death. 3Now then, please take your gear, your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field and hunt game for me; 4and prepare a savory dish for me such as I love, and bring it to me that I may eat, so that my soul may bless you before I die.”

Gen 27:1 “when Isaac was old, and his eyes were too dim to see” Eye problems must have been a significant disease in the Ancient Near East (cf. Jacob in Gen 48:10; Eli in 1Sa 3:2 and later, Paul in Gal 4:13-15; Gal 6:11; 2Co 12:7).

“he called his older son Esau” This shows (1) the favoritism of Isaac toward Esau (cf. Gen 25:28), which will become obvious as the chapter develops or (2) the cultural expectation of the oldest (i.e., lit. “great,” BDB 152, i.e., in age, cf. Gen 10:21; Gen 44:12) son’s special place in the family.

Gen 27:2 “Isaac said, ‘Behold now, I am old and I do not know the day of my death'” It is interesting to note that Isaac, about 137 years of age, is nervous about his death. We learn from Gen 35:28 that he lived to be 180 years old. His concern may have issued from the fact that his brother, Ishmael, died at the age of 137, recorded in Gen 25:17. If it is true that Martin Luther’s calculations of Isaac’s age of 137 is accurate, then Isaac was reacting to his physical disabilities and not to the revelation of God.

From the Nuzi Tablets from this same area and time we learn that “I am old” may be a legal idiom for the public transfer of inheritance rights to the control of a son.

Gen 27:3-4 There is a series of IMPERATIVES related to Isaac’s requested meal before passing on the patriarchal blessing. Here are Isaac’s commands/requests.

1. “please take your gear” (“quiver,” BDB 1068, only here in the OT and “bow,” BDB 905), Gen 27:3, BDB 669, KB 724, Qal IMPERATIVE

2. “go out to the field,” Gen 27:3 BDB 422, KB 425, Qal IMPERATIVE

3. “hunt game for me,” Gen 27:3, BDB 844, KB 1010, Qal IMPERATIVE

4. “prepare a savory dish,” Gen 27:4, BDB 793, KB 889, Qal IMPERATIVE

5. “bring it to me,” Gen 27:4, BDB 97, KB 112, Hiphil IMPERATIVE

6. “that I may eat,” Gen 27:4, BDB 37, KB 46, Qal COHORTATIVE

Gen 27:4 “so that my soul” This is the term nephesh (BDB 659, KB 711, see note at Gen 35:18 , cf. Gen 27:25), which refers to that which breathes or has life. It can be used of cattle (cf. Gen 1:24; Gen 2:19) or humans (cf. Gen 2:7). Humans do not have a soul (Greek thought), they are a soul. Their physical body is the outer boundary of a body/soul/spirit unity.

“may bless you before I die” Notice the purpose of the meal was to be the occasion of the passing on of the leadership of the family (i.e., patriarchal blessing). The Hebrew concept of the spoken word was such that once it was given it could not be revoked (cf. Gen 27:33-38; Isa 55:11).

Isaac thought he was dying (cf. Gen 27:2), but lived years longer. Isaac was the beneficiary of the covenant promises to Abraham. Yet still he was going blind and thought he would soon die. Physical illness is not a sign of God’s displeasure, but the result of living in a fallen world (see the booklet by Gordon Fee, “The Disease of the Health, Wealth Gospel”).

Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley

old. About 137 years (same age as his brother Ishmael died at). He recovered and lived 43 years longer (Compare Gen 35:28).

Behold. Figure of speech Asterismos. App-6.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

Shall we turn now in our Bibles to Genesis chapter twenty-seven?

Now it came to pass, when Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim, so that he could not see, he called Esau his eldest son, and said unto him, My son: and he said unto him, Behold, here am I. And he said, Behold now, I am old, I know not the day of my death: now therefore take, I pray thee, thy weapons, your quiver, your bow, go out to the field, and get me some venison; Make me some savoury barbecued venison, such like I such as I love, and bring it to me, that I may eat; and my soul may bless thee before I die ( Gen 27:1-4 ).

It is interesting that at this point, Isaac is becoming feeble; he’s pretty much bedfast. He’s blinded now as the result of his age. He feels that death is approaching but it is interesting that death does not come unto Isaac for many, many years. After this experience, Jacob had fled to Haran, spent twenty years there, came back and Isaac was still alive.

And so sometimes you think you’ve about had it, you think I’m going fast but you know don’t give up, the Lord still allows you to hang on and you know, “it is appointed unto us once to die and after that the judgment”( Heb 9:27 ). We don’t always know the appointments of God. But indeed, I feel that it is tragic to be in the case of Isaac to be an invalid for such a long period of time. That indeed is tragic.

I think that death is not the worst thing that can happen to a person. I think that when the body can no longer really function in its God-given manner and purpose, when the body can no longer really express me, what I am, here confined to a bed, almost blind or for all practical purposes blind and all, helpless, having to be waited on; and for the spirit just to remain in the body is a hard thing. It’s a hard thing upon the person that is lying there; it is a hard thing upon the persons that have to take care of them.

And many times, in cases like this, as far as the person is concerned, much better to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord ( 2Co 5:8 ). And to just have your spirit linger on in the body, why does the spirit linger on? Why doesn’t God release the spirit sooner from the body? I don’t know. These are the things that are all in the hands of God. It really isn’t mine to question the ways of God.

But here’s a man that God loved. Here’s a man that was a servant of God. And yet we find his body incapacitated and yet, his life continuing for many, many years to come in the state of semi-invalidism. And so feeling that he’s going to die, calls his son Esau that he go out and get some venison, fix it and spice it up and all like he liked it and bring it to him that he might eat and give him the blessing.

Earlier Esau cared nothing of the birthright. A profane man not interested in spiritual things. Not interested in the promises of God and the fulfillment of the promises of God. He could care less about the birthright, but he is interested in the blessing but the blessing really went with the birthright. The blessing came upon the eldest son. But he had sold that position, the birthright, but still he was desiring the blessing of his father.

Now indeed it was the purposes of God that Jacob should receive the birthright and it was also the providence of God, the choice of God, that Jacob should receive the blessing. It is an interesting thing before the twins were born, when they were striving, fighting with each other in Rebekah’s womb. She could not figure out all of the activity. She prayed and God said, “There are two nations striving in your womb”. They are diverse from each other and before they were ever born, God said, “And the elder shall serve the younger”.

Now this was declared of God before their birth that the selection of Jacob might be of the sovereign purposes of God, rather than the deservings of man. God knowing in advance their nature, their character; knowing in advance Esau being a profane person and being a materialist and not really concerned with spiritual things, knowing before they were ever born the attitudes of their lives. God chose Jacob over Esau, that it might be of election, by God’s choice and not by man’s deservings.

Now the election of God is something that is difficult for us to understand. It is really impossible for us to think as God thinks. I cannot think with that foreknowledge. I just can’t do it. God does. And thus it’s impossible for me to put my mind in God’s mind, to think as God thinks. And thus it’s wrong for me to judge God for the way he thinks because I can’t even know how he thinks. Because when God thinks or when God looks at a situation, He looks at it with this foreknowledge, knowing already in advance what’s going to be. We don’t know that. And thus when we select someone, we don’t know what the outcome is going to be.

Say we have someone who comes in for a job interview. The resume looks great. It looks like, oh, they’d be just the right-and you hire them. You think, oh my, this is great; this is the employee we need. And they turn out to be just horrible. We’ve made the wrong selection. Now if we knew six months what was going to be in six months, you know, when we hired them, we’d never have hired them. We’d never have selected them. If we had the foreknowledge and knew what was going to happen because we had selected them for this particular job, we’d never hired them in the first place. But we don’t have that kind of knowledge and thus we select or we elect and then we hope for the best.

Last night if Gossage would have had foreknowledge and known what that particular pitch that he elected to pitch to Baylor what was going to happen to it, you think he’d ever elected that pitch? No, you’d have thrown it out of the park. He’d have rolled in the home plate or something. But you see, we don’t know so we think this is what’s best. They fire it and then oh man, what a mistake. But God doesn’t make mistakes because God knows in advance what the result is going to be. And thus he elects according to His foreknowledge.

Now if you had the capacity of foreknowledge, wouldn’t it be rather stupid to elect a loser? If you had this kind of ability to think with foreknowledge, wouldn’t it be sort of dumb to select someone you know is not going to make it? Of course, it would be. So how can you fault God for the fact that He makes selections because He does it according to His foreknowledge? I can’t think that way and I really can’t fault God because He can think that way and makes His selection by His foreknowledge.

So God knew in advance concerning Esau, concerning Jacob, and according to this advance knowledge that God had, He selected that the elder should serve the younger and that through the younger one, His promises for the nation and for the world should be fulfilled.

Now Jacob came to an awareness of this. Of course, his mother knew it before he was ever born because she had prayed and she said, “God, what’s going on inside of me?” God said “there are two nations” and He said, “the elder shall serve the younger”. So when Jacob came out second, she knew that Jacob was the one that God had selected for the blessings, and that the purposes of God will be accomplished through Jacob rather than Esau. Their mother knew that from their birth. And knowing that, she favored Jacob. But Esau, not really caring about the spiritual things, manifested the very character and nature that God knew he had from the beginning, the reason why God rejected him.

Now Isaac’s whole request, go out and get me some nice barbecued venison that I might bless you. You know the kind that I really love to eat. What a cheap basis for blessing. Just ’cause this kid can hunt and get good barbecued meat, that’s all that Isaac was really caring about. He was going to give the blessing upon the basis of a savory meat, where God wanted the blessing to go upon the basis of the purposes of God in the future.

So when Rebekah heard Isaac sending Esau out to get this venison, she called Jacob in, and she said, Now, your dad has sent your brother out to get some venison and all, so quickly, get me a couple of goats and kill them and I’ll fix the meat. I can barbecue that goat to taste like venison. Your dad won’t know the difference. And you take it in to him that you might receive the blessing ( Gen 27:5-10 ).

Now notice that this whole deceptive scheme was coming from Rebekah but she was putting Jacob up to it.

And Jacob objected and said, Hey, there’s so much difference, though we’re twins there’s so much difference between us. They were fraternal instead of identical twins and so much difference between us that he’ll surely discover the fact that I’m not Esau. That guy is so covered with hair and if he calls me over to feel me, he’ll see that I’m just smooth and he’s just covered with hair and we smell different and everything else. No way we can pull it off. And she said, Let me take care of that. And said, she wrapped some of the goat fur around his arm and around his neck and put some covered him with dirt to give him an earthy smell. And so he carried in this barbecued goat that she had fixed to taste like venison. And he said, Here, father, I’ve got the venison for you that you might eat and bless me. He said, Well, how come you got it so fast? And he said, Well, the Lord was with me and the deer just came right across my path. As soon as I got out the door, there it was and I got it. And he said, Are you sure that that is you, my son Esau? And he said, Yes, I’m Esau. He says, Well, come over here close to me. And so Jacob went over close and the old man felt his arm and he held out that fur that he had tied around his arm and he says, Yeah, it’s the voice of Jacob but it’s sure the hairy arm of Esau. And he ate the venison and he blessed Jacob ( Gen 17:11-25 ).

Now the thing is, was it God’s will that Jacob receive the blessing? Yes. Did Jacob and Rebekah know that it was God’s will that Jacob receive the blessing? Yes, they did. But they made a mistake and that is they knowing what God intended, endeavored to help God out in fulfilling His purpose and thus went into the deception which was a ploy of theirs to help God fulfill His will and fulfill His purpose.

Why is it that we think that God can’t do His work without our help? Why is it that we think that God is so dependent upon us to accomplish His purposes? Such is not the case. God can accomplish His purposes apart from our help. God will accomplish His purposes apart from us if necessary.

You remember when Esther was faced with that dangerous task of going into her husband, the king, uninvited. According to the laws of the Medes and the Persians, if she should go in without his asking for her to come, she would be grabbed by the guards and put to death, unless he would raise his sceptre to her. No one goes into the king, not even his wife, unless the king has called for them. And to dare to come into his court without being called meant instant death unless the king himself at that moment would give you the reprieve by holding up his sceptre.

And yet the people of God were in danger of extermination by a foolish decree that the king had made. And Mordecai came to Esther and he said, “Look, perhaps God has brought you into the kingdom for just a time as this or just an hour as this”( Est 4:14 ). In other words, maybe your whole life is going to be fulfilled in this one hour that God has brought you to this position just for this purpose.

She explained the difficulty, the law of the Medes and the Persians. He hasn’t called me for a long time. I don’t know if he’s mad at me or whatever. If I go in there and he doesn’t raise his sceptre, my head is gone. It’s all over for me.

And Mordecai said to her, “Do you think that at this time you can altogether escape the edict of the king? You’re Jewish, too”. And he said, “If you should fail at this time, their deliverance shall arise from another quarter”. God will save His people. He’s not going to let His people get wiped out. If you fail, God is still not going to fail. But you, in your failure, will lose your own life. Sort of “he who seeks to save his life will lose it: he who’ll lose his life for my sake”, Jesus said, “the same will find it” ( Mat 16:25 ).

And Esther was in that very position. Mordecai said, “Look, don’t think that you’re going to escape this decree. But if you at this time altogether fail, their deliverance shall arise”. He had that confidence that God will accomplish His purpose. Though you may fail, the purposes of God cannot fail.

But what happens is that you’ll lose out the reward and the blessing that could be yours by being that instrument that God uses to accomplish His work. Now the work of God is going to be accomplished. What God has willed and purposed shall come to pass. We can be the instruments through which it happens. If we yield ourselves to God, He’ll work through us. If we fail to yield ourselves, God will still do His work and yet we have lost the reward and the benefit and the joy of being the instrument.

But the work of God is never dependent upon our deception or our conniving or our scheming. We don’t have to scheme and connive to get the work of God done. I look around today at people who are endeavoring to do the work of God. And there are so many people who have great visions for what they can do for God. All they need is the money. And so they’ve gone into all kinds of schemes to raise money in order to do the work of God. And when you read their letters, the whole insinuation of the letter is “here’s a glorious work of God that is depending now upon you sending in your contribution. And if you fail the work of God is not going to be done”.

And they really lay those heavy ones on you of you’ve got to send it in and here’s the work of God. It can’t be done unless you respond. If it’s a true work of God, it’s going to be done. If it is a true work of God, then it is worth responding to. But yet, God is able to do His work independent. God is not dependent upon us ever. We are dependent on Him always.

So their mistake or their fault here was not a fault of not believing God nor was it a fault of not believing the purposes of God. They were both faithful, believing God, believing the purposes of God. Their mistake was thinking that God couldn’t fulfill His purposes without their help.

“I know what You want to do, God, and I just don’t see how You can do it without my help”. And so I get in there and I start scheming and conniving to help God get His work done. Never. He doesn’t need that kind of help.

And so Jacob pulled it off and Esau blessed Jacob, verse twenty-six. I mean Isaac.

Isaac said unto him, Come near now, and kiss me, my son. And he came near, and he kissed his father: and his father smelled the smell of his raiment ( Gen 27:26-27 ),

Looking for that earthy smell.

and he blessed him, and he said, See, the smell of my son is the smell of the field which the LORD hath blessed ( Gen 27:27 ):

It smells like the outdoor fields.

Therefore God give thee of the dew of heaven, and of the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine: And let people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee: be lord over your brethren, and let thy mother’s sons bow down to thee: cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee ( Gen 27:28-29 ).

So somewhat the blessing that God had pronounced upon Abraham is passed on to him. That is, the blessing upon those that would bless him, the curse upon those that would curse him, but giving to him the fatness of the earth, prosperity, and servants.

And it came to pass, as soon as Isaac had made an end of the blessing of Jacob, and Jacob was scarcely gone out from the presence of his father, that Esau his brother came in from his hunting. And he also had made the savoury meat, and he brought it to his father, and he said unto his father, Let my father arise, and eat of his son’s venison, that thy soul may bless me. And Isaac his father said unto him, Who art you? And he said, Well, I’m your son, your firstborn Esau. And Isaac trembled very exceedingly, [began to shake] he said, Who? And where is he that has taken the venison, and brought it to me, and I have eaten all of it before you came, and I have blessed him? yes, he shall be blessed. And when Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with a great and exceeding bitter cry, and said unto his father, Bless me, even me also, O my father. And he said, Thy brother came with subtlety, and he has taken away your blessing. And he said, Is he not rightly called Heel Catcher? for he hath supplanted me these two times: he took away my birthright; and, behold, now he has taken away my blessing. And he said, Haven’t you reserved a blessing for me? And Isaac answered and said to Esau, Behold, I have made him thy lord, and all of his brothers have I given to him for servants; and with corn and wine have I sustained him: and what shall I do now unto thee, my son? And Esau said unto his father, Have you not but one blessing, my father? bless me, even me also, O my father. And Esau lifted up his voice, and wept ( Gen 27:31-38 ).

Now in Hebrews the twelfth chapter as we deal with the men of faith in the Old Testament, this particular incident is brought into view. In verse sixteen and seventeen of chapter twelve where he’s talking about the men of faith in the Old Testament, actually going back to verse thirteen is where, well twelve, were not eleven, is men of faith, twelve is getting into the chastening of the Lord. And he tells us to “follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord: Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled.”

Now be careful about yourself. Follow after peace with all men. Don’t allow bitterness to fill your heart. Any root of bitterness coming in will trouble you and will defile many people around you. “Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye know how that when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears” ( Heb 12:14-17 ).

He sought what carefully? Not repentance. He wasn’t crying here repentant tears at all. What was he crying about? He was crying about the loss of the blessing. Many people get confused and think, “Oh, poor Esau, he tried to repent and he was crying in repentance and he couldn’t find a place of repentance though he sought repentance with tears”. No, he never did seek repentance. What he was seeking was the blessing and what he was crying about was the fact that there was no blessing for him. Had he really repented, then God surely would have done something for him. God has said that “a broken and a contrite spirit he will not turn away” ( Psa 51:17 ). No man has yet truly repented but what God did not accept him and bless him.

But his was not the repentance at all nor tears of repentance. And don’t confuse thinking “oh, the poor guy was just there weeping before God and crying out in repentance but he couldn’t receive it”. No, that’s not so. You read the story here and the tears were not at all tears of repentance. Actually, they were tears of anger; they were tears of bitterness. They were tears of a lost blessing that he was desiring. He really didn’t seek spiritual things. He wasn’t really seeking God; he was only seeking the blessing of his father. And when it was gone, when his brother had taken it, his tears were tears of bitterness, anger, hatred against his brother but not at all tears of repentance.

There was no place of repentance. And that’s what the scripture is saying. He didn’t-he didn’t really repent at all. There was no change in Esau’s heart, only a weeping over the fact that he had lost the blessing.

And Isaac his father answered and said unto him, Behold, thy dwelling shall be the fatness of the earth, and the dew of heaven from above; And by thy sword shalt thou live, and shalt serve thy brother; and it shall come to pass when thou shalt have the dominion, that thou shalt break his yoke from off thy neck. And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing wherewith his father blessed him: and Esau said in his heart, The days of mourning for my father are at hand; and then will I slay my brother ( Gen 27:39-41 ).

My dad’s soon going to die and as soon as he’s dead, I’m going to kill that brother of mine. Didn’t want to do it while his dad was alive ’cause his dad might curse him. So I’ll wait till daddy’s dead and then I’m going to kill him.

Notice the bitterness. This is what Hebrews is warning about. “Lest any root of bitterness”; profane person Esau, he became very embittered over this, a root of bitterness defiling him. Now this hatred of Esau’s descendants for Israel continued. Esau became the father of the Edomites. And there was a great hostility through history of the Edomites against the Israelites. Many times the Edomites sought to invade the land of Israel. When the Israelites were coming out of Egypt and needed to pass through the land of the Edomites, the king of Edom met them with his armies and prohibited their passage through the land.

The Edomites of course have since passed off of the scene. The last Edomite that we know is Herod, king Herod of Idumaea and his family. And there ended the Edomite race. But of course, God has preserved Israel to the present time.

Now this threat of Esau was heard by his mother Rebekah.

And so she called Jacob, and she said unto him, Behold, thy brother Esau, is comforting himself in the thought that he’s going to kill you ( Gen 27:42 ).

He’s finding comfort in that right now. He’s really mad, he’s really bitter and he’s just comforting himself by his intention to kill you.

Therefore, [she said], obey my voice; and arise and flee to Laban my brother to Haran; and tarry with him a few days, until your brother’s fury is turned away; Until your brother’s anger is turned away from you, and he forget that which was done to him: then will I send, and fetch thee from there: for why should I be deprived of you both in one day? And Rebekah said unto Isaac, I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth: if Jacob takes a wife from one of these wild girls around here, then what good is my life going to be to me ( Gen 27:43-46 )?

And so she’s setting up for that Isaac will send Jacob away in peace, saying that these daughters-in-law were just really a real vexation and a problem and all and she wanted her son Jacob to go and get a wife from her own family.

Somehow it takes away a little bit from the romance of the story as it goes to realize that at this point, Jacob was about seventy years old. Getting ready to run away from home. But these patriarchs were living to twice the age, which is normal today. So you have to really sort of cut the age factor in half in order that you might totally understand the virility and all of the person at seventy years because they lived to one hundred and forty, one hundred and fifty years old. Thus seventy years wasn’t really that old to them at that time. But it does sort of throw a different light on the whole thing; you don’t picture some teenage kid running off from home at this stage. He was close to seventy years old.

Rebekah said stay there for a few days until your brother’s anger has subsided. But Esau did not cool off in a hurry for word never did come to Jacob from his mother to come home because as Jacob was gone, his mother died. And so he never saw his mother again unfortunately. And of course, the sad by-product of this bit of deception that they had connived together is that the mother was deprived of ever seeing her son whom she loved, Jacob again. She died while Jacob was in Haran.

Now if you remember the story earlier, when the servant had gone to Haran to get a bride for Isaac, that Rebekah came out to the well and he said, “Give me a drink” and she said, “Sure, and I’ll get water for your camels, too”. And that was the little thing that he had set up that he would know the will of God for the one who was to be the bride of Isaac. And how the servant explained this whole thing and he gave to her a gold nose ring and a couple of golden bracelets. And she ran home and said, “Oh, one of Abraham’s servants is here and he’s looking”, you know for they didn’t know what his purpose was but he’s just here and he’s got a lot of camels and she showed the gold earrings and the golden nose ring.

And Laban her brother came running out to meet him. “Oh, come, stay in our house”. Laban, seeing the gold, he was-he was attracted to this and was a very gracious host and all. And Laban was active in the negotiations to send Rebekah back. She was his sister and so he is the uncle of Jacob and it’s important that you sort of fix that relationship in your mind as we move along now in the story. Laban is the brother of Jacob’s mother, the brother of Rebekah and he will be coming soon into our scene.

“

Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary

Gen 27:1-4. And it came to pass, that when Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim, so that he could not see, he called Esau his eldest son, and said unto him, My son: and he said unto him, Behold, here am I. And he said, Behold now, I am old, I know not the day of my death: Now therefore take, I pray thee, thy weapons, thy quiver and thy bow, and go out to the field, and take me some venison; And make me savoury meat, such as I love, and bring it to me, that I may eat: that my soul may bless thee before I die.

A sad misfortune to lose the sight of the eyes! How greatly, how much more than we do, ought we to thank God for the prolongation of our sight, and it has been well remarked by one of our greatest men of science that we seldom hear Christian men thank God as they should for the use of spectacles in these modern times. A philosopher has written a long paper concerning the blessings which he found in old age from this invention, and we, enabled still to read the Word when our sight decays, should be exceedingly grateful for it. After all, with all alleviations, it is a very great trial to be deprived of ones eyesight, but those who are in good company. Whilst they have some of the greatest divines in modern history, they have here one of the best of men one of the patriarchs whose eyes were dim so that he could not see. He seems to have had some sort of mistiness of soul about this time which was far worse, and so he desired to give the blessing to Esau, whom God had determined should never have it.

Gen 27:5-11. And Rebekah heard when Isaac spake to Esau his son. And Esau went to the field to hunt for venison, and to bring it. And Rebekah spake unto Jacob her son, saying, Behold, I heard thy father speak unto Esau thy brother, saying, Bring me venison, and make me savoury meat, that I may eat, and bless thee before the LORD before my death. Now therefore, my son, obey my voice according to that which I command thee. Go now to the flock, and fetch me from thence two good kids of the goats; and I will make them savoury meat for thy father, such as he loveth: And thou shalt bring it to thy father, that he may eat, and that he may bless thee before his death. And Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man:

He does not appear to have raised any objection to what she proposed on moral grounds, but only on the ground of the difficulty of it and the likelihood of being discovered. It only shows how low the moral sense may be in some who, nevertheless, have a desire towards God and have a faith in him. In those darker days we can hardly expect to find so much of the excellences of the spirit as we ought to find now-a-days in those who possess the spirit of God fully.

Gen 27:12-15. My father peradventure will feel me, and I shall seem to him as a deceiver; and I shall bring a curse upon me, and not a blessing. And his mother said unto him, Upon me be thy curse, my son: only obey my voice, and go fetch me them. And he went, and fetched, and brought them to his mother: and his mother made savoury meat, such as his father loved. And Rebekah took goodly raiment of her eldest son Esau, which were with her in the house, and put them upon Jacob her younger son:

And Esau, altogether a man of the world, one very like the sons of other families around about, took care to adorn himself in goodly raiment. It seems always more becoming to the worldling than the Christian. Jacob had a suit good enough for this occasion, but the worldly man had not. I would that those who fear God were less careful about the adornments of their persons. There are far better ornaments than gold can buy ornaments neat, and raiment comely may we all possess them.

Gen 27:16-19. And she put the skins of the kids of the goats upon his hands, and upon the smooth of his neck: And she gave the savoury meat and the bread, which she had prepared, into the hand of her son Jacob. And he came unto his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I; who art thou, my son? And Jacob said unto his father, I am Esau thy firstborn;

Which, whatever may be said about it, was a plain lie, and is not to be excused upon any theory whatever. It was as much a sin in Jacob as it would be in us, except that perhaps he had less light, and the general cunning of those who surrounded him may have made it more easy with him and a less tax on conscience for him to do this than it would be in our case. I am Esau, said he. Why is all this recorded in the Bible? It is not to the credit of these men. No! the Holy Spirit does not write for the credit of man: he writes for the glory of Gods grace. He writes for the warning of believers now, and these things are examples unto us that we may avoid the blots and flaws in good men, and may thereby ourselves become more what we should be.

Gen 27:19-20. I have done according as thou badest me: arise, I pray thee, sit and eat of my venison, that thy soul may bless me. And Isaac said unto his son, How is it that thou hast found it so quickly, my son? And he said, Because the Lord thy God brought it to me.

Here he draws Gods name into this lie, And this is worse still.

Gen 27:21-29. And Isaac said unto Jacob, Come near, I pray thee, that I may feel thee, my son, whether thou be my very son Esau or not. And Jacob went near unto Isaac his father; and he felt him, and said, The voice is Jacobs voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau. And he discerned him not, because his hands were hairy, as his brother Esaus hands: so he blessed him. And he said, Art thou my very son Esau? and he said, I am. And he said, Bring it near to me, and I will eat of my sons venison, that my soul may bless thee. And he brought it near to him, and he did eat: and he brought him wine, and he drank. And his father Isaac said unto him, Come near now, and kiss me, my son. And he came near, and kissed him: and he smelled the small of his raiment, and blessed him, and said, See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field which the Lord hath blessed: therefore God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine: Let people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee: be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mothers sons bow down to thee: cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee.

So he tied his own hands: he could not revoke his blessing, or, had he done so, he would have brought the curse upon himself.

Fuente: Spurgeon’s Verse Expositions of the Bible

From this point the history passes to center largely around Jacob. At the beginning, four persons stand out: Isaac, Rebekah, Esau, and Jacob, and not one of them is admirable. Isaac is even more degenerate in his devotion to the physical. Rebekah knows the purpose of God but is not content to wait. Esau is still the same, a man of physical strength, completely centered therein. Jacob is weak as he yields to the suggestion of his mother.

Over the whole is seen the activity of the divine government, overruling deceit and duplicity, so that the purpose of the divine counsel moves forward. Isaac, when the facts are discovered, was seized with a strange trembling, born assuredly of his sense of the ovemling majesty of God. The trembling led to the action of faith in which he refused to interfere in the matter of the blessing which he had pronounced unwittingly on Jacob.

Esau’s natural reaction was hatred for Jacob, which created anxiety in the mind of Rebekah, and she began to arrange to send Jacob out of the reach of danger.

In all probability Rebekah never saw Jacob again. Her plan was that he should tarry with Laban a few days only, and she distinctly declared her intention to send for him again. But she never did.

Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible

Rebekah Plans to Cheat Isaac

Gen 27:1-17

This chapter narrates a sad story of the chosen family. Esau is the only character which elicits universal sympathy. Isaac appears to have sunk into premature senility. It seems hardly credible that he who had borne the wood for the offering up Mount Moriah, and had yielded himself so absolutely to the divine will, would have become so keen an epicure. He could only be reached now through the senses. Perhaps this was due to the prosperity and even tenor of his life. It is better, after all, to live the strenuous life, with its uphill climb, than to be lapped in the ease of the valley. The birthright had been already promised to Jacob, and there was no need for him to win it by fraud; and Rebekah was truly blameworthy in that she deceived her husband, showed partiality toward her children, and acted unworthily of herself. Who would have expected that out of such a family God was about to produce the religious leaders of the world! Pharaoh would one day crave a blessing from those kid-lined hands!

Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary

Gen 27:34

No one can read this chapter without feeling some pity for Esau. All his hopes were disappointed in a moment. He had built much upon this blessing, for in his youth he had sold his birthright, and he thought that in his father’s blessing he would get back his birthright, or what would stand in its place. He had parted with it easily, and he expected to regain it easily. He thought to regain God’s blessing, not by fasting and prayer, but by savoury meat, by feasting and making merry.

I. Esau’s cry is the cry of one who has rejected God, and who in turn has been rejected by Him. He was: (1) profane; and (2) presumptuous. He was profane in selling his birthright, presumptuous in claiming the blessing. Such as Esau was, such are too many Christians now. They neglect religion in their best days; they give up their birthright in exchange for what is sure to perish and make them perish with it. They are profane persons, for they despise the great gift of God; they are presumptuous, for they claim a blessing as a matter of course.

II. The prodigal son is an example of a true penitent. He came to God with deep confession-self-abasement. He said, “Father, I have sinned.” Esau came for a son’s privileges; the prodigal son came for a servant’s drudgery. The one killed and dressed his venison with his own hand, and enjoyed it not; for the other the fatted calf was prepared, and the ring for his hand and shoes for his feet, and the best robe; and there was music and dancing.

J. H. Newman, Selection front Parochial and Plain Sermons, p. 141; also vol. vi., p. 15.

References: Gen 27:34.-Bishop Armstrong, Parochial Sermons, p. 1; J. S. Bartlett, Sermons, p. 33. Gen 27:35.-Preacher’s Monthly, vol. 111., p. 147.

Gen 27:36

Jacob is the typical Jew; he is the epitome of the character of the chosen people, who, again, are an epitome of the great human world. All the virtues, all the vices, all the strength and all the weakness, all the nobleness and all the baseness, of the people whom Jehovah loved and whom He took to be His own, meet in this patriarch’s character and life.

I. Jacob was a man who could cheat and lie; he could lie roundly and cheat coolly when it suited his purpose; and he could carry on what would everywhere be esteemed sharp practice to a wonderfully successful issue, A man of deep schemes, of far sight, of silent vigilance, of untiring patience, and apparently not much troubled by questions so long as his schemes were justified by success. He was a man of cunning, scheming, crafty nature, with some grand deep qualities beneath them all, which God’s eye discerned, which His hand drew forth, and by a long stern discipline educated for Himself.

II. If we would know why God set a mark on him and made him, rather than his more shallow and splendid brother, the father of a great nation and a prince in His Church, we must note that he could believe and pray: (1) Jacob’s faith was a power in his life; it became in the end a mighty power. Esau could live only for the moment, and found it hard to sink the present in the future; but Jacob could live and suffer for a day far distant, for a day whose light would never gladden him, but would shine upon his heirs. (2) Jacob could wrestle in prayer. No man can believe who cannot pray. The wrestling with the angel was the great crisis in Jacob’s history. It is as though he rose that night into his higher, nobler life. Jacob, the supplanter, disappears, and Israel, the Prince with God, stands up in his room.

J. Baldwin Brown, Christian World Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 97.

Gen 27:38

I. The character of Esau has unquestionably a fair side. Esau was by no means a man of unqualified wickedness or baseness; judged according to the standard of many men, he would pass for a very worthy, estimable person. The whole history of his treatment of Jacob puts his character in a very favourable light: it represents him as an open-hearted, generous person, who, though he might be rough in his manners, fond of a wild life, perhaps as rude and unpolished in mind as he was in body, had yet a noble soul, which was able to do what little minds sometimes cannot do-namely, forgive freely a cruel wrong done to him.

II. Nevertheless it is not without reason that the apostle styles Esau a profane person. The defect in his character may be described as a want of religious seriousness; there was nothing spiritual in him-no reverence for holy things, no indications of a soul which could find no sufficient joy in this world, but which aspired to those joys which are at God’s right hand for evermore. By the title of profane the apostle means to describe the carnal, unspiritual man-the man who takes his stand upon this world as the end of his thoughts and the scene of all his activity, who considers the land as a great hunting field, and makes the satisfaction of his bodily wants and tastes the whole end of living.

III. Esau’s repentance was consistent with his character; it was manifestly of the wrong kind. It was emphatically sorrow of this world, grief for the loss of the corn and wine. Jacob had taken his birthright-that he could have pardoned him; but it grieved Esau to his very soul that Jacob had gotten the promise of the world’s wealth besides. He continued in heart unchanged, and so he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.

Bishop Harvey Goodwin, Parish Sermons, 2nd series, p. 1.

References: Gen 27:38.-T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. iv., p. 133; S. Leathes, Truth and Life, p. 54. Gen 27:41-46.-R. S. Candlish, Book of Genesis, vol. ii., p. 1; M. Dods, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, p. 79. Gen 27-Parker, vol. i., p. 268. Gen 28:1-15.-R. S. Candlish, Book of Genesis, vol. ii., p. 1. Gen 28:10.-F. Langbridge, Sunday Magazine, 1885, p. 675.

Fuente: The Sermon Bible

CHAPTER 27 The Story of Jacob and the Deception of Rebekah and Jacob

1. Esau sent (Gen 27:1-4)

2. Rebekahs deception (Gen 27:5-17)

3. Jacobs deception (Gen 27:18-25)

4. Jacob blessed (Gen 27:26-29)

5. The discovery (Gen 27:30-40)

6. Esau hates Jacob (Gen 27:41)

7. Rebekah advises Jacob to flee (Gen 27:42-46)

With this chapter the story of Jacob begins. Three periods of his life are especially to be noticed: 1. His life in Canaan; 2. His departure from the land and his servitude in Padan-aram; 3. His return to the Land. The history of his descendants, the people Israel, may be traced in this. They were in the land; now they are away from the land scattered among the nations; like Jacob they will return to the land. Isaac knew the Word of God, the elder shall serve the younger, yet he wanted to bless Esau. This was failure on his side. Yet he blessed Jacob by faith (Heb 11:20). Rebekah wants to comply with the divine declaration but uses unholy means trying to aid God by her own devices to fulfill His Word. Jacob obeys his mother and makes use of the deception. Esau deceives, too, for he claimed a blessing to which he had no right before God and man. The flesh and its sinful ways is fully manifested in this chapter, nevertheless the will of God was accomplished.

Isaac lives after this event 43 years longer, but with this he passes from the page of history. Of his death and burial by Esau and Jacob we hear later. His life was characterized by patient endurance and suffering and his faith consisted in quietness and waiting.

Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)

am 2244, bc 1760

dim: Gen 48:10, 1Sa 3:2, Ecc 12:3, Joh 9:3

eldest son: Gen 25:23-25

Reciprocal: Gen 31:18 – for to go Gen 35:29 – Isaac Gen 37:13 – Here am I Deu 34:7 – his eye 1Sa 4:15 – and his eyes 1Ki 14:4 – for his eyes Psa 71:18 – Now Ecc 12:2 – the sun Rom 9:16 – General

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

Despite the marriages, Isaac continued to love Esau more than Jacob. His advancing years convinced Isaac it was time to give the blessing, which normally went with the birthright, to Esau. He intended to do this despite God’s prophecy that the older would serve the younger and the selling of the birthright which usually went with the blessing ( Gen 27:1-4 ; Gen 25:23 ; Gen 25:29-34 ).

Fuente: Gary Hampton Commentary on Selected Books

Gen 27:1. When Isaac was old A hundred and thirty-seven years old; but he lived forty years after this. And his eyes were dim Whereby God brought about his own purpose of bestowing the blessing on Jacob. He called Esau, his eldest son With a view to declare him his heir. The promise of the Messiah, and the land of Canaan, was a great trust, first committed to Abraham, inclusive and typical of spiritual and eternal blessings; this, by divine direction, he transmitted to Isaac. Isaac, either not knowing, or not duly considering the divine oracle concerning his two sons, that the elder should serve the younger, resolves to entail all the honour and power that was wrapped up in the promise upon Esau his eldest son. Esau had greatly grieved his parents by his marriage, yet they had not expelled him, but it seems were pretty well reconciled to him.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Gen 27:1. Isaac was old; in the hundred and thirty-seventh year of his age, the very year in which his brother Ishmael died. Jacob and Esau were also in their seventy-seventh year; but Isaac lived, though blind, about forty-two years after he had blessed Jacob.

Gen 27:3. Takethy bow. Providence here seems to have given Jacob an opportunity in this mysterious transaction to obtain the blessing. God having promised Isaac the blessing, the reprehensible step was the means employed to obtain it.

Gen 27:5. Rebekah heard. From the time that she had consulted the oracle she believed that Jacob was to inherit the princely benediction. But Isaac having from the birth of those twins, designed the blessing for Esau, she suddenly formed this tragic plot for Jacob to obtain it. It was an officious and distrustful plot, it being the work of God to demonstrate his fidelity to his promises. Reuben was the firstborn of Jacob, yet Joseph had the blessing, and Judah had the sceptre. God is the sovereign, as well as the ever faithful God. May he not do what he will with his own?

Gen 27:7. Bless thee. The patriarchs were accustomed before death to bless their children, and their priests were enjoined to bless the people. So our Saviour stretched forth his hands, and blessed the apostles before his ascension.

Gen 27:12. A curse. Jacob wisely feared the malediction of Ham. The judgments of God on one man should make others afraid to sin.

Gen 27:15. Goodly raiment. The raiment, it is thought, in which the firstborn officiated at sacrifice, and which was kept by Rebekah, not by Esaus wives. The raiment worn by men in the primitive ages was generally weather-worn, and much decayed.

Gen 27:19. I am Esau thy firstborn. Two other deceptions follow: I have done as thou didst bid me!Eat of my venison! Origen, strom, 6. has said what may tend to diminish the errors of this plot, that John the baptist is called Elias; that the angel in Tobit is called Azarias; and that the princely blessing was promised to Jacob, The elder shall serve the younger. These changes of name, it is replied, being mere figures of speech, leave the deception in all its glare of turpitude. It was a finesse, a distrust of providence; for God who overruled Jacob to cross his hands in blessing the two sons of Joseph, could by means known to himself have secured the blessing to Jacob.

Gen 27:23. He discerned him not. The holy prophets, and the holy apostles were sometimes for a moment deceived, notwithstanding their high endowments; Jesus Christ alone being omniscient, and having in all things the preminence.

Gen 27:27. The smell of a field. , a full field; that is, a field in full bloom. So is the Samaritan Pentateuch.

Gen 27:28. God give thee. This benediction consists of five parts, including every spiritual and temporal blessing of the covenant; these are in substance the same as those which God sware to confer on Abrahams seed after the oblation of Isaac.

Gen 27:29. Let people serve thee. This blessing is not restricted to the sovereignty of the kings of Judah over a few surrounding nations, but extends to all the nations to be converted to the Messiah. The eyes and hearts, of all the prophets were lost and swallowed up in the glory of Christ.

Gen 27:38. Hast thou but one blessing. hi, sometimes found in the feminine ipsa, that, is here not rendered. It is omitted altogether in many other versions, though the key-word to the anguish of Esaus heart. Hast thou but that one blessing, oh my father! Ah! that one blessing, the princely sovereignty. To this Jacob pointedly replies, I have made him thy Lord! Isaac, conscious that the Spirit had accompanied his words, adds but the secondary benedictions, which were confirmed to him as patriarch and prince in Mount Seir.

Gen 27:40. Thou shalt serve thy brother. These words refer to Esaus posterity, often made tributary to the house of David, and as often broke off their yoke. But for their wickedness they, and other small states, were denationalized, and their mountains laid waste for the dragons of the wilderness by the Assyrian conquests. And thus the prophecies of Obadiah were fulfilled. For thy violence against thy brother Jacob, shame shall cover thee, and thou shalt be cut off for ever. Gen 27:10-18. 1Ki 22:47. 2Ki 8:20.

Gen 27:41. Then will I kill my brother Jacob. Family crimes are double crimes, because they violate the tenderest ties of nature; but revenge, and revenge without measure, completes the calamity, and plunges the injured in greater guilt than the first offender.

Gen 27:45. Both in one day. Rebekah, through an eagerness to come prematurely at the promised blessing, had contrived a cluster of untruths, and now she eats the bitter fruits of her own doings. Had she come once more and told Isaac Gods revealed will, no doubt he would have hearkened at last; for the Spirit of God, as was really the case, would have overruled the purposes of his heart.

REFLECTIONS.

How short is the life of man, how soon the long age of the patriarchs expired! Our age in comparison of theirs, will expire at noon. It is high time to think of dying, and of settling our affairs, that we may give up ourselves to God.

But oh, the quarrels of brothers concerning their rights of precedence and property have too often imbittered the last moments of an aged saint. Let parents avoid as much as possible all partiality in their affections, and do their best for the concord of their children; and let children do all they can to procure the good esteem and blessing of their parents; for a parents blessing is to be regarded as next to Gods favour.

In all families where wrongs have happened, and where grievances are unredressed, let no one, like Esau, think of revenge, but think rather of his own sins and personal unworthiness. Revenge makes a calamity double, and perpetuates its memory to the latest generation. Revenge invades the rights of God, who alone is best acquainted with the proper measure, and happiest occasions of corrections for sin.

In Esaus bitter and unavailing tears, all sinners may see the sad fruits of selling their birthright for the sinful pleasures of the age, and the awful situation in which they will be found when they come to die. In vain shall they cry and weep with the bitterest tears; in vain shall they begin to stand without and knock, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us. The period of mercy will be past, and God will not reverse the sentence pronounced in his word.

Did Jacobs exile work for his good by enabling him to marry in the Lord, and to become established as a patriarch in the earth? Then let no man be discouraged though he suffer afflictions, or visitations of his sins. God will hear the tears of true repentance, and direct the afflicted in the way he ought to go. Above all things let us learn never to serve God by unlawful means: doing evil that good may come is expressly forbidden by the Lord, and shame will be the consequence.

Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Genesis 27 – 35

These chapters present to us the history of Jacob-at least, the principal scenes in that history. The Spirit of God here sets before us the deepest instruction, first, as to God’s purpose of infinite grace; and, secondly, as to the utter worthlessness and depravity of human nature.

There is a passage in Gen. 25 which I purposely passed over, in order to take if up here, so that we might have the truth in reference to Jacob fully before us “And Isaac entreated the Lord for his wife, because she was barren; and the Lord was entreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived. And the children struggled together within her: and she said, If it be so, why am I thus? And she went to enquire of the Lord. And the Lord said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.” This is referred to in Malachi, where we read, “I have loved you, saith the Lord: yet ye say, wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob’s brother? saith the Lord: yet I have loved Jacob, and hated Esau.” This is again referred to in Rom. 9: “For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God, according to election, might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth; it was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger, as it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.”

Thus we have very distinctly before us, God’s eternal purpose, according to the election of grace. There is much involved in this expression. It banishes all human pretension from the scene, and asserts God’s right to act as He will. This is of the very last importance. The creature can enjoy no real blessedness until he is brought to bow his head to sovereign grace. It becomes him so to do, inasmuch as he is a sinner, and, as such, utterly without claim to act or dictate. The great value of finding oneself on this ground is, that it is then no longer a question of what we deserve to get, but simply of what God is pleased to give. The prodigal might talk of being a servant, but he really did not deserve the place of a servant, if it were to be made a question of desert; and, therefore, he had only to take what the father was pleased to give – and that was the very highest place, even the place of fellowship with himself. Thus it must ever be. “Grace all the work shall crown, through everlasting days.” Happy for us that it is so. As we go on, day by day, making fresh discoveries of ourselves, we need to have beneath our feet the solid foundation of God’s grace: nothing else could possibly sustain us in our growing self-knowledge. The ruin is hopeless, and therefore the grace must be infinite: and infinite it is, having its source in God Himself, its channel in Christ, and the power of application and enjoyment in the Holy Ghost. The Trinity is brought out in connection with the grace that saves a poor sinner. “Grace reigns through righteousness, unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord.” It is only in redemption that this reign of grace could be seen. we may see in creation the reign of wisdom and power; we may see in providence the reign of goodness and long-suffering; but only in redemption do we see the reign of grace, and that, too, on the principle of righteousness.

Now, we have, in the person of Jacob, a most striking exhibition of the power of divine grace; and for this reason, that we have in him a striking exhibition of the power of human nature. In him we see nature in all its obliquity, and therefore we see grace in all its moral beauty and power. From the facts of his remarkable history, it would seem that, before his birth, at his birth, and after his birth, the extraordinary energy of nature was seen. Before his birth, we read, “the children struggled together within her.” At his birth, we read, “his hand took hold on Esau’s heel.” And, after his birth – yea to the turning point of his history, in Gen. 32, without any exception – his course exhibits nothing but the most unamiable traits of nature; but all this only serves, like a drab background, to throw into relief the grace of Him who condescends to call Himself by the peculiarly touching name, “the God of Jacob” – a name most sweetly expressive of free grace.

Let us now examine the chapters consecutively. Gen. 27 exhibits a most humbling picture of sensuality, deceit, and cunning; and when one thinks of such things in connection with the people of God, it is sad and painful to the very last degree. Yet how true and faithful is the Holy Ghost! He must tell all out. He cannot give us a partial picture. If he gives us a history of man, he must describe man as he is, and not as he is not. So, if He unfolds to us the character and ways of God, He gives us God as He is. And this, we need hardly remark, is exactly what we need. We need the revelation of one perfect in holiness, yet perfect in grace and mercy, who could come down into all the depth of man’s need, his misery and his degradation, and deal with Him there, and raise him up out of it into full, unhindered fellowship with Himself in all the reality of what He is. This is what scripture gives us. God knew what we needed, and He has given it to us, blessed be His name!

And, be it remembered, that in setting before us, in faithful love, all the traits of man’s character, it is simply with a view to magnify the riches of divine grace, and to admonish our souls. It is not, by any means, in order to perpetuate the memory of sins, for ever blotted out from His sight. The blots, the failures, and the errors of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, have been perfectly washed away, and they have taken their place amid “the spirits of just men made perfect;” but their history remains, on the page of inspiration, for the display of God’s grace, and for the warning of God’s people in all ages; And, moreover, that we my distinctly see that the blessed God has not been dealing With perfect men and women, but with those of “like passions as we are” that He has been walking and bearing with the same failures, the same infirmities, the same errors, as those over which we mourn every day. This is peculiarly comforting to the heart; and it may well stand in striking contrast with the way in which the great majority of human biographies are written, in “which, for the most part, we find, not the history of men, but of beings devoid of error and infirmity. histories have rather the effect of discouraging than of edifying those who read them. They are rather histories of what men ought to be, than of what they really are, and they are, therefore, useless to us, yea, not only useless, but mischievous.

Nothing can edify save the presentation of God dealing with man as he really is; and this is what the word gives us. The chapter before us illustrates this very fully. Here we find the aged patriarch Isaac, standing, as it were, at the very portal of eternity, the earth and nature fast fading away from his view, yet occupied about “savoury meat,” and about to act in direct opposition to the divine counsel, by blessing the elder instead of the younger. Truly this was nature, and nature with its “eyes dim.” If Esau had sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, Isaac was about to give away the blessing for a mess of venison, How very humiliating!

But God’s purpose must stand, and He will do all His pleasure. Faith knows this; and, in the power of that knowledge, can wait for God’s time. This nature never can do, but must set about gaining its own ends, by its own inventions. These are the two grand points brought out in Jacob’s history – God’s purpose of grace, on the one hand; and on the other, nature plotting and scheming to reach what that purpose would have infallibly brought about, without any plot or scheme at all. This simplifies Jacob’s history amazingly, and not only simplifies it, but heightens the soul’s interest in it also. There is nothing, perhaps, in which we are so lamentably deficient, as in the grace of patient, self-renouncing dependence upon God. Nature will be working in some shape or form, and thus, so far as in it lies, hindering the outshining of divine grace and power. God did not need the aid of such elements as Rebekah’s cunning and Jacob’s gross deceit, in order to accomplish His purpose. He had said, “the elder shall serve the younger.” This was enough – enough for faith, but not enough for nature, which must ever adopt its own ways, and know nothing of what it is to wait on God.

Now, nothing can be more truly blessed than the position of hanging in child-like dependence upon God, and being entirely content to wait for His time. True, it will involve trial; but the renewed mind learns some of its deepest lessons, and enjoys some of its sweetest experiences, while waiting on the Lord; and the more pressing the temptation to take ourselves out of His hands, the richer will be the blessing of leaving ourselves there. It is so exceedingly sweet to find ourselves wholly dependent upon one who finds infinite joy in blessing us. It is only those who have tasted, in any little measure, the reality of this wondrous position that can at all appreciate it. The only one who ever occupied it perfectly and uninterruptedly was the Lord Jesus Himself. He was ever dependent upon God, and utterly rejected every proposal of the enemy to be anything else. His language was, “In thee do I put my trust;” and again, “I was cast upon thee from the womb.” Hence, when tempted by the devil to make an effort to Satisfy His hunger, His reply was, “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” When tempted to cast Himself from the pinnacle of the temple, His reply was, “It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” When tempted to take the kingdoms of the world from the hand of another than God, and by doing homage to another than Him, His reply was, “It is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.” In a word, nothing could allure the perfect man from the place of absolute dependence upon God. True, it was God’s purpose to sustain His Son; it was His purpose that He should suddenly come to His temple; it was His purpose to give Him the kingdoms of this world; but this was the very reason why the Lord Jesus would simply and uninterruptedly wait on God for the accomplishment of His purpose, in His own time, and in His own way. He did not set about accomplishing His own ends. He left Himself thoroughly at God’s disposal. He would only eat when God gave Him bread; He would only enter the temple when sent of God; He will ascend the throne when God appoints the time. “Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thy foes thy footstool.” (Ps. 110)

This profound subjection of the Son to the Father is admirable beyond expression. Though entirely equal with God, He took, as man, the place of dependence, rejoicing always in the will of the Father; giving thanks even when things seemed to be against Him; doing always the things which pleased the Father; making: it His grand and uvarying object to glorify the Father; and finally, when all was accomplished, when He had perfectly finished the work which the Father had given, He breathed His spirit into the Father’s hand, and His flesh rested in hope of the promised glory and exaltation. Well, therefore, may the inspired apostle say, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus; who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”

How little Jacob knew, in the opening of his history, of this blessed mind! How little was he prepared to wait for God’s time and God’s way! He much preferred Jacob’s time and Jacob’s way. He thought it much better to arrive at the blessing and the inheritance by all sorts of cunning and deception, than by simple dependence upon and subjection to God, whose electing grace had promised, and whose almighty power and wisdom would assuredly accomplish all for him.

But, oh! how well one knows the opposition of the human heart to all this! Any attitude for it save that of patient waiting upon God. It is almost enough to drive nature to distraction to find itself bereft of all resource but God. This tells us, in language not to be misunderstood, the true character of human nature. In order to know what nature is, I need not travel into those scenes of vice and crime which justly shock all refined moral sense. No; all that is needful is just to try it for a moment in the place of dependence, and see how it will carry itself there. It really knows nothing of God, and therefore cannot trust Him; and herein was the secret of all its misery and moral degradation. It is totally ignorant of the true God, and can therefore be nought else but a ruined and worthless thing. The knowledge of God is the source of life – yea, is itself life; and until a man has life, what is he? or, what can he be?

Now, in Rebekah and Jacob, we see nature taking advantage of nature in Isaac and Esau. It was really this. There was no waiting upon God whatever. Isaac’s eyes were dim, he could therefore be imposed upon, and they set about doing so, instead of looking off to God, who would have entirely frustrated Isaac’s purpose to bless the one whom God would not bless – a purpose? founded in nature, and most unlovely nature, for “Isaac loved Esau,” not because he was the first-born, but “because he did eat of his venison.” How humiliating!

But we are sure to bring unmixed sorrow upon ourselves, when we take ourselves, our circumstances, or our destinies, out of the hands of God.* Thus it was with Jacob, as we shall see in the sequel. It has been observed by another, that whoever observes Jacob’s life, after he had surreptitiously obtained his father’s blessing, will perceive that he enjoyed very little worldly felicity. His brother purposed to murder him, to avoid which he was forced to flee from his father’s house; his uncle Laban deceived him, as he had deceived his father, and treated him with great rigor; after a servitude of twenty-one years, he was obliged to leave him in a clandestine manner, and not without danger of being brought back or murdered by his enraged brother; no sooner were these fears over, than he experienced the baseness of his son Reuben, in defiling his bed; he had next to bewail the treachery and cruelty of Simeon and Levi towards the Shechemites; then he had to feel the loss of his beloved wife; he was next imposed upon by his own sons, and had to lament the supposed untimely end of Joseph; and, to complete all, he was forced by famine to go into Egypt, and there died in a strange land. So just, wonderful, and instructive are all the ways of providence.”

{*We should ever remember, in a place of trial, that what we want is not a change of circumstances, but victory over self.}

This is a true picture, so far as Jacob was concerned; but it only gives us one side, and that the gloomy side. Blessed be God, there is a bright side, likewise, for God had to do with Jacob; and, in every scene of his life, when Jacob was called to reap the fruits of his own plotting and crookedness, the God of Jacob brought good out of evil, and caused His grace to abound over all the sin and folly of His poor servant. This we shall see as we proceed with his history.

I shall just offer a remark here upon Isaac, Rebekah, and Esau. It is very interesting to observe how, notwithstanding the exhibition of nature’s excessive weakness, in the opening of Genesis 27, Isaac maintains, by faith, the dignity which God had conferred upon him. He blesses with all the consciousness of being endowed with power to bless! He says, “I have blessed him; yea, and he shall be blessed.. Behold, I have made him thy lord, and all his brethren have I given to him for servants; and with corn and wine have I sustained him; and what shall I do now unto thee, my son?” He speaks as one who, by faith, had at his disposal all the treasures of earth. There is no false humility, no taking a low ground by reason of the manifestation of nature. True, he was on the eve of making a grievous mistake – even of moving right athwart the counsel of God; still, he knew God, and took his place accordingly, dispensing blessings in all the dignity and power of faith. “I have blessed him; yea, and he shall be blessed.” “With corn and wine have I sustained him.” It is the proper province of faith to rise above all one’s own failure and the consequences thereof, into the place where God’s grace has set us.

As to Rebekah, she was called to feel all the sad results of her cunning actings. She, no doubt, imagined she was managing matters most skillfully; but, alas! she never saw Jacob again: so much for management! How different it would have been had she left the matter entirely in the hands of God. This is the way in which faith manages, and it is ever a gainer. “Which of you by taking thought, can add to his stature one cubit?” We gain nothing by our anxiety and planning; we only shut out God, and that is no gain. It is a just judgement from the hand of God to be left to reap the fruits, of our own devices; and I know of few things more sad than to see a child of God so entirely forgetting his proper place and privilege, as to take the management of his affairs into his own hands. The birds of the air, and the lilies of the field, may well be our teachers when we so far forget our position of unqualified dependence upon God.

Then, again, as to Esau, the apostle calls him “a profane person, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright,” and “afterwards, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected; for he found no place of change of mind, though he sought it carefully with tears.” Thus we learn what a profane person is, viz. one who would like to hold both worlds; one who would like to enjoy the present, without forfeiting his title to the future. This is, by no means, an uncommon case. It expresses to us the mere worldly professor, whose conscience has never felt the action of divine truth, and whose heart has never felt the influence of divine grace.

We are now called to trace Jacob in his movement from under his fathers roof, to view him as a homeless and lonely wanderer on the earth. It is here that God’s special dealings with him commence. Jacob now begins to realise, in some measure, the bitter fruit of his conduct, in reference to Esau; while, at the same time, God is seen rising above all the weakness and folly of His servant, and displaying His own sovereign grace and profound wisdom in His dealings with him. God will accomplish His own purpose, no matter by what instrumentality; But if His child, in impenitence of spirit, and unbelief of heart, will take himself out of His hands, he must expect much sorrowful exercise and painful discipline. Thus it was with Jacob: he might not have had to flee to Haran, had he allowed God to act for him. God would, assuredly, have dealt with Esau, and caused him to find his destined place and portion; and Jacob might have enjoyed that sweet peace which nothing can yield save entire subjection in all things to the hand and counsel of God.

But here is where the excessive feebleness of our hearts is constantly disclosed. We do not lie passive in God’s hand; we will be acting; and, by our acting, we hinder the display of God’s grace and power on our behalf. “Be still and know that I am God,” is a precept which nought, save the power of divine grace, can enable one to obey. “Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand. (eggus) Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.” What will be the result of this activity? “The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall garrison (phrouresei) your hearts and minds by Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 4: 5-7)

However, God graciously overrules our folly and weakness, and while we are called upon to reap the fruits of our unbelieving and impatient ways, He takes occasion from them to teach our hearts still deeper lessons of His own tender grace and perfect wisdom. This, while it, assuredly, affords no warrant whatever for unbelief and impatience, does most wonderfully exhibit the goodness of our God, and comfort the heart even while we may be passing through the painful circumstances consequent upon our failure. God is above all; and, moreover, it is His special prerogative to bring good out of evil; to make the eater yield meat, and the strong yield sweetness; and hence, while it is quite true that Jacob was compelled to be an exile from his father’s roof in consequence of his own restless and deceitful acting, it is equally true that he never could have learnt the meaning of “Bethel” had he been quietly at home. Thus the two sides of the picture are strongly marked in every scene of Jacob’s history. It was when he was driven, by his own folly, from Isaac’s house, that he was led to taste, in some measure, the blessedness and solemnity of “God’s house.”

“And Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went toward Haran. and he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep.” Here we find the homeless wanderer just in the very position in which God could meet him, and in which He could unfold His purposes of grace and glory. Nothing could possibly be more expressive of helplessness and nothingness than Jacob’s condition as here set before us. Beneath the open canopy of heaven, with a pillow of stone, in the helpless condition of sleep. Thus it was that the God of Bethel unfolded to Jacob His purposes respecting him and his seed. “And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And behold the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed. And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.”

Here we have, indeed, “grace and glory.” The ladder “set on the earth” naturally leads the heart to meditate on the display of God’s grace, in the Person and work of His Son. On the earth it was that the wondrous work was accomplished which forms the basis, the strong and everlasting basis, of all the divine counsels in reference to Israel, the Church, and the world at large. On the earth it was that Jesus lived laboured. and died; that, through His death, He might remove out of the way every obstacle to the accomplishment of the divine purpose of blessing to man.

But “the top of the ladder reached to heaven.” It formed the medium of communication between heaven and earth; and “behold the angels of God ascending and descending upon it” – striking and beautiful picture of Him by whom God has come down into all the depth of man’s need, and by whom also He has brought man up and set him in His own presence for ever, in the power of divine righteousness! God has made provision for the accomplishment of all His plans, despite of man’s folly and sin; and it is for the everlasting joy of any soul to find itself, by the teaching of the Holy Ghost, within the limits of God’s gracious purpose.

The prophet Hosea leads us on to the time when that which was foreshadowed by Jacob’s ladder shall have its full accomplishment. “And in that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven, and with the creeping things of the ground: and I will break the bow, and the sword, and the battle, out of the earth, and will make them to lie down safely. And I will betroth thee unto me for ever; yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgement, and in loving-kindness, and in mercies; I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness; and thou shalt know the Lord. And it shall come to pass in that day, I will hear, saith the Lord, I will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth; and the earth shall hear the corn, and the wine, and the oil; and they shall hear Jezreel. And I will sow her unto me in the earth; and I will have mercy upon her that had not obtained mercy; and I will say to them which were not my people, Thou art my people; and they shall say, Thou art my God.” (Hosea 2: 18-23) There is also an expression in the first chapter of John, bearing upon Jacob’s remarkable vision; it is Christ’s word to Nathanael, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.” (Ver. 51)

Now this vision of Jacob’s is a very blessed disclosure of divine grace to Israel. We have been led to see something of Jacob’s real character, something, too, of his real condition; both were evidently such as to show that it should either be divine grace for him, or nothing. By birth he had no claim; nor yet by character. Esau might put forward some claim on both these grounds; i.e., provided God’s prerogative were set aside; but Jacob had no claim whatsoever; and hence, while Esau could only stand upon the exclusion of God’s prerogative, Jacob could only stand upon the introduction and establishment thereof. Jacob was such a sinner, and so utterly divested of all claim, both by birth and by practice, that he had nothing whatever to rest upon save God’s purpose of pure, free, and sovereign grace. Hence, in the revelation which the Lord makes to His chosen servant, in the passage just quoted, it is a simple record or prediction of what He Himself would yet do. “I am…. I will give…. I will keep …. I will bring….. I will not leave thee until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of” It was all Himself. There is no condition whatever. No if or but; for when grace acts there can be no such thing. Where there is an if, it cannot possibly be grace. Not that God cannot put man into a position of responsibility, in which He must needs address him with an ‘if.’ We know He can; but Jacob asleep on a pillow of stone was not in a position of responsibility, but of the deepest helplessness and need; and therefore he was in a position to receive a revelation of the fullest, richest, and most unconditional grace.

Now, we cannot but own the blessedness of being in such a condition, that we have nothing to rest upon save God Himself; and, moreover, that it is in the most perfect establishment of God’s own character and prerogative that we obtain all our true joy and blessing. According to this principle, it would be an irreparable loss to us to have any ground of our own to stand upon, for in that case, God should address us on the ground of responsibility, and failure would then be inevitable. Jacob was so bad, that none but God Himself could do for him.

And, be it remarked, that it was his failure in the habitual recognition of this that led him into so much sorrow and pressure. God’s revelation of Himself is one thing, and our resting in that revelation is quite another. God shows Himself to Jacob, in infinite grace; but no sooner does Jacob awake out of sleep, than we find him developing his true character, and proving how little he knew, practically, of the blessed One who had just been revealing Himself so marvellously to him. “He was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” His heart was not at home in the presence of God; nor can any heart be so until it has been thoroughly emptied and broken. God is at home, blessed be His name, with a broken heart, and a broken heart at home with Him. But Jacob’s heart was not yet in this condition; nor had he yet learnt to repose, like a little child, in the perfect love of one who could say, “Jacob have I loved.” “Perfect love casteth out fear;” but where such love is not known and fully realised, there will always be a measure of uneasiness and perturbation. God’s house and God’s presence are not dreadful to a soul who knows the love of God as expressed in the perfect sacrifice of Christ. such a soul is rather led to say,” Lord, I have loved the habitation of thy house, and the place where thine honour dwelleth.” (Ps. 26: 8) And, again, “One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in his temple.” (Ps. 27: 4) and again, “How amiable are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts! My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth, for the courts of the Lord.” (Ps. 84) When the heart is established in the knowledge of God, it will assuredly love His house, whatever the Character of that house may be, whether it be Bethel, or the temple at Jerusalem, or the Church now composed of all true believers, “builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.” However, Jacob’s knowledge, both of God and His house, was very shallow, at that point in his history on which we are now dwelling.

We shall have occasion, again, to refer to some principles connected with Bethel; and shall, now, close our meditations upon this chapter, with a brief notice of Jacob’s bargain with God, so truly characteristic of him, and so demonstrative of the truth of the statement with respect to the shallowness of his knowledge of the divine character. “And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this may that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my Father’s house in peace; then shall the Lord be my God; and this stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be God’s house: and of all that thou shalt give me, I will surely give the tenth unto thee.” Observe, “if God will be with me.” Now, the Lord had just said, emphatically, “I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land,” &c. And yet poor Jacob’s heart cannot get beyond an “if” nor, in its thoughts of God’s goodness, can it rise higher than “bread to eat, and raiment put on.” Such were the thoughts of one who had just seen the magnificent vision of the ladder reaching from earth to heaven, with the Lord standing above, and promising an innumerable seed, and an everlasting possession. Jacob was evidently unable to enter into the reality and fullness of God’s thoughts. He measured God by Himself, and thus utterly failed to apprehend Him. In short, Jacob had not yet verily got to the end of himself; and hence he had not really begun with God.

“Then Jacob went on his journey, and came into the land of the people of the east.” As we have just seen, in Gen. 28 Jacob utterly fails in the apprehension of God’s real character, and meets all the rich grace of Bethel with an “if” and a miserable bargain about food and raiment. We now follow him into a scene of thorough bargain-making. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” There is no possibility of escaping from this. Jacob had not yet found his true level in the presence of God; and, therefore, God uses circumstances to chasten and break him down.

This is the real secret of much, very much, of our sorrow and trial in the world. Our hearts have never been really broken before the Lord; we have never been self-judged and self-emptied; and hence, again and again, we, as it were, knock our heads against the wall. No one can really enjoy God until he has got to the bottom of self, and for this plain reason, that God has begun the display of Himself at the very point at which the end of flesh is seen. If, therefore, I have not reached the end of my flesh, in the deep and positive experience of my soul, it is morally impossible that I can have anything like a just apprehension of God’s character. But I must, in some way or other, be conducted to the true measure of nature. To accomplish this end, the Lord makes use of various agencies which, no matter what they are, are only effectual when used by Him for the purpose of disclosing, in our view, the true character of all that is in our hearts. How often do we find as in Jacob’s case, that even although the Lord may come near to us, and speak in our ears, yet we do not understand His voice, or take our true place in His presence. “The Lord is in this place, and I knew it not ….. How dreadful is this place!” Jacob learnt nothing by all this, and it, therefore, needed twenty years of terrible schooling, and that, too, in a school marvellously adapted to his flesh; and even that, as we shall see, was not sufficient to break him down.

However, it is remarkable to see how he gets back into an atmosphere so entirely suited to his moral constitution. The bargain-making Jacob, meets with the bargain-making Laban, and they are both seen, as it were, straining every nerve to outwit each other. Nor can we wonder at Laban, for he had never been at Bethel: he had seen no open heaven, with a ladder reaching from thence to earth; he had heard no magnificent promises from the lips of Jehovah, securing to him all the land of Canaan, with a countless seed: no marvel, therefore, that he should exhibit a grasping grovelling spirit; he had no other resource. It is useless to expect from worldly men ought but a worldly spirit, and worldly principles and ways; they have gotten nought superior; and you cannot bring a clean thing out of an unclean. But to find Jacob, after all he had seen and heard at Bethel, struggling with a man of the world, and endeavouring, by such means, to accumulate property, is peculiarly humbling.

And yet, alas! it is no uncommon thing to find the children of God thus forgetting their high destinies and heavenly inheritance, and descending into the arena with the children of this world, to struggle there for the riches and honours of a perishing, sin-stricken earth. Indeed, to such an extent is this true, in many instances, that it is often hard to trace a single evidence of that principle which St. John tells us “overcometh the world.” Looking at Jacob and Laban, and judging of them upon natural principles, it would be hard to trace any difference. One should get behind the scenes, and enter into God’s thoughts about both, in order to see how widely they differed. But it was God that had made them to differ, not Jacob; and so it is now. Difficult as it may be to trace any difference between the children of light and the children of darkness, there is, nevertheless, a very wide difference indeed – a difference founded on the solemn fact that the former are “the vessels of mercy, which God has before prepared unto glory,” while the latter are “the vessels of wrath, fitted (not by God, but by sin) to destruction.” Rom 9: 22, 23)* This makes a very serious difference. The Jacobs and the Labans differ materially, and have differed, and will differ for ever, though the former may so sadly fail in the realization and practical exhibition of their true character and dignity.

{*It is deeply interesting to the spiritual mind to mark how sedulously the Spirit of God, in Rom. 9 and indeed throughout all scripture, guards against the horrid inference which the human mind draws from the doctrine of God’s election – when He speaks of “vessels of wrath,” He simply says, “fitted to destruction.” He does not say that God “fitted” them.

Whereas, on the other hand, when He refers to “the vessels of mercy” he says, “whom he had afore prepared unto glory.” This is most marked.

If my reader will turn for a moment to Matt 25: 34-41, he will find another striking and beautiful instance of the same thing.

When the king addresses those on His right hand, he says, “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” (Verse 34) But when He addresses those on His left, He says, “Depart from me ye cursed.” He does not say, “cursed of My Father.” And, further, He says, “into everlasting fire, prepared,” not for you, but “for the devil and his angels.” (Verse 41)

In a word, then, it is plain that God has “prepared’ a kingdom of glory, and “vessels of mercy’ to inherit that kingdom; but He has not prepared” everlasting fire” for men, but for the “devil and his angels” nor has He fitted the “vessels of wrath,” but they have fitted themselves.

The word of God as clearly establishes “election” as it sedulously guards against “reprobation.” Everyone who finds himself in heaven will have to thank God for it; and everyone that finds himself in hell will have to thank himself.}

Now, in Jacob’s case, as set forth in the three chapters now before us, all his toiling and working, like his wretched bargain before, is the result of his ignorance of God’s grace, and his inability to put implicit confidence in God’s promise. The man that could say, after a most unqualified promise from God to give him the whole land of Canaan, “IF God will give me food to eat and raiment to put on,” could have had but a very faint apprehension of who God was, or what His promise was either; and because of this, we see him seeking to do the best he can for himself. This is always the way when grace is not understood: the principles of grace may be professed, but the real measure of our experience of the power of grace is quite another thing. One would have imagined that Jacob’s vision had told him a tale of grace; but God’s revelation at Bethel, and Jacob’s actings at Haran, are two very different things; yet the latter tell out what was Jacob’s sense of the former. Character and conduct prove the real measure of the soul’s experience and conviction, whatever the profession may be. But Jacob had never yet been brought to measure himself in God’s presence, and therefore he was ignorant of grace, and he proved his ignorance by measuring himself with Laban, and adopting his maxims and ways.

One cannot help remarking the fact that inasmuch as Jacob failed to learn and judge the inherent character of his flesh before God, therefore he was, in the providence of God, led into the very sphere in which that character was fully exhibited in its broadest lines. He was conducted to Haran, the country of Laban and Rebekah, the very school from whence those principles, in which he was such a remarkable adept, had emanated, and where they were taught, exhibited, and maintained. If one wanted to learn what God was, he should go to Bethel; if to learn what man was, he should go to Haran. But Jacob had failed to take in God’s revelation of Himself at Bethel, and he therefore went to Haran, and there showed what he was – and oh, what scrambling and scraping! what shuffling and shifting! There is no holy and elevated confidence in God, no simply looking to and waiting on Him. True, God was with Jacob – for nothing can hinder the outshining of divine grace. Moreover, Jacob in a measure owns God’s presence and faithfulness. Still nothing can be done without a scheme and a plan. Jacob cannot allow God to settle the question as to his wives and his wages, but seeks to settle all by his own cunning and management. In short, it is “the supplanter” throughout. Let the reader turn, for example, to Gen. 30: 37-42, and say where he can find a more masterly piece of cunning. It is verily a perfect picture of Jacob. In place of allowing God to multiply “the ringstraked, speckled, and spotted cattle,” as be most assuredly could have done, had He been trusted, he sets about securing their multiplication by a piece of policy which could only have found its origin in the mind of a Jacob. So in all his actings, during his twenty years’ sojourn with Laban; and finally, he, most characteristically, “steals away,” thus maintaining, in everything, his consistency with himself.

Now, it is in tracing out Jacob’s real character, from stage to stage of his extraordinary history, that one gets a wondrous view of divine grace. None but God could have borne with such an one, as none but God would have taken such an one up. Grace begins at the very lowest point. It takes up man as he is, and deals with him in the full intelligence of what he is. It is of the very last importance to understand this feature of grace at one’s first starting; it enables us to bear, with steadiness of heart, the after discoveries of personal vileness, which so frequently shake the confidence and disturb, the peace of the children of God.

Many there are who, at first, fail in the full apprehension of the utter ruin of nature, as looked at in God’s presence, though their hearts have been attracted by the grace of God, and their consciences tranquillised, in some degree, by the application of the blood of Christ. Hence, as they get on in their course, they begin to make deeper discoveries of the evil within, and, being deficient in their apprehensions of God’s grace, and the extent and efficiency of the sacrifice of Christ, they immediately raise a question as to their being children of God at all. Thus they are taken off Christ, and thrown on themselves, and then they either betake themselves to ordinances, in order to keep up their tone of devotion, or else fall back into thorough worldliness and carnality. These are disastrous consequences, and all the result of not having “the heart established in grace.”

It is this that renders the study of Jacob’s history so profoundly interesting and eminently useful. No one can read the three chapters now before us, and not be struck at the amazing grace that could take up such an one as Jacob, and not only take him up, but say, after the full discovery of all that was in him, “He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel.” (Num. 23: 21) He does not say that iniquity and perverseness were not in him. This would never give the heart confidence – the very thing, above all others, which God desires to give. It could never assure a poor sinner’s heart, to be told that there was no sin in him; for, alas! he knows too well there is; but to be told there is no sin on him, and that, moreover, in God’s sight, on the simple ground of Christ’s perfect sacrifice, must infallibly set his heart and conscience at rest. Had God taken up Esau, we should not have had, by any means, such a blessed display of grace; for this reason, that he does not appear before us in the unamiable light in which we see Jacob. The more man sinks, the more God’s grace rises. As my debt rises, in my estimation, from the fifty pence up to the five hundred, so my sense of grace rises also, my experience of that love which, when we “had nothing to pay, could “frankly forgive” us all. (Luke 7: 42) Well might the apostle say, “it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace: not with meats, which have not profited them that have been occupied therein.” (Heb. 13: 9)

Fuente: Mackintosh’s Notes on the Pentateuch

Gen 27:1-45. At his Mothers Instigation, Jacob Cheats Esau of his Fathers Blessing.Probably compiled from J and E. Since both presuppose it later, both must have told the story. There are doublets which point to the use of two sources. We naturally expect the blessing to follow at the end of Gen 27:23, but it comes only in Gen 27:27 b. Twice Jacob is questioned as to his identity, and Isaac is in one place deceived by touch (Gen 27:21-23) in the other by smell (Gen 27:27). The analysis is, however, very uncertain, and may be neglected as the chapter reads fairly connectedly. The main thread of the story seems to come from J. Isaac, in anticipation of death, bids Esau go hunting and bring him venison prepared as a savoury meal, that thus the prophetic spirit may be induced (as later the prophets induced ecstasy by music, 1Sa 10:5 f. *, 2Ki 3:15), and he may utter the prized blessing on his firstborn son. Rebekah overhears the command and, as soon as Esau has gone, schemes to outwit her blind husband and secure the coveted, irrevocable blessing for her favourite son. Jacobs objections are overruled, and Rebekah cooks two kids which he will pass off for venison, dresses him in the raiment Esau used for sacred occasions, and conceals with the goatskins the tell-tale smoothness of Jacobs skin. Isaac is struck with the speed of the return, Jacob piously attributes it to the good hand of his fathers God. Isaac notes the Jacob like ring of the voice, but is reassured by the hairiness of the hands. He eats the meal, and, thus inspired, pronounces the blessing on his son, redolent as he is of the smell of a field which Yahweh has blessed. Fruitful lands, abundant harvest and vintage, political supremacywith such blessings in his ears, and the knowledge that no discovery of his deceit can deprive him of them, the trickster leaves his fathers presence, undetected by the father, nor surprised by the brother. He and his mother had played a daring game, and had won it. Only just won it; a little later and he would have been caught by his brother, cursed by his justly-incensed father. The scene between Esau and Isaac is among the most pathetic in literature. To his consternation the father discovers the justice of the suspicions which had too easily been allayed, yet a blessing once uttered cannot be taken back (Gen 9:25-27*). And Esau, not the same man as when he lightly sold his birthright, is stricken with bitter grief that he should have been cheated of his blessing by one who has thus doubly justified his sinister name. All the primitive wildness of Esaus nature bursts out like a stream of lava (Procksch). But has the father no blessing? What can he have, when to a fruitful land he has added Jacobs lordship over Esau? But with passionate tears Esau urges his entreaty. So Isaac announces the destiny of Edom. There is an ambiguity in the preposition (RV of, mg. away from, cf. Job 19:26*) which may be intentional, but which makes it uncertain whether Gen 27:39 a is a blessing like Gen 27:28, or dooms Edom to a sterile land. Actually Edom had a fertile land, but the reference may not be to the whole of the territory it held at a later period, and the general impression of the whole passage favours mg. Edom is to dwell in a barren land, live by plunder, and be in servitude to Israel. Yet the prediction of Israels suzerainty (Gen 27:29), though it must be fulfilled, leaves a loophole. Esaus subjection will not be permanent. The people will become restive and then snap their yoke. Esau decides that he will not disturb his fathers last days by summary vengeance on Jacob; the funeral rites for Isaac are at hand, and then he will kill Jacob while the seven days mourning is in progress. Rebekah learns of his design and counsels Jacob to visit Laban till Esaus anger is past. Only a short time and with a character so shallow, the storm will have blown over, and Jacob will be back. Why, then, should Esau kill him and die for the fratricide and she lose both her sons at a stroke? Jacob, however, met Rachel and stayed with Laban for twenty years.

Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible

JACOB DECEIVES HIS FATHER

In spite of Esau’s wrong marriages, and in spite of God’s word that Isaac’s older son would serve the younger (ch.25:23). Isaac was ready to confer his chief blessing on Esau. We are told in verse 1 that his eyes were dim, and no doubt his spiritual eyes were dim also, evidently because he allowed his natural appetite to take precedence over the revealed will of God (ch.25:28).

But in order that he might bless Esau, he wanted Esau first to take his bow and quiver of arrows to hunt deer, and bring him cooked venison, “such as I love,” he adds (v.4).

When Rebekah overheard these instructions, she recognized a threatened emergency, but instead of going in prayer to the Lord, who had told her that Jacob would have the chief place, she took the only way she saw to change things. It is true that her plan worked in the way she wanted, and no doubt God was over this, but still we cannot defend her cunning scheme to deceive her husband. God could have worked the matter out in another way without both Rebekah and Jacob being involved in deception. If they had acted in faith and had depended on God, they may have seen a miraculous answer to the problem, and in this way have reason for deepest thanksgiving, rather then being left with troubled consciences.

Rebekah had Jacob kill two kids of the goats, of which the meat would be young and tender (v.9), and she was able to prepare it in such a way that Isaac did not even suspect it was not venison. So much for our pre-conceived ideas of what we like the best!

Jacob was hesitant about the whole scheme. He objected that all his father had to do was to feel his hands and arms, for Esau was a hairy man and Jacob not so (vs.11-12). But Rebekah urged him to obey her and that she would bear the results of any miscarriage of the plan. One writer defends Jacob in this whole matter because he says that Jacob was responsible to obey his mother, therefore no blame could attach to him! But Jacob was a grown man, not a little child. In fact, even a little child is wrong to tell a lie, whether his mother tells him to or not. Rebekah gave Jacob Esau’s clothes to wear, but goat skins on his hands and on the smooth of is neck, and Jacob proceeded with the deception.

He brought the meat to his father and told him that he was Esau. Isaac wondered at Esau’s finding venison so quickly, but Jacob hypocritically brought God’s name into his deception in order to make Isaac more comfortable (v.20). Still, Isaac was not too sure that it was Esau speaking to him, and as Jacob anticipated, he wanted to feel him to be certain. It is a lesson for us that we cannot always depend on our sight or on our feelings either. But Isaac allowed his feelings to persuade him, though his hearing told him it was Jacob’s voice (v.21). Still, he pressed further in asking if Jacob was actually his very son Esau, and Jacob flatly lied to him, saying, “I am.”

After finishing his meal, which he thought was venison, Isaac asked his son to kiss him, and he recognized the outdoor smell of Esau’s clothes, as being the smell of a field which the Lord has blessed (v.27).

His blessing first voices the desire that God would give his son of the dew of heaven. This is typical of the living refreshment of the Spirit of God. Added to this is an abundance of grain and wine. The grain speaks of the Lord Jesus as the food of the believer, whether it may be barley (typical of His character of lowly humiliation on earth) or wheat (symbolizing the higher truth of Christ glorified at God’s right hand). Both are valuable in providing needed nourishment for the Christian life. the new wine pictures the joy of a new life in Christ based upon the value of the shedding of His blood. Every Christian father or mother may well desire such blessing for all of their children.

But more than this: Isaac desires and virtually prophesies that people will serve his son. Nations would bow down to him. He would be the master of his brothers. His own mother’s sons would bow down to him. Those who cursed him would be cursed, and those who blessed him would be blessed (v.29).

While Isaac intended all this for Esau, he was not in concord with God’s thoughts, for God had decreed that the elder would serve the younger, and Isaac did not realize that he was blessing his second son rather than his first. Jacob was to be the father of the Israelitish nation, and other nations would eventually bow to them. Predominantly, Christ would be born of the line of Jacob, and the force of the prophecy is primarily that all must bow to Christ. But the nation Israel was to have a place above all other nations. Nations who bless her will find themselves blessed, while those who curse her will not escape a curse on themselves. The ultimate fulfilment of this prophecy has never taken place as yet, and will not until Israel is recovered from her present state of unbelief in bowing to the Lord Jesus, the true Messiah of Israel.

ESAU BLESSED IN A SECOND PLACE

Jacob was able to accomplish his ends just in time to leave his father before Esau returned with his prepared venison. He had been quick in finding a deer and preparing it for Isaac, no doubt because he was anxious to receive the blessing. Actually, since he had sold his birthright to Jacob, he was not entitled to the blessing, but he did not tell his father this. He saw an opportunity of getting the blessing of the firstborn, and would get it before his brother became aware of it!

But he found that it was he who was too late. Isaac was shocked when Esau told him who he was (vs.32-33). At first he questions who had already come, but of course he knew the answer to this. He tells Esau he has blessed the first who came, and adds positively that “he shall be blessed.” In this way God had overruled Jacob’s inexcusable deceit in order that the blessing should be given to the younger son, as God had decreed.

Esau deeply felt the pain of being deprived of the blessing of the firstborn, and cried with an exceeding great and bitter cry, entreating that his father should bless him also. Heb 12:16-17 refers to this occasion, speaking of Esan being a profane person who, for one morsel of food sold his birthright, then when he expected the blessing, was rejected. We are told that “he found no place for repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.” Not that he sought repentance: he sought the blessing, but without repentance. He ought to have repented for despising his birthright, but he found no place to repent.

Isaac could not bless Esau now with the same blessing as Jacob, for he had made Esau the servant of Jacob, as he tells him that his brother had come deceitfully to take away Esau’s blessing (v 35). Esau reminds his father that Jacob’s name means supplanter, and that he has been true to his name in taking away both Esau’s birthright and his blessing. Did Esau forget that he had willingly sold his birthright to Jacob? This being the case, Jacob was entitled to the blessing too. But Esau wanted the blessing though he had despised the birthright. He entreats his father if he had not at least reserved some blessing for him (v.36). This is a common affliction among human beings. While they have no interest in that which God has to give in a spiritual way (for the birthright is significant of this), they are most importunate when it becomes a matter of their temporal prosperity and blessing. It is really a matter of their desiring all the blessings that God may give while ignoring the Giver Himself. Thus men may receive much blessing from God, yet at the same calmly refuse to receive the Lord Jesus, the Son of God, as Savior and Lord.

In all this history God was sovereignly working. Jacob was the heir according to His promise. Esau is typical of the flesh, which will not live before God. It must be put into the place of subjection. Yet Isaac does give Esau his blessing, just as God in man’s present life provides many material blessings for him in spite of his rebellious character. But Isaac tells Esau he will live by his sword. The flesh is always in conflict, just as the troubled sea cannot rest, and the flesh considers it necessary to fight for its rights. Esau would serve his brother, yet would break Jacob’s yoke from off his neck: in spite of his subjection, his rebellious character could not be tamed, just as the flesh continually breaks out in rebellion.

ESAU’S HATRED AWAKENED

This occasion awakened such hatred in Esau toward Jacob that he purposed to kill him after their father’s death (v.41). While it is only written that Esau said this in his heart, he must also have told someone else of his intention, for his mother heard about it, and warned Jacob of it (v.42).

Rebekah therefore advised Jacob to leave and take a long journey back to Haran, where he could count on the hospitality of her brother Laban. She tells him he should stay there “a few days” until Esau’s anger has abated, but the few days turned out to be over 20 years, probably because Jacob was not anxious to see Esau in all that time. But the government of God did not allow Jacob to see his mother again on earth (see Gen 35:27), though he did see his father. She said she would send for him at the appropriate time and have Jacob brought home again. She was therefore as fully deprived of Jacob’s presence as if she had been bereaved of him, as she feared (v.45).

Rebekah had made that decision for Jacob before she spoke to Isaac about it. But her words to Isaac in verse 46 were altogether different to those to Jacob. She tells Isaac she is tired of living because of the daughters of Heth, two of whom Esau had married. They evidently continued to be “a grief of mind” to her (ch.26:35). How many Christian mothers since then have had deep sorrow over their children being married to unbelievers! Rebekah tells Isaac therefore that her life would be miserable if Jacob were to marry one of the daughters of Heth.

Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible

Isaac’s blessing 27:1-28:5

Here we have the third round of Jacob’s battle with Esau. The first was at birth (Gen 25:21-28) and the second was over the birthright (Gen 25:29-34). [Note: See Mathews, Genesis 11:27-50:26, pp. 418-19, for clarification of the difference between a birthright and a blessing.] In all three incidents Jacob manipulated his brother-unnecessarily, in view of God’s promise (Gen 25:23).

"This chapter [27] offers one of the most singular instances of God’s overruling providence controlling the affairs of sinful men and so disposing of them that the interests of God’s kingdom are safeguarded. Usually the guilt of Jacob is overemphasized, and Esau is regarded as relatively or entirely the innocent party in the transaction. This traditional view requires modification and correction." [Note: Leupold, 2:735.]

"This chapter portrays an entire family attempting to carry out their responsibilities by their physical senses, without faith. . . .

"All the natural senses play a conspicuous part-especially the sense of taste in which Isaac prided himself, but which gave him the wrong answer. Reliance on one’s senses for spiritual discernment not only proves fallible, but often fouls up life unduly.

"Most importantly, however, the story is about deception." [Note: Ross, "Genesis," pp. 72, 73.]

An oral blessing was as legally binding as a written will in the ancient Near East. [Note: See Davis, p. 239.]

"As in modern society, inheritance under Nuzi law was effected by testamentary disposition, although the [Nuzi] tablets indicate that such a testament was often made orally. One of the tablets tells of a lawsuit between brothers concerning the possession of their late father’s slave girl, Sululi-Ishtar. The youngest of three brothers, Tarmiya, was defending his elder brothers’ claim to Sululi-Ishtar and the tablet sets out his testimony:

’My father, Huya, was sick and lay on a couch; then my father seized my hand and spoke thus to me. "My other sons, being older, have acquired a wife; so I give herewith Sululi-Ishtar as your wife."’

"In the end result the Court found in favour of Tarmiya, upholding his father’s oral testamentary disposition.

"It also appears from another Nuzi tablet that even an oral testament commenced with an opening introductory statement such as: ’Now that I am grown old . . . .’ which was the legal phraseology to indicate that what was to follow constituted a testamentary disposition. In similar manner, Isaac indicated to his elder son Esau that he wished to bestow upon him his testamentary blessing: ’Behold now, I am old, I know not the day of my death’ (Gen 27:2)." [Note: West, p. 71. See also Ephraim Speiser, "’I Know Not the Day of My Death,’" Journal of Biblical Literature 74 (1955):252-56.]

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

Abraham’s life ended with happiness, success, and a strong character. In contrast, physical and spiritual decay marked Isaac’s old age. [Note: Meir Sternberg, Poetics of Biblical Narrative, p. 350. See Bruce K. Waltke, "Reflections on Retirement from the Life of Isaac," Crux 32 (December 1996):4-14.]

"In this the infirmity of his [Isaac’s] flesh is evident. At the same time, it was not merely because of his partiality for Esau, but unquestionably on account of the natural rights of the firstborn, that he wished to impart the blessing to him, just as the desire to do this before his death arose from the consciousness of his patriarchal call." [Note: Keil and Delitzsch, 1:274.]

". . . Isaac’s sensuality is more powerful than his theology." [Note: Wenham, Genesis 16-50, p. 206.]

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

JACOBS FRAUD

Gen 27:1-46

“The counsel of the Lord standeth for ever.”- Psa 33:11

THERE are some families whose miserable existence is almost entirely made up of malicious plottings and counter-plottings, little mischievous designs, and spiteful triumphs of one member or party in the family over the other. It is not pleasant to have the veil withdrawn, and to see that where love and eager self-sacrifice might be expected their places are occupied by an eager assertion of rights, and a cold, proud, and always petty and stupid, nursing of some supposed injury. In the story told us so graphically in this page, we see the family whom God has blessed sunk to this low level, and betrayed by family jealousies into unseemly strife on the most sacred ground. Each member of the family plans his own wicked device, and God by the evil of one defeats the evil of another, and saves His own purpose to bless the race from being frittered away and lost. And it is told us in order that, amidst all this mess of human craft and selfishness, the righteousness and stability of Gods word of promise may be more vividly seen. Let us look at the sin of each of the parties in order, and the punishment of each.

In the Epistle to the Hebrews Isaac is commended for his faith in blessing his sons. It was commendable in him that, in great bodily weakness, he still believed himself to be the guardian of Gods blessing, and recognised that he had a great inheritance to bequeath to his sons. But, in unaccountable and inconsistent contempt of Gods expressed purpose, he proposes to hand over this blessing to Esau. Many things had occurred to fix his attention upon the fact that Esau was not to be his heir. Esau had sold his birthright, and had married Hittite women, and his whole conduct was, no doubt, of a piece with this, and showed that, in his hands, any spiritual inheritance would be both unsafe and unappreciated. That Isaac had some notion he was doing wrong in giving to Esau what belonged to God, and what God meant to give to Jacob, is shown from his precipitation in bestowing the blessing. He has no feeling that he is authorized by God, and therefore he cannot wait calmly till God should intimate, by unmistakable signs, that he is near his end; but, seized with a panic test his favourite should somehow be left unblessed, he feels, in his nervous alarm, as if he were at the point of death, and, though destined to live for forty-three years longer, he calls Esau that he may hand over to him his dying testament. How different is the nerve of a man when he knows he is doing Gods will, and when he is but fulfilling his own device. For the same reason, he has to stimulate his spirit by artificial means. The prophetic ecstasy is not felt by him; he must be exhilarated by venison and wine, that, strengthened and revived in body, and having his gratitude aroused afresh towards Esau, he may bless him with all the greater vigour. The final stimulus is given when he smells the garments of Esau on Jacob, and when that fresh earthy smell which so revives us in spring, as if our life were renewed with the year, and which hangs about one who has been in the open air, entered into Isaacs blood, and lent him fresh vigour.

It is a strange and, in some respects, perplexing spectacle that is here presented to us-the organ of the Divine blessing represented by a blind old man, laid on a “couch of skins,” stimulated by meat and wine, and trying to cheat God by bestowing the family blessing on the son of his own choice to the exclusion of the divinely-appointed heir. Out of such beginnings had God to educate a people worthy of Himself, and through such hazards had He to guide the spiritual blessing He designed to convey to us all.

Isaac laid a net for his own feet. By his unrighteous and timorous haste he secured the defeat of his own long-cherished scheme. It was his hasting to bless Esau which drove Rebekah to checkmate him by winning the blessing for her favourite. The shock which Isaac felt when Esau came in and the fraud was discovered is easily understood. The mortification of the old man must have been extreme when he found that he had so completely taken himself in. He was reclining in the satisfied reflection that for once he had overreached his astute Rebekah and her astute son, and in the comfortable feeling that, at last, he had accomplished his one remaining desire, when he learns from the exceeding bitter cry of Esau that he has himself been duped. It was enough to rouse the anger of the mildest and godliest of men, but Isaac does not storm and protest-“he trembles exceedingly.” He recognises, by a spiritual insight quite unknown to Esau, that this is Gods hand, and deliberately confirms, with his eyes open, what he had done in blindness: “I have blessed him: Yea, and he shall be blessed.” Had he wished to deny the validity of the blessing, he had ground enough for doing so. He had not really given it: it had been stolen from him. An act must be judged by its intention, and he had been far from intending to bless Jacob. Was he to consider himself bound by what he had done under a misapprehension? He had given a blessing to one person under the impression that he was a different person; must not the blessing go to him for whom it was designed? But Isaac unhesitatingly yielded.

This clear recognition of Gods hand in the matter, and quick submission to Him, reveals a habit of reflection, and a spiritual thoughtfulness, which are the good qualities in Isaacs otherwise unsatisfactory character. Before he finished his answer to Esau, he felt he was a poor feeble creature in the hand of a true and just God, who had used even his infirmity and sin to forward righteous and gracious ends. It was his sudden recognition of the frightful way in which he had been tampering with Gods will, and of the grace with which God had prevented him from accomplishing a wrong destination of the inheritance, that made Isaac tremble very exceedingly.

In this humble acceptance of the disappointment of his lifes love and hope, Isaac shows us the manner in which we ought to bear the consequences of our wrong-doing. The punishment of our sin often comes through the persons with whom we have to do, unintentionally on their part, and yet we are tempted to hate them because they pain and punish us, father, mother, wife, child, or whoever else. Isaac and Esau were alike disappointed. Esau only saw the supplanter, and vowed to be revenged. Isaac saw God in the matter, and trembled. So when Shimei cursed David, and his loyal retainers would have cut off his head for so doing, David said, “Let him alone, and let him curse: it may be that the Lord hath bidden him.” We can bear the pain inflicted on us by men when we see that they are merely the instruments of a divine chastisement. The persons who thwart us and make our life bitter, the persons who stand between us and our dearest hopes, the persons whom we are most disposed to speak angrily and bitterly to, are often thorns planted in our path by God to keep us on the right way.

Isaacs sin propagated itself with the rapid multiplication of all sin. Rebekah overheard what passed between Isaac and Esau, and although she might have been able to wait until by fair means Jacob received the blessing, yet when she sees Isaac actually preparing to pass Jacob by and bless Esau, her fears are so excited that she cannot any longer quietly leave the matter in Gods hand, but must lend her own more skilful management. It may have crossed her mind that she was justified in forwarding what she knew to be Gods purpose. She saw no other way of saving Gods purpose and Jacobs rights than by her interference. The emergency might have unnerved many a woman, but Rebekah is equal to the occasion. She makes the threatened exclusion of Jacob the very means for at last finally settling the inheritance upon him. She braves the indignation of Isaac and the rage of Esau, and fearless herself, and confident of success, she soon quiets the timorous and cautious objections of Jacob. She knows that for straightforward lying and acting a part she was sure of good support in Jacob. Luther says, “Had it been me, Id have dropped the dish.” But Jacob had no such tremors-could submit his hands and face to the touch of Isaac, and repeat his lie as often as needful.

An old man bedridden like Isaac becomes the subject of a number of little deceptions which may seem, and which may be, very unimportant in themselves, but which are seen to wear down the reverence due to the father of a family, and which imperceptibly sap the guileless sincerity and truthfulness of those who practise them. This overreaching of Isaac by dressing Jacob in Esaus clothes, might come in naturally as one of those daily deceptions which Rebekah was accustomed to practise on the old man whom she kept quite in her own hand, giving him as much or as little insight into the doings of the family as seemed advisable to her. It would never occur to her that she was taking God in hand; it would seem only as if she were making such use of Isaacs infirmity as she was in the daily practice of doing.

But to account for an act is not to excuse it. Underlying the conduct of Rebekah and Jacob was the conviction that they would come better speed by a little deceit of their own than by suffering God to further them in His own way-that though God would certainly not practise deception Himself, He might not object to others doing so that in this emergency holiness was a hampering thing which might just for a little be laid aside that they might be more holy afterwards-that though no doubt in ordinary circumstances, and as a normal habit, deceit is not to be commended, yet in cases of difficulty, which call for ready wit, a prompt seizure, and delicate handling, men must be allowed to secure their ends in their own way. Their unbelief thus directly produced immorality-immorality of a very revolting kind, the defrauding of their relatives, and repulsive also because practised as if on Gods side, or, as we should now say, “in the interests of religion.”

To this day the method of Rebekah and Jacob is largely adopted by religious persons. It is notorious that persons whose ends are good frequently become thoroughly unscrupulous about the means they use to accomplish them. They dare not say in so many words that they may do evil that good may come, nor do they think it a tenable position in morals that the end sanctifies the means; and yet their consciousness of a justifiable and desirable end undoubtedly does blunt their sensitiveness regarding the legitimacy of the means they employ. For example, Protestant controversialists, persuaded that vehement opposition to. Popery is good, and filled with the idea of accomplishing its downfall, are often guilty of gross misrepresentation, because they do not sufficiently inform themselves of the actual tenets and practices of the Church of Rome. In all controversy, religious and political, it is the same. It is always dishonest to circulate reports that you have no means of authenticating: yet how freely are such reports circulated to blacken the character of an opponent, and to prove his opinions to be dangerous. It is always dishonest to condemn opinions we have not inquired into, merely because of some fancied consequence which these opinions carry in them: yet how freely are opinions condemned by men who have never been at the trouble carefully to inquire into their truth. They do not feel the dishonesty of their position, because they have a general consciousness that they are on the side of religion, and of what has generally passed for truth. All keeping back of facts which are supposed to have an unsettling effect is but a repetition of this sin. There is no sin more hateful. Under the appearance of serving God, and maintaining His cause in the world, it insults Him by assuming that if the whole bare, undisguised truth were spoken, His cause would suffer.

The fate of all such attempts to manage Gods matters by keeping things dark, and misrepresenting fact, is written for all who care to understand in the results of this scheme of Rebekahs and Jacobs. They gained nothing, and they lost a great deal, by their wicked interference. They gained nothing; for God had promised that the birthright would be Jacobs, and would have given it him in some way redounding to his credit and not to his shame. And they lost a great deal. The mother lost her son; Jacob had to flee for his life, and, for all we know, Rebekah never saw him more. And Jacob lost all the comforts of home, and all those possessions his father had accumulated. He had to flee with nothing but his staff, an outcast to begin the world for himself. From this first false step onwards to his death, he was pursued by misfortune, until his own verdict on his life was, “Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life.”

Thus severely was, the sin of Rebekah and Jacob punished. It coloured their whole afterlife with a deep sombre hue. It was marked thus, because it was a sin by all means to be avoided. It was virtually the sin of blaming God for forgetting His promise, or of accusing Him of being unable to perform it: so that they, Rebekah and Jacob, had, forsooth, to take Gods work out of His hands, and show Him how it ought to be done. The announcement of Gods purpose, instead of enabling them quietly to wait for a blessing they knew to be certain, became in their unrighteous and impatient hearts actually an inducement to sin. Abraham was so bold and confident in his faith, at least latterly, that again and again he refused to take as a gift from men, and on the most honourable terms, what God had promised to give him: his grandson is so little sure of Gods truth, that he will rather trust his own falsehood; and what he thinks God may forget to give him, he will steal from his own father. Some persons have especial need to consider this sin-they are tempted to play the part of Providence, to intermeddle where they ought to refrain. Sometimes just a little thing is needed to make everything go to our liking-the keeping back of one small fact, a slight variation in the way of stating the matter, is enough-thines want just a little push in the right direction: it is wrong, but very slightly so. And so they are encouraged to close for a moment their eyes and put to their hand.

Of all the parties in this transaction none is more to blame than Esau. He shows now how selfish and untruthful the sensual man really is, and how worthless is the generosity which is merely of impulse and not bottomed on principle. While he so furiously and bitterly blamed Jacob for supplanting him, it might surely have occurred to him that it was really he who was supplanting Jacob. He had no right, divine or human, to the inheritance. God had never said that His possession should go to the oldest, and had in this case said the express opposite. Besides, inconstant as Esau was, he could scarcely have forgotten the bargain that so pleased him at the time, and by which he had sold to his younger brother all title to his fathers blessings.

Jacob was to blame for seeking to win his own by craft, but Esau was more to blame for endeavouring furtively to recover what he knew to be no longer his. His bitter cry was the cry of a disappointed and enraged child, what Hosea calls the “howl” of those who seem to seek the Lord, but are really merely crying out, like animals, for corn and wine. Many that care very little for Gods love will seek His favours; and every wicked wretch who has in his prosperity spurned Gods offers will, when he sees how he has cheated himself, turn to Gods gifts, though not to God, with a cry. Esau would now very gladly have given a mess of pottage for the blessing that secured to its receiver “the dew of heaven, the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine.” Like many another sinner, he wanted both to eat his cake and have it. He wanted to spend his youth sowing to the flesh, and have the harvest which those only can have who have sown to the spirit. He wished both of two irreconcilable things-both the red pottage and the birthright. He is a type of those who think very lightly of spiritual blessings. while their appetites are strong, but afterwards bitterly complain that their whole life is filled with the results of sowing to the flesh and not to the spirit.

“We barter life for pottage; sell true bliss

For wealth or power, for pleasure or renown;

Thus Esau-like, our Fathers blessing miss,

Then wash with fruitless tears our laded crown.”

The words of the New Testament, in which it is said that Esau “found no place for repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears,” are sometimes misunderstood. They do not mean that he sought what we ordinarily call repentance, a change of mind about the value of the birthright. He had that; it was this that made him weep. What he sought now was some means of undoing what he had done, of cancelling the deed of which he repented. His experience does not tell us that a man once sinning as Esau sinned becomes a hardened reprobate whom no good influence can impress or bring to repentance, but it says that the sin so committed leaves irreparable consequences-that no man can live a youth of folly and yet find as much in manhood and maturer years as if he had lived a careful and God-fearing youth. Esau had irrecoverably lost that which he would now have given all he had to possess; and in this, I suppose, he represents half the men who pass through this world. He warns us that it is very possible, by careless yielding to appetite and passing whim, to entangle ourselves irrecoverably for this life, if not to weaken and maim ourselves for eternity. At the time, your act may seem a very small and secular one, a mere bargain in the ordinary course, a little transaction such as one would enter into carelessly after the days work is over, in the quiet of a summer evening or in the midst of the family circle: or it may seem so necessary that you never think of its moral qualities, as little as you question whether you are justified in breathing; but you are warned that if there be in that act a crushing out of spiritual hopes to make way for the free enjoyment of the pleasures of sense-if there be a deliberate preference of the good things of this life to the love of God-if, knowingly, you make light of spiritual blessings, and count them unreal when weighed against obvious worldly advantages-then the consequences of that act will in this life bring to you great discomfort and uneasiness, great loss and vexation, an agony of remorse, and a life-long repentance. You are warned of this, and most touchingly, by the moving entreaties, the bitter cries and tears of Esau.

But even when our life is spoiled irreparably, a hope remains for our character and ourselves-not certainly if our misfortunes embitter us, not if resentment is the chief result of our suffering; but if, subduing resentment, and taking blame to ourselves instead of trying to fix it on others, we take revenge upon the real source of our undoing, and extirpate from our own character the root of bitterness. Painful and difficult is such schooling. It calls for simplicity, and humility, and truthfulness-qualities not of frequent occurrence. It calls for abiding patience; for he who begins thus to sow to the spirit late in life must be content with inward fruits, with peace of conscience, increase of righteousness and humility, and must learn to live without much of what all men naturally desire.

While each member of Isaacs family has thus his own plan, and is striving to fulfil his private intention, the result is, that Gods purpose is fulfilled. In the human agency, such faith in God as existed was overlaid with misunderstanding and distrust of God. But notwithstanding the petty and mean devices, the short-sighted slyness, the blundering unbelief, the profane worldliness of the human parties in the transaction, the truth and mercy of God still find a way for themselves. Were matters left in our hands, we should make shipwreck even of the salvation with which we are provided. We carry into our dealings with it the same selfishness, and inconstancy, and worldliness which made it necessary: and had not God patience to bear with, as well as mercy to invite us; had He not wisdom to govern us in the use of His grace, as well as wisdom to contrive its first bestowal, we should perish with the water of life at our lips.

Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary