3 And Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau his brother unto the land of Seir, the country of Edom. 4 And he commanded them, saying, Thus shall ye speak unto my lord Esau; Thy servant Jacob saith thus, I have sojourned with Laban, and stayed there until now: 5 And I have oxen, and asses, flocks, and menservants, and womenservants: and I have sent to tell my lord, that I may find grace in thy sight.It had been twenty years since Jacob had seen his brother. Twenty years is a lot of time for people to change. Certainly, Jacob was not returning as the same man as when he first left his father’s home.
Even so, Jacob had not forgotten the hostility that Esau held towards him when he left, and he thought it wise to send servants ahead with a flattering and humble message. Note that in his statement Jacob calls himself Esau’s servant, refers to Esau as “my lord,” and states that his desire is simply to find grace in his brother’s sight. When Jacob had stolen his father’s blessing Isaac had specifically promised that Esau’s descendants would serve Jacob’s, thus it was particularly prudent for Jacob to show that he did not consider himself as above his brother here and now.
Jacob also included in his message a description of the many animals and people in his entourage. Perhaps this was to alert Esau to the fact that there were many innocents who did not deserve to die for Jacob’s past transgressions, or perhaps to let Esau know that Jacob was independently wealthy, and thus wasn’t coming to take Esau’s living from him.
And now Jacob has only to wait and see what answer is brought back to him. He has knocked on the door of his own home, but he does not know if it is a sword or an embrace that waits upon the other side.
Scriptural Analysis- Genesis 32:1-2
1 And Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him. 2 And when Jacob saw them, he said, This is God’s host: and he called the name of that place Mahanaim.We are about to read of Jacob’s reunion with Esau, and it will be abundantly clear how worrying this meeting was for him. He had made it safely away from Laban, but for all he knew he was going out of the frying pan and into the fire!
How comforting it must have been, then, to meet these angelic figures. We do not know what transpired between he and they, clearly the messengers did not remove the issue of meeting with Esau, but at least there would have been the comfort of knowing God was still watching over him in this, his greatest moment of need. Jacob would still have to continue into the lion’s den, but he would not have to go alone.
Scriptural Analysis- Genesis 28:6-9
6 When Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob, and sent him away to Padan-aram, to take him a wife from thence; and that as he blessed him he gave him a charge, saying, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan;
7 And that Jacob obeyed his father and his mother, and was gone to Padan-aram;
8 And Esau seeing that the daughters of Canaan pleased not Isaac his father;
9 Then went Esau unto Ishmael, and took unto the wives which he had Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael Abraham’s son, the sister of Nebajoth, to be his wife.Esau witnessed the blessing and charge that Isaac gave to Jacob, and he realized how his own marriage choices had distressed his parents. He therefore married his cousin Mahalath, daughter of Ishmael, Isaac’s brother.
But Esau’s motivation here was to appease his parents. Not an evil desire, of course, but hardly the best reason for following commandments. Esau’s chief concern was not obedience to God or to overcome his base impulses, but to find a quick solution to return himself to the good graces of other people.
But then, that is most often the case with each of us. Most of us try to do good things to appease some worldly influence, and then get frustrated that we can’t keep up that game for long. If we want to change, to truly change, it has to be founded in something more real.
Scriptural Analysis- Genesis 27:37-40
37 And Isaac answered and said unto Esau, Behold, I have made him thy lord, and all his brethren have I given to him for servants; and with corn and wine have I sustained him: and what shall I do now unto thee, my son? 38 And Esau said unto his father, Hast thou but one blessing, my father? bless me, even me also, O my father. And Esau lifted up his voice, and wept. 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; 40 And by thy sword shalt thou live, and shalt serve thy brother; and it shall come to pass when thou shalt have the dominion, that thou shalt break his yoke from off thy neck.Esau continued to plead for some sort of blessing from his father, even after hearing that Jacob had already been promised to rule over his brother’s posterity. And this prophecy would come true after the Israelite Exodus. Jacob’s descendants would enter wars with all the other nations in the promised land, including the Edomites, who were the descendants of Esau. This struggle between the brothers’ posterity would be resolved when Saul and David finally conquered the Edomites, subjugating the nation for many years to come.
However, God did have a small reprieve for Esau, and through Isaac he pronounced that the Edomites would eventually regain their freedom. This would occur in the days of Elisha and Joram, when the Edomites successfully revolted and crowned their own king. They would never go so far as to gain power over the Israelites, but at least they would be their own masters.
But it would be wrong to assume that the Israelites would prevail over the Edomites because of this one time where Jacob was more faithful than Esau. The Israelites prevailed in the time of David because they were more worthy at that time. And the Edomites eventually threw off the Israelites because the Israelites were no longer more worthy at that time. Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that when God foretells good or bad for a nation, it is a recompense for a decision made by a single ancestor. This was a misconception that Jesus had to correct his own disciples on many years later. When God foretold that Jacob’s descendants would rule over Esau’s he was merely foretelling that their descendants would earn that outcome for themselves.
Scriptural Analysis- Genesis 27:30-36
30 And it came to pass, as soon as Isaac had made an end of blessing Jacob, and Jacob was yet scarce gone out from the presence of Isaac his father, that Esau his brother came in from his hunting. 31 And he also had made savoury meat, and brought it unto his father, and said unto his father, Let my father arise, and eat of his son’s venison, that thy soul may bless me. 32 And Isaac his father said unto him, Who art thou? And he said, I am thy son, thy firstborn Esau. 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. 34 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. 35 And he said, Thy brother came with subtilty, and hath taken away thy blessing. 36 And he said, Is not he rightly named Jacob? for he hath supplanted me these two times: he took away my birthright; and, behold, now he hath taken away my blessing. And he said, Hast thou not reserved a blessing for me?As I mentioned previously, Isaac immediately pieced together what transpired once he was greeted by the real Esau, so he must have still had his suspicions all the way through giving Jacob the first blessing.
And as for Esau, even amidst his anguish his chief concern was that he still receive some sort of blessing. His words “hast thou not reserved a blessing for me?” further shows his misunderstanding of how blessings work. He seems to believe that it us up to his father to produce and give out blessing as if they could be pulled out a bag.
Esau does not appreciate that true blessings are the immutable word of God, given and withheld entirely at His choosing. Thus the blessing that Esau ends up receiving is not some backup gift his father conjured up, it is the original blessing that was always intended for him by God.
Scriptural Analysis- Genesis 27:1-4
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. 2 And he said, Behold now, I am old, I know not the day of my death: 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; 4 And make me savoury meat, such as I love, and bring it to me, that I may eat; that my soul may bless thee before I die.We previously read about when Ishmael had been born, but not Isaac, and God promised to Abraham that Sarah would yet have a child of her own. Abraham had thought that was incredulous, and suggested God just take all of the covenanted blessings and bestow them upon his current son, Ishmael (Genesis 17:17-18). But God rejected that plan, assuring Abraham that the covenant must pass on to an as-of-yet unborn child, and from that point on Abraham seems to have accepted God’s word on the matter, even though Isaac was the second-born.
It is interesting that Isaac, a second-born who received the covenant blessing from God, did not realize that the same selection needed to occur upon his own sons. For some reason he was not aligned with God’s purposes in this matter as his father had been. It is especially strange that he is not open to this arrangement after he saw Esau defy the Lord’s commandments by marrying two strange wives that were outside of the covenant.
Was it because Isaac loved Esau more than Jacob (Genesis 25:28) that he was unwilling to entertain the thought of giving his choicest blessings to the younger? As today’s verses state, Isaac’s eyes seem to be dim on the matter, and not only in the physical sense.
Scriptural Analysis- Genesis 26:34-35
34 And Esau was forty years old when he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite: 35 Which were a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah.Esau’s choice to marry the Hittite wives is another example of how he sought his immediate desires over the blessings of God. His family was living in Gerar, many miles away from the covenant bloodline. But rather than take a trip to the home of his forefathers to find a wife who knew and followed Jehovah, he sought immediate gratification from the idolatrous wives who lived next door.
As with his birthright and the mess of pottage, Esau showed an aloofness for the things of God, a failure to see the weight and significance in anything that did not immediately feed his physical, carnal appetites. When we first met him in Genesis 25:27 he was called a “man of the field,” and that is an incredibly astute description. Esau was a man of the earth, a man of the physical realm, whose thoughts extended no higher than the dirt of the plain.
Scriptural Analysis- Genesis 25:29-34
29 And Jacob sod pottage: and Esau came from the field, and he was faint: 30 And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint: therefore was his name called Edom. 31 And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright. 32 And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me? 33 And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob. 34 Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright.Here we have the famous scene of Esau selling his birthright for a mess of pottage. Of course, God had already foretold that his covenant blessings would be continued through Jacob, not Esau, and I wonder whether Jacob was aware of that prophecy, or if he was fulfilling it unknowingly.
There are those who decry Jacob for taking advantage of his brother, though personally his methods have in these verses have never disturbed me. Esau might have said “I am at the point to die,” but he was still walking and talking, hardly the behavior of someone who is literally at death’s door. And if Esau was willing to trade the blessings of God to satiate his hunger, then he didn’t deserve to have it in the first place. He was literally valuing the things of the body more than the things of God. Even after Esau had taken care of his physical needs it then describes him as simply rising up and walking away, not showing the slightest sign of remorse at the priceless birthright that he had just given up.
And no doubt Esau’s temporal-focused mindset was evident in the way he lived his life, even before this moment. Jacob would have known that his brother would never honor and cherish God’s birthright in the same way that he would. Perhaps part of the reason why Esau was willing to sell the birthright was because he knew it, too.
There is a good deal of supposition from me in all of that, but I do think there is enough room for doubt that we shouldn’t try to judge Jacob on the matter. Maybe he was in the wrong, but also maybe he was not. And in any case, this whole exchange was only a bit of human theatrics, it did not actually change either man’s destiny. God had already determined where the blessings would go years prior, and Esau and Jacob were merely playing into his foreordained plan.
Spiritual Wanderings 