Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 26-28.

I think that perhaps we do not pay enough attention to Esau’s poor choices for his first two wives.  They represent the same sort of poor decision making which led him to sell his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of stew.  It says here that Esau’s wives made life bitter for Isaac and Rebekah.  The NIV translates that as “They were a source of grief for Isaac and Rebekah.”  In either case, Esau’s wives made life miserable for his parents. This was not just a matter of them not liking his wives.  What made me go down this path was that as I read this passage I began to wonder what made Rebekah choose to trick her husband into giving his blessing to Jacob.  Yes, in yesterday’s passage it said that Isaac loved Esau because he ate of the game which Esau killed when he went hunting, and that Rebekah loved Jacob, but that does seem like enough for Rebekah to go to this much effort to steal Isaac’s blessing for Jacob.  No, I think Esau’s wives were the reason that Rebekah chose to conspire with Jacob to steal the blessing.  I think that it never occurred to Esau that his wives had caused a problem with his father until after Isaac sent Jacob to Paddan-aram.  Perhaps he was aware that his mother did not like his wives, but I don’t think it ever crossed his mind that that was a problem.  Of course, Esau’s wives also did not see how their behavior negatively impacted Esau’s relationship with his family, or, perhaps they thought it did not matter.  It never occurred to any one of the three of them that they needed to care what Isaac and Rebekah thought about their relationship or how they acted.  While this example gives us an example of the sorts of problems which arise when we do not think about how our actions, and the actions of those we choose to love, will impact our relations with our families, the same thing holds true with our other relationships as well.  We should think carefully about our various relationships will impact our other relationships, especially when we decide on who we will marry (but not just who we marry).  I want to also note that I think Esau would have been better off trying to get his wives to act differently in regard to his parents rather than trying to fix the problem by marrying a third woman.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 26-28.

I am not sure what to make of something that caught my attention in today’s passage.  First, I noticed that Isaac was caught out for lying by saying that Rebekah was his sister because Abimelek saw him caressing her through a window.  That suggests that Isaac was living in town (after all, if he was telling people Rebekah was his sister, he wouldn’t caress her unless he was at home, or, at least close to home).  Second, Rebekah had some of Esau’s clothes to give Jacob because the clothes were “in the house”.  Yet, in between, after Isaac left Gerar, the passage tells us that he pitched his tent near Beersheba.  I want to note that God appeared to Isaac there before he pitched his tent.  The way this reads the phrase “pitched his tent” seems to have a more long term implication than just setting up a tent to stay for a night or two.

I mentioned God appearing to Isaac in the last paragraph because I want to connect it to God appearing to Jacob at Bethel, where He had previously appeared to Abraham.  It is when God appears to Jacob at Bethel that Isaac is put on the list of those who belong to God.  When God begins speaking to Jacob He introduces Himself as the Lord, the God of Abraham  and the God of Isaac.  Here God promised Jacob that He would be with him wherever he went and would bring him back to this land.  Jacob then affirmed that if God did that, God would be his God.  One thing is interesting, and is easy to miss, when Jacob says this he modifies the “deal” God was offering him.  God promised that He would bring Jacob safely back to this land.  Jacob promised to make God his God, if God brought him safely back to his father’s household.  And yet ,even though Jacob put a condition on taking God as his God, he acknowledged that it would be God who gave him everything he would gain.  Jacob promised that if God brought him safely home, he would give back to God a tenth of everything which God gave him.  Jacob acknowledges here that everything he would gain would be given to him by God

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 26-28.

Usually I try to write about spiritual lessons from the passage which I read. but today I just have some thoughts.

Why did Rebekah conspire with Jacob to trick Isaac into giving Jacob the blessing intended for Esau?  We were told in yesterday’s passage that Isaac loved Esau because Esau was a hunter of wild game and Isaac loved eating wild game, and we were told that Rebekah loved Jacob.  However,  the passage did not explain Rebekah’s love for Jacob.  It seems likely that Esau’s Hittite wives played a role in Rebekah’s preference for Jacob.  Actually, I suspect that the aspects of Esau’s personality which led him to take not one, but two Hittite wives contributed to Rebekah favoring Jacob over Esau.  Another question this passage raises: why wasn’t Isaac upset that Jacob had tricked him into giving him the blessing he intended for Esau?  Perhaps he was and the account just doesn’t mention it.  However, I think it likely that while Isaac loved Esau he was also disappointed in him.   After all, Abraham, Isaac’s father had arranged his marriage, but the passage suggests that Esau did not even consult his father before marrying two women whom neither of his parents liked.  Even after Isaac sent Jacob to Rebekah’s family to find a wife, Esau did not consult with his father over Isaac’s unhappiness with his wives.  Esau just went and married one of Ishmael’s daughters.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 26-28.

Well, my first thought was, “Well, I guess the idea that Jacob was the reason for the Hebrew phrase for “he grasps the heel” meaning “he deceives” was incorrect, because, after discovering that Jacob had stolen his father’s blessing, Esau says that Jacob was rightly named.  I struggle with the fact that, based on things we learn elsewhere in the Bible, God appears to have intended for Jacob to deceive Isaac into giving him the blessing which Isaac intended to give Esau.  Perhaps if Rebekah had not gotten Jacob to deceive his father God would have found another way for Jacob to gain the blessing.  We will never know.  However, this passage shows us that God uses our sinful behavior to accomplish his purposes.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Genesis 26-28.

As I was reading this I was struck by something which does not fit with our usual understanding of Isaac (or even Abraham before him).  That something has several elements.  First, for some length of time Isaac lived in the city of Gerar.  Second, Isaac gained a great amount of wealth from farming.  Third, as part of gaining that wealth, Isaac also become militarily powerful.  We normally think of Isaac as being a nomadic herdsman, but this passage suggests that he spent a significant part of his life as a farmer.  This story also suggests to me that Isaac was contemporary with the early settlement by the Philistines on the Mediterranean coast, which would push the arrival of the Philistines back a couple hundred years from when conventional archeology dates it.

Next we have the story of Jacob stealing the blessing which Isaac intended for Esau.  I always feel bad for Esau in this story, but I also acknowledge that in some ways his loss of this blessing resulted from his lack of foresight in selling his birthright.  While we only have these two accounts of conflict between Esau and Jacob, it seems likely there were more.  Esau was impulsive and did not always think through the consequences of his actions.  In any case, Esau was murderously angry with Jacob, to the degree that Rebekah thought he might actually kill him given the opportunity.  So Rebekah arranged to send Jacob to her brother Laban for a few years.  There are two aspects to Jacob being sent off that we normally gloss over.  First, Rebekah said that she would send word to Jacob when he should return (might word from Rebekah had something to do with the timing of Jacob’s decision to leave Laban?). Second, Isaac makes clear to Jacob that he should return to the Land of Canaan at some point.  I am confident that Isaac was indirectly reminding Jacob of the story about Abraham’s servant obtaining Rebekah to be Isaac’s wife.  Isaac was telling Jacob that it was OK for him to go to Haran to obtain a wife, but he must not stay there.   Finally, there is Jacob’s vision of the stairway to heaven.  I want to focus on Jacob’s oath.  We tend to view this as Jacob making a deal with God: “God keep me safe and bring me safely back to my father’s household and I will server you.”  I think it was more of a fleece: “If God keeps me safe AND brings me back to my father’s household than God is THE God (not just a god) and I will worship Him, and only Him.”  Jacob was going off to a foreign land where he would have opportunities and he was unsure that he was ever going to come back.  He had heard the stories which his father told about God and the history and creation of the world, stories passed down from Abraham, but he was not sure he believed them.  After all, the people among whom they lived had different stories about the history and creation of the world.  Sure, he had just had a vision which seemed to confirm his father’s accounts, but was it really a vision, or just a dream?

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

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 26-28.

When Jacob, pretending to be Esau, brought the dish to Isaac, Isaac asked him how he was able to find it so quickly.  Jacob replied that “The Lord, your God, gave me success.”  Jacob does not at this point consider the Lord to be his own God, merely the God of his father.  Later, when he had a vision of a stairway to Heaven, he vows that if God brings him safely back to his father’s house, then the Lord would be his God.  This is a process that each of us must go through at some point.  We must transition from the Lord being someone else’s God to being our God.  If we are lucky, that someone else is one or both of our parents.  However, if the Lord was our parents’ God, sometimes we think that He just automatically becomes ours, but we must each choose Him, just as Jacob chose Him.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on Genesis 26-28.

It struck me today as I compared what happened when Isaac said that Rebekah was his sister rather than his wife to when Abram did the same with Sarai that what happened in Egypt differed from what happened in Philistia.  In Egypt, God sent plagues upon the Pharaoh and his household.  In Philistia, God merely appeared to the first Abimelech when he took Sarai to be his wife.  The second Abimelech realized that Rebekah was Isaac’s wife before anyone did anything.  The thing of interest being that the Philistines recognized the sin of taking another man’s wife to bed, while the Egyptians only responded to the consequences.  The second Abimelech saw value in allying with Isaac.  Initially, he thought that Isaac would assimilate into the population and increase his own wealth.  When Abimelech realized that Isaac would not assimilate and had become powerful enough to be competition, he asked Isaac to move on.  Nevertheless, once Isaac had moved far enough to not be competition to his own power, Abimelech made a treaty with Isaac, just as the previous Abimelech had done with Abraham.