Genesis 25
McGeeCHAPTER 25THEME: Abraham marries Keturah; Abraham dies; Esau and JacobThis is another great chapter of the Bible. It records the death of Abraham and the birth of the twins, Esau and Jacob, to Isaac and Rebekah. It gives the generations of Ishmael and also the generations of Isaac. Then there is the incident relative to the birthright. So this is a remarkable chapter, and it covers a great deal of ground. This chapter concludes the account of Abraham’s life, but, frankly, his story ended back in chapter 23 when he sent the servant out to get a bride for Isaac.
Genesis 25:1
ABRAHAM MARRIES KETURAHNow he has quite a family. He had his biggest family after the death of Sarah. Somebody will raise the question, “I thought that at the time of the birth of Isaac Abraham was dead as far as his capability of bringing a child into the world.” Granted, he was. But when God does something, He really does it. This is the reason I believe that anything God does bears His signature. Right here we see that this man Abraham was not only able to bring Isaac into the world, but he now brings in this great family of children. The interesting thing that we have before us here is the mention of Medan and Midian. The other boys will have nations come from them also, but I can’t identify them. I’m not interested in them because they do not cross our pathway in Scripture, but Midian does. We will find later that Moses will go down into the land of Midian and take a wife from there. Remember that the Midianites are in the line of Abraham and so are the Medanites. So we find here the fact that there are other sons of Abraham, but the Lord has said it is through Isaac that Abraham’s seed is callednot through any of these other sons. It is not through Ishmael, nor through Midian, nor Medan. All of these were nomads of the desert.
Genesis 25:5
ABRAHAM DIESIshmael comes for the funeral because, after all, Abraham is his father. So Isaac and Ishmael together bury Abraham. Then Isaac goes down to live at the place where he first met Rebekah.
Genesis 25:11
In verses Gen_25:12 to Gen_25:18 we have the generations of Ishmael, Abraham’s son, whom Hagar the Egyptian, Sarah’s handmaid, bare unto Abraham. The list of them is given here. I call to your attention again the fact that the Holy Spirit uses this method in the Book of Genesis. The rejected line is given first and then set aside and not mentioned anymore. Then the line that is leading to Christ is given and followed. So it is after the line of Ishmael is given that we come to the line of Isaac.
Genesis 25:19
ESAU AND JACOBThis is the line we are going to follow. “Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob” is the way the first chapter of Matthew begins. Each of these men had other sons, as we have seen. Abraham had quite a few sons, but the genealogy of those men is not followed. It is the genealogy of Isaac that is followed. You can forget Ishmael and Midian and Medan and all the rest. They will cross paths with the descendants of Isaac time and again, but we will not follow their lines.
Genesis 25:20
It is interesting that Rebekah, like Sarah, was barren. But Isaac pled with God on her behalf, and now she is pregnant with twins.
Genesis 25:22
The struggle of these two boys, which began before their birth, represents the struggle which still goes on in the world today. There is a struggle between light and darkness, between good and evil, between the Spirit and the flesh. Every child of God knows something of this struggle which Paul sets before us in the seventh chapter of Romans. Rebekah didn’t understand the struggle which was going on within her, and she went to the Lord with the question, “Why am I thus?”
Genesis 25:23
God makes the statement to her that the elder shall serve the younger. She should have believed it, and her younger son should have believed it.
Genesis 25:24
The name Esau means “red” or “earth-colored.” Because he is born first, he is considered the elder. But the elder is to serve the younger.
Genesis 25:26
Isaac and Rebekah had been married for about twenty years before the children were born. The older one was Esau, and they called him “Red,” if you please. Jacob took hold on Esau’s heel; so they called him Jacob, meaning the usurper, because he was trying to become the elder or to take his placebut God had already promised that to him.
Genesis 25:27
Now we will look at these two boys as they grow up in this home. Here they are, twins, but no two boys were ever more different than these two. They not only struggled in the womb, but they are against each other from here on out. They have absolutely different viewpoints, different philosophies of life. Their thinking is different, and their attitudes are different. At the beginning, I must confess, Esau is more attractive than Jacob. But we learn that one can’t always judge by the outward sign. We must judge by what takes place on the inside. We learn that in this particular case. “The boys grew.” This fellow Esau was a cunning hunter, the outdoor boy, the athletic type. He is the one we would call the all-American boy today. He went in for sports. He went in for everything that was physical, but he had no understanding or capacity or desire for spiritual things. He was only interested in that which was physical. He represents the flesh. Jacob was a plain man. I think that you can make of that anything you want to. He lived indoors. He was mama’s boy and was tied to her apron strings. You will notice that he did what she told him to do. Jacob is really a mama’s boy. And this boy Esau is papa’s boy
Genesis 25:28
Here is the problem in the home. You feel that under these circumstances they are going to have trouble, and they are. When one parent is partial to one child and the other parent is partial to the other child, you have trouble. That is exactly what took place here. Isaac loved him because he ate of his venison. Esau went out hunting, and he always got something when he went hunting. He brought home the venison. Isaac liked that, and he liked this outdoor type of boy. Rebekah loved Jacob because he was a mama’s boy. As I have said before, at this juncture the boy Esau is much more attractive than Jacob. He seems to be a more wholesome boy. The boy Jacob is cunning; he tries to be clever. The fact of the matter is that he doesn’t mind stooping to do things that are absolutely wrong.(And God will deal with him for this.) The interesting thing is that although Esau was very attractive on the outside, down underneath he really had no capacity for God whatever. If ever there was a man of the world, he is that man. He is just a physical man and that is all. That is all that he lived for. Down underneath in Jacob there was a desire for the things that are spiritual. It took God a long time to rub off all the debris that was on top and to remove all the coverings in order to get down to where the spiritual desire was, but He finally did it. Before we are through with our study of Jacob (and his story goes almost all the way through the Book of Genesis), we will see that he was God’s man all along, although he didn’t demonstrate it until late in life. Now we are told of an incident which took place in the home. You can well understand that the partiality shown by both father and mother would cause difficulty and conflict. It could not be called a happy home.
Genesis 25:29
This incident reveals the nature of both of these men. Esau came from the field. He had been outdoors, and he was tired. He was not starving to death as some would imply. No one who had been brought up in the home of Abraham would starve to death. There would always be something for him to eat. The thing was that there was nothing prepared right at that moment but this pottage, this stew, which Jacob had made. Jacob was the indoor boy. Evidently he was a good chef. “Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red (notice in your King James Version that the word pottage is in italics, meaning that the word has been supplied by the translators); for I am faint: therefore was his name called Edom.” Edom means red or earthy just as Esau does. This man asks for some of the stew, and Jacob saw his chance. He is a trickster and a traitor, and he wanted the birthright. He said, “Sell me this day thy birthright.” Let’s stop and look for a minute at the value of the birthright and what it means. It means that the one who had it was the head of the house. It also means that the one who had it was the priest of the family. In this particular family, it means that the one who had it would be the one who would be in the line that would lead to Christ. Do you think that Esau had valued it at all? Jacob knew that he didn’t. He attached no importance to it, and he didn’t want to be the priest of the family. In fact, that’s the last thing that he wanted to be. In our day, sometimes when a Christian is asked to do something for the cause of Christ, he replies, “Oh, I’m not a preacher; I can’t do that!” There are too many folk today who do not want to do that which is spiritual. They don’t even want to give the impression that they are interested in spiritual things. That was Esau. He didn’t want to give that impression. If anyone would have called him “deacon” or “preacher,” it would have insulted him. He didn’t want the birthright. He didn’t care about being in the line that led to Christ. No one could have cared less about being in that line. Jacob sees this, and he says to him, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, if you’ll give me your birthright, I’ll give you a bowl of stew.” Esau was very happy with the bargain. He said, “I’ll be very happy to do it; what profit is the birthright to me? What do I care about the birthright? I’d rather have a bowl of stew.” That is the value which he attached to spiritual things. Let us remember that Jacob also was wrong in what he did. God had promised, “The elder shall serve the younger.” The birthright is coming to Jacob in God’s own time. Jacob can’t wait; so he reaches out to take that which God has promised him. He takes it in a clever, tricky fashion. He should have waited for God to give it to him. This man operated on the principle that he would do what he could for himself. He thought that as long as he could help himself there was no reason to look to God to perform it. He felt thoroughly capable of taking care of his business. At the beginning he really did rather well as far as the world would measure him. But there came a day when God sent this man off to college, and Uncle Laban was the president of the college. It was known as the college of hard knocks, and Jacob was going to learn a few things in the college of hard knocks. But here he is still operating on the principle that he is clever enough to get what is coming to him.
Genesis 25:33
“Esau despised his birthright” is the important thing to see at this juncture. So Esau sat down and ate his stew. He had surrendered his birthright because it meant nothing to him. Nothing that was spiritual meant anything to him. Unfortunately, I’m afraid we have church members like that. They have no spiritual capacity and no understanding of spiritual truths. I believe that the mark of a true Christian is one whom the Spirit of God can teach and guide. It is as if a man today had a very valuable heirloom, let’s say an old family Bible which had belonged to his grandfather. Another grandson wants it and offers to give him a quarter for it. So the owner says, “Give me the twenty-five cents because I was going to throw the old thing away anyway.” That is exactly what Esau would have done. But Jacob is wrong also, and we’ll see more of his cleverness and trickery in chapter 27.