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Genesis Chapter
Twenty-seven
Genesis 27
Chapter Contents
Isaac sends Esau for venison. (1-5) Rebekah teaches Jacob
to obtain the blessing. (6-17) Jacob, pretending to be Esau, obtains the
blessing. (18-29) Isaac's fear, Esau's importunity. (30-40) Esau threatens
Jacob's life, Rebekah sends Jacob away. (41-46)
Commentary on Genesis 27:1-5
The promises of the Messiah, and of the land of Canaan,
had come down to Isaac. Isaac being now about 135 years of age, and his sons
about 75, and not duly considering the Divine word concerning his two sons,
that the elder should serve the younger, resolved to put all the honour and
power that were in the promise, upon Esau his eldest son. We are very apt to
take measures rather from our own reason than from Divine revelation, and
thereby often miss our way.
Commentary on Genesis 27:6-17
Rebekah knew that the blessing was intended for Jacob,
and expected he would have it. But she wronged Isaac by putting a cheat on him;
she wronged Jacob by tempting him to wickedness. She put a stumbling-block in
Esau's way, and gave him a pretext for hatred to Jacob and to religion. All
were to be blamed. It was one of those crooked measures often adopted to
further the Divine promises; as if the end would justify, or excuse wrong
means. Thus many have acted wrong, under the idea of being useful in promoting
the cause of Christ. The answer to all such things is that which God addressed to
Abraham, I am God Almighty; walk before me and be thou perfect. And it was a
very rash speech of Rebekah, "Upon me be thy curse, my son." Christ
has borne the curse of the law for all who take upon them the yoke of the
command, the command of the gospel. But it is too daring for any creature to
say, Upon me be thy curse.
Commentary on Genesis 27:18-29
Jacob, with some difficulty, gained his point, and got
the blessing. This blessing is in very general terms. No mention is made of the
distinguishing mercies in the covenant with Abraham. This might be owing to
Isaac having Esau in his mind, though it was Jacob who was before him. He could
not be ignorant how Esau had despised the best things. Moreover, his attachment
to Esau, so as to disregard the mind of God, must have greatly weakened his own
faith in these things. It might therefore be expected, that leanness would
attend his blessing, agreeing with the state of his mind.
Commentary on Genesis 27:30-40
When Esau understood that Jacob had got the blessing, he
cried with a great and exceeding bitter cry. The day is coming, when those that
now make light of the blessings of the covenant, and sell their title to
spiritual blessings for that which is of no value, will, in vain, ask urgently
for them. Isaac, when made sensible of the deceit practised on him, trembled
exceedingly. Those who follow the choice of their own affections, rather than
the Divine will, get themselves into perplexity. But he soon recovers, and
confirms the blessing he had given to Jacob, saying, I have blessed him, and he
shall be blessed. Those who part with their wisdom and grace, their faith and a
good conscience, for the honours, wealth, or pleasures of this world, however
they feign a zeal for the blessing, have judged themselves unworthy of it, and
their doom shall be accordingly. A common blessing was bestowed upon Esau. This
he desired. Faint desires of happiness, without right choice of the end, and
right use of the means, deceive many unto their own ruin. Multitudes go to hell
with their mouths full of good wishes. The great difference is, that there is
nothing in Esau's blessing which points at Christ; and without that, the
fatness of the earth, and the plunder of the field, will stand in little stead.
Thus Isaac, by faith, blessed both his sons, according as their lot should be.
Commentary on Genesis 27:41-46
Esau bore malice to Jacob on account of the blessing he
had obtained. Thus he went in the way of Cain, who slew his brother, because he
gained that acceptance with God of which he had rendered himself unworthy. Esau
aimed to prevent Jacob or his seed from having the dominion, by taking away his
life. Men may fret at God's counsels, but cannot change them. To prevent
mischief, Rebekah warned Jacob of his danger, and advised him to withdraw for
his safety. We must not presume too far upon the wisdom and resolution, even of
the most hopeful and promising children; but care must be taken to keep them
out of the way of evil. When reading this chapter, we should not fail to
observe, that we must not follow even the best of men further than they act
according to the law of God. We must not do evil that good may come. And though
God overruled the bad actions recorded in this chapter, to fulfil his purposes,
yet we see his judgment of them, in the painful consequences to all the parties
concerned. It was the peculiar privilege and advantage of Jacob to convey these
spiritual blessings to all nations. The Christ, the Saviour of the world, was
to be born of some one family; and Jacob's was preferred to Esau's, out of the
good pleasure of Almighty God, who is certainly the best judge of what is fit,
and has an undoubted right to dispense his favours as he sees proper, Romans 9:12-15.
── Matthew Henry《Concise Commentary on Genesis》
Genesis 27
Verse 1
[1] And
it came to pass, that when Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim, so that he
could not see, he called Esau his eldest son, and said unto him, My son: and he
said unto him, Behold, here am I.
Here is Isaac's design to declare Esau his
heir. The promise of the Messiah and the land of Canaan was a great trust first
committed to Abraham, inclusive and typical of spiritual and eternal blessings;
this by divine direction he transmitted to Isaac. Isaac being now old, and
either not knowing, or not duly considering the divine oracle concerning his
two sons, that the elder should serve the younger, resolves to entail all the
honour and power that was wrapt up in the promise upon Esau, his eldest son.
He called Esau —
Tho' Esau, had greatly grieved his parents by his marriage, yet they had not
expelled him, but it seems were pretty well reconciled to him.
Verse 2
[2] And he said, Behold now, I am old, I know not the day of my death:
I am old, and know not the day of my death — How soon I may die.
Verse 3
[3] Now
therefore take, I pray thee, thy weapons, thy quiver and thy bow, and go out to
the field, and take me some venison;
Take me some venison that I may; bless thee — Esau must go a hunting and bring some venison. In this he designed not
so much the refreshment of his own spirits, as the receiving a fresh instance
of his son's, filial duty and affection to him, before he bestowed this favour
upon him.
That my soul may bless thee before I die — Prayer is the work of the soul, and not of the lips only; as the soul
must be employed in blessing God, Psalms 103:1, so it must be in blessing
ourselves and others: the blessing will not go to the heart, if it do not come
from the heart.
Verse 6
[6] And
Rebekah spake unto Jacob her son, saying, Behold, I heard thy father speak unto
Esau thy brother, saying,
Rebekah is here contriving to procure the
blessing for Jacob, which was designed for Esau. If the end was good, the means
were bad, and no way justifiable. If it were not a wrong to Esau to deprive him
of the blessing, he himself having forfeited it by selling the birth right, yet
it was a wrong to Isaac, taking advantage of his infirmity, to impose upon him:
it was a wrong to Jacob, whom she taught to deceive, by putting a lie in his
mouth. If Rebekah, when she heard Isaac promise the blessing to Esau, had gone
to him, and with humility and seriousness put him in remembrance of that which
God had said concerning their sons; if she had farther shewed him how Esau had
forfeited the blessing, both by selling his birth-right, and by marrying of
strange wives; 'tis probable Isaac would have been prevailed with to confer the
blessing upon Jacob, and needed not thus to have been cheated into it. This had
been honourable and laudable, and would have looked well in history; but God
left her to herself to take this indirect course, that he might have the glory
of bringing good out of evil.
Verse 19
[19] And Jacob said unto his father, I am Esau thy firstborn; I have done
according as thou badest me: arise, I pray thee, sit and eat of my venison,
that thy soul may bless me.
And Jacob said, I am Esau — Who would have thought this plain man could have played such a part? His
mother having put him in the way of it, he applies himself to those methods
which he had never accustomed himself to, but had always conceived an
abhorrence of. But lying is soon learned. I wonder how honest Jacob could so readily
turn his tongue to say, I am Esau thy first-born: and when his father asked
him, Genesis 27:24. Art thou my very son Esau? to
reply I am. How could he say, I have done as thou badst me, when he had
received no command from his father, but was doing as his mother bid him? How
could he say, Eat of my venison, when he knew it came not from the field, but
from the fold? But especially I wonder how he could have the forehead to father
it upon God, and to use his name in the cheat.
Verse 20
[20] And
Isaac said unto his son, How is it that thou hast found it so quickly, my son?
And he said, Because the LORD thy God brought it to me.
The Lord thy God brought it to me — Is this Jacob? It is certainly written not for our imitation, but our
admonition, Let him that, standeth, take heed lest he fall. Now let us see how
Isaac gave Jacob his blessing.
Verse 27
[27] And
he came near, and kissed him: and he smelled the smell of his raiment, and
blessed him, and said, See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field
which the LORD hath blessed:
He kissed him; in token of particular
affection to him. Those that are blessed of God are kissed with the kisses of
his mouth, and they do by love and loyalty kiss the son, Psalms 2:12. 2. He praised him. Upon occasion of
the sweet smell of his garments he said, See the smell of my son is as the
smell of a field which the Lord| hath blessed - That is, like that of the most
fragrant flowers and spices. Three things Jacob is here blessed with, (1.)
Plenty, Genesis 27:28. Heaven and earth concurring to
make him rich. (2.) Power, Genesis 27:29. Particularly dominion over his
brethren, viz. Esau and his posterity. (3.) Prevalency with God, and a great
interest in heaven, Cursed be every one that curseth thee - Let God be a friend
to all thy friends, and an enemy to all thine enemies. Now, certainly more is
comprised in this blessing than appears at first; it must amount to an entail
of the promise of the Messiah: that was in the patriarchal dialect the blessing;
something spiritual doubtless is included in it. First, That from him should
come the Messiah, that should have a sovereign dominion on earth. See Numbers 24:19. Out of Jacob shall come he that
shall have dominion, the star and scepter, Numbers 24:17. Jacob's dominion over Esau was to
be only typical of this, Genesis 49:10. Secondly, That from him should
come the church that should be particularly owned and favoured by Heaven. It
was part of the blessing of Abraham when he was first called to be the father
of the faithful, Genesis 12:3. I will bless them that bless thee;
therefore when Isaac afterwards confirmed the blessing to Jacob, he called it
the blessing of Abraham, Genesis 28:4.
Verse 33
[33] And
Isaac trembled very exceedingly, and said, Who? where is he that hath taken
venison, and brought it me, and I have eaten of all before thou camest, and
have blessed him? yea, and he shall be blessed.
Isaac trembled exceedingly — Those that follow the choice of their own affections rather than the
dictates of the Divine will, involve themselves in such perplexities as these.
But he soon recovers himself, and ratifies the blessing he had given to Jacob,
I have blessed him, and he shall be blessed - He might have recalled it, but
now at last he is sensible he was in an error when he designed it for Esau.
Either recollecting the Divine oracle, or having found himself more than
ordinarily filled with the Holy Ghost when he gave the blessing to Jacob, he
perceived that God did as it were say Amen to it.
Verse 39
[39] And
Isaac his father answered and said unto him, Behold, thy dwelling shall be the
fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above;
Esau likewise obtained a blessing: yet it was
far short of Jacob's. 1. In Jacob's blessing the dew of heaven is put first, as
that which he most valued and desired: in Esau's the fatness of the earth is
put first, for that was it which he had the principal regard to. 2. Esau hath
these, but Jacob hath them from God's hand. God give thee the dew of heaven, Genesis 27:28. It was enough to have the
possession, but Jacob desired it by promise. 3. Jacob shall have dominion over
his brethren, for the Israelites often ruled over the Edomites. Esau shall have
dominion, he shall gain some power, but shall never have dominion over his
brother: we never find that the Jews were sold into the hands of the Edomites,
or that they oppressed them. But the great difference is, that there is nothing
in Esau's blessing that points at Christ, nothing that brings either him or his
into the church, and without that the fatness of the earth, and the plunder of
the field, will stand him in little stead. Thus Isaac by faith blessed them
both, according as their lot should be.
Verse 45
[45]
Until thy brother's anger turn away from thee, and he forget that which thou
hast done to him: then I will send, and fetch thee from thence: why should I be
deprived also of you both in one day?
Why should I be deprived of you both? — Not only of the murdered, but of the murderer, who either by the
magistrate, or by the immediate hand of God would be sacrificed to justice.
Verse 46
[46] And
Rebekah said to Isaac, I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth:
if Jacob take a wife of the daughters of Heth, such as these which are of the
daughters of the land, what good shall my life do me?
If Jacob take a wife of the daughters of Heth — As Esau has done. More artifice still. This was not the thing she was
afraid of. But if we use guile once, we shall be very ready to use it again. It
should be carefully observed, That altho' a blessing came on his posterity by
Jacob's vile lying and dissimulation, yet it brought heavy affliction upon
himself, and that for a long term of years. So severely did God punish him
personally, for doing evil that good might come.
── John Wesley《Explanatory Notes on
Genesis》
27 Chapter 27
Verse 1-2
Isaac was old and his eyes were dim
Isaac in the near prospect of death
I.
HE
HAS WARNINGS OF HIS APPROACHING END.
1. His advanced age.
2. Signs of weakness and decay.
II. HE SETS IN
ORDER HIS WORLDLY AFFAIRS.
1. Duties prompted by the social affections.
2. Duties regarding the settlement of inheritance and property. (T.
H.Leale.)
Isaac’s preparation for death
1. His longing for the performance of Esau’s filial kindness as for
a last time.
2. Isaac prepared for death by making his last testamentary
dispositions. They were made, though apparently premature--
The blind father
Isaac.
1. Now very aged. One hundred and thirty-six years old. Feeble.
Ought to have been specially reverenced, both as a father and because so aged.
Reverence due to old age. What more beautiful than old age (Proverbs 15:31)? See the Word of God
concerning old age (Leviticus 19:32; 2 Chronicles 36:17; Proverbs 20:29).
2. Helpless. Forced to sit in the house while his sons were actively
employed. Dependent on the kind offices of others.
3. Blind. And therefore should have been specially reverenced, and
treated with most respectful tenderness,
4. Felt his end approaching (Genesis 27:4). Should therefore have been
treated with the greater consideration.
5. About to impart the covenant blessing. A most solemn act. To be
given, and received, in the fear of God.
6. Would signalize it with a feast. The last he might have; and his
own beloved Esau should prepare it. (J. C. Gray.)
The day of death unknown
I have read a parable of a man shut up in a fortress under
sentence of perpetual imprisonment, and obliged to draw water from a reservoir
which he may not see, but into which no fresh stream is ever to be poured. How
much it contains he cannot tell. He knows that the quantity is not great; it
may be extremely small. He has already drawn out a considerable supply during
his long imprisonment. The diminution increases daily, and how, it is asked,
would he feel each time of drawing water and each time of drinking it? Not as
if he had a perennial stream to go to-”I have a reservoir; I may be at ease.”
No: “I had water yesterday, I have it to-day; but my having it yesterday and my
having it to-day is the very cause that I shall not have it on some day that is
approaching.” Life is a fortress; man is the prisoner within the gates. He draws
his supply from a fountain fed by invisible pipes, but the reservoir is being
exhausted. We had life yesterday, we have it today, the probability--the
certainty--is that we shall not have it on some day that is to come. (R.
A.Wilmot.)
Isaac, the organ of Divine blessing
It is a strange and, in some respects, perplexing spectacle that
is here presented to us--the organ of the Divine blessing represented by a
blind old man, laid on a “couch of skins,” stimulated by meat and wine, and
trying to cheat God by bestowing the family blessing on the son of his own
choice to the exclusion of the Divinely-appointed heir. Out of such beginnings
had God to educate a people worthy of Himself, and through such hazards had He
to guide the spiritual blessing He designed to convey to us all. Isaac laid a
net for his own feet. By his unrighteous and timorous haste he secured the
defeat of his own long-cherished scheme. It was his hasting to bless Esau which
drove Rebekah to checkmate him by winning the blessing for her favourite. The
shock which Isaac felt when Esau came in and the fraud was discovered is easily
understood. The mortification of the old man must have been extreme when he
found that he had so completely taken himself in. He was reclining in the
satisfied reflection that for once he had overreached his astute Rebekah and
her astute son, and in the comfortable feeling that, at last, he had
accomplished his one remaining desire, when he learns from the exceeding bitter
cry of Esau that he has himself been duped. It was enough to rouse the anger of
the mildest and godliest of men, but Isaac does not storm and protest--“he
trembles exceedingly.” He recognises, by a spiritual insight quite unknown to
Esau, that this is God’s hand, and deliberately confirms, with his eyes open,
what he had done in blindness: “I have blessed him: Yea, and he shall be
blessed.” Had he wished to deny the validity of the blessing, he had ground
enough for doing so. He had not really given it; it had been stolen from him.
An act must be judged by its intention, and he had been far from intending to
bless Jacob. Was he to consider himself bound by what he had done under a
misapprehension? He had given a Messing to one person under the impression that
he was a different person; must not the blessing go to him for whom it was
designed? But Isaac unhesitatingly yielded. This clear recognition of God’s
hand in the matter, and quick submission to Him, reveals a habit of reflection,
and a spiritual thoughtfulness, which are the good qualities in Isaac’s
otherwise unsatisfactory character. Before he finished his answer to Esau, he
felt he was a poor feeble creature in the hand of a true and just God, who had
used even his infirmity and sin to forward righteous and gracious ends. It was
his sudden recognition of the frightful way in which he had been tampering with
God’s will, and of the grace with which God had prevented him from
accomplishing a wrong destination of the inheritance, that made Isaac tremble
very exceedingly. In this humble acceptance of the disappointment of his life’s
love and hope, Isaac shows us the manner in which we ought to bear the
consequences of our wrong-doing. The punishment of our sin often comes through
the persons with whom we have to do, unintentionally on their part, and yet we
are tempted to hate them because they pain and punish us, father, mother, wife,
child, or whoever else. Isaac and Esau were alike disappointed. Esau only saw
the supplanter, and vowed to be revenged. Isaac saw God in the matter, and
trembled. So when Shimei cursed David, and his loyal retainers would have cut
off his head for so doing, David said: “Let him alone, and let him curse; it
may be that the Lord hath bidden him.” We can bear the pain inflicted on us by
men when we see that they are merely the instruments of a Divine chastisement.
The persons who thwart us and make our life bitter, the persons who stand
between us and our dearest hopes, the persons whom we are most disposed to
speak angrily and bitterly to, are often thorns planted in our path by God to
keep us on the right way. (M. Dods, D. D.)
Verses 6-10
Go now to the flock, and fetch me from thence two good kids of the
goats; and I will make them savoury meat for thy father, such as he loveth
Rebekah’s cunning plot in favour of Jacob
I.
THE
HUMAN ELEMENT IN IT.
1. The partiality of a fond mother.
2. Ambition.
II. THE RELIGIOUS
ELEMENT IN IT.
1. It seemed as if the oracle of God was likely to become void.
2. The crisis was urgent. (T. H. Leale.)
Crooked measures to obtain a worthy object
This is a mysterious affair. It was just that Esau should lose the
blessing, for by selling his birthright he had despised it. It was God’s
design, too, that Jacob should have it. Rebekah also knowing of this design,
from it having been revealed to her that “the elder should serve the younger,”
appears to have acted from a good motive. But the scheme which she formed to
correct the error of her husband was far from being justifiable. It was one of
those crooked measures which have too often been adopted to accomplish the
Divine promises; as if the end would justify, or at least excuse the means.
Thus Sarah acted in giving Hagar to Abraham; and thus many others have acted
under the idea of being useful in promoting the cause of Christ. The answer to
all such things is that which God addressed to Abraham: “I am God Almighty;
walk before Me, and be thou perfect.” The deception practised on Isaac was
cruel. If he be in the wrong, endeavour to convince him; or commit it to God,
who could turn his mind, as he afterwards did that of Jacob when blessing
Ephraim and Manasseh; but do not avail yourself of his loss of sight to deceive
him. Such would have been the counsel of wisdom and rectitude; but Rebekah
follows her own. (A. Fuller.)
Use of unscrupulous meals by religious persons
To this day the method of Rebekah and Jacob is largely adopted by
religious persons. It is notorious that persons whose ends are good frequently
become thoroughly unscrupulous about the means they use to accomplish them.
They dare not say in so many words that they may do evil that good may come,
nor do they think it a tenable position in morals that the end sanctifies the
means; and yet their consciousness of a justifiable and desirable end
undoubtedly does blunt their sensitiveness regarding the legitimacy of the
means they employ. For example, Protestant controversialists, persuaded that
vehement opposition to Popery is good, and filled with the idea of
accomplishing its downfall, are often guilty of gross misrepresentation,
because they do not sufficiently inform themselves of the actual tenets and
practices of the Church of Rome. In all controversy, religious and political,
it is the same. It is always dishonest to circulate reports that you have no
means of authenticating; yet how freely are such reports circulated to blacken
the character of an opponent, and to prove his opinions to be dangerous. It is
always dishonest to condemn opinions we have not inquired into, merely because
of some fancied consequence which these opinions carry in them; yet how freely
are opinions condemned by men who have never been at the trouble carefully to
inquire into their truth. They do not feel the dishonesty of their position,
because they have a general consciousness that they are on the side of
religion, and of what has generally passed for truth. All keeping back of facts
which are supposed to have an unsettling effect is but a repetition of this
sin. There is no sin more hateful. Under the appearance of serving God, and
maintaining His cause in the world, it insults Him by assuming that, if the
whole bare, undisguised truth were spoken, His cause would suffer. The fate of
all such attempts to manage God’s matters by keeping things dark, and
misrepresenting fact, is written for all who care to understand in the results
of this scheme of Rebekah’s and Jacob’s. They gained nothing, and they lost a
great deal, by their wicked interference. They gained nothing; for God had
promised that the birthright would be Jacob’s, and would have given it him in
some way redounding to his credit and not to his shame. And they lost a great
deal. The mother lost her son; Jacob had to flee for his life, and, for all we
know, Rebekah never saw him more. And Jacob lost all the comforts of home, and
all those possessions his father had accumulated. He had to flee with nothing
but his staff, an outcast to begin the world for himself. From this first false
step onwards to his death, he was pursued by misfortune, until his own verdict
on his life was, “Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life.” (M.
Dods, D. D.)
Ahead of Providence
Luther was very importunate at the throne of grace to know the
mind of God in a certain matter; and it seemed to him as if he heard God speak
to his heart thus: “I am not to be traced.” One adds, “If He is not to be
traced, He may be trusted; and that religion is of little value which will not
enable a man to trust God where he can neither trace nor see Him. But there is
a time for everything beneath the sun; and the Almighty has His ‘times and
seasons.’ It has been frequently with my hopes and desires, in regard to
Providence, as with my watch and the sun. My watch has often been ahead of true
time; I have gone faster than Providence, and have been forced to stand still
and wait, or I have been set back painfully. Flavel says, ‘Some providences,
like Hebrew letters, must be read backwards.’” (J. G. Wilson.)
God will not have His kingdom maintained by carnal policy
We must walk in simplicity, sine plicis, for though the
serpent can shrink up into his folds, and appear what he is not, yet it doth
not become the saint to shuffle either with God or men. Jacob got the blessing
by a wile, but he might have got it cheaper by plain dealing. (W. Gurnall.)
A lie not permitted to man
The minister of the seminary at Clermont, France, having been
seized at Autun by the populace, the mayor, who wished to save him, advised him
not to take the oath, but to allow him to tell the people that he had taken it.
“I would myself make known your falsehood to the people,” replied the
clergyman; “it is not permitted me to ransom my life by a lie. The God who
prohibits my taking the oath will not allow me to make it believed that I have
taken it.” The mayor was silent, and the minister was martyred.
Verse 13
Upon me be thy curse, my son
Rebekah’s imposition on Isaac considered
This language plainly shows that she thought her conduct
justifiable, and thus we have a melancholy instance of the way in which good
people sometimes deceive themselves, and suffer their judgments to be misled by
carnal reasonings, and the counsels of the natural heart.
I. The OBJECT
which she had in view. She wished the blessing to go, not to Esau the
first-born, but to Jacob, her younger son. And what, may we ask, was the reason
of this preference? Did she love Jacob best? It is probable that she did. But
Rebekah might have another motive for wishing that the blessing should be given
to Jacob. She knew that he was fittest for receiving it. She knew that he
highly valued it, not merely for the sake of any worldly benefit annexed to it,
but on account of the spiritual promises contained in it. Esau, on the
contrary, had repeatedly shown the greatest contempt for the blessing and its
promises. But even this reason, however sufficient it might have been, was not,
we may conjecture, the chief motive by which Rebekah’s mind was influenced. She
had a still stronger reason for wishing to defeat her husband’s purpose. She
felt assured that in this design he was opposing the will and purpose of the
Almighty. Her desire, then, was good, and her attempt praiseworthy. The end
which she proposed to herself was to prevent her husband from acting contrary
to the divine will, and to assist in turning the blessing where God intended it
should go. So far, then, as the object which she had in view was concerned, far
from finding any thing to blame, we see much to commend. It sprang from her
faith and piety, and showed her zeal for the glory of God. Let us consider.
II. The MEANS
which she used for attaining this object. Here we are forced to withhold our
commendation; nay, we must go farther, we must positively condemn her conduct,
and declare it to have been utterly without excuse. We say nothing of the
probability which there was of a discovery, and of the dangerous consequences
which might have followed. Admitting that a discovery was very unlikely to take
place; admitting that her plan was most wisely laid, with every prospect of
success; yet of what kind was her wisdom? Was it that wisdom “ which is from
above, and which is first pure, and then peaceable, full of good fruits, and
without hypocrisy”? Or rather, was it not that wisdom” which descendeth not
from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish”? (James 3:15; James 3:17.) Was it that wisdom whichour
Lord prescribes when he says, “Be ye wise as serpents, and harmless as doves”?
Or rather, was it not the crooked policy of the old Serpent, who is a liar and
the father of lies? Rebekah, indeed, could not but know that to impose on her
husband by means of his infirmity, and to tempt her son to the commission of
falsehood and deception, were acts which in themselves were highly sinful. What
may we suppose, then, were the arguments by which she would probably defend and
even justify her conduct? She would say to herself, “I am placed in very
extraordinary circumstances. Here is Isaac about to act in direct opposition to
the Divine Will. Here is the blessing, which God has designed for Jacob, on the
point of being given to Esau. Is it not my duty to prevent the purposes of the
Almighty from being defeated? Though the means to which I may have recourse are
such as on a common occasion might not be lawfully used, yet does not the
necessity of the present case allow and even require me to use them?” But how
vain and false would such reasoning be! What permission had Rebekah received
“to do evil, that good might come”? Her duty was to be learned, not from the
purposes, but from the precepts of the Almighty. Did she suppose that God could
not complete His designs without her committing sin in order to fulfil them?
Or, did she think that sin would not be sin, because she dressed it in this
specious covering? In all cases the Law of God is to be our rule. In no case can
we claim the privilege of setting it aside. Rebekah’s sin, however she might
excuse it to herself, was sufficient to have ruined her soul; and
unquestionably, unless through God’s grace she had afterwards repented and
obtained forgiveness, it would have ruined her soul. Such is the case with
every sin. Whatever good may come of the evil which we do, that good will not
excuse the evil, nor make it less. But it may be further said, “Rebekah’s plan
succeeded. Jacob, by his deception, obtained the blessing; and thus God, by
making the means successful, showed that He approved them.” It is true that God
permitted Rebekah’s plan to be successful; but it does not therefore follow
that He approved it. Indeed, it is utterly impossible that He could approve
falsehood in any shape or in any case. He permitted it to be practised, and He
overruled it for the fulfilling of His own purposes; but this is a very
different thing from approving it. Nay, if we attentively examine the whole
matter, in all its effects and consequences, we shall discover clear marks of
God’s displeasure against both her and Jacob for their parts in this
transaction. Sin ever brings along with it shame and sorrow, and those who
permit themselves to do evil that good may come will surely in the end deplore
their worldly wisdom and presumptuous conduct. It may yet, however, be further
asked, “What ought Rebekah to have done? Was she, knowingly, to have let her
husband act contrary to the Divine intentions, without endeavouring to prevent
him? Was she to have taken no steps in order to have procured the blessing for
Jacob? “I answer, there were means which she might lawfully have used for the
attainment of her end; and to these she ought to have confined herself. She
should have reasoned the mutter with Isaac. She should meekly have pointed out
to him the mistake which he was on the point of committing. She should have
reminded him of the revelation which God had given of His will in this affair;
and thus, by persuasion and argument, she should have endeavoured to turn him
from his purpose. There is reason to think that such a conduct would probably
have succeeded. Isaac, when he afterwards discovered what had been done,
appears to have suddenly recollected himself; and, shuddering at the danger
from which he had escaped, in a very striking manner, confirmed the blessing to
Jacob: “Yea and he shall be blessed.” It is, therefore, likely that he would
before have yielded to a mild remonstrance, affectionately urged. At any rate,
Rebekah should have added also to it strong faith and fervent prayer. These are
the weapons of our warfare. (E. Cooper, M. A.)
Influence of woman
Samuel Morley’s mother was a woman of rare piety. He was wont to
say concerning her, “I am much what my mother has made me.”
Lessons
1. Faith pursueth God’s oracle through the worst of difficulties and
fears.
2. Fleshly passion may mix with faith in its strongest operations.
3. Affection may make mothers adventure to bear a curse for their
sons.
4. Natural affection may be instant to have things done irregularly
upon a ground of faith. (G. Hughes, B. D.)
Verses 14-24
And he went, and fetched, and brought them to his mother
Rebekah’s cunning plot accepted and carried out by Jacob
I.
REVEALS
SOME QUALITIES OF JACOB’S CHARACTER.
1. He was a weak and pliable man.
2. He lacked the power of self-determination.
3. He was fearful of consequences.
4. He could long indulge the thought of that which was forbidden.
II. REVEALS THE
GRADUAL DEBASEMENT OF JACOB’S CHARACTER.
1. He overcomes difficulties in the way of sin.
2. He learns to act a falsehood.
3. He proceeds to the direct falsehood.
4. He allows himself to be led into sin under the idea that he is
carrying out the purpose of God. (T. H. Leale.)
The stolen blessing
I. THE TEMPTATION
ORIGINATED IN A SENSUOUS REQUEST OF ISAAC.
II. THIS
TEMPTATION WAS PRESENTED TO JACOB THROUGH THE UNSCRUPULOUS LOVE OF REBEKAH. We
cannot but admire her love. But it was not based upon principle.
III. THIS
TEMPTATION WAS GREEDILY RESPONDED TO BY THE WEAK AND CRAFTY NATURE OF JACOB. (F.
B. Meyer, B.A.)
Sharp practice
I. JACOB’S
CONDUCT UNFOLDS THE STRENGTH OF EARLY PREFERENCES.
II. JACOB’S
CONDUCT SHOWS PROGRESS IN A WRONG DIRECTION.
III. JACOB’S
CONDUCT LETS US SEE SOME OF THE INFLUENCES WHICH IMPEL MEN TO GREATER EVIL.
1. One is that of relationship.
2. Another influence worked in the man himself. Jacob had a vehement
craving for the blessing.
IV. JACOB’S
CONDUCT PROVES THAT THERE MAY BE MORE RELIGION ON THE LIPS THAN IN THE LIFE (Genesis 27:20). (D. G. Watt, M. A.)
The supplanter
I. THE POWER OF
PARENTAL INFLUENCE AND THE DANGER OF PARENTAL PARTIALITY.
II. THE PROGRESS
OF MORAL DETERIORATION. This is seen--
1. In Isaac.
2. In Rebekah.
3. In Esau.
4. Especially in Jacob.
Lessons:
1. That mere fondness is not affection.
2. To beware of encouraging or countenancing the appearance of
untruth.
3. That no righteous purpose can justify an unrighteous act.
4. To avoid the beginning, “the very appearance of evil.”
5. To beware what thoughts we cherish.
6. Success does not avert the moral consequences of wrong-doing. (A.
F.Joscelyne, B. A.)
The blessing fraudulently obtained
I. THE SPIRIT OF
DOUBT AND MISTRUST LEADS MEN TO PRACTICE DECEIT.
1. It was deceiving a relative.
2. Deceiving an infirm relative.
3. Deceiving an infirm relative in spiritual matters.
II. IT DEADENS
MEN’S MORAL SENSIBILITIES.
1. It creates indifference to man’s moral culture.
2. It renders one insensible to the greatest danger.
III. IT INVOLVES
PAIN.
1. Loss of peace.
2. Instability.
3. Humiliation. (Homilist.)
The blessing obtained by fraud
1. Many of the most serious evils in life must be traced to parental
mismanagement.
2. No end, however good, will sanction bad ways of accomplishing it.
3. Our history illustrates the prolific nature of sin. The
commission of one crime makes another necessary, in order to supply what is
lacking in the first.
4. The sins of youth have often a long and lasting influence. (A.
McClelland, D. D.)
Duplicity
I. THE
CONSPIRACY.
1. Its nature.
2. Its cause.
(2) Rebekah’s fear that patriarchal blessing would be bestowed on
Esau, though God had declared that it should be given to Jacob.
II. THE DISCOVERY.
1. Its suddenness.
2. Its effect. Practical lessons:
1. That sad consequences ever follow the practice of duplicity,
whether in the family or elsewhere.
2. That a mother should teach a son to deceive his father is full of
warning.
3. That such wrong should be perpetrated in the name and for the
promotion of religion suggests the importance of scrutinizing our motives.
4. That the consciences of pious persons should allow them to
justify themselves in such conduct suggests the blinding power of unbelief that
God will fulfil what He has promised. (D. C. Hughes, M. A.)
The sin of Isaac and his family
I. Look at ISAAC.
1. His sin lay in aiming at a wrong object--he wanted to set aside
the will of God.
2. Mark the punishment of Isaac. It was two-fold. First, his object
was defeated--Esau lost the blessing. And man will always be defeated when man
struggles with his Maker. He vindicates His authority in an unexpected moment
and by unexpected means, and then where and what are we? Our schemes, and
efforts, and hopes, are all laid low; and worse than this--they are all turned
against ourselves. And so was it here; for notice another part of Isaac’s
punishment--not only was his object defeated, but in aiming at it, he brought
much sin on his family and much anguish on himself.
II. We may turn
now to REBEKAH.
1. Her sin was altogether different in its character from Isaac’s.
It consisted in aiming at a right object by sinful means.
2. The punishment of Rebekah may appear slight, and yet to a fond
mother like her, it must have been deeply painful. The curse was indeed on her,
and it came in a form she little anticipated--she lost the son for whom she had
plotted and sinned. Her example speaks plainly and solemnly also to all who are
parents amongst us. It tells us that children are easily led into sin. Deceit
and falsehood are bound up in the heart of every child that breathes, and it is
as easy to call them into action as to get their tongues to speak or
their feet to move. It is easy also to find motives that seem good, for
prompting the lie, or sanctioning the lie, or concealing the lie; but as surely
as there is a God living in heaven, the evil we prompt or encourage or tolerate
in our children will come down in the end on our own heads. The curse of it
will be on us. The blow may at first strike others, but in the end it will
recoil on ourselves. Our poor children may themselves sting us to the quick; or
if not so, the hand of God may be on them. We may see in their undoing at once
our own punishment and our own sin.
III. Let us turn
now to JACOB. The instant we look at him, we are struck with this fact, that
the nearer a man is to God, the more God is displeased with any iniquity He sees
in him, and the more openly and severely He punishes it. Of all this family,
Jacob was the most beloved by Him, but yet, as far as regards this world, he
appears to have suffered from this transaction the most bitterly.
1. His sin was of a complicated character. To a hasty observer, it
might appear light. Certainly much might be said in palliation of it. He was
not first in the transgression. The idea of it did not originate with him. His
feelings revolted at it when it was proposed to him. He remonstrated against
it. Besides, it was a parent who urged him on, a fond and tender mother. And we
must remember, too, that all those motives which led Rebekah to form this plot
would operate also in Jacob’s mind to lead him to execute it. It was furthering
the will of God, it was saving a father from sin. Let young persons see here
what a single deviation from truth can do. In one short hour it made the pious
Jacob appear and act like one of the worst of men.
2. As for the punishment of Jacob’s sin, we must read the history of
his life to see the extent of it. It followed him almost to his dying hour. He
was successful in his treachery; it obtained from his deceived father the
desired birthright; but what fruit had he from his success? We might say none
at all, or rather he sowed the wind and he reaped the whirlwind. His fears were
realized; he did bring a curse on him and not a blessing.
IV. We come now to
the case of Esau. Alive to the present and reckless of the future, he preferred
to it the momentary gratification of a sensual appetite. (C. Bradley, M. A.)
How Jacob stole his blessing
I. ISAAC’S
OBSTINATE PARTIALITY.
II. REBEKAH’S
CRAFTINESS, AND JACOB’S FRAUD.
III. THE
CONSEQUENCES OF THE FRAUD. Isaac’s vain regret. Esau’s murderous malice.
Rebekah’s fear for her favourite son. Jacob’s hasty banishment. Conclusion:
What may we especially learn for ourselves?
1. Not to resist God’s will, like Isaac. We may sometimes think we
know what is best; yet, if we listened to God’s word, we should not do the very
thing we perhaps most like to do.
2. Not to forfeit God’s favour and blessing, like Esau. It was
Esau’s own recklessness and worldliness that led to his being rejected, and to
“the blessing” being withheld from him. He had shown himself to be incapable of
deeper thoughts and religious faith.
3. Not to do wrong that good may come, like Rebekah and Jacob. God’s
promises will be fulfilled in due time. But we must neither murmur, nor be
hasty (comp. Hebrews 2:3). (W. S. Smith, B. D.)
The wily supplanter
Jacob, whose nature was at this time true to his name.
1. Receives a hint from his mother. Sad that her maternal love
should have prompted such an act. Esau, as much her son as Jacob.
She was equally bound by natural obligations to care far one as the
other. No apologies seem to be a sufficient vindication of conduct that was in
its very essence wrong.
2. Closes with his mother’s recommendation. He ought to have
resented it; to have expostulated, and over-ruled it. He rather suggests
difficulties (Genesis 27:11) to prompt her ingenuity.
3. Adopts the disguise she prepared, and followed her directions.
Deception; and self-deception the worst of all. Perhaps thought it well, even
by such means, to gain the blessing.
4. Repeated falsehoods. Again and again assured his father that he
was Esau.
5. Obtained the blessing. Yet how could that bless which had been so
obtained? God, in His mercy, ultimately brought good out of the evil Otherwise
the father’s blessing, so obtained, must have been a curse. (J. C. Gray.)
Appearances often deceptive
“The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.”
We cannot always depend upon appearances. When, at the time of the gunpowder
plot, the Parliament houses were searched, only coals and fagots were found in
the cellars beneath. But, on a more careful search, barrels of gunpowder were
found under the coals and wood, as well as Guy Fawkes with his preparations to
blow up the king and his parliament. Many a fine-looking tree is rotten at the
core; some who are very healthy in appearance are secretly and fatally
diseased; gilding or paint sometimes covers really worthless rubbish; so the
lives of some who profess to be “the epistles of Christ “ are really a forgery,
for they are not what they profess to be. Many who speak in religious services,
or at other times and places, with “Jacob’s voice,” or as saints, really have
“the hands of Esau,” for they are living in the practice of wickedness. (G.
Hughes, B. D.)
The deception of Isaac
It is often forgotten that Jacob was divinely appointed to be the
inheritor of the blessing. The omission from the calculation or thought of that
one fact is likely to lead not only to mental perplexity but to moral
confusion. You find the proof of the assertion in Genesis 25:23. The Lord said unto
Rebekah, in view of the birth of her children, “The one people shall be
stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.” The
mystery, therefore, is Divine. Jacob was a destined man; Jacob was destined
before he was born; what, then, was his error? Not in feeling, how mysteriously
soever, the pressure of his destiny, but in prematurely taking it into his own
hands. We must not force Providence. Is there not an appointed time to man upon
the earth, in a much wider sense than in the sense of marking out the day of
his death? Is there not a time for the rising of the sun and the going down of
the same? Is there not a seed time in the year, as well as a harvest day? We
are tempted to force Providence, thus to do the right thing in the wrong way,
and at the wrong time. Right is not a question of a mere point; it gathers up
into its mystery all the points of the case, so that it is not enough to be
going in the right road; we must have come into that road through the right
door, at the right hour, and by direct intervention and sanction of God. It is
tempting to natures like ours to help ourselves by trickery. We do like to
meddle with God. Granted that the mother saw the religious aspect of this whole
case, and knew the destiny of the boys, she had no right to force Divine Providence.
Was Rebekah moved by the consciousness of destiny, or was she excited by the
spirit of revenge? It is easy for us to mistake our revenge for religion. Some
men pray out of spite; some men preach Christ out of envy; it is possible to
build a church upon the devil’s foundation, and to light an altar with the
devil’s fire. Jacob was pre-eminently a destined child, a man with a special
mark upon him: how he will come out of this we shall see; but God will be King
and Master, and right shall be done. What, then, is to be our attitude under
the consciousness of destiny, and under the suggestion of tempting events? Our
attitude is to be one of perfect resignation. (J. Parker, D. D.)
The temptation of destiny
Although the prediction of the fact did not entitle her or her son
to bring about its fulfilment, yet it makes some slight difference in the case.
For we see even now that when a nation or a man once feels that it is “manifest
destiny” to do a certain thing--predetermined--he feels free to do that thing,
no matter how unjust it is.
We see the same delusion in a thousand other cases. Shakespeare
recognizes it in the great drama of “Macbeth.” The prediction, “Thou shalt be
king hereafter,” did not justify the murder, but it seemed to give to it a
certain supernatural countenance, marshalling the murderer the way that he was
going. If this can be the case when the supernatural soliciting comes from
below, how much more strong when it was felt to come from above--from God
Himself! Then remember, besides, that there was somethingnot altogether evil in
Jacob’s passionate coveting of the birthright. For it was a sacred good, and
eagerly to appreciate it as he did was itself a sign of some fitness for it;
while to despise it as Esau did marked the man as unworthy of it. (A. G.
Mercer.)
The selection of Jacob
But now hear me for a moment in defence of that Divine Providence
which allowed the substitution of this particular man, Jacob, in the place of
this particular man, Esau, as the third of the patriarchs. The importance of a
right choice here is not easily over-rated. For several reasons the character
of the patriarchs was to influence and mould the character of the Hebrew race
more than could be done by any of the whole line of law-givers, princes,
prophets, and warriors--Moses, perhaps, excepted, To have the right man, then,
was indeed important. But was Jacob he? or, at least, was he more fit than
Esau? He was. What was Jacob? Let us see. A man may be described by three
things--whether he has ends--what they are--and how he reaches them.
1. Whether he has ends. Esau had not, He was one of a class of
characters who live without any distant ends to reach--who live very much from
day to day, working perhaps energetically for their little daily plans, or
floating from interest to interest. Jacob was, above all things else, a man of
purpose.
2. The next question about a man is, What are his ends? Two traits
in a man’s ends lift up the man--the remoteness and the generosity of his ends.
If very remote--that is, if a man takes into his vision the whole scope of his
life, and with a masterly power brings under his whole existence to that
far-oft end--that man, even though his ends are selfish, is a superior person.
Now Jacob was certainly that man. Show me such a man anywhere, and I will show
you his equal here. Seven years of the hardest service he served for Rachel,
and counted them but as seven days--and then seven more. He wore through twenty
years of the hardest life,carrying on his design that he should be the successor
and heir of Isaac, and though he was of a timid nature, never yielding that
purpose, even when he stood in the presence of the avenger Esau himself. Never
was there a more patient, tenacious soul. This was singular, for remember that
primitive men may be persistent in passions, but not in purposes, save in that
one passion and purpose--revenge. But Jacob had all the calmness and tenacity
of an advanced age. His end, however, may have been a selfish one.
Self-advancement? Yes. But, considering the age and place, self-advancement was
one of the higher forms of virtue, especially when we know that the end Jacob
sought had a certain sacredness about it--the hope, namely, that he should be
in the line of God’s special favours--should take eminent place as His servant.
3. The third test of a man is the means he uses to reach his ends.
Jacob’s were bad enough. Remember, however, that the rule, the end does not
justify the means, was unknown to Jacob--is, in fact, a great and modern
discovery in morals, not fully known even yet. And remember, besides, that
whatever his means were, they were always effective, and never gratuitously
wicked. On the whole, then, here was a mixed character as to its excellence,
but a high character as to its ability. Nay, besides--this very mixture, the
very defects of character, made Jacob a fit instrument of the Divine purposes.
He was, even in his weakest points, far better fitted to lay the foundations of
a family and kingdom than the impulsive and purposeless Esau. Had he been a more
purely excellent man, he would have been less fitted. A style of character
purely excellent cannot lay a permanent grasp upon the men of early ages, or
men of any age not high enough to receive it. The powerful great man is the one
who is at once above and yet along-side of his fellows. Hence we see, as a
matter of fact, that among the patriarchs, though Abraham is most revered,
Jacob has been the truly influential man with the Jewish masses. He has moulded
the mass of the Jewish people into his own image. I regard this as specially
providential. Thus the purer and higher were led to God and held to God through
the high spirit that was in Abraham; the body were held to God and their
religion through the lower soul of Jacob. They could be inferior Jacobs when
they could not be properly children of Abraham.
So, through lower and higher instruments, the purposes of God are
worked out.
1. Among the thoughts suggested by the subject, notice first the
effect of success in the judgment of character. Esau, once gone under, holds no
place.
2. Notice, again, how poorly we judge of mixed characters. The same
Jacob who over-reached his father, his brother, and I might say destiny itself,
the supplanter, the robber, who “from a shelf the precious diadem stole, and put
it in his pocket,” was yet the same who wrestled all night with God. Truly we
are all of different natures, marvellously mixed--a worm, a god! This should
teach me at least some things, such as humility to myself. I know by this that
the statues of the demi-gods stand on clay feet--that my best moments, my best
feelings, are but a part of me--that I have a whole world of things to repent
of, and to be ashamed of, before God. That, and nothing of soul growth, was
especially the fact with Jacob. His character was unlike that of the other
patriarchs in this: Abraham and Isaac, such as we see them at first, are very
much such as we see them at last. But Jacob only becomes his real, that is, his
higher self at the last. At the bottom of his young and eager ambition and
selfishness there was at the very first, as I have said, something good, the
root of a great tree of right--namely, the real sense that God’s blessing and
favour were above allvalue--and so in his blind, but most earnest way, he went
to work to grasp them.
3. There is one test every man should solemnly try himself by, one
test of what our ultimate selves and our ultimate destiny will be--Does the
good part of our characters grow? (A. G. Mercer.)
Verses 25-29
God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth,
and plenty of corn and wine
Isaac blessing Jacob
I.
WITH
TEMPORAL BLESSINGS.
1. A fertile soil.
2. Abundance of provision.
3. Political pre-eminence.
II. WITH SPIRITUAL
BLESSINGS.
1. The channel of spiritual blessing to mankind.
2. A test of character. (T. H. Leale.)
Isaac’s blessing--the parent’s warning
I. First, we
shall consider WHEREIN ISAAC’S BLESSING CONSISTED.
1. Plenty, heaven and earth combining to enrich the happy possessor.
2. Power, almost unlimited, especially over his own brethren.
3. And last, though not the least, a mighty influence with God and a
great interest in the courts of heaven. “Cursed be every one that curseth thee,
and blessed be he that blesseth thee.” Or, in other words, “Let God be an enemy
to all thy enemies, and a friend to all thy friends.”
4. Now these, doubtless, were very desirable mercies, and they
belonged, by right, to the first-born; though God was pleased sometimes to
revoke that taw, and to transfer these blessings from the elder to the younger,
as instanced in the case before us, and also in that of Cain and of Reuben.
These, I say, were very desirable mercies, and, when accompanied with the
Divine sanction, of untold value. But still, after all, they were but
temporary. They lasted only for this life; and Jacob, I doubt not, might have
managed very well without any one of them. The blessing of Isaac, therefore,
must have comprised something more than what we have here recorded; otherwise
we may be well assured that Jacob would never have risked so much to obtain it,
nor would his mother ever have placed him in so hazardous and perilous a
situation. But the fact is, these temporal blessings were but the “shadows of
better things to come.” They were, to use an apostolic phrase, “the substance
of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” They included all those
good things which were more particularly specified to Abraham when God entered
into covenant with him. They intimated, for instance, in the first place, that
from him should descend the Messiah--He who was to be the “Prince of the kings
of the earth . . . before whom all nations should come and worship . . . and
who was to rule them with a rod of iron, and to break them to shivers as a
potter’s vessel.” And, in the second place, that from him also should come the
church that was to be specially owned and blessed by God; and consequently we
find Isaac, when afterwards confirming the blessing to Jacob, calling it the
“blessing of Abraham.”
II. What were THE
MEANS THAT REBEKAH ADOPTED to secure the blessing for her favourite son Jacob.
They were little else than a tissue of lies and deceit.
III. Let us now see
what LESSONS we may gather up from a contemplation of the whole subject.
1. In the first place, then, it reads a very solemn and affecting
warning to parents. It teaches the folly and danger of making invidious
distinctions between the different members of your families--of showing an
undue partiality for one child more than another. It is a withering curse. It
introduces discord and dissension into every family wherever it finds a
footing, and it is the fruitful source of all evil, social and moral. Whenever,
therefore, you feel its chilling influence beginning to steal over you, oh,
remember Rebekah, and in the name and strength of your God shake it from you.
Give it no encouragement; or, if you must, keep it to yourself. Let no one else
ever see or feel it. In the second place, learn from this subject the way in
which our Heavenly Father will have us to seek for His blessing. We must come
to Him for it in and through our Elder Brother. We must come clothed in His
“goodly raiment,” even that pure and spotless robe which He wrought for us on
Calvary. There is no other way under heaven whereby we can be saved. And if you
ask me by what means we are to get this goodly raiment--this pure and spotless
righteousness, I answer, simply by asking for it. “Ask,” says your God and Saviour,
“and you shall have.” And although it cost Him a great price--even His own
precious blood--yet He offers it to you without money and without price. Oh, go
to Him, then, and ask Him for this precious gift; for “the gift of God is
eternal life.” (E. Harper, B. A.)
Isaac blessing Jacob
1. That parents ought to bless their children; too many do curse,
and not bless them.
2. Children ought to fear the causeful curses of their parents. The
better son feared the curse of his father (Genesis 27:12).
3. Parents ought rather to gather a stock of Divine promises, that
they may bless their children more out of faith than out of form, praying for
them out of a promise, as Isaac did then for his son Jacob, praying that the
blessing of Abraham might come upon him (Genesis 28:4).
4. A wishing our children’s weal customarily without a praying for
them believingly, is neither enough for parents, nor is it all (or at all) that
is warranted by Isaac’s blessing Jacob here. There is much difference between a
formal wish and a faithful prayer for their good.
5. Spiritual blessings must be sought and sued for in their proper
season. Here Esau came too late for the blessing, which was bestowed before he
lost the right season (which is a part of time above all other parts, even the
shine and lustre of time), so could not obtain it, no, not with tears Hebrews 12:16-17). (C. Ness.)
Verses 33-40
And when Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with a great
and exceeding bitter cry, and said unto his father, Bless me, even me also, O
my father
Esau’s cry
No one can read this chapter without feeling some pity for Esau.
All his hopes were disappointed in a moment. He had built much upon this
blessing; for in his youth he had sold his birthright, and he thought that in
his father’s blessing he would get back his birthright, or what would stand in
its place. He had parted with it easily, and he expected to regain it easily,
tie thought to regain God’s blessing, not by fasting and prayer, but by savoury
meat, by feasting and making merry.
I. Esau’s cry is
the cry of one who has rejected God, and who in turn has been rejected by Him.
He was
He was profane in selling his birthright, presumptuous in claiming
the blessing. Such as Esau was, such are too many Christians now. They neglect
religion in their best days; they give up their birthright in exchange for what
is sure to perish and make them perish with it. They are profane persons, for
they despise the great gift of God; they are presumptuous, for they claim a
blessing as a matter of course.
II. The prodigal
son is an example of a true penitent. He came to God with deep
confession--self-abasement. He said, “Father, I have sinned.” Esau came for a
son’s privileges; the prodigal son came for a servant’s drudgery. The one
killed and dressed his venison with his own hand, and enjoyed it not; for the
other the fatted calf was prepared, and the ring for his hand and shoes for his
feet, and the best robe, and there was music and dancing. (J. H. Newman, D.
D.)
Esau’s late repentance
I. The character
of Esau has unquestionably a fair side. Esau was by no means a man of
unqualified wickedness or baseness; judged according to the standard of many
men, he would pass for a very worthy, estimable person. The whole history of
his treatment of Jacob puts his character in a very favourably light; it
represents him as an open-hearted, generous person, who, though he might be
rough in his manners, fond of a wild life, perhaps as rude and unpolished in
mind as he was in body, had yet a noble soul, which was able to do what little
minds sometimes cannot do--namely, forgive freely a cruel wrong done to him.
II. Nevertheless,
it is not without reason that the apostle styles Esau a profane person. The
defect in his character may be described as a want of religious seriousness;
there was nothing spiritual in him--no reverence for holy things, no
indications of a soul which could find no sufficient joy in this world, but
which aspired to those joys which are at God’s right hand for evermore. By the
title of profane the apostle means to describe the carnal, unspiritual man--the
man who takes his stand upon this world as the end of his thoughts and the
scene of all his activity, who considers the land as a great hunting-field, and
makes the satisfaction of his bodily wants and tastes the whole end of living.
III. Esau’s
repentance was consistent with his character; it was manifestly of the wrong
kind. Sorrow of this world; grief for the loss of the corn and wine. (Bishop
Harvey Goodwin.)
Esau disappointed of his blessing
I. HE IS
OVERWHELMED BY A HEART-RENDING SORROW
II. HE REFERS HIS
WRONGS TO THEIR TRUE AUTHOR.
III. HE PLEADS
PATHETICALLY WITH HIS FATHER.
IV. HE IS
CONTENTED WITH AN INFERIOR BLESSING. God’s blessings without God. Nothing of
heaven enters into it. (T. H. Leale.)
The deceived father and the defrauded son and brother
I. ISAAC’S
CONDUCT.
1. Remark, first, the double blessing--Jacob’s containing temporal
abundance, temporal rule, and spiritual blessing, the main points plainly being
the rights of primogeniture; Esau’s, in the first part identical with his
brother’s, but different afterwards by the want of spiritual blessing: God’s
gifts without God, the fruit of the earth and the plunder of the sword, but no
connection with the covenant of God. Of course the destinies of Israel and Edom
are prefigured in this, rather than the personal history of Jacob and Esau. For
the predicted liberty of Edom, the breaking the yoke off the neck, did not take
place till the reign of Jehoram, long after Esau’s death 2 Kings 8:22). So that when it is
written, “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated,” the selection of nations
to outward privileges is meant, not the irrespective election of individuals to
eternal life. Now in these blessings we have the principle of prophecy. We
cannot suppose that the Jacob here spoken of as blessed was unmixedly good, nor
the Esau unmixedly evil. Nor can we imagine that idolatrous Israel was that in
which all the promises of God found their end, or that Eden was the nation on
whom the curse of God fell unmixed with any blessing. Prophecy takes
individuals and nations as representations for the time being of principles
which they only partially represent. They are the basis or substratum of an
idea. For instance, Jacob, or Israel, represents the principle of good, the
Church of God, the triumphant and blessed principle. To that, the typical
Israel, the promises are made; to the literal Jacob or Israel, only as the type
of this, and so far as the nation actually was what it stood for. Esau is the
worldly man, representing for the time the world. To that the rejection
belongs; to the literal Isaac, only so far as he is that.
2. Next observe Isaac’s adherence to his promise. If anything can
excuse a departure from a promise, Isaac might have been excused in this case;
for in truth he did not promise to Jacob, though Jacob stood before him. He
honestly thought that he was speaking to his first-born; and yet, perhaps
partly taught to be punctiliously scrupulous by the rebuke he had received in
early life from Abimelech, partly feeling that he had been but an instrument in
God’s hands, he felt that a mysterious and irrevocable sacredness belonged to
his word once past, and said, “Yea, and he shall be blessed.” Jesuitism amongst
us has begun to tamper with the sacredness of a promise. Men change their
creed, and fancy themselves absolved from past promises; the member of the
Church of Rome is no longer bound to do what the member of the Church of
England stipulated. Just as well might the king refuse to perform the promises
or pay the debts of the prince whom he once was. Therefore, let us ponder over
such texts as these. Be careful and cautious of pledging yourself to anything;
but the money you have once promised, the offer you have once made, is
irrevocable--it is no longer yours; it is passed from you as much as if it had
been given.
II. ESAU’S
CONDUCT.
1. Remark his contentment with a second-rate blessing: “Hast thou
not another blessing?” &c. These words, taken by themselves, without
reference to the character of him who spoke them, are neither good nor evil.
Had Esau meant only this: God has many blessings, of various kinds; and looking
round the circle of my resources, I perceive a principle of compensation, so
that what I lose in one department I gain in some other; I will be content to
take a second blessing when I cannot have the first. Esau would have said
nothing which was not praiseworthy and religious; he would have only expressed
what the Syro-Phoenician woman did, who observed that though in this world some
have the advantages of children, whereas others are as little favoured as dogs,
yet that the dogs have the compensatory crumbs. But it was not in this spirit
at all that Esau spoke. His was the complaining spirit of the man who repines
because others are more favoured than he; the spirit of the elder son in the
parable, “thou never gavest me a kid.” This character transformed outward
disadvantages into a real curse. For, again I say, disadvantages are in
themselves only a means to more lustrous excellence. But if to inferior talents
we add sloth, and to poverty envy and discontent, and to weakened health
querulousness, then we have indeed ourselves converted non-election into
reprobation; and we are doubly cursed--cursed by inward as well as outward
inferiority.
2. Remark Esau’s malice (verse 41). “The days of mourning for my
father are at hand, then will I slay my brother Jacob.” Distinguish this from
the resentment of righteous indignation. Resentment is an attribute of humanity
in its original, primal state. He who cannot feel indignant at some kinds of
wrong has not the mind of Christ. Remember the words with which he blighted
pharisaism--words not spoken for effect, but syllables of downright, genuine
anger; such expressions as peculiarly belong to the prophetic character, in
which indignation blazes into a flame; the prophetic writings are full of it.
Very different from this was Esau’s resentment. Anger in him had passed into
malice; private wrong had been brooded on till it had become revenge,
deliberate and planned vindictiveness. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)
Esau and the blessing
I. This narrative
SUGGESTS A WARNING AGAINST THE UNDER-VALUING OF PRIVILEGE.
II. This narrative
SUGGESTS THAT GOD IS ABLE TO BLESS EVERY DESIRING SOUL. Eternal life for all.
See the inexhaustible nature of the Divine riches exemplified in--
1. The vast numbers who have been made partakers of it already
passed from mortal sight.
2. The multitudes on their way at this moment to the same heavenly
kingdom who have “ obtained like precious faith.”
III. This narrative
REMINDS US THAT ONE MAY SEEK THE BLESSING TOO LATE. Though Esau obtained at
last a blessing, he did not realize the blessing. (F. Goodall, B. A,)
The cry of one man representing the wail of many
I. There is here
THE SENSE OF AN IMMENSE LOSS. A holy character is the highest birthright. We
have all to lament the loss of this.
II. THE SENSE OF A
GREAT INJURY. Victimized by his own brother. Far worse to bear than an injury
from an enemy.
III. THE SENSE OF
REMORSE.
IV. THE SENSE OF
APPROACHING HOPELESSNESS. Conclusion:
1. What we have all lost. Our birthright--the image of God.
2. What we should all chiefly struggle for. The restoration of the
Divine image. Our loss is not, like Esau’s, irremediable. We can, by faith in
Christ, regain it. (Homilist.)
The repentance of Esau
I. CERTAINLY WE
ARE NOT TO GATHER HENCE THAT ANY TRUE PENITENT CAN TURN TO GOD AND BE REJECTED
OF HIM. ESAU’S rejection was no such contradiction of God’s love as the
rejection of any one weeping penitent upon earth would surely be. For, first,
there is about Esau’s very cry itself, loud and bitter as it was, no sign of
true penitence; and, next, when he uttered it, so far as that which he had then
lost is concerned, his day of probation was already over, his time of trial
closed, his hour of judgment come. There is doubtless, as we shall see hereafter,
a true counterpart of this before every impenitent man, with horrors aggravated
above any which waited upon Esau’s sentence, as far as time is exceeded by
eternity, and temporal disadvantage by the death of the enduring soul. But
there is not one word in it to make any one who, in this his day of grace,
turns to the Lord, and cries to him for cleansing and for pardon, doubt the
full certainty of a most gracious acceptance by Him who suffered the woman that
was a sinner to wash His blessed feet with her tears, and to wipe them with the
hair of her head.
II. This, then,
certainly is not the lesson which is taught us here; but just as certainly IT
IS THAT WE, TOO, MAY CAST AWAY GOD’S MERCY TO US that we, the true children of
promise, bred in the family of One greater than Isaac--that we, the inheritors
of a birthright greater far than Jacob sought for or Esau despised--that we,
the children of God’s grace, may reject His grace, and cast profanely from us
our more blessed birthright. Such awful cases the experience of every parish
priest has, I suppose, brought before him. I have seen them and have trembled.
I have seen the fearful paroxysms of a loud and violent despair. I have seen
what is more awful still, the obstinate sinner, calmly, deliberately, determinately
put from himself the hope of salvation, and declare that in a few hours he
shall be in hell. And so indeed it must be. For if this were not so, what could
the warning mean, “Look diligently, test any man fail of the grace of Christ.”
Surely it must mean that the time of hopeless lamentation will come to every
obstinate despiser of God’s grace; that His Spirit does not always strive with
any man--that there is a limit to the trial of every man. Can we not, as we
gaze with awe upon the fearful picture, see in some measure why this doom is
irreversible? For must it not of necessity happen that the very perfection of
this miserable wickedness sets the seal of hopeless continuance upon such
spiritual wretchedness? For such a spiritual being with such a nature must hate
the good; must, above all, hate supremely God, the All-Good; must see in Him
the highest and most absolute conceivable contradiction of itself, and so must
recoil infinitely from Him, and in recoiling from Him must choose the evil with
an ever-renewed iteration and ever-increasing intensity of choice. Nor does the
perfection of the misery which such a soul endures at all incline it to any
breath of penitence; it only deepens the blackness and the malignity of its
despair. There is nothing in itself purifying in suffering.
III. But if we
would learn one true lesson from this portion of God’s Word, we must not only
note the general warning of looking diligently lest we fall from God’s grace,
but we must see further AGAINST WHAT SPECIAL FORMS OF EVIL THIS WARNING IS
PECULIARLY DIRECTED. And indeed, for many here, as everywhere, this is a lesson
needing very signally to be learned. For remember what were Esau’s
circumstances and Esau’s trial. Born to the inheritance of a certain
birthright, exercising, as to his first title to it, no volition regarding it;
having centred in his own person the mysterious privileges which ordinarily
belonged to the first-born son of the heir of promise--he cast these away; not
from special or marked depravity of character, but from yielding to the
temptations of appetite.
This one special attribute of sensuality is clearly shadowed forth
in this example; we see its direct tendency to lead to delaying repentance
until true repentance is impossible. For its gratifications fill for a season,
and occupy the degraded soul. Thus the first drawings of the blessed Spirit are
resisted, His first tender motions on the soul are quenched; and it is in
yielding to these, instead of resisting them, that there is the only possibility
of any true repentance. So it was with Esau, when, under the overmastering
impulse of a sensual temptation, he was led to cast all good away--for “thus
Esau despised his birthright.” Surely the application is too explicit to be
missed. Is not the warning plain against exactly that whole class of sins of
the real guilt of which the world takes least account? Is it not as much as
saying that indulged sensuality does build up barriers against true repentance,
which are all but impassable? Does it not meet the man possessed, by natural
endowment, of high spirits, of frankness, of cheerfulness, of all that makes
him a popular companion--with strong passions, with great powers of
enjoyment--who flings himself freely into life, is the leader of a set, and, from
there being a certain look of generosity about his vices, is lauded perhaps for
his unselfishness; who has naturally a far more attractive character than the
less courageous, less spirited, less frank, more self-conscious, more
self-watchful man beside him? doest it not meet this man in his hours of
sensual temptations, and say, Thou hast a birthright, beware of despising it,
beware of bartering it? Does it not say to him, “Thou, too, art a son of
Abraham”? yea, and more, “Thou art a son of Christ”; without thy choice, before
thy knowledge, of God’s mere love and mercy, that blessed privilege was made
thine. His love yearned over thine infancy, His Spirit has striven with thy
youth, His care is watching over thee now, and thou, too, art tempted to barter
these inestimable blessings for the mess of pottage. In thee, too, appetite
craves for indulgence; before thine eyes a sensuous fancy paints her glowing
pictures of the mad delight of gratified desire, of the feast, of the revel, of
the impure orgy, of the satisfied sense. All these she sets before thee, and
thy spirit, faint often and weary in this struggle, whispers to thee, Lo! I die
in this abstinence; and what good shall this birthright do me? Oh, then
beware--for then is the tempter nearest, closest, most dangerous. Then, under
the form of what he whispers to thee is a common practice, a slight evil, the
yielding to an irresistible temptation; then is he tempting thee, too, after
this example of the old profaneness of Esau, to despise thy birthright. Nor can
you tell that in any one of these allowed instances of sensual indulgence you
may not actually sell your birthright. It is the very secret of the power of
the temptation, that in each separate instance it looks so inconsiderable in
its future consequence, compared with the pressing urgency of the present
desire. It is the gusty impulsiveness of your nature which exposes you so
certainly to the danger. You become profane without knowing it; you meant but
to gratify appetite, and lo! for appetite you have bartered your soul. Here,
then, is God’s warning to you. He sets, from the beginning, the end before you.
He shows you what such conduct really is, and whither it must lead you. He lets
you hear the loud and bitter cry. (Bp. S. Wilberforce.)
Lessons
I. To respect and
reverence old age, and commiserate its infirmities.
II. To cultivate a
spirit of truth, honesty, and honour in our dealings.
III. To shun every
occasion of household strife.
IV. To seek the
blessing of our heavenly Father, in the full confidence that all He has given
to others has not so impoverished Him that there is not a blessing left for us.
(J. C. Gray.)
The blessing
An accurate view of individual history--the history of real
life--is always interesting.
I. THE FACTS HERE
STATED.
1. Notice the individuals concerned; these are, Isaac and Rebekah,
and their twin sons, Esau and Jacob. Isaac was the child of promise, given to
Abraham in his old age, through whom the blessing pronounced on Abraham was to
descend to an innumerable multitude. He married Rebekah, his cousin, the
grand-child of Abraham’s brother; and the offspring of their union were these
twin children, Esau and Jacob. All that is recorded of the parents impresses us
with the conviction of their piety. In the short notices of their life, we
observe that, with sufficient evidence of their partaking of human infirmity,
we have abundant testimony to their devotional habits, their submission to the
dispensations of Providence, their peaceable and liberal disposition, and their
prosperity under the blessing of the Lord. Esau and Jacob, their children, were
characters widely differing from each other.
2. The blessing that Jacob obtained. It was a blessing which was
inherent in the posterity of Abraham, and which one of the sons of Isaac was
consequently to inherit.
3. The means which were used for the obtaining of this blessing.
Isaac was on the point of conferring the blessing of the first-born upon Esau,
contrary to the Divine intimation, contrary to the warrantable expectations of
Rebekah, and contrary to those predilections which she seems to have cherished
for the younger son, and which his regular and domestic habits appear to have
strengthened. Acting under the influence of unbelief, she immediately suggested
to Jacob the plan of supplanting his brother by fraud. Jacob’s objections
appear to have been those of prudence rather than of principle; they yielded to
a mother’s earnest entreaties; and the result shows him to be no inapt scholar
in the ways of deception. There is something very humiliating in the whole of
Jacob’s interview with his father. Every succeeding step is marked with grosser
hypocrisy and deeper guilt; and though, in the mysterious providence of God,
the promised blessing was permitted to rest on his head, yet the guilt of that
scene must afterwards have been like a barbed arrow in his conscience, and
given increased severity to many of his subsequent sufferings. The promise was
given to Isaac with this recognition of Abraham’s character, “Abraham obeyed My
voice and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws.” Isaac did
the same. He entered into the spirit of the covenant, and lived a life of
obedience. On what reasonable ground, therefore, could Esau, knowing this,
expect the blessing? He was a “profane person, a fornicator,” a mere
sensualist. It is in this light, therefore, that we should regard him, and by
these things that we must measure his tears.
II. The
circumstances that have come before us suggest SOME VERY IMPORTANT AND USEFUL
PRACTICAL REMARKS. We notice--
1. The evil of parental partialities. The selection of one child for
favouritism is altogether inconsistent with the sacredness of parental duty,
and with the strict justice which is essential to parental discipline. In the
present instance, the fondness of Isaac for his first-born, and of Rebekah for
her younger child, led both themselves and their children into sin.
2. The fearful results of one deviation from rectitude. One vice
entails another. One instance of error or untruth frequently places a man in
circumstances in which he is led to commit many to bring him off without
suspicion; and he who tells one lie will not scruple much, in a very
short time, blasphemously to call the name of God to witness it. “And he said,
Because the Lord thy God brought it to me.” Let every one, then, beware how he
approaches the first appearances of evil, or oversteps in the least degree the
line of propriety. “We cannot hope to be preserved when we have placed
ourselves in questionable circumstances; and we have not strength to keep
ourselves.
3. The character of the over-ruling providence of God. It was said
of Jacob and Esau, “the elder shall serve the younger.” But the ways of God are
very mysterious. The same result is brought about by a series of natural
events, on which we could not have calculated; events, however, which are in no
respect the results of an absolute fatalism, but which are seen to arise fairly
out of the elements of character and habits of the parties concerned. “we see
each character developed in its peculiarities by the course which it is
permitted to pursue; and to each, in the sovereignty of Divine Providence, a
moral discipline is applied, calculated to forward the best interests of the
soul.
4. The melancholy character of the sorrow of the world. While,
therefore, the afflictions of Jacob, though they were the consequences of his
sins, led him to draw near to God in his solitude, the grief of Esau was
merely the regret consequent on worldly disappointment. The privation of the
blessing of the first-born was only lamented by him as the ruin of his best
earthly hopes. It was the downfall of his ambition. It was a limit prescribed
to his indulgences. It was merely that sorrow which often seizes on ungodly men
in the course of Providence, and in which they know not where to turn for
consolation, because they will not turn to God.
5. Observe the immeasurable extent of the Divine compassion. It is
only on the mercy of God that Jacob or Esau, or any character similar to
either, can rest a sure and certain hope of deliverance at last. (E. Craig.)
Godly and worldly sorrow
I suppose that when we read the account of Esau’s grief, of his
affecting appeal to his father and of its ill success, we begin to think it an
instance of the fruitlessness of repentance. Those who have thrown away God’s
gifts of grace, who have despised them in former days, and sold them for some
mess of pottage, who are now wishing to have them back and to return to God,
are apt to be disheartened and dismayed by such a passage in God’s Word. The
fear springs up lest they also should find no answer to their prayers, lest
theirs should be fruitless tears, lest the cry should be made by them in yam,
“Bless me also, O my Father.” But however natural such thoughts from the first
impression of the scene, a closer study of the passage may serve to drive away
the clouds. We may learn to see that there was something wrong and faulty in
Esau’s sorrow, great as it was, something in the nature of his distress of mind
not altogether satisfactory or right. If we examine his conduct at the time, we
fail to see any religious element in it at all. It was a worldly sorrow, a
burst of natural but worldly grief; there was no confession of his former sin,
no acknowledgment that the blessing had been justly lost, no word of
self-condemnation, no avowal like the penitent thief upon the cross, that he,
indeed, was justly suffering for past misdeeds, and was reaping as he had sown;
no allusion to his faithlessness, to his contempt of the promise of God in
selling his birthright for the mess of pottage, no turning to God, no
mention of God at all, or of God’s just anger for his past offence. And hence
we may conclude that he took a mere worldly view of his loss, that he felt mere
worldly sorrow--sorrow for the loss of some temporal advantages to himself and
his descendants, and perhaps mingled with this keen sense of worldly
disappointment--sorrow at having missed a father’s benediction, especially as
he believed it, in his case, to carry with it some unusual power. If this is a
right view of Esau’s state of mind, we see at once that he is not to be
regarded as a true penitent, that he is not presented to us as such, and that
therefore no feelings of true penitence are to be chilled or checked in their
growth by the treatment which he received. The great truth still stands out as
clearly as ever, quite unclouded by any instance in Scripture to the contrary,
that God does receive back the penitent; that godly sorrow, if it lead on to
the after acts and fuller development of repentance, never rends our hearts in
vain; not in vain does any wandering child of God draw near, and kneeling down
at the foot of the cross exclaim, “Bless me also, O my Father.” Whenever the
sorrow of the heart is true godly sorrow, and the conscience-stricken bow
themselves in genuine compunction at the mercy-seat of God, mercy comes forth
from the throne of God, and the penitent is blessed. But all sorrow--and it is
this which the history of Esau impressively proclaims--is not godly sorrow, and
has not its blessed fruit. Men may grieve over losses, disasters, reverses
brought on them through sin, without grieving altogether for the sin, without
being grieved and angry with themselves for sinning. And what harder burden to
bear than this worldly sorrow, when the heart is dry and dead to the influence
of grace, when the soul has no light in its dark place, when God is not
confessed in time of trial, when chastisements for sin fail to create the sense
of sin, or to break the will of the disobedient child, when there is no mark of
the Cross of Christ, but when it is the fruitless cross of the world, which
cannot heal? If we are in any suffering, under any trial through
transgressions, whether lately or long since done, we can find blessings
springing up amid the thorns, should we own the hand of God and sorrow after a
godly sort; but if we steel our hearts, and go through trial without taking it
as from our Saviour’s hands, without owning “rod lamenting the sins and errors
and neglects, the worldliness and the foolishness from which the trial grew,
then indeed it is a heavy weight to bear, and there is a still heavier burden
to be laid upon us hereafter. (Bp. Armstrong.)
Esau, the man of nature
While in Jacob’s conduct the high and noble aims which he pursued
were in most discordant contrast with the ungenerous means which he employed,
Esau was fluctuating and contradictory within himself; though the general tone
of his mind was indifference to spiritual boons, his sentiments were spontaneous
and profound whenever the voice of nature spoke; he despised the birthright (Genesis 27:34), but regarded himself
always as the first-born son (Genesis 27:32); he slighted the prophecy
of God (Genesis 27:23), but coveted most
anxiously the blessing of his father; he attributed to the latter a greater
force than to the former; he hoped to to neutralize the effect of the one by
the weight of the other; he could not comprehend or feel the invisible, but he
was keenly susceptible of the visible; his mind was not sublime, but his heart
was full of pure and strong emotions; he saw in his father only the earthly
progenitor, not the representative of the Deity--he was, indeed, the man of
nature. As such he is described in the affecting scene of our text; tie is
designedly placed in marked contradistinction to his brother Jacob: nature,
simplicity, deep and genuine affection on the one side; shrewdness, ambition,
and indefinite, soaring, but unsatisfied intellectual craving on the other.
This contrast not only implies the kernel and spirit of this narrative, but
forms the centre of all Biblical notions. Hence Esau’s vehement disappointment
will receive its proper light; he deeply repented that he had sold his
birthright, but only because he believed that he was for that reason justly
deprived of the father’s blessing due to the eldest son (Genesis 27:36); he beard without envy or
animosity, that Jacob’s descendants had been declared the future lords of his
own progeny; leaving that prerogative ummurmuringly to his brother, he
exclaimed: “Hast thou but one blessing, my father?” and bursts forth into
another flood of tears. (M. M.Kalisch, Ph. D.)
Esau’s irreligious envy of Jacob
It was not that he desired to be a servant of the Lord, or that
his posterity should be His people, according to the tenor of Abraham’s
covenant: but as he that should be possessed of these distinctions would in
other respects be superior to his brother, it became an object of emulation.
Thus we have often seen religion set at nought, while yet the advantages which
accompany it have been earnestly desired; and where grace has in a manner
crossed hands by favouring a younger or inferior branch of a family, envy and
its train of malignant passions have frequently blazed on the other side. It
was not as the father of the holy nation, but as being “lord over his
brethren,” that Jacob was the object of Esau’s envy. And this may further
account for the blessing of Isaac on the former dwelling principally upon temporal
advantages, as designed of God to cut off the vain hopes of the latter, of
enjoying the power attached to the blessing, while he despised the blessing
itself. When Esau perceived that Jacob must be blessed, he entreated to be
blessed also: “Bless me, even me also, oh my father!” One sees in this language
just that partial conviction of there being something in religion, mixed with a
large portion of ignorance, which it is common to see in persons who have been
brought up in a religious family, and yet are strangers to the God of their
fathers. If this earnest request had extended only to what was consistent with
Jacob’s having the pre-eminence, there was another blessing for him, and he had
it: but though he had no desire after the best part of Jacob’s portion, yet he
was very earnest to have had that clause of it reversed, “be lord over thy
brethren, and let thy mother’s sons bow down to thee.” If this could have been
granted him, he had been satisfied; for “ the fatness of the earth” was all he
cared for. But this was an object concerning which, as the apostle observes,
“he found no place of repentance” (that is, in the mind of his father), “though
he sought it carefully with tears.” Such will be the case with fornicators and
all profane persons, who, like Esau, for a few momentary gratifications in the
present life, make light of Christ and the blessings of the gospel. They will
cry with a great and exceeding bitter cry, saying, “Lord, Lord, open unto us!”
But they will find no place of repentance in the mind of the Judge, who will
answer them, “I know you not whence ye are: depart from Me ye workers of
iniquity!” Esau’s reflections on his brother for having twice supplanted him,
were not altogether without ground; yet his statement is exaggerated. He lost
his birthright because he himself, despising it, sold it to Jacob. (A.
Fuller.)
Late and false tears
Why did he not rather weep to his brother for the pottage than to
Isaac for a blessing? If he had not then sold, he had not needed now to buy. It
is just with God to deny us those favours which we were careless in keeping,
and which we undervalued in enjoying. How happy a thing is it to know the
seasons of grace, and not to neglect them! How desperate to have known and
neglected them I These tears are both late and false. (Bp. Hall.)
Verses 41-45
Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing.
--
Esau’s resentment
I. IT WAS CARNAL.
II. IT WAS
OVER-RULED FOR GOOD. (T. H. Leale.)
Lessons
1. Esau’s wicked hypocrites hate always bitterly those whom God
loves dearly.
2. God’s blessing on His own is the cause why the wicked do so much
hate and curse them.
3. The hearts of the wicked are meditating mischief, and their tongues
belching it out against the righteous.
4. Pretended mourning for the dead is the hypocrite’s cloak for the
death of the living.
5. Mischievous hypocrites in the Church, stick not to hasten the
death of parents when they hinder from their ends.
6. Resolutions of the wicked are for the slaughter of the righteous
and blessed, were it in their hands. (G. Hughes, B. D.)
Lessons
1. Providence ordereth the counsels of the wicked to be revealed
that they may be prevented.
2. God maketh sometimes the instruments of their straits to be
instruments of deliverance to His. So Rebekah was to Jacob.
3. It is but meet that such who bring into danger should be
solicitous to prevent it.
4. Timely advice for safety should be taken with greatest heed, as
given with greatest care.
5. The murder of the innocent is the comfort of the cruel and wicked
man. Revenge comforts the hypocrite, when no harm is done to him (Genesis 27:22).
6. The mother’s voice must be heard when it tends to the good of
children.
7. Flight from danger into exile is many times the lot of persecuted
saints.
8. God can make the wicked’s habitations sometimes shelters to His
people (Genesis 27:43.)
9. Gracious parents and children would part but for a little time if
it might be.
10. Time wears out anger and memory of all pretended injuries in the
wicked (Genesis 27:44).
11. Tender mothers long to preserve the lives of children, evil and
good.
12. To be childless, or bereft of all, is an evil deprecated by the
saints (verse Jeremiah 31:15). (G. Hughes, B. D.)
Verse 46
I am weary of my life.
--Throughout the whole of man’s marvellous pilgrimage on earth, or at least
from the time that he became truly intelligent, the same haunting mysteries
hover around him; the same unappeasable hunger, the same quenchless thirst, and
the same abiding restlessness characterize all human life. One blood circulates
throughout the whole family of man. And so, in these words of our text, Rebekah
speaks for us all. She anticipates the inquiry of Mr. Mallock. “Is life worth
living?” She discloses a difficulty which we still feel, a difficulty which all
the mighty discoveries of modern science are powerless to remove, or even to
alieviate. We are still as far as Rebekah was from finding on earth any real
and abiding object for our lives. Illusion spreads itself over our whole life.
Our present is for ever discrediting our past, to be itself also discredited in
its turn. Our different moods of mind have not the smallest faith in each
other. Youth finds out the illusions of childhood; manhood finds out those of
youth; and old age finds them both out, and too often sheds all further belief
or hope, as trees shed their leaves in autumn. It often seems as if nature took
a kind of pleasure in deceiving us, or sporting with us. In the realm of nature
nothing is, but all things are becoming. Nature is a sort of embodied illusion.
She tempts us to take refuge in utter sceptism. We no sooner get accustomed to
some of her ways, than forthwith she proceeds to alter them. As soon as we find
out one of her illusions, she immediately presents us with another. She makes
us laugh and cry almost in the same moment. Nature mocks at the staid
seriousness of the human soul. But not in nature is our chief or strongest hope
of finding a settled home for our spirits. Man is far dearer to us than nature
can ever be. “A man” would indeed be to us a “hiding-place,” if only we could
find a real and genuine man. Rebekah is not much troubled by the spiteful
duplicity of nature, so long as she has the heart of Jacob her son entirely for
her own. Sublime and full of prophetic glory are the grand illusions of the
human heart. What tender, fervent soul has not at some time thoroughly believed
in them? Every deep human affection has its strange mystic transfiguration on
the high mountains of exalted nobleness. Earth appears the very vestibule of
heaven; and we gratefully exclaim with St. Peter, “Lord, it is good for us to
be here.” Here we seek to make tabernacles, in which to entertain for ever the
celestial visitants. But by and by the vision vanishes. The voice of the
prophets is heard no more. The sterile bleakness of the mountain discloses
itself; and affection such as we had dreamed of appears a romantic
impossibility. Down we come from our mountain of transfiguration, to tread with
perplexity and weariness the old dusty road that seems to lead to no particular
goal. “Our silver is become dross, our wine mixed with water.” Our sacramental
elements are common bread and common wine. Jacob is sent away from his mother;
and the very soul of Rebekah becomes inert and objectless. And so we learn how
essentially solitary the human soul is here on earth. We learn that no one
human being is adequate to the complete and permanent satisfaction of any other
human being. We learn that Rebekah was not wise to seek the true centre of her
life in the unstable heart of Jacob her son. We learn that souls, like atoms,
never really meet or coalesce, that every human spirit is in truth an island
surrounded by the dark waters of innavigable seas. It is only on certain rare,
sacred days that divine miraculous ships of the Lord affords a means of
communication to these lonely islands. We pilgrims must learn to live on such
divine mana of human affection as God may send us from day to day. We may not
store it up in great strong barns of our own devising; for it will not keep.
Earthly friendships are only “ brooks in the way,” of which we may drink freely
now and then during our long dusty pilgrimage, and so “ lift up our heads,” and
walk with freshened energy towards the far-off land of changeless realities.
The friendships of earth are but transient foregleams of deep, unchanging,
mystic glories in the world to come. Failing, then, to find an anchor for the
soul, or a real centre in the hearts of our brethren, can we find it in work,
in some great aim which shall occupy all our energies, and lift us up above the
fret and worry and the vain longings of life? Without religion I think that we
cannot; and even with this aid we can only do so to a certain extent. The
pilgrim must still remain a pilgrim. The simple fact that we ourselves are
always changing, always growing, never “continuing in one stay,” obviously
renders it impossible for us to find permanent satisfaction in any one pursuit.
Of each successive object of man’s devotion and attachment we may truly say, in
the sad language of the Psalmist, “In the morning it is green, and groweth up;
but in the evening it is cut down, dried up, and withered.” An
ever-tantalizing, ever baffling limitation mars and spoils all human objects of
pursuit. We need God’s dew from heaven to revive and water even our fading and
languishing ideals. (A. Craufurd, M. A.)
Lessons
1. Good wives are ready in straits to unbosom themselves to good
husbands.
2. Good mothers are in great trouble for the good and safety of
their children.
3. Gracious women are burdened with the impieties of rebellious and
wicked allies in their families.
4. Wicked matches are burdens to the very life of gracious parents.
5. God sometimes makes gracious mothers more solicitous to stir up
fathers for right disposing of their children (Genesis 27:46). (G. Hughes, B. D.)
──《The Biblical Illustrator》