Genesis 25

Genesis 25:19-28

XXVI ISAAC AND JACOB Genesis 25:19-28:9 We take up the story of Isaac and Jacob. The closing paragraphs of Isaac’s history are recorded in Genesis 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 Hebrews 11 says that she is a woman of faith. By faith she was enabled to bear seed. 2 Peter 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 Galatians 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 Genesis 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, Genesis 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 Romans 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. Hebrews 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 JACOBIn 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” (Genesis 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, Malachi 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 Romans 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 (Deuteronomy 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.

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? (Hebrews 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 Hebrews 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 Malachi 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?