Gen. 27:18-29 - NOTES & COMMENTARY
Genesis 27 - Jacob Deceptively Gains the Blessing of Isaac
A. Rebekah and Jacob plot to deceive Isaac.
1. (1-4) Isaac's deathbed request to Esau.
Now it came to pass, when Isaac was old and his eyes were so dim that he could not see, that he called Esau his older son and said to him, "My son." And he answered him, "Here I am." Then he said, "Behold now, I am old. I do not know the day of my death. Now therefore, please take your weapons, your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field and hunt game for me. And make me savory food, such as I love, and bring it to me that I may eat, that my soul may bless you before I die."
2. (5-10) Rebekah advises Jacob to deceive his father Isaac.
Now Rebekah was listening when Isaac spoke to Esau his son. And Esau went to the field to hunt game and to bring it. So Rebekah spoke to Jacob her son, saying, "Indeed I heard your father speak to Esau your brother, saying, Bring me game and make savory food for me, that I may eat it and bless you in the presence of the LORD before my death.' Now therefore, my son, obey my voice according to what I command you. Go now to the flock and bring me from there two choice kids of the goats, and I will make savory food from them for your father, such as he loves. Then you shall take it to your father, that he may eat it, and that he may bless you before his death."
3. (11-17) Preparations are made for Jacob's deceptive attempt to steal the blessing.
And Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, "Look, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth-skinned man. Perhaps my father will feel me, and I shall seem to be a deceiver to him; and I shall bring a curse on myself and not a blessing." But his mother said to him, "Let your curse be on me, my son; only obey my voice, and go, get them for me." And he went and got them and brought them to his mother, and his mother made savory food, such as his father loved. Then Rebekah took the choice clothes of her elder son Esau, which were with her in the house, and put them on Jacob her younger son. And she put the skins of the kids of the goats on his hands and on the smooth part of his neck. Then she gave the savory food and the bread, which she had prepared, into the hand of her son Jacob.
B. Jacob receives the blessing that Isaac intended for Esau. 1. (Gen. 27:18-27a) Jacob lies to his father, pretending to be Esau.
18 So he went in to his father and said, "My father." And he said, "Here I am. Who are you, my son?" 19 Jacob said to his father, "I am Esau your firstborn. I have done as you told me; now sit up and eat of my game, that your soul may bless me." 20 But Isaac said to his son, "How is it that you have found it so quickly, my son?" He answered, "Because the Lord your God granted me success." 21 Then Isaac said to Jacob, "Please come near, that I may feel you, my son, to know whether you are really my son Esau or not." 22 So Jacob went near to Isaac his father, who felt him and said, "The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau." 23 And he did not recognize him, because his hands were hairy like his brother Esau's hands. So he blessed him. 24 He said, "Are you really my son Esau?" He answered, "I am." 25 Then he said, "Bring it near to me, that I may eat of my son's game and bless you." So he brought it near to him, and he ate; and he brought him wine, and he drank. 26 Then his father Isaac said to him, "Come near and kiss me, my son." 27a So he came near and kissed him. And Isaac smelled the smell of his garments and blessed him
2. (27b-29) The blessing is given to Jacob.
27a and said, "See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field that the Lord has blessed! 28 May God give you of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth and plenty of grain and wine. 29 Let peoples serve you, and nations bow down to you. Be lord over your brothers, and may your mother's sons bow down to you. Cursed be everyone who curses you, and blessed be everyone who blesses you!"
Genesis 27
This chapter tells us a strange story of deceit, human intrigue, greed, indulgence, hatred and a complete lack of faith in God. Yet the topic is the promise and blessing that God had given to Abraham and that was passed on to Isaac and was supposed to be given to Jacob according to what God had told Rebekah.
The Word of God that is the subject of human manipulation. What is done with it is unbelievable. Under a guise of piety, human beings pursue their own interest as if they were identical with God's interest; and yet God is nowhere to be found in this. That God comes out victorious is one of those miracles that is beyond our comprehension. It is clear, however, that God is not behind this intrigue or that He approved of any part of it. What is being done is sinful, and God hates sin.
In the light of this chapter it seems difficult to reconcile these events with the statement of Hebrews: "By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future."[ 1 ] We have to look very closely to see where this faith of Isaac becomes evident. It seems more that Isaac demonstrates a complete lack of faith. We shall see later that probably Isaac's words at the end in vs.33 where we read that when Isaac discovered what he has done, he starts to tremble violently, but he confirms: "I blessed him; and indeed he will be blessed!"are a demonstration of dormant faith.
Isaac is getting old. The commentators disagree on the actual age. The Pulpit Commentary says about this: "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 (ch.41:46), and having been thirty-nine years of age (ch.45:6) when his father, aged one hundred and thirty (ch. 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. ch.30:25 with 29:13,21,27) Jacob's flight must have taken place when he was seventy-seven. But Jacob was born in Isaac's sixtieth year (ch.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 (ch. 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 neighbour, 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, if not impossible, at least highly improbable. Adopting the larger number as the term of Jacob's sojourn in Mesopotamia, Isaac would at this point be only one hundred and seventeen."
However interesting the above calculations, we will leave it at that. The point is that Isaac felt he was nearing death because of his blindness. So he decides that preparations must be made for what we would in modern times call, a will. The difference, however, is that the blessing he was going to pronounce in the Name of YHWH would be irrevocable. It would not be like a human testament that could be changed. If it is true that Isaac was 137 years old when this story starts, he still had 43 years ahead of him, because according to ch. 35:28 he passed away at the age of 180. Evidently his blindness and consequent isolation created and enforced a death wish, but his general physical condition must still have been good. It seems, however, that Isaac at this point had given up on life. He was confined to bed because he confined himself to it. It seems to me that this is a trap old people should avoid. It must be miserable to spend forty years of one's life wishing to die. Yet I know people who live lives like that.
But the death wish Isaac nurtured did not spoil his appetite. He thoroughly enjoyed gourmet cooking, and he somehow links God's blessing to such a kind of meal. It sounds like identifying Christmas with a Christmas dinner. It is true that if we are not fully alive while we still live, we need some compensation, and good food may often serve the purpose. I realize, as I am growing older myself, how important it is to look constantly at yourself in the light of the Lord and ask Him to keep our testimony pure. There is nothing against good food. But if it becomes the focus of our enjoyment, something in our fellowship with the Lord has been lost.
Then there is Isaac's disobedience to the revealed will of God, regarding who should receive the blessing as the oldest son. There can be no doubt about it that Isaac was aware of what God had said to Rebekah. He may not have heard it personally, but he had no reason to doubt, since the revelation was given even before the children were born. Yet Isaac is attracted to his son Esau to the point where he blatantly shows favoritism. Isaac's attitude shows how little he was a priest in his home. He was the recipient of God's richest promise; his life had been completely dedicated to the Lord, and yet he had done nothing with these spiritual possession. In Ephesians we read: "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ."[ 2 ] The question we have to ask ourselves is what we do with "every spiritual blessing in Christ." Our obedience and testimony begin at home! It would profit us little if the whole world would see Christ in us, but our children don't.
Not only was something wrong in the relationship between Isaac and his children; there was also no communication between husband and wife. Rebekah learns of Isaac's plan to bestow the blessing upon Esau by eavesdropping. Isaac had not talked his plan over with his wife. There may be situations in which a husband should overrule his wife's objections in certain matters, but the general principle should be that there is agreement, especially in spiritual things. The whole atmosphere in Isaac's household was one of broken relationships, mutual secrets and outright deceit.
Rebekah is just as much to blame as Isaac. She should have gone to her husband and talked to him. After all she had heard the Word of God herself. She should have reminded Isaac of the prophecy. There is no indication she even tried. We get the impression that Jacob inherited the ability to scheme from his mother. She is a mistress of deception. If there ever had been any love between Isaac and Rebekah it had evidently died long before this point. Love cannot deceive.
Esau makes no attempt to tell his father that he sold his birthright to Jacob. Either he had never taken the deal seriously or he was embarrassed about it or he had conveniently forgotten it. Jacob probably never forgot things like that. But he does not counter his mother's plan by claiming his right, since he paid for it with a bowl of soup. There was most likely some embarrassment on his side also. That may be the only positive part in this chapter. He offers no moral objections to his mother's plan to deceive his father. The only reservation he has is the fear of discovery. In verse 12 he makes the understatement of all understatements: "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," or as the KJV puts it: "I shall seem to him as a deceiver." What did he consider himself to be?
His mother says that the curse would fall upon her. She does not seem to take her husband's curses too seriously. One wonders in that case what she thinks of his blessings! If this chapter wasn't dealing with the issue of God's promise, of His revelation and ultimately the Incarnation, the Word becoming flesh, this story would be a comedy of the first order. As it is, it makes a mockery of God. Nobody takes the Word of God seriously. Nobody thinks that God is able to bring about what He had promised. Everybody deceives everybody else and ultimately himself or herself the most. The devil is behind all these schemes, and he laughs his head off. There is in this family nothing left of the faith of Abraham, which God imputed to him as righteousness.
Once again, how can the writer to the Hebrews say: "By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future?"[ 3 ] What faith? Ironically, this is the only incident in Isaac's life that brought him into the hall of fame of the Hebrew epistle. That is where the relationship between faith and grace comes in. Isaac, Jacob and Esau all had to receive forgiveness. Isaac was the first one to confirm that the blessing he accidentally pronounced on the wrong person would stand as an act of God. He implied in this that God had overruled his foolishness. For Jacob it took years before he faced God at Peniel, where he wrestled with God and asked for forgiveness. Hosea's comment, as we read it in "He struggled with the angel and overcame him; he wept and begged for his favor,"[ 4 ] [actually says in Hebrew "he wept and asked for his forgiveness"] shows that he did receive cleansing.
And in ch. 33:4 we see that a change had taken place in Esau. "But Esau ran to meet Jacob and embraced him; he threw his arms around his neck and kissed him. And they wept." The only one whose repentance is not mentioned is Rebekah.
So the plan to deceive Isaac is actually Rebekah's. She does not seem to have too much trouble to talk Jacob into it. He has no moral objections. It never dawns on anybody that a spiritual blessing cannot be obtained by deceit. The mere supposition throws a shadow on the character of God. Maybe the most awful feature of this story is that God does not intervene in this diabolic plot. God is often most merciful when he punishes sin on the spot. Man is put in a dangerous position when God permits sin to accumulate.
The plan is also a sin against the person of Isaac. It is true that Isaac did wrong in going against the prophetic Word of God regarding Jacob's birthright. Although the law in Leviticus, which says: "Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind, but fear your God. I am the LORD,"[ 5 ] was written much later, the principle must have been known in Isaac's day. Rebekah and Jacob must have had no fear of God when they conceived this plan and put it in practice.
Nobody ever asked the question why God did not let Jacob come out of his mother's womb first, if he was to receive the blessing of the first born? It never occurred to anybody that God might have a special plan in this reversal. God put these people to the test and they all failed.
The Bible does not explain specifically why God chose Jacob over Esau. The Apostle Paul gets close to the mystery when he says: "Not only that, but Rebekah's children had one and the same father, our father Isaac. Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad; in order that God's purpose in election might stand: Not by works but by him who calls; she was told, 'The older will serve the younger.' Just as it is written: 'Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.' God's purpose in election might stand ... not by works but by Him Who calls."[ 6 ] God is sovereign. A birthright is no right in the strictest sense of the word. No one is born by his own choice, so why should we lay claim on any privilege? The beginning and the end of our lives as well as what is in between is in God's hand. This is an established fact; it should be an accepted fact also.
One wonders what went on inside Jacob as he deceived his father. Isaac has doubts from the very beginning. The first question he asks is "Who is it?" Jacob succeeds to pull the wool over his father's eyes on every point, except his voice. Twice Jacob says that he is Esau, and once he invokes the Name of the Lord in saying that the LORD gave him success. What finally convinces Isaac is the smell. A man can fake almost every facet of his life and show himself different from what he is inside. But a smell can not be faked. I am not talking about the physical phenomena, which can be overruled or changed by cosmetics. Our character spreads an odor that is beyond our control. That is why Paul can say "For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life."[ 7 ] In the natural we all are odious, and spiritually even more so before God. Jacob's wearing of Esau's clothing is an illustration in the negative of our being clothed with the righteousness of Jesus Christ. The only way we can be an aroma of Christ among men is if God smells Jesus Christ in us. May be the worst part of Jacob and Rebekah's deception was that Jacob was wearing Esau's clothes.
Isaac catches the smell of Esau when Jacob kisses him. Nowhere else, but in Judas' betrayal of Jesus, is there a larger distance between affection and a kiss than in Jacob's act here. Jacob had probably not intended to fall that deeply. But once we start falling we are out of control. One cannot just sin a little bit. The devil will drag us down till we hit the ground and be crushed. The wages of sin is death.
It is easy, of course, to pronounce our condemnation upon Jacob. But we miss the point if we do not look at his sin that is spread out so openly before us here and not compare ourselves with it.
Then Isaac pronounces the blessing, which later he makes irrevocable: (vs.27-29) "Ah, the smell of my son is like the smell of a field that the LORD has blessed. May God give you of heaven's dew and of earth's richness; an abundance of grain and new wine. 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." There are no echo's of the blessing God bestowed upon Abraham in these words, are there? It sounds rather earthly. If this is a deterioration or a deviation, we cannot tell. Abraham never blessed Isaac, as far as we know. This is the first incident in which a father blesses his son. But it is apparently not the passing on of a divine mandate. Yet this is what the writer to the Hebrews claims it to be. Hebrews says: "By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future."[ 8 ] It boils down to a confirmation of God's prophecy to Rebekah. "Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger."[ 9 ]
The only link with God's blessing to Abraham is in the words "May those who curse you be cursed and those who bless you be blessed." In ch. 12:3 God had said to Abraham: "I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." It seems that in omitting the last part of the blessing, Isaac shows he had lost the vision of the coming of the Messiah. Or maybe his doubts as to whom he was blessing had not been completely alleviated.
We may presume that Jacob left in a hurry after he had received what he came for. One wonders how much satisfaction he received. How blessed did he feel? He clears the place just in time because immediately afterward Esau enters. Isaac has no doubt about Esau's identity. This time he knows his son. The shock of the discovery is almost too much for the old man. We read:"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!'"[ 10 ] The only part of the deception that does not penetrate immediately is that he had a meal of goat meat instead of game. His body betrays what his heart had not wanted to admit over the years. He had obstructed God's purpose with his insistence to bless Esau over Jacob. He breaks down to the point where he loses control of his limbs. Isaac's reaction must have been a pitiful sight, but there is nobody present to pity him. Esau is too much involved in his own loss to pity his father. However pitiful Isaac may have been at this point, it is here that faith is rekindled in his heart. His trembling signifies surrender to God's ways and a giving up of his own. That is why the author of Hebrews can say, "By faith Isaac blessed..."
Esau's reaction is "a loud and bitter cry." This strong specimen of masculinity melts down like wax and cries like a child. The child has probably always been there, hidden by the rough exterior. The only words he can utter are: "Me too... me too!" They may have been the first he learned to say. They must have been his early defense against his feeling of being inferior to his brother Jacob. Here everything comes to a head. Esau behaves more like a wounded animal than a human being. He cries like the animals he used to shoot himself.
The author of the Hebrew Epistle sums it up for us by saying: "See that no one is sexually immoral, or is godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son. Afterward, as you know, when he wanted to inherit this blessing, he was rejected. He could bring about no change of mind, though he sought the blessing with tears."[ 11 ] He calls Esau "godless" and he implies that Esau's tears were not tears of repentance.*
The question is how can one receive a blessing without a personal relationship with God? The fact that Esau is called "godless" implies that he did not know God; neither did he care. The same question can be asked in regard to Jacob also. How godly was he? The fact that the essence of the blessing was the lineage of the Messiah is completely lost in this tragic-comedy of deceit. Not even Isaac mentions this. Everybody is only interested in himself and wants to get out of God as much as he can without strings attached.
Isaac sees through the deceit now. He realizes that the one with Jacob's voice was Jacob. We never read that Isaac called Jacob and scolded him on account of his deceit. It seems that the father had played little or no role in the growing up of his boys. If he occupied himself at all with his sons, it must have been mainly with Esau and that on account of Esau's ability to hunt the kind of animals Isaac like to eat, as we read in Ch. 25:27.
Esau catches the essence of Jacob's character by saying: "Is not he rightly named Jacob?" Jacob means "he grabs the heel," as the footnote of the NIV says both here and in chapter 25:26. The idea developed into "he trips people up." A modern nickname for Jacob would be "Jack the tripper."
Esau makes a distinction between his birthright and the blessing. It seems to me that the two should not be separated, but evidently they were. In the above quoted verse from Heb.12 they are treated as one. The birthright guaranteed the largest portion of the father's earthly possessions, but the blessing was the divine touch that gave value and content to these possessions. It is on this last point that the people involved in the events of this chapter lost all sense of reality. A. B. Simpson wrote the song: "First it was the blessing, now it is the Lord." This development is absent here. The Lord is not in this at all. There is a strong odor of superstition in this whole story.
It is amazing to see how the living faith and personal relationship with God that Abraham possessed, has deteriorated to a pious veneer that covered an animistic worldview. Syncretism is almost as old as man is.
In blessing Esau, Isaac predicts Jacob's dominion over him. But there is also a promise of release as the result of a great effort on the part of Esau. The phrase rendered in the NIV with "But when you grow restless, you will throw his yoke from off your neck," is open for various translations. The KJV says: "and it shall come to pass when thou shalt have the dominion, that thou shalt break his yoke from off thy neck." And the RSV translates it as:"but when you break loose you shall break his yoke from your neck." The Hebrew appears to be obscure. The probable intent is that eventually Edom would be able to shake off Israel's yoke in a revolt. History bears this out.
Another example of conflicting translations is found in the beginning of the blessing. The KJV translates verse 39 as: "Behold, thy dwelling shall be the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above," while the NIV says: "Your dwelling will be away from the earth's richness, away from the dew of heaven above." The RSV agrees with the latter. According to The Pulpit Commentary, the Hebrew grammar allows for both translations. It seems, however, that the negative sense, the one that withholds earth's richness and heaven's dew from Edom, fits more in the context. It is true that Mal.1:3 describes the country of Edom as a wasteland, but this may not have been the original condition of the place. (Mal 1:3 "But Esau I have hated, and I have turned his mountains into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals.")
Obviously, Esau is very unhappy with the blessing he receives. The NIV says: "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." (vs.41). The KJV puts it much stronger and is probably closer to the real feelings Esau had toward his brother. We read: "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; then will I slay my brother Jacob."
There is little doubt as to whether Esau was serious or not. His hatred for Jacob was so intense that he would have committed murder. It would probably have meant his own death as well as Rebekah clearly understood. In verse 45 she says: "Why should I lose both of you in one day?" But Esau was not the person to think things through. He was not a Jacob, a plotter.
Actually we have come to the end of Isaac's story at this point. His death is mentioned in chapter 35:28, 34 years later. Between here and then he fades out of the picture. The last time we see him is when he sends Jacob away to Rebekah's family in Haran. The rest of the story is Jacob's.
How do we sum up Isaac's life? We gave it the title "The sacrificed life" and we hold on to that. But we do get the impression that over the years Isaac had taken several pieces of the sacrifice off the altar. He certainly did not live consistently with the Lord. We believe that his trembling at the discovery of the mistake he had made in blessing Jacob meant a return to spiritual reality. Heb.11:20 seems to confirm this. God identifies with Isaac by revealing Himself as the God of Abraham and Isaac. But Isaac did not have the living, heroic faith of his father. Nowhere is he called "a friend of God." It is evidently possible to put yourself on God's altar and yet achieve very little of a testimony. Maybe the sacrifice of his life was more his father's sacrifice than his own. He put himself on the altar as a young man. Growing up and growing old is hard. We have to do it very carefully and walk with God as we do it.
Cole - Bible.org:
Lesson 52: My Way Or God's Way? (Genesis 27:1-46)
Frank Sinatra's well-known song, "I Did It My Way," was shocking for its blatant ungodliness. Of course what Sinatra stated plainly in that song, "I did it my way," is true of every person who does not submit his life to Jesus Christ. Most people just aren't as open as Sinatra in stating the controlling force of their lives.
In Genesis 27, four people sing Sinatra's song. Isaac does things his way by trying to bestow the family blessing on Esau, in opposition to God's revealed will. Esau tries to take back what he had already sold to his brother Jacob. When he is foiled, he plans to kill his brother. Rebekah deceives her aging husband into giving the blessing to her favorite son, Jacob. And Jacob lies to his father and outsmarts his brother. Rebekah and Jacob could argue that they were only trying to bring about the will of God, since God had told Rebekah that her older son would serve the younger. But I'm not persuaded by those who attribute high motives to Rebekah and Jacob. I think that what you have here are four self-centered people seeking their own advantage. They all did it their way, not God's way. In the end they all came up empty and paid a high price for their selfishness.
Every person must have as a theme song in life either "I Did It My Way" or "I Did It God's Way." You would think that the lines would be clearly drawn: Every person outside of Christ would sing, "I Did It My Way"; every Christian would sing, "I Did It God's Way." But I find that many who profess to believe in Christ are really just living for themselves, often using God as the means to self-fulfillment. But the genuine Christian life is a matter of God's confronting our self-centeredness and enthroning Christ as Lord in our hearts. While the process takes a lifetime, I question whether the person who is not involved in the process of dying to self is truly a child of God. Genesis 27 teaches the principle that ...
When we seek our own way, we never get what we wanted and we pay a high price.
It is presented as a drama with four characters. First (27:1-4), Isaac comes on the stage with his selfish desire, based on his appetite, to give the blessing to Esau, who goes off to comply with Isaac's plan. In scene two (27:5-17), Rebekah, who was eavesdropping, hatches her plot to deceive Isaac and get the blessing for Jacob. In the third scene (27:18-29), Jacob successfully carries out his mother's scheme. In the fourth scene (27:30-40), Isaac and Esau discover they have been deceived. Isaac can only give a lesser blessing to Esau. In the conclusion (27:41-46), we see the consequences: Esau plans to kill Jacob, while Rebekah plots how to divert that crisis. Each of the characters illustrates the theme: Each seeks his or her own way; each is frustrated in not getting what he sought; and each pays a high price.
The drama is marked by some undercurrents which run through the chapter. The first is haste or urgency. Isaac seems to be near death's door when he summons Esau to his bedside. Actually, Isaac, who was 137, lived 43 more years. But you get the feeling that he has one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel-Esau needs to get on with his mission. While Esau is gone, Rebekah quickly summons Jacob, and there is a flurry of activity as they prepare to deceive the blind old man before Esau returns from his hunt. Jacob barely makes it out the door before Esau comes back. There is haste in Rebekah's urgent words to Jacob, "... arise, flee to Haran ...!" (27:43).
There is often a sense of haste when people are trying to pull off their own schemes, even if it's under the guise of doing God's will. If you're not trusting God to orchestrate circumstances for you, then you work under the false impression that you've got to pull your own strings. So you rush around like a one-armed man putting on a show with 50 dancing marionettes, trying to keep all the strings going at the right time. There are exceptions, but generally when you're trusting God to work things out in His time and way, you aren't running around in eleventh hour haste, trying to rescue the situation.
A second undercurrent which runs through the drama is deception or conspiracy. In the famous words of Sir Walter Scott, "Oh, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive." There is an air of secrecy when old Isaac calls Esau to his bedside. Normally, the blessing would have been given before the entire family (see Genesis 49). It was an oral will which legally determined the disposition of all the father possessed. But Isaac calls Esau without Rebekah or Jacob. He knew that Rebekah would oppose his move; she always had favored Jacob. So Esau is sent out secretly.
But, Rebekah was secretly eavesdropping on Isaac's meeting with Esau. So she secretly calls Jacob and works out her plot to deceive her blind husband. Later, when she thinks that Esau will kill Jacob, Rebekah schemes again by telling Isaac that she is tired of living because of Esau's Hittite wives. If Jacob marries women like these, life will not be worth living (27:46). So without telling Isaac of the real reason, she secures his blessing on Jacob before he sends him away to Haran to find a wife from Rebekah's relatives. Throughout the whole drama is this web of deception, conspiracy, and secrecy.
A third undercurrent is mistrust. You can't carry on secrets and manipulative plots in a family without eroding trust. Isaac didn't trust Rebekah or Jacob or he would have included them in the plan to give away his blessing. Rebekah didn't trust Isaac or she wouldn't have gone to such elaborate lengths to deceive him. Jacob knew that his father wouldn't trust him, as seen in his comment to his mother, "Perhaps my father will feel me, then I shall be as a deceiver [mocker] in his sight; ..." (27:12). Neither Jacob nor Esau trusted each other. It was a family riddled with mistrust because it operated on the basis of deception and secrecy instead of honesty and openness.
Each character illustrates the theme: When we seek our own way, we never get what we wanted and we pay a high price.
1. The theme is illustrated with Isaac.
This is not a pretty picture of Isaac. Some try to excuse him by saying that maybe he didn't know or had forgotten about God's prophecy to Rebekah, that the older son would serve the younger. But surely Rebekah would have told and have frequently reminded Isaac of that prophecy, especially when she sensed Isaac's favoritism toward Esau and wanted to assert her own favoritism toward Jacob. Isaac knew.
This is a premeditated plot on Isaac's part to overthrow the revealed purpose of God. Sadly, Isaac's reasons were based totally on the flesh: He had a taste for Esau's game (25:28; 27:3-4). Here, on what Isaac thought was his deathbed, he can only think of indulging himself once more with his favorite meal prepared by his favorite son. He was gratifying his sensual desires in opposition to God's plan. It's a sorry picture.
The picture grows even darker when we read (in 26:34-35) that Esau had taken two Hittite wives. Abraham had been emphatic that his son Isaac should not take a wife from the Canaanites (24:3-9). He knew that those pagan women would pollute God's plan to bless all nations through his descendants. Isaac's charge to Jacob not to take a wife from the Canaanites (28:1) shows that he knew the importance of the heir having a godly wife. Why hadn't he given both sons this charge years before? Yet he set aside that requirement when he made up his mind to give the blessing to Esau.
Isaac wanted his way, not God's way. He liked Esau and his game over Jacob. No matter that Esau was a godless man, that he had despised his birthright, that he had married Canaanite wives. Isaac liked him, so he planned to give everything to Esau, as is clear from the mistaken blessing on Jacob (27:28--29, 37-38).
But did Isaac get what he wanted? Instead of wild game, he got spiced up goat. Instead of blessing Esau, he put him under a curse, because he ordained that whoever cursed Jacob should be cursed, and Esau planned to kill Jacob. His family was riddled with rivalry and his sons were separated from him. He and his wife were at odds and didn't trust each other. Isaac sought his own way, didn't get what he wanted, and paid a high price.
2. The theme is illustrated with Rebekah.
Rebekah wanted God's choice (Jacob), but for selfish reasons. He was her favorite. He was her pawn in her power struggle against her husband. So even though on the surface she could claim, "I just want God's will," the claim was a pious fraud. Rebekah wanted her way. She was willing to deceive her blind husband and to draw her son into deception to gain her goal.
Of course, Rebekah could have rationalized: "What could I do? If I hadn't acted as I did, God's promise wouldn't have been fulfilled. The whole Messianic program was at stake! You can't just sit back and trust God at a time like that. You have to take decisive action. Besides, it worked! God's blessing through Abraham and Isaac came to Jacob, just as God ordained."
The fallacy in that line of thinking is that deception was the only alternative. Rebekah could have sought the Lord and then appealed to Isaac based on what he knew to be God's purpose. Having done that, she could have left the matter with God, trusting that if He needed to, God could reverse Isaac's wrong action.
That's the fallacy of situation ethics. It poses a false dilemma, then tells you that you have no choice except to violate God's moral absolutes. There's often time pressure. I can imagine Rebekah thinking, "If I don't act now, God's plan will be thwarted. I don't like lying, but I have no choice." But, almost always, there are other choices. I will grant that, in a fallen world, there are some ethical dilemmas; but they are really rare. Almost always, there is a way not to sin.
Did Rebekah get what she was after? On the surface, yes, Jacob got the blessing. But in the end, no. What she feared (27:45) happened when she lost both her sons. Jacob fled to Haran and Esau moved to Edom. She sought to get the inheritance for Jacob, but he had to leave it behind and flee for his life. She sought to make Jacob the ruler over all that Isaac had; instead, Jacob became the indentured servant of Laban.
And what about the cost? Rebekah calculated that the whole thing would blow over soon (27:44-45): "Stay with him a few days, until your brother's fury subsides, until your brother's anger against you subsides, and he forgets what you did to him. Then I shall send and get you from there." The "few days" turned out to be 20 years, and Rebekah probably never saw her favorite son again. When he returns, Isaac is mentioned, but not Rebekah. In the only other mention of her name in Genesis, Jacob on his deathbed states that they buried Rebekah in the cave of Machpelah (49:31, implying that he was not there). So Rebekah spent her final years bereft of her sons, emotionally estranged from her blind husband. She sought her own way, didn't get what she wanted, and paid a high price.
3. The theme is illustrated with Jacob.
Again, I must disagree with commentators who exonerate Jacob. Some say that he was valuing spiritual things and, after all, he was only obeying his mother. But remember, the man wasn't a teenager-he was probably 77 years old! He should have rebuked his mother for her deceptive scheme. Clearly, Jacob is not a spiritually-minded man. He does not fear God or His moral law; he only fears that the scheme might not work and he might get cursed instead of blessed. He wanted the wealth and advantage which went along with the blessing. Like Rebekah, Jacob was seeking his own way under the guise of seeking God's way.
Note the extremes he was willing to take to get what he wanted. His blind old father asks, "Who are you, my son?" Jacob flatly lies, "I am Esau your firstborn; I have done as you told me" (27:18-19). When Isaac questions how he could have returned so quickly, Jacob crassly gives God the credit (27:20)! But because of Jacob's voice, Isaac still has doubts. So he calls Jacob to him so he can feel his skin. After feeling the deceptive goatskins on Jacob's arms, he asks again, "Are you really my son Esau?" And Jacob baldly lies again, "I am" (27:24). He caps the whole thing off with a kiss! Where is Jacob's conscience?
Jacob's actions seem incredible-until you get honest with yourself. If you know your heart, you can see yourself right there in Jacob's sandals, doing the same thing. Haven't you ever bent the truth when you were under pressure or when you thought it was for a good cause? And once you tell the first lie, it's harder to bail out. So you dig yourself in deeper and deeper.
Did Jacob get what he was after? On the surface, yes, he got the blessing. But it didn't quite do for him what he was expecting. He had to flee from his brother who wanted to kill him. The blessing stipulated that he would be master of his brothers (vs. 29), but before Esau bowed to Jacob, Jacob would bow before Esau and call him lord (33:3, 8). He thought the blessing would put him in a position of influence, but before that it forced him to become the indentured servant of a man who deceived him. Later the sons of this deceiver would deceive their father concerning his beloved son, Joseph, telling him that the animals had killed the boy. For 20 years he mourned for that son, thinking him to be dead before he found out the truth. So Jacob sought his own way, didn't get what he wanted, and paid high installment payments for years to come.
4. The theme is illustrated with Esau.
While we may sympathize with Esau, there is no doubt that he was seeking his own way. Granted, he was the older brother, so the birthright and blessing should have been his. But he had made a legal agreement with his brother to sell his birthright. It was not true, as Esau laments, that Jacob took away his birthright (27:36). Esau gave it up. Here, he was in cahoots with his father's secretive plan to get the blessing for himself; he just happened to get outsmarted. As a godless man, not concerned about the spiritual promises God had given to Abraham, Esau was clearly seeking his own way, not God's way.
His tears (27:34, 38) may make us feel sorry for him. But remember, Esau wasn't truly repentant, ready to turn from his self-seeking ways to follow God's ways. He was just sorry he didn't get what he was after. He was like the guy who heard at work that his neighbor's house burned down. Since they didn't get along too well, he shrugged and said, "Too bad!" Then he drove home and found out that his own house had burned down, too. If he started wailing, you wouldn't assume that he was sorry for his neighbor or for his own bad attitude. He was just sorry for himself. Esau wasn't truly repentant toward God; he was just sorry his scheme hadn't worked.
Clearly, Esau didn't get the blessing he desired. He ended up estranged from God's promises to Abraham and his descendants. He became the father of the Edomites, who lived to the east of the Dead Sea and were later subjected by several kings of Israel. They finally succeeded in casting off Israel's rule, even as Isaac prophesied (27:40). They sided with Nebuchadnezzar in his overthrow of Jerusalem (587 B.C.) and were overjoyed at its destruction (Ps. 137:7; Lam. 4:21, 22; Obadiah 10-16). Esau, like Isaac, Rebekah, and Jacob, sought his own way, didn't get what he wanted, and paid a high price.
Conclusion
Let me draw four concluding lessons from this drama:
(1) If we sow to the flesh, we'll reap from the flesh. The law of sowing and reaping is as true for God's people as it is for unbelievers. If you live for the pleasures of the flesh, you will reap from the flesh corruption (Gal. 6:7-8). If you live for the things of this world, you may get them, but you'll be poor before God.
Some may protest: "But we're under grace, not law!" But remember, Paul warned about sowing and reaping in the very letter where he strongly argues for the grace of God--Galatians. You can't plant spinach and harvest sweet corn. While sin may taste sweet in your mouth, it will be bitter in your stomach and you'll wish you had never tasted it! That's true for believers under grace.
(2) You can't thwart the ultimate purpose of God, so why not work with Him, not against Him? It is utter futility to fight God. It may seem as if you're going to be able to get away with your plan. But "He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord scoffs at them" (Ps. 2:4). Man's sin can never thwart God's purpose. It may appear that things are not under God's control and that the forces of evil are going to turn world history to their own ends. It's only an illusion. Even the wrath of man will bring ultimate praise to God (Ps. 76:10). God, not man, determines history. You can either smash yourself to bits trying to fight against God or you can submit to His purpose. As the apostle Paul and millions of others can tell you, life is a lot more pleasant when you don't kick against the goads.
(3) Godly ends do not justify wrong means. Was it God's will to give the blessing to Jacob? Yes! Was it right for Rebekah and Jacob to gain the blessing through deception? No! Methods do matter! Wrong methods don't become right just because they work, even when they help accomplish God's purpose. We live in a pragmatic culture, and many Christians have bought into any method that works. Just because a marketing scheme brings people into the church does not make it right. God's work must be done in His way.
(4) The way to find your life is to lose it for Christ's sake. Hebrews 11:20 states: "By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau, even regarding things to come." How can that be, when it seems that he was acting in the flesh? The answer is in Genesis 27:33, where a trembling Isaac realizes that he has really blessed Jacob, not Esau, as he intended. He admits, "Yes, and he shall be blessed." At that point Isaac realized that he and Esau had been fighting against God and they had lost. God pinned him to the mat, Isaac admitted defeat, and submitted to God's sovereign way. So Isaac gives up his theme song, "I Did It My Way." He lost his life, only to find real life in God.
That's the key, by the way, to family harmony-when each member dies to his own selfish way and lives for God's way. What is God's word to wives? "Submit to your husband." Many Christian wives hate that word! It grates on the flesh. But it is God's Word to wives! Before you husbands start gloating, remember God's word to you: "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her." The Bible never tells husbands to get their wives to submit. It tells us to seek the highest good of our wives by dying to our own selfish ways. God's word to children is, "Obey your parents" and you will be blessed. To parents (especially fathers) He says, "Don't provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord." (Eph. 5:22-6:4).
Many Christian counselors are telling hurting people, "Assert yourself! Stand up for your rights! Don't be codependent! You've got a right to some happiness in life, so go for it!" But God's Word is clear: If you seek your own way, you won't get what you want and you'll pay a high price in family conflict. If you'll die to your way and seek God's way, He will give you the desires of your heart. You've got to decide which will be your theme song: "I did it my way," or, "I did it God's way?"
