Genesis 25-27 Jacob the Cheater

Genesis 25-27 Jacob the Cheater We are still on a journey away from paganism and its practices, and we see family patterns repeated. Isaac lied about his wife Rebekah being his sister, just like his father did, for example. The men and women use their servant girls as baby mamas. One reason for studying Genesis is that we see patterns developing that help us interpret the Bible. We will see some of them here. Jacob is his own worst enemy. He is a complicated person in the Old Testament story. His name—Supplanter--is his character. I am glad we don’t do that now. He also shows a pattern of “the second” being the preferred. Cain and Abel, Adam and Christ, David over Saul, Jacob over Esau, Judah over his brothers. Despite Jacob’s tricks, he is redeemed and disciplined. I think he liked getting it over on people. In the end, he and Esau reconnect, reconcile and over time he comes to terms with his past dishonesty. Starting 25:1: It is of value to know the basic facts of the Bible, and this is one of them, the patriarchs and their families. What happens in Genesis here influences the rest of the Bible and our study of it. This lesson is essentially about God’s redemptive story through Isaac and his little family. It’s a story about twin brothers who never get along. 1. Genesis 25: 19-23. The boys begin. Last week we saw how Isaac met his wife. Isaac is a different character from his father and sons. Other than the drama of almost being sacrificed, he lives a fairly quiet life. His father found a wife for him when he was forty (through servant Eleazar). When Isaac’s beloved wife could not have children, he prayed and she conceived. Women struggling with infertility, or barrenness, is a repeated theme in the Bible—Hannah, Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Michal, Elizabeth, Shunnamite woman, mother of Samson. This is a comfort to many women, that the story of redemption includes this recognition of the sorrows of women who don’t conceive easily or at all. Rebekah is having a hard pregnancy. Her words are interesting—is she in despair, just questioning, confused, scared? “If it is like this, why do I live?” Why is this so hard, what is going to happen, why did this happen to me?” maybe she is wondering. She may not have known there were twins. Twins were rare in the ancient world and even more rare to survive, so they were often seen as an omen or a legend (Romulus and Remus, Thomas Didymus, Tamar’s sons by Jacob). Rebekah went to inquire of the LORD. This might mean she saw a holy leader, like a priest, or she went to a shrine to pray, but she was given a message. Twins! Good news or bad? “Two nations are in your womb. Two peoples will be separated from your body. The one people will be stronger than the other people. The elder will serve the younger.” This is not necessarily good news. It is a reversal of the cultural order. Just like Abraham’s descendants moving away and starting a new “clan,” that is going to happen here, and the twin boys will be at odds with each other. 2. The boys are born and grow up. 24-28. Isaac seemed to prefer the first born Esau, an outdoorsman, to the other son. He knew (we assume) there was a prophecy about his sons but he seems unconcerned about it. It makes me tend to think that Isaac was kind of passive and not as shrewd as his father and sons. I have heard people criticize him and Rebekah for having favorites between the sons and also Rebekah for manipulating and deceiving also in order for the prophecy to come true. I think it is natural to be drawn to one child but that doesn’t mean less love; in Rebekah’s case, her sin was the deception, conniving ,and not trusting that the prophecy would come true without her conniving. This is also a theme in the Old Testament and New of people manipulating circumstances instead of letting God take care of them. Peter cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant to keep Jesus from being arrested. We spend a great deal of time, energy, and life orchestrating rather than trusting sometimes. On the other hand, we do have a responsibility to be wise, so it takes discernment to know the difference. One might think Jacob was effeminate, but it’s unlikely. He was shrewd though. I can see him planning and plotting with his mother. This follows his life. I imagine he struggled with trustworthiness all his life. 3. Esau’s sin, 29-34. The depth of this decision should not be lost on us. It’s very much like the prodigal son, or like a person today whose father is a millionaire but who signs a paper saying he would reject his inheritance for cheap car. It’s not just the stupidity; it’s the rejection of his spiritual duty as the leader of the family. He doesn’t care, and perhaps in the moment he thinks it’s not going to happen, “Dad’s ok, they’ll forget, I’m still the oldest,” etc. Quick decisions can matter forever. Yet they do not come out of nowhere. They brew in one’s character. Genesis 26 is a detour while the family interacts with the people of Abimelech. There are tensions over water rights and wells. Isaac is apparently pretty good at farming after all, and in the end there is a peace treaty between the two “people groups.” We don’t really know how many servants, family of servants, slaves, and livestock was with them. I think this narrative is here to show that the Abraham family is blessed materially and to explain later interactions with Abimelech and his descendants. There are several Abimelechs in the Bible (another pattern, people with same names or may or may not be related; also relationships started in Genesis go throughout the Bible). We go back to the family story in verse 26:34. Rebekah did not like her daughters-in-law. Hittites were very pagan, the natural enemies of Israel. Was their conflict because of Rebekah’s controlling nature, or their culture? This point comes up again in 27:46. 4. Jacob’s deception, Genesis 27: – What a story. You can see this like a TV show. 5. The outcome – Jacob basically exiled to live with his kinsman Laban in Syria. Rebekah says a “few days.” No, about thirty years. She doesn’t get to see her beloved child again. 6. Jacob’s future—the rest of Genesis, so the remaining 26 chapters involve Jacob. Jacob is kind of a scumbag. God redeems scumbags. It’s hard to us to believe that. We think, “Once a scumbag, always a scumbag.” Jacob is going to live a long time and have a lot of heartache with his children because even though God has a plan for us, the consequences of sin don’t go away when we are forgiven. This is something we don’t understand sometimes. Forgiveness is one thing; life consequences are another. The government penalty is justice, even if the victims forgive. Legal systems do not forgive; they may pardon, but forgiveness is personal and spiritual. We see the eternal tension between God’s plan and human decision making in Jacob’s narrative. We have to be careful when interpreting Scripture that we keep the redemptive plan in view and Christ’s gospel, at all times. This is not just high drama; it is God’s story of bringing the world back to Him.