In the last issue of Faith In Focus we discussed the Soul’s War: that the Christian’s battle is primarily with God, in which he fights by faith, knowing his own corruption, with a God whose wrath and condemnation he fears. In this issue, we begin the first of two parts that reveals the prime example in the Bible of the man who wrestled with God.
He was a gentle, peaceful man, a pastoral type, taking care of the family’s sheep herds (Gen. 25:27). But the meekness was only sheep-skin deep. His parents sensed something unusual even during his birth: he had latched on to his brother’s heel while exiting the birth canal. The event landed him with a name far from complementary in its meaning: someone who grasps at what is not his own.
His mother had got a message from the Lord that there were twins in her womb who would become two nations, and the older twin would serve the younger (Gen. 25:22, 23). It’s hardly likely that Rebekah kept this explosive information to herself, that the last-born would, in effect, be the first, especially since she lived with a husband whose father had been told he was going to head up the human race. She may well have concealed it from Esau, the older twin by a baby-length, but she most likely confided it to Jacob, the younger one, who was her favorite (Gen. 25:28).
It would be hard to understand otherwise, how this gentle, peaceful man could exhibit such a manipulative dominance over his older brother, as he did later. Along with his mother, he’d most likely fallen for the delusion that people who believe they walk with destiny often think their privileged position gives them the freedom to bend the rules in order to force the destiny.
Not that we can hang all that transpired on such lofty spiritual delusions. There was also trouble in the family, and Jacob might have had a passive-aggressive side which is often evident in quiet, seemingly nice people. Loyalties were divided. Rebekah loved Jacob, whose softer, more gentle qualities probably appealed to her feminine sensitivities. And, surely, she treasured him in a special way, after the prophetic word she’d received about him. He was, furthermore, a more manageable son, accepting his parents’ counsel to marry from within their extended family (Gen. 28:6, 7), whereas Esau married Hittite women who nearly drove Rebekah crazy, causing her and Isaac so much grief (Gen. 26:35) that the women made Rebekah sick and tired of living (Gen. 27:46). She could not have helped but be resentful towards Esau over the results of his rash behavior. Seeds of conflict were germinating. But it took more than Rebekah to make them sprout.
Rebekah’s husband had a favorite son, too. And it wasn’t Jacob. Isaac had a taste for game (Gen. 25:28; 27:4) and Esau’s occupation just happened to be hunting. He was skilled at it, to boot, and loved his way of life so much that his hunting defined him as “a man of the field” (Gen. 25:27). Men like to see their own undeveloped qualities emerging in their sons. Esau’s father, Isaac, appears to have been a mild-mannered man, born when his father, Abraham, was very old (Gen. 21:5), devoted and obedient to him (Gen. 22:1–18), a man given to meditating in the field of an evening (Gen. 24:63), and it is possible that Esau’s wilder side was that unformed part of Isaac he relished as it emerged in his son. Jacob’s temperament, on the other hand, more like his own, may have been less fascinating to Isaac.
It would have been impossible for any brother, especially one as introverted as Jacob, not to have brooded over his father’s favoritism for Esau and his livelihood. Maybe he felt like the older, seemingly unappreciated son in the parable of the Prodigal, centuries later. Here was Jacob doing his work faithfully, but noticing the glint of anticipation and approval in his father’s eye whenever his brother brought home the musky game, leading Jacob to wonder whether his dinners of lamb and herbs were looked upon as ho-hum by comparison.
Whatever the case, with a father lacking appreciation of him while showing favor to a less principled brother; a mother revealing a bias towards him that widened the divisions in the family, and a wild brother walking roughshod over family tradition with his Hittite wives while still the heir presumptive of the blessings of Abraham, it is easy to imagine gentle Jacob’s resentment beginning to simmer.
The pot finally boiled over. And it’s a bit of universal trivia to report that it had lentils in it. Esau had been out hunting and Jacob was at home cooking, of course. Esau comes staggering in “famished” and asks for “a swallow of that red stuff there” (Gen. 25:29, 30).
The stark directness of Jacob’s response is likely the result of suspicions long held in abeyance. “First sell me your birthright” (Gen. 25:31). No trial balloons. No subtlety. Impulse breaking forth. You don’t behave like an heir. You don’t deserve to head up the family and receive all the blessings promised to our grandfather. What kind of a family priest would you make? And I hardly dare imagine how you’d spend the double portion, you unprincipled bum. I’d make twice as good an heir as you ever would. And, come to think of it, since you and Dad never did think much of my food, how about these pathetic lentils as the price of the inheritance you apparently think so little of?
Jacob may have been surprised by the melodramatic nonsense of Esau’s response: “Behold, I am about to die; so of what use then is the birthright to me?” (Gen. 25:32).
And more than surprised, he must also have been pleased. He was on a roll, his suspicions confirmed, his brother careless enough to make a big deal out of being exhausted. He made him swear over the transfer of his birthright (Gen. 25:33). Thus was confirmed what Jacob almost certainly suspected: “Esau despised his birthright” (Gen. 25:34). “Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew; and he ate and drank, and rose and went on his way…” (Gen. 25:34).
It’s curious that the family’s reaction is this event is not on record. It could hardly have been kept secret. We know that Isaac knew about it because Esau referred to it as a matter already known when talking to his father, presumably years later (Gen. 27:36). The silence may mean that Isaac was quietly determined to ignore it, while Rebekah was quietly determined to seize upon it when the time came. And come, it did, to the extent that a godly family’s loyalties were finally split right down the middle with the dividing line etched by deep intentions of murder.
We all know the story. Isaac is getting old. Passing on the blessing of inheritance is on his mind. No ordinary blessing is this: the extraordinary promise of the covenant bestowed upon Abraham and Isaac by God that their descendants would inherit the land of Canaan and ultimately the world. His thoughts turn to his older son, Esau (Gen. 27:1–4). He asks him to go and hunt and “prepare a savory dish for me such as I love” (v. 4) “so that my soul may bless you before I die”.
Rebekah is listening; in the back of her mind, obviously, the memory of the prophetic word concerning Jacob, and most likely, Jacob’s grab for the birthright years before. Rebekah quickly moves into action with a plan which can only be considered breathtakingly foolhardy were it not carefully thought through beforehand. Never having forgotten the day Jacob reached for Esau’s heal at birth, she directs Jacob to take this chance-of-a-lifetime to reach for the birthright by impersonating Esau and going in to his father, Isaac, with choice-cooked kid from the herd before Esau gets home from the hunt with game (Gen. 27:9, 14). Impersonate Esau, the hardy, hairy man and Jacob, the smooth?! Even Jacob is skeptical (Gen. 27:11, 12). Yet his mother prevails—and, no doubt, so does his own lack of integrity (Gen. 27:12, 13).
Rebekah knows her husband. She knows his eyesight is so bad that he’s just about blind (Gen. 27:1). She knows what his senses of touch and smell are capable of and to what extent their fading powers can be fooled (Gen. 27:11). And she knows he’s a very trusting man (Gen. 22:1–16).
While Esau is out on the hunt, his mother having quickly prepared a savory dish (probably with herbs used for game instead of for mutton), Jacob is made to dress in Esau’s best clothes (Gen. 27:15). Knowing Isaac’s habits of touch, she fastens the kidskins on the back of Jacob’s hands and on the smooth part of his neck (v. 16). The man, now ready to perform the arch-deception of his life, appears without guilt, accompanied only by the fear that he will unmasked and viewed as a deceiver in his father’s eyes and receive a curse instead of a blessing (Gen. 27:12). In the attempt to establish a name for all his descendants, he is about to confirm his name Jacob: supplanter.
The air is charged with suspense. We are carried along with the risky subterfuge. Several times we fear trusting Isaac is about to realize that Jacob is trying to pull the sheep’s wool over his eyes: “Who are you, my son” (Gen. 27:18); “How is it that you have it [the game] so quickly, my son?” (v. 20); “Please come close, that I may feel you, my son, whether you are really my son Esau or not” (v. 21). “The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau” (v. 22). “Are you really my son Esau?” (v. 24). “Please come close and kiss me, my son” (v. 26).
And with each of Jacob’s painful lies, one can imagine his very soul, of its sheer humanness and sonship, being itself crushed with every blow of verbal betrayal he metes out upon the tender heart of his dear, trying-hard-to-trust father, inwardly screaming at himself as, with every falsehood, he thrusts away from him the gentle bosom that so often caressed him in more innocent years, while denial upon denial creates wistful aches for times long past when his Old Man had the wit to be able to save Jacob from himself:
“I am Esau your first-born. I have done as you told me…eat my game, that you may bless me…the Lord your God caused it to happen to me [to make a kill so quickly]…I AM [ESAU]” (Gen. 27:19, 20, 24).
The dinner of venison and wine now over (Gen. 27:25), the sad kiss of betrayal, masked by the outdoor, wildly fresh, sweet, earthy smells of Esau’s clothes (Gen. 27:27) finally sways Isaac, and the blessings of the Abrahamic inheritance tumble forth from his lips upon Jacob:
Dew of heaven, fatness of earth, grain and new wine in abundance, service of nations, curses upon those who curse you, blessings upon those who bless (see Gen. 27:27–29).
It is done.
And no sooner is it done and Jacob has made a swift exit, than Esau comes in from the hunt and prepares his savory dish (Gen. 27:30, 31)…
There follows, after that transcendent event of the conferring of the blessing, one of most anguished scenes in the Bible. Isaac, upon hearing Esau’s announcement that dinner’s ready, appears on the verge of apoplexy “trembling violently” (Gen. 27:33), as he realizes that he has passed on the inheritance to the wrong son.
Esau is utterly devastated, and cries out “with an exceedingly great and bitter cry” (Gen. 27:34), begging his father again and again for a blessing (vv. 34, 36, 38), railing at the very thought of his brother: “Is he not rightly named Jacob, for he has supplanted me these two times? He took away my birthright, and behold, now he has taken away my blessing” (Gen. 27:36). Isaac, perhaps with a growing sense of a move on the part of Providence and maybe with a long-delayed nod at the word his wife received from God at Jacob’s birth, affirms with dismay that the blessing upon Jacob stands, and “he shall be blessed” (Gen. 27:33, 35, 37). Esau finally ekes out a blessing from his father but its content probably makes him wish he hadn’t (Gen. 27:39, 40).
The die is cast. The family is on the verge of war. Esau holds a grudge long enough for it to form into a fantasy of murder. The images take on words as he muses to those around him that after his father dies, he’s going to kill his brother. Someone friendly to Jacob reports it to Rebekah (Gen. 27:41, 42). Clearly, she knows that Esau’s not bluffing. Activist that she is, she urges Jacob to high-tail it to Uncle Laban, back in Haran, for “a few days, until your brother’s fury subsides” (Gen. 27:43, 44). Isaac, now reconciled to the turn of events, and with a mind that’s thinking in terms of years rather than “a few days”, commands Jacob, at the prompting of Rebekah (Gen. 27:46), not to marry a Canaanite woman but someone in his mother’s family at Haran (Gen. 28:1, 2). With that, he blesses his son with all the promises given to Abraham. The moment reads as if Isaac sees this as his final farewell to his son. With it, he sends Jacob away (vv. 3–5).
The “few days” turn out to be twenty years, and Jacob becomes a wealthy and powerful man (Gen. 30:43, 35:5) in the land of his relatives.
But what of Jacob’s heart? We have set the scene, reconstructed from the Bible, to draw reasonable inferences about Jacob’s state of mind as he is about to be launched into the greatest faith-struggle of his life. What was that faith-struggle? Knowing Jacob’s life-history that led up to it helps us to determine the nature of it. His coming wrestle with God is so significant in God’s scheme of things, that the Lord directed Jacob to change his name to mark the event. All who take hold of faith from that time were to be named in his name, Israel (Rom. 9:6–8; 2:28, 29; Gal. 6:15, 16).
Everything Jacob had touched sprang into the bloom of prosperity during the twenty years leading up to the wrestle with God. But blessings brought trouble. Jacob worked for his unfair uncle, hardly getting proper rest, worn out by the heat and unable to sleep properly from the cold (Gen. 31:6, 40). Ten times, Laban changed his wages. Jacob’s prosperity became a power issue between them (Gen. 30:25–31:42). And to top it off, his wives were always at each other’s throat (Gen. 29:31–30:24).
It would have been impossible for Jacob not to have nagging doubts about the meaning of all that was happening to him, in view of his history.
“Why am I having all this trouble? Is God punishing me for what I did to my brother and father? If I hadn’t done all that and remained a peaceful shepherd and not grabbed for power, I’d still be at home and none of this would be happening. Am I fooling myself? Is all this wealth a result of God’s blessing, or all the conniving I did at home and the tricks of the trade I’m pulling on my shifty uncle (he deserves it, anyway)? I’ve been working my elbows to the bone. Is that how God blesses? And, Oh, my poor father! How could I have treated him like that after all he’s done for me? I should never have listened to my mother. I didn’t stand up for myself like a man. And my brother. I can hear his yellings of grief even now over what I did to him. He never was all that bad to me. I hate myself for what I did to him. What does God think of me? This can’t be how He meant it to be. Did it have to happen this way?”
His misgivings were about to launch Jacob into the only real war.