Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 24-25.

One thing that struck me during this time reading through the accounts of Ishmael and Isaac is that despite Ishmael being given reasons to resent Isaac, he appears to have been on good terms with him by the time Abraham died.  Back in chapter 17, God gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision at the same time as He told Abraham that Isaac would be born the following year.  Ishmael was thirteen years old when Abraham circumcised him.  It seems that there is a good chance that Ishmael would have known about the connection between being circumcised, which was surely a painful procedure, and the birth of Isaac.  Many thirteen year old’s would have resented their younger half-brother for that.  Later, when Abraham sent Hagar and Ishmael away, Ishmael would have surely known it was because Sarah viewed him as a threat to her son Isaac.  Again many young men would have resented their younger half-brother for that.  Yet, when Abraham died, Ishmael stood by Isaac as they together buried their father.  And we know from later on that there were some continued relations between Isaac and Ishmael because when Esau realized that his parents did not like his first two wives, he tried to fix that by marrying Ishmael’s daughter.  Esau would not have done that if there were not some goodwill between Isaac and Ishmael.

I have never really given much thought to Esau’s side of the relationship between Jacob and Esau.  I often think about the fact that God said that He favored Jacob before they were born, but that’s not exactly what God says here.  God told Rebekah that her older son would serve his younger brother.  (Yes, later, in Malachi, God said “I have loved Jacob but Esau I have hated.” But that doesn’t change what I am writing here).  Here we see that Esau had no real thought for his future.  He came back from the field when Jacob was cooking.  Esau was hungry and casually sold his birthright for a meal.  As the eldest son of Jacob, Esau’s birthright was a double portion of his father’s wealth when his father passed it on to his sons (typically upon the father’s death).  But it’s more than just the wealth, it is also a double portion of his father’s legacy.  It should have been Esau through whom God’s blessing to Abraham and Isaac should have come, but here he sold that to Jacob for a bowl of stew.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.