Back to our Genesis Chapter 27/28 Study

Back to Jacob – We are given far more details about Jacob’s actions, emotions, and response to God than about most individuals of the Old Testament.

It’s interesting that God’s promise of a seed starts out through one person at a time until after Jacob. Abraham to Isaac to Jacob….and then to Jacob’s 12 sons – each as important as the other in Israel’s history. Scripture records many events in Jacob’s life. We see his sins, his faith and God’s dealings with him in grace, in chastisement, by revelation and by rebuke as he molds Jacob’s character into the dignified man of stature he eventually became. You’ll notice that God allows Jacob to experience from others the same kind of deception and suffering he inflicted upon his father, Isaac – with his taking Esau’s birthright and then Isaac’s blessing.

We’ll get to it shortly, but you’ll remember that Jacob leaves his parents and goes to live with his uncle Laban for twenty years. Laban lied to him about earning his wife and also about his wages many times. In his old age his sons lied to him about what happened to Joseph. Some people would call this Karma, but it’s God disciplining him in a way he can see his own sin.

God disciplines His own and He often does this by circumstances of life.

Isaac’s blessing was also prophecy. It was God promising through Isaac –

1.      That the land which his son would possess would be blessed with heavenly dew, which in Israel is so heavy that even in the dry season it almost takes the place of rain. The land would be fertile, full of grain and wine.

2.      Nations would serve his line. People would bow down. People bowed down to Jacob’s son Joseph in Egypt. And of course we will ALL bow down to Jesus one day.

3.      Isaac also blessed him with headship over his brother. Although he was really blessing Esau with headship over Jacob. (Isaac was trying to annul God’s original declared purpose in regard to the younger ruling over the elder.)

4.      The Abrahamic promise of cursing and blessing. He just reasserted God’s promise to Abraham that he would be so identified in God’s family and with God Himself that God would consider those who cursed him as though they cursed God and those who blessed him as though they blessed God.

Then Jacob left and Esau came in and Isaac realized what had happened. And he trembled violently. Imagine how he felt when he realized that he had tried to manipulate God, but God had stepped in and prevented him! He realized he couldn’t change God’s sanction and told Esau so.

Esau regrets his former action, but regret and remorse are not repentance.

Isaac gave him the portion of temporal blessing and prophecy relating to the future which God knew most fitted the life which Esau had already chosen for himself.

1.      Esau’s land would be rocky and dry (“away from the earth’s richness, away from the dew of heaven above”). Edom is a mountainous stronghold with a few fertile places, but very little rain.

2.      Esau and his descendants would be known throughout history for their continual violence and conflict, particularly in relation to the more peaceful Israel whom they constantly harassed and even persecuted.

3.      He would serve his brother – for a long time Israel was over Edom.

4.      “You will throw his yoke from off your neck.” The time came when Judah lost Edom.

Eventually Edom disappeared. One commentator wrote that by “refusing to value their spiritual possessions while they had them they ended in being discarded by God from being instruments of blessing to the people around them.”

I couldn’t help but think of America when I read that. (Re-read statement)

Isaac calls Jacob back to give him the full Abrahamic blessing:

Genesis 28:1-9 So Isaac called for Jacob and blessed him. Then he commanded him: “Do not marry a Canaanite woman. ² Go at once to Paddan Aram, to the house of your mother’s father Bethuel. Take a wife for yourself there, from among the daughters of Laban, your mother’s brother. ³ May God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and increase your numbers until you become a community of peoples. ⁴ May he give you and your descendants the blessing given to Abraham, so that you may take possession of the land where you now reside as a foreigner, the land God gave to Abraham.” ⁵ Then Isaac sent Jacob on his way, and he went to Paddan Aram, to Laban son of Bethuel the Aramean, the brother of Rebekah, who was the mother of Jacob and Esau.

⁶ Now Esau learned that Isaac had blessed Jacob and had sent him to Paddan Aram to take a wife from there, and that when he blessed him he commanded him, “Do not marry a Canaanite woman,” ⁷ and that Jacob had obeyed his father and mother and had gone to Paddan Aram. ⁸ Esau then realized how displeasing the Canaanite women were to his father Isaac; ⁹ so he went to Ishmael and married Mahalath, the sister of Nebaioth and daughter of Ishmael son of Abraham, in addition to the wives he already had.

Esau, who had been indifferent and easy going, turned all his blame and bitterness on Jacob. Rebekah hears him say he is going to kill Jacob, so sends him away to her brother Laban. Remember when she had told Jacob “let the curse be on me”? Well, the first part of that curse was she lost her favorite son. It’s thought they never saw each other again.

So how can we apply this story to our lives? Isaac shows us that it is possible so to live in the light of a past great experience with God that in the present we stagnate, become spiritually lazy and blind and indifferent to God’s call to new decisions and new sacrifices.

From Rebekah we learn that it is possible to know God’s Word, to believe it, to be sound and to recognize when others are not acting according to God’s revealed Word, but yet in personal actions ignore God’s requirements of plain truthfulness, honesty, integrity and righteous conduct. Orthodox belief accompanied by unrighteous conduct will lead to God’s chastisement and sorrow.

From Jacob we learn it is possible to be so convinced that we are in the right, legally, that any conduct seems allowable .We should not be going after our “rights” in ways that don’t please God.

And from Esau we learn not to blame others for the consequence of our own indifference to God and spiritual things.

Isaac's Blessings

Genesis 27 When Isaac was old and his eyes were so weak that he could no longer see, he called for Esau his older son and said to him, “My son.”
“Here I am,” he answered.

² Isaac said, “I am now an old man and don’t know the day of my death. ³ Now then, get your equipment—your quiver and bow—and go out to the open country to hunt some wild game for me. ⁴ Prepare me the kind of tasty food I like and bring it to me to eat, so that I may give you my blessing before I die.”

⁵ Now Rebekah was listening as Isaac spoke to his son Esau. When Esau left for the open country to hunt game and bring it back, ⁶ Rebekah said to her son Jacob, “Look, I overheard your father say to your brother Esau, ⁷ ‘Bring me some game and prepare me some tasty food to eat, so that I may give you my blessing in the presence of the Lord before I die.’ ⁸ Now, my son, listen carefully and do what I tell you: ⁹ Go out to the flock and bring me two choice young goats, so I can prepare some tasty food for your father, just the way he likes it. ¹⁰ Then take it to your father to eat, so that he may give you his blessing before he dies.”

¹¹ Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, “But my brother Esau is a hairy man while I have smooth skin. ¹² What if my father touches me? I would appear to be tricking him and would bring down a curse on myself rather than a blessing.”

¹³ His mother said to him, “My son, let the curse fall on me. Just do what I say; go and get them for me.”

¹⁴ So he went and got them and brought them to his mother, and she prepared some tasty food, just the way his father liked it. ¹⁵ Then Rebekah took the best clothes of Esau her older son, which she had in the house, and put them on her younger son Jacob. ¹⁶ She also covered his hands and the smooth part of his neck with the goatskins. ¹⁷ Then she handed to her son Jacob the tasty food and the bread she had made.

¹⁸ He went to his father and said, “My father.”

“Yes, my son,” he answered. “Who is it?”

¹⁹ Jacob said to his father, “I am Esau your firstborn. I have done as you told me. Please sit up and eat some of my game, so that you may give me your blessing.”

²⁰ Isaac asked his son, “How did you find it so quickly, my son?”

“The Lord your God gave me success,” he replied.

²¹ Then Isaac said to Jacob, “Come near so I can touch you, my son, to know whether you really are my son Esau or not.”

²² Jacob went close to his father Isaac, who touched him and said, “The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau.” ²³ He did not recognize him, for his hands were hairy like those of his brother Esau; so he proceeded to bless him. ²⁴ “Are you really my son Esau?” he asked.

“I am,” he replied.

²⁵ Then he said, “My son, bring me some of your game to eat, so that I may give you my blessing.”

Jacob brought it to him and he ate; and he brought some wine and he drank. ²⁶ Then his father Isaac said to him, “Come here, my son, and kiss me.”

²⁷ So he went to him and kissed him. When Isaac caught the smell of his clothes, he blessed him and said,

“Ah, the smell of my son is like the smell of a field that the Lord has blessed.
²⁸ May God give you heaven’s dew and earth’s richness—an abundance of grain and new wine. ²⁹ May nations serve you and peoples bow down to you. Be lord over your brothers, and may the sons of your mother bow down to you. May those who curse you be cursed
and those who bless you be blessed.”

³⁰ After Isaac finished blessing him, and Jacob had scarcely left his father’s presence, his brother Esau came in from hunting. ³¹ He too prepared some tasty food and brought it to his father. Then he said to him, “My father, please sit up and eat some of my game, so that you may give me your blessing.”

³² His father Isaac asked him, “Who are you?”

“I am your son,” he answered, “your firstborn, Esau.”

³³ Isaac trembled violently and said, “Who was it, then, that hunted game and brought it to me? I ate it just before you came and I blessed him—and indeed he will be blessed!”

³⁴ When Esau heard his father’s words, he burst out with a loud and bitter cry and said to his father, “Bless me—me too, my father!”

³⁵ But he said, “Your brother came deceitfully and took your blessing.”

³⁶ Esau said, “Isn’t he rightly named Jacob? This is the second time he has taken advantage of me: He took my birthright, and now he’s taken my blessing!” Then he asked, “Haven’t you reserved any blessing for me?”

³⁷ Isaac answered Esau, “I have made him lord over you and have made all his relatives his servants, and I have sustained him with grain and new wine. So what can I possibly do for you, my son?”

³⁸ Esau said to his father, “Do you have only one blessing, my father? Bless me too, my father!” Then Esau wept aloud.

³⁹ His father Isaac answered him, “Your dwelling will be away from the earth’s richness,
away from the dew of heaven above. ⁴⁰ You will live by the sword and you will serve your brother. But when you grow restless, you will throw his yoke from off your neck.”

⁴¹ Esau held a grudge against Jacob because of the blessing his father had given him. He said to himself, “The days of mourning for my father are near; then I will kill my brother Jacob.”

⁴² When Rebekah was told what her older son Esau had said, she sent for her younger son Jacob and said to him, “Your brother Esau is planning to avenge himself by killing you. ⁴³ Now then, my son, do what I say: Flee at once to my brother Laban in Harran. ⁴⁴ Stay with him for a while until your brother’s fury subsides. ⁴⁵ When your brother is no longer angry with you and forgets what you did to him, I’ll send word for you to come back from there. Why should I lose both of you in one day?”

⁴⁶ Then Rebekah said to Isaac, “I’m disgusted with living because of these Hittite women. If Jacob takes a wife from among the women of this land, from Hittite women like these, my life will not be worth living.”

Jacob becomes the man that God’s promise of a seed would come through. He was a man of boundless energy, a schemer at least in the beginning, but also a man of power who chose with every ounce of his being to grasp and to live by the promises of God. In Exodus God calls Himself the God of Jacob. He says several times in the Bible “I have loved Jacob.” God also ordained that His chosen nation should be known by Jacob’s second name Israel.

He had some weaknesses, but his solid worth far out weighed them.

I was doing a little research on Esau’s descendants and came across this which was interesting:

One of the most valuable lessons to be learned from the family history of the descendants of the brothers Jacob and Esau concerns the New Testament application. The New Testament views the conflict between the flesh and the spirit as typified by the conflict between Jacob and Esau:

Galatians 5:13-26 For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." But if you bite and devour one another take heed that you are not consumed by one another. But I say, walk by the Spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh.

For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you would.

But if you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us have no self-conceit, no provoking of one another, no envy of one another.

Jacob in many ways typifies the average believer. He was deceitful, manipulative, clever and bent on advancing his own causes for many years. After wrestling all night with The Angel of the Lord at the Brook Jabbok near Peniel, his name was finally changed to Israel. Though he may have been somewhat slow to fully believe and trust God, Jacob's heart was inclined from his birth towards the things of the Lord.

Esau's heart and motives, on the other hand, were perpetually set on the goals and rewards of the world. He cared not at all about the things that were important to God.

Hebrews 12:15-17 "See to it that no one fail to obtain the grace of God; that no 'root of bitterness' spring up and cause trouble, and by it the many become defiled; that no one be immoral or irreligious like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal. For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears."

The entire book of Obadiah tells us why God hated Esau but loved Jacob, and why it is that perpetual enmity exists within the Christian, between the spirit and the flesh:

The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rock, whose dwelling is high, who say in your heart, "Who will bring me down to the ground?" Though you soar aloft like the eagle, though your nest is set among the stars, thence I will bring you down, says the LORD.

When the people of Israel left Egypt under the leadership of Moses the first opposition they encountered was from a people known as the Amalekites. Genesis 36 tells us that Amalek was the grandson of Esau!

Then came Amalek and fought with Israel at Rephidim. Exodus 17:8-16 And Moses said to Joshua, "Choose for us men, and go out, fight with Amalek; tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God in my hand." So Joshua did as Moses told him, and fought with Amalek; and Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed; and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses' hands grew weary; so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat upon it, and Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side; so his hands were steady until the going down of the sun. And Joshua mowed down Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword.

And the LORD said to Moses, "Write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven." And Moses built an altar and called the name of it, The LORD is my banner, saying, "A hand upon the banner of the LORD! The LORD will have war with Amalek from generation to generation."

Later King Saul was told by the prophet Samuel to completely eradicate the Amalekites, (1 Samuel 15). Saul's incomplete obedience not only cost him his throne and his life, but reveals clearly how easy it is for us as believers to compromise with our own flesh---which God has said is utterly worthless.

In the book of Esther, the arche-fiend and enemy of the Jews is the infamous Haman, an Agagite. Sure enough, Agag's name is to be found listed as the king of the people of Amalek!

Herod Antipas, before whom Jesus remained silent in Luke 23:9 was an Idumean, that is one of the last of the Edomites. God has nothing further to say to the flesh, nor to the descendants of Edom. Their fate was sealed long ago.

King David's successful military dealings with Edom are recorded in 2 Samuel 8. Solomon's compromises with his "many foreign wives" caused the Lord to raise up against him an adversary, Hadad, from the royal line of Edom, (2 Kings 11).

There is a long history of antagonism between the descendants of Jacob and of Esau throughout Old Testament history.

And all of this history serves to illustrate for us that no good ever comes from our best efforts, our self effort in the Christian life, which is the root source of what the Bible calls "the flesh." Only the works of God, the works of the Holy Spirit done through us when we are obedient and submissive to God---have any lasting worth. All else will, in the end, be destroyed.

Esau Sells His Birthright

Genesis 25:24-34 When the time came for her to give birth, there were twin boys in her womb. ²⁵ The first to come out was red, and his whole body was like a hairy garment; so they named him Esau. ²⁶ After this, his brother came out, with his hand grasping Esau’s heel; so he was named Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when Rebekah gave birth to them.

²⁷ The boys grew up, and Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the open country, while Jacob was content to stay at home among the tents. ²⁸ Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob.

²⁹ Once when Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau came in from the open country, famished. ³⁰ He said to Jacob, “Quick, let me have some of that red stew! I’m famished!” (That is why he was also called Edom.)  (Edom means red)

³¹ Jacob replied, “First sell me your birthright.”

³² “Look, I am about to die,” Esau said. “What good is the birthright to me?”

³³ But Jacob said, “Swear to me first.” So he swore an oath to him, selling his birthright to Jacob.

³⁴ Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew. He ate and drank, and then got up and left.

So Esau despised his birthright.

Since Jacob was his mother’s favorite, she may have told him about what God told her about “the elder will serve the younger”. Maybe that’s what gave Jacob the idea of getting Esau to give him the birthright.

Back in this era, the birthright was an important element in the structure of society. According to Scripture this birthright includes: a double portion of the father’s inheritance, authority in place of the father in the family, the title of the land of promise and carrying on the line of promise.

Paul tells us in Romans 9:4-5 the privileges granted to Israel that Esau threw over for a good meal: “Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ…”

By wanting this Jacob showed he believed God. BUT, he also showed a lack of belief that God would not fulfill His prophecy without Jacob’s help. That was wrong and we’ll see throughout Jacob’s life God disciplining him. He becomes less scheming and more trusting of God as he ages.

Esau was all about the here and now. Materialism. Future land they may or may not have didn’t do anything for him.

We can relate this to today because many of us are born into Christian families. That’s our spiritual birthright. But we come to an age where we have to claim it. We know the facts, the promises. But some say, “what good does all that do me in my busy life?” they’re too busy to spend time in God’s Word.

There are people in third world countries who would kill for a Bible! And then sometimes ARE KILLED for having one! While we, who have the birthright, have half a dozen lying around our house, never opened.

Some of us are like Esau – not valuing what we’ve been given. While others are like Jacob; they have an intense appreciation of God’s inheritance when they realize it is for them. Truly, as Christ said, “the first shall be last and the last first.”