Jacob's Trick, Jacob's Trouble - Genesis 26:34-27:46

Bible Study Lesson for February 17

Having told a series of stories about Isaac, Genesis returns in chapter 27 to Jacob and Esau. As you will remember from Genesis 25:23, before Esau and Jacob were born, their mother Rebekah received a message from God about their fates: “Two nations are in your womb,/ and two peoples born of you shall be divided;/ the one shall be stronger than the other,/ the elder shall serve the younger.” When Jacob was born as the second twin, he became the heir of the surprising promise of God. Just as Isaac was chosen over his older brother Ishmael, so Jacob will carry the promise instead of Esau. Later in chapter 25, Jacob bargained with his hungry brother to obtain his birthright: the material possessions that would pass from Isaac to his sons.

In Chapter 27 we have a wonderful example of how the Bible tells stories. The episode begins with Isaac wanting to bless his eldest son. The blessing will be a verbal statement about Isaac’s wishes for Esau. In the Bible, these types of speeches have power of their own. Rebekah hears Isaac command Esau to bring him a savory dish of game, and when Esau comes back Isaac will bless him. This kicks off a series of seven scenes, all centered around the keyword blessing, which also appears seven times in the story.

1.  v. 1-4 Isaac commands Esau to bring him food, and promises to bless him.

2.  v. 5-17 Rebekah and Jacob plot to trick Isaac to get him to bless Jacob instead.

3.  v. 18-29 Jacob, disguised as Esau, brings his father a savory dish and succeeds in securing the blessing for himself.

4.  30-38 Esau comes back to Isaac and they discover what Jacob has done. Isaac blesses Esau with what is left.

5.  41 Esau plots against Jacob.

6.  42-45 Rebekah learns of the plot against Jacob, and makes plans with Jacob to send him away.

7.  27:46 Rebekah goes to Isaac and uses Esau’s marriage to two unapproved women as an excuse to send Jacob to find a wife from among her family.

What can we learn from this passage? What can we take and apply to our lives? Like many of the passages we have already read in Genesis, this one takes on the character of a morality play. There is no explicit judgment from God on any of the characters, those who succeed or those who fail, but we see behavior and consequence. When we pay attention to the characters themselves, we understand the consequences. Jacob once again lives up to his name (“heel grasper/supplanter” which means someone who takes another person’s place) and engages in trickery to deprive his older brother of his father’s blessing. From Jacob’s perspective, he is just fulfilling the promise of God from before he was born. Jacob is using whatever means necessary to secure the blessing that is his right by divine favor, even if the standards of the world say it should go to his older brother.

Jacob earns Esau’s hatred as a consequence of these actions to secure God’s promises for himself. As soon as Esau hears what Jacob has done, he expresses his resentment. “He took away my birthright; and look, now he has taken away my blessing” (27:36). Jacob and Rebekah have to live with the consequences of their decision. Jacob has to go into exile until his brother Esau calms down. He has to leave home and miss his father’s death and burial because his brother has determined to kill him once Isaac is out of the picture.

Do we ever fall into the trap of thinking the ends justify the means? We all know we do. When we get so caught up in what God has promised us, or what we feel is our right, that we lose sight of our neighbors. In the case of Jacob, he runs rough shod over his brother in order to secure what 

God has already promised to him. There is a temptation to press an advantage that we have, to look at the world as a zero-sum game, and to think the only way we can win is by making sure someone else loses. 

More often, we just don’t see past our own interests and we ignore the cost of our behavior to our neighbors without even realizing it. We have to think and reflect on how our actions affect everyone else. In the face of the dangerous and unprecedented winter storms in Texas this week, the power grid is facing a tremendous shortfall. A lot of people are without power, not because of damaged power lines or outages, but because there simply isn’t enough electricity to go around. The people who do have power have a choice. They can live as normal, running the heat to their level of comfort and using whatever electricity they want. Or they can try to ration their electricity by turning the temperature down a few degrees, allowing the grid to recover and have enough electricity to go around. We all have basic rights, but sometimes the insistence on getting our needs fulfilled in the way we want them to spells doom for our neighbors. We need to think about how our actions, even when seeking good goals, might affect other people. We need to always be asking ourselves, “what does it look like to love our neighbors in this situation?” There is a time for self-sacrifice in order to love others better.

Like Jacob, we Christians are recipients of the promise of God. But Jacob models for us the wrong way to go about seeking that promise’s fulfillment. Throughout his story, Jacob proves to be someone who is always looking out for himself. His sins and his shortcomings do not cancel out God’s promise, because God’s promise comes from God’s grace and not from Jacob’s actions. But God does not need Jacob to strive and manipulate in order to earn the promise. Especially when that striving and manipulating actively harm his brother Esau and others. Although we can trust in the free grace of God, the Bible encourages us to go beyond this trust to try to live lives of goodness and compassion. Jesus commands us to actively find ways to love our neighbors as ourselves. The ends do not justify the means when the means— the way we seek to achieve our goals— hurt other people.