Genesis 27

CHAPTER 27THEME: Jacob takes Esau’s birthright; Jacob flees to LabanThis chapter has as its theme Jacob and Rebekah conniving to get the blessing of Isaac for Jacob. It is the blessing which Isaac intended for Esau. You see, Jacob wanted the blessing of his father. He knew God had promised his mother that the elder would serve the younger; so the blessing was his already. However, he did not believe God. Rebekah, his mother, did not believe God. Evidently Isaac, the father, didn’t believe God or he would never have attempted to bypass Jacob and give the blessing to Esau. He followed his own feelings and appetite in contradiction to the distinct Word of God. The method Jacob used in obtaining the birthright cannot be supported on any grounds whatsoever. He used fraud and deceit. His conduct was despicable. God did not condone this any more than He condoned the conduct of Sarah and Abraham in the matter of Hagar and Ishmael. God could not use the trickery and cleverness of Jacob. As we shall see, God deals with this man in a very definite way. Jacob had to pay for his sin in the same coin in which he sinned. You will note that as we get into this chapter. Chapter 26 concluded with Esau, who was about forty years old, marrying two Hittite women. This was a grief to Isaac and to Rebekah. Now they recognize that, if Jacob is not to marry a Hittite or a Philistine, he must be sent away to Haran where Isaac got his bride from the family of Abraham.

Genesis 27:1

JACOB TAKES ESAU’S BIRTHRIGHTWe have seen that Isaac was an outstanding man, a great man. Abimelech and the Philistines came to make a treaty with him since they feared him. He was patient and peace loving but also prominent and powerful. Here, however, he reveals that weakness of the flesh. All during his life, Esau had been his favorite while Jacob had been the favorite of Rebekah. Esau was the outdoor boy who would go out and bring in a deer or some other animal.

He would barbecue it, and the old man would enjoy it. Now Isaac is very old and he wants to bless his favorite son. He knows very well that God has said the elder will serve the younger, but he bypasses that because he wants to bless Esau. So he tells Esau to go out and bring in some meat and he will bless him because of it. What a revelation this is of this family. Have you noticed the family strife since we have come to this last major section of Genesis? There was strife in the family of Abraham because of Hagar. Now there is strife in this family over these twins.

Genesis 27:5

Rebekah overheard what Isaac said. Jacob is her favorite; so she conceives this deceitful plan. It is absolute trickery, and it cannot be condoned on any basis whatever. God is recording it as history, but He condemns it. We will see that. Remember the things that are being done here, and later you will see the chickens come home to roost for Jacob. Now Rebekah goes on to say to him:

Genesis 27:9

Esau was not only an outdoor man and a red man, but he was also a hairy man.

Genesis 27:12

Not only will he seem to be a deceiver; he is a deceiver.

Genesis 27:13

My friend, I can’t help but comment on this. She put that skin of the kid of the goat on the back of his neck and on the back of his hands so that when his father would feel him, he’d think it was Esau. She also dressed him in Esau’s clothes so he would smell like him! Apparently the deodorant that Esau was using was not very potent. The fact of the matter is, I think he was like the whimsical story I heard about two men who were working in a very tight place. One of them finally said to the other one, “Wow! I think the deodorant of one of us has quit working.” The other fellow answered, “It must be yours because I don’t use any!” Well, I don’t think that Esau used any either, and I’m not sure he had a shower very often. Even if you couldn’t see him, you could smell him.

Genesis 27:18

Believe me, this boy at this particular point is typical of pious frauds. You find many such frauds even in fundamental circles today. They talk about the Lord leading them. My, sometimes the Lord “leads” them to do some very unusual things! I find out sometimes that Christian men think they can do things that the Mafia would be arrested for. But these men can very piously pray about it and say that it is the Lord’s will. Believe me, Jacob at this point is a pious fraud. The Lord had nothing to do with this deception.

Genesis 27:21

You can tell that Isaac suspected something was wrong, but Rebekah knew Isaac very well and she had worked out every detail.

Genesis 27:28

Isaac is giving the blessing which he had receivedhe is passing it on. The interesting thing is that it already belonged to Jacob. God had said that it did. God had already blessed Jacob. God is not accepting this deception at all.

Genesis 27:30

Somebody may ask whether venison tastes like lamb or goat. It surely does. I remember several years ago when I was pastor in Pasadena that I went deer hunting in Utah with one of the officers of the church. We got a deer, and so we invited the congregation for a dinner just to have a time of good, wholesome fellowship and a lot of fun. We didn’t have quite enough meat for all the people; so we bought two lamb legs and cooked that along with the rest of the meat. Nobody could tell the difference, and everyone said the venison was good. Both meats tasted very much alike. Now Isaac really sees how he has been taken in by this plot.

Genesis 27:41

JACOB FLEES TO LABANEsau is thinking. My father is old and won’t live much longer. Just as soon as my father dies, I’ll kill Jacob. I’ll get rid of him! This is the thought of his heart, and he evidently talked about it to others.

Genesis 27:42

Here again we see Rebekah taking things into her own hands. She tells Jacob, “You are going to have to leave home.” Little did she know that she would pay for her part in this, her sin. She never saw this boy again. She said she would send him over there for a little while but it was a long while and she died before he got back. We must remember that Jacob is her favorite. She wants Jacob to go to her brother, Laban, and that is where she will send him. This is where Jacob is going to learn his lesson. This is where the chickens will come home to roost. Old Uncle Laban is going to put him through school and teach him a few things. Jacob thought he was clever, but Uncle Laban is an expert at cleverness. Poor Jacob will find he is just an amateur, and he is going to cry out to God in desperation before it is all over.

Genesis 27:44

Notice that she says she will send him away for a few days. A few days lengthened to twenty years, and during that interval she died. She never saw her boy, her pet, her favorite, again. We can picture the life of Rebekah during those years when we consider that Esau probably did not think much of his mother after that little episode.

Genesis 27:46

Remember that Esau had married these heathen, godless women. Already that was ringing sorrow into the home, and even Rebekah was overwhelmed by it. Now she tells Isaac that if Jacob stays there he will probably do the same thing. She could use this as an excellent excuse to get Jacob away from home to protect him from Esau. She has this little conference with Isaac to convince him that the thing to do is to send Jacob back to her family, to her brother Laban. Remember how Abraham’s servant had gone there to get her.

So now the point is to get Jacob back there to find a wife, but also to get him out of danger. Very frankly, I think that if he had stayed at home, Esau would have tried to kill him. However, the way it turned out, Rebekah was the first to die, and Jacob got back for his father’s funeral. But he never again saw his mother.