Genesis 26

Subdivision 6. (Genesis 26:34-35; Genesis 27:1-46; Genesis 28:1-22; Genesis 29:1-35; Genesis 30:1-43; Genesis 31:1-55; Genesis 32:1-32; Genesis 33:1-20; Genesis 34:1-31; Genesis 35:1-29; Genesis 36:1-43; Genesis 37:1.) Jacob -Israel.The discipline of sons, which Israel’s history as a nation illustrates. The lesson of Jacob’s life is understood more variously than any other of these Genesis-lives. He has been taken to represent the life of service, and the path, to a greater or less extent, of the perfect Servant. His wives have been supposed to picture the Jewish and Gentile brides of Christ. Or, again, the lesson taught us has been said to be that of discipline, which would seem to forbid our finding in it any picture of the Lord at all. That this last is the true view the numerical structure decides at once. Jacob’s is the sixth life in this series, and we have seen that “discipline” comes under this number.

To this also correspond the two names which distinguish the two parts of his life, before and after this has done its work. He is Jacob in his methods long after his heart is set upon divine things; he is Israel when, his human strength broken down, he halts upon his thigh. His first act in the moment of his birth gives him his natural character and name, (Jacob, the heel-catcher, over-reacher,) what divine grace has to meet and master in him, and in us all. These two names -Jacob and Israel -are applied all through Scripture, in a perfect and beautiful way, to the nation which sprang from him, and of which he is the representative throughout. Only the effect of the Lord’s discipline with them is hardly to be read rightly in their history hitherto: to read it aright, we must take in prophecy, which is, in its main features, clear enough. Their history has in the past been that of Jacob: it will be yet said “of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought!” It is not unimportant to note here, that whereas Isaac’s seed is compared to the stars of heaven (Genesis 26:4), Jacob’s seed is compared to the “dust of the earth” (Genesis 28:14), and Abraham’s to both. (Genesis 22:17.) As connected with the lesson of discipline, Bethel, the house of God, finds easily the significant place which it has in Jacob’s history. It is as El-beth-el, “the God of His own house,” that he learns at last to recognize the One who is in covenant with him; and it is there that his name of Israel, “a prince with God,” is afresh conferred, and finds its full significance. The holiness of God’s house imposes the necessary conditions upon which alone he can be “a prince with God.” Jacob’s history divides evidently into three parts, -his early life in Canaan, his stay in Paddan Aram, and his life as again restored to Canaan; just as the history of the nation broadly divides into their first occupation of the land (or Old-Testament history), their present dispersion, and their future and perpetual enjoyment of it when God brings them back in the time certainly now not far off.

Genesis 26:34-28

Section 1. (Genesis 26:34-35; Genesis 27:1-46; Genesis 28:1-22.)God the unchanging Blesser, but the righteous God. We have first, then, to consider Jacob as Jacob, blessed in the purpose of God, but the blessing yet barren, because he is this. Let us remember that he does not really gain the blessing through deceit, but that God had already destined him to it. By his deceit he only gets driven from the land, twenty years a fugitive. That the blessing could not be Esau’s we are first of all reminded here. At the end of forty years (the period of perfect probation), he marries at once two Canaanitish wives, chooses in self-will the people of the curse. How could the blessing go with this?

Yet Jacob too fails, and would supplement God’s assurance of blessing by his own craft; thus he is blessed, indeed, but delays the enjoyment of the blessing. Esau’s blessing is not really such, and though living by his sword, not by the soil, he is to serve his brother, though not without slipping his neck at times out of the yoke. We are all quite conscious that the flesh does this. For the present, indeed, Jacob has to give way before Esau, -the necessary fruit of his own doing. And between Jacob merely and Esau the victory is ever with Esau. So the Jew sought the blessing, but in carnal ways which drove him from the land.

The applications of this are many and various. The dream at Bethel takes place when Jacob is just about to leave the land, and we are all aware of how the Lord applied this vision to Himself. He, as the Son of Man, in fact, secures to Israel Jehovah’s care and ministrations while outcast from their inheritance, and when they shall, with Nathanael’s faith, confess Him Son of God and King of Israel, they shall have, in a more blessed way than ever yet, their house of God on earth. Meanwhile, only the faith of a little remnant has answered to the glorious vision, and it could not hinder their present banishment out of their land. Jacob’s covenant with God shows the low and legal spirit which is incapable of rising to the height of God’s grace here. Beautiful it is to see how, the moment he is under chastening, and a wanderer, God can appear to Jacob. But the dwelling of God with man implies the holiness which becometh His house forever. We must stoop our necks to the yoke and accept the fruit of our own ways. God can assure Jacob of no escape from this, but that in it and through it all the blessing shall be attained.