WHAT THIS STORY TELLS US
We know that Abraham had a son called Isaac , and that God had promised to bless the children of Abraham and make of them a great nation. In this story the Bible tells us of the beginning of the fulfilment of that promise. We see how God guides men, and how patiently He deals with His people. We see how God blessed Isaac with wealth and happiness, and how His mighty promise began to fulfil itself in Isaac’s son, though he began life weakly and even wickedly.
THE STORY OF ISAAC AND HIS SONS
ISAAC, son of Abraham, was married to a woman named Rebekah, and he loved her tenderly. He became a rich man. He not only increased his flocks and herds, but he set himself, in addition, to plough land and grow corn. His courage and his skill both helped to make his wealth.
When famine came, he did not sit down and mourn, but moved away to more fertile country, and began again. When his wealth made other people envious, and they stopped up his wells so that his flocks and herds might perish, he quietly set himself to dig other wells and prayed to God for His protection.
God, who had blessed Abraham, blessed his son Isaac, and appeared to him in the midst of his troubles, saying, ” I am the God of Abraham thy father ; fear not, for I am with thee, and will bless thee, and multiply thy seed for my servant Abraham’s sake.” Isaac rested in this promise. His character was so calm and noble, his manner of life so honourable and beautiful, that even those who had sought to do him harm became his friends, and confessed that God had blessed him.
After nineteen years of marriage, Rebekah, his wife, gave birth to two sons, Esau and Jacob. The joy of Isaac was now complete. His farming prospered, his heart was filled with peace, and his sons grew up in health and strength to rejoice the eyes of his age. Now, these two boys were very different in character.
Esau, the elder, was what we should call an outdoor lad; he loved riding and hunting, he was strong and powerful, he rejoiced in the splendid and dangerous risks of a wild life. Jacob, on the other hand, was a quiet and thoughtful lad ; he was adored by his mother, who kept him at her side, and he preferred thinking to action.
We can imagine how his mother would tell him of his wonderful grandfather, the rich and powerful Abraham, who had seen visions of God, and to whom God had made the promise that his children should be a great nation. Jacob would think much of these things.
Esau probably thought little about Abraham and his dreams. All he cared about was the joy of hunting and the exercise of his bodily strength. In some ways he was a fine character, for he was entirely free from avarice – he did not think how rich he would be when his father died, and he was not proud of being the eldest son and the heir. He married women of a tribe which greatly displeased his father. He did not care. He probably laughed when his father reproved him. And yet we know that in spite of this disobedience Isaac loved his brave, gallant, and wilful son, and yearned after him with his heart.
To show how reckless and wild was this bold hunter, he came home one day hot and weary from the chase, and found Jacob preparing a dish of food, the smell of which was very pleasant to him. He asked for it, and Jacob, who probably thought his rough brother unworthy of God’s blessing, replied that the food should be Esau’s if Esau would give him his birth-right; and Esau agreed. For a dish of food, because he was hungry and faint, he gave up the privilege of being the eldest son of Abraham’s son, Isaac.
Such were the characters of these two men. Esau, reckless, careless, but brave and generous; Jacob, gentle and thoughtful, but inclined to cunning.
HOW JACOB AND HIS MOTHER DECEIVED ISAAC AND STOLE THE BIRTHRIGHT
When their father, Isaac, was an old man, and his eyes were dim, he called Esau to his side, and told him to take bow and arrow and go out to shoot venison and return to him with meat, that he might lay his hands upon his eldest son and bless him.
Rebekah, his wife, heard these words; and directly Esau had gone out she whispered to Jacob that he should go and kill two kids, and she would make meat of them, and he should carry it to his father and receive the blessing. It was the advice not of a wicked woman, but of a mother tempted at that moment by love for her favourite child. Jacob listened to his mother and agreed to do as she desired, only saying that he feared to be discovered.
“Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man! My father peradventure will feel me, and I shall seem to him as a deceiver.”
Rebekah dressed him in Esau’s clothes, and put the skins of animals on his arms and neck. They both set themselves to deceive the blind, old, dying man.
STEALING OF THE BIRTHRIGHT AND THE GREAT BITTERNESS OF ESAU
Jacob carried the meat to his father, and his father was surprised. They spoke together in this manner, the father troubled by suspicion, the son trembling with shame and fear:
ISAAC: Who art thou, my son? JACOB: I am Esau, thy firstborn; I have done according as thou badest me. Arise, pray thee, sit and eat of my venison, that thy soul may bless me !
ISAAC: How is it that thou hast found it so quickly, my son?
JACOB: Because the Lord thy God brought it to me.
ISAAC: Come near, I pray thee, that I may feel thee, my son, whether thou be my very son Esau or not. The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau. Art thou my very son Esau ?
JACOB: I am.
Thus Jacob received the blessing of Isaac, who smelt the raiment of Esau which Jacob was wearing, and exclaimed with fatherly love, “See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field which the Lord hath blessed!”
When Jacob had gone out, and Isaac lay alone in the dim chamber, thinking of God’s promises to his father, Abraham, and praying that the son whom he had just blessed might receive the guidance of God, lo! there came in to the poor old man his son, his elder son, Esau, whom he loved with a deep passion.
Isaac, his father, said unto him, Who art thou? And he said, “I am thy son, thy firstborn, Esau.” 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.”
When Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with a great and bitter cry, and said unto his father, ‘Bless me, even me also, O my father!”
ONE OF THE MOST PATHETIC SCENES IN THE STORY OF THE WORLD
This scene is one of the most pathetic and beautiful in all the writings of the world. Who cannot see the horror in the dying, sightless eyes of the grand old farmer, and the bitter repentance of the reckless son as he knelt there, knowing, too late, that he had squandered his birthright? We can almost hear the sobs of the hunter, and see the trembling of the dying patriarch.
Esau’s fury against the brother who had supplanted him was deep and terrible. He vowed to kill him. But Rebekah heard of this, and, making a pretence that she wished Jacob to marry one of their own people, she persuaded Isaac to let Jacob go to her brother Laban, who lived far away, and there find a wife.
Her purpose was to send away only till Esau’s wrath had vanished; but her purpose was frustrated by the will of God. She had sinned; she had taught Jacob to deceive. Though her act was prompted by love, nevertheless, like every other sin, it had to meet its own punishment; and in kissing her son and sending him away for a few weeks, she was in reality parting from him for ever.