Jacob and Esau

by Philip du Nard

In Genesis 25, we learn that after Sarah died, Abraham remarried and had many more sons by his wife, Keturah, but he "gave all that he had to Isaac" and eventually sent the other sons away to the "east country."

Abraham died at the age of 175 and Isaac continued to dwell in Canaan by the well Lahairoi. The sons of Ishmael are then named.

Then the generations of Isaac are named. Rebekah, his wife, was barren. As is so often the case, the Lord puts his people in circumstances where they must pray in order to have His intervention and blessing and so it was here. Isaac had to pray and God had to intervene before Rebekah could conceive.

When a believer has an experience like this, it makes the Lord very real to them and seeing the hand of God in a situation like this confirms in one's mind that the whole thing is indeed of God and very special.

Therefore, it evidently seemed all the more puzzling to Rebekah that the children would struggle with each other. We pray, God answers, and we sometimes still wonder why things should work out the way they do. Verse 22 states, "And the children struggled together within her; and she said,If it be so, why am I thus? And she went to enquire of the Lord."

The Lord's answer to Rebekah was, "Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger."

In light of the concerted effort in our time to ignore or downplay any differences that might exist among earthly peoples and vehemently proclaim that all are the same and there is something terribly evil about those who might so much as suggest otherwise, it is revealing to see that the Almighty, unmoved by such political correctness, proclaims there to be important differences, not only between the two boys, but their respective descendants as well.

We should not be ashamed to say that these are "two manner of people."How significant were these differences? They were significant enough to produce conflict. The fact that the boys struggled in the very womb refutes the idea that they were "taught to hate" as some might claim. This struggling was symbolic of the rivalry and contention that would exist, not only in the lives of Jacob and Esau, but between the two peoples all down through history.

Later, we learn that Esau sold his birthright to Jacob for some red pottage which is how he and his descendants came to be known as Edom which means "red." The very name whereby Esau's nation came to be called is associated with this incident and would therefore seem to be symbolic of treasuring the more immediate material side of things over the seemingly more intangible benefits of the birthright though there certainly were material blessings associated with the birthright. Whatever can be said about the manner in which Jacob came into possession of the birthright, it is clear from God's proclamation to Rebekah that He intended for Jacob to have it anyway and it merely reflected the longstanding attitude of the two young men. Jacob evidently placed a value on such things just as in the days of Mary and Martha, Mary chose to sit at the feet of Jesus to hear His words and so the Lord said of her that she "hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken from her." Luke 10:42. Jacob's name was later changed to Israel which means "ruling with God." Esau, by constrast, " despised his birthright." In Hebrews 12:15-17, Christians are warned against doing as Esau did.

This same attitude was manifested by his utter disregard for the long range purposes of God by his violation of Abraham's command and the wishes of his parents by marrying into a forbidden lineage. We read in Genesis 26:34-35, "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:  Which were a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah."

This was but another way of despising his birthright. He apparently is called a "fornicator" for this action in the passage of Hebrews cited above and, thus, a case could be made that this was another form of fornication.

In Genesis 27, we have the familiar story of how Jacob secured from his father Isaac the blessing that Isaac intended for Esau to have by deceiving Isaac into thinking that he, Jacob, was Esau. The blessing he received is an important identification mark of the Israel people. Verses 26-28 state, "And his father Isaac said unto him, Come near now, and kiss me, my son.  And he came near, and kissed him: and he smelled the smell of his raiment, and blessed him, and said, See, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field which the LORD hath blessed: Therefore God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine: Let people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee: be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother's sons bow down to thee: cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee."

The smell of the field is evidently something that would characterize the descendants of Jacob down through the ages as Isaac blessed Jacob accordingly with great agricultural bounty. Whatever can be said about the genius and special talents of the Jewish people, the smell of the field is not something that has been generally associated with them, especially during the church age. Rather, there are other scriptural indications that they would be drawn to the financial realm.
See the exposition of the Parable of the Unjust Steward at What Has Happened That the Bible Has Predicted. Scroll down to point #5.

This is yet another indication to look elsewhere for the fulfillment of this blessing.

In Psalm 145:15, we read, "The eyes of all wait upon thee and thou givest them their meat in due season." God has blessed all peoples of the earth to a certain extent with material blessings, otherwise they could not survive. So some might contend that God's blessing upon Jacob was a rather generic blessing. But we might reasonably conclude that, relative to the other peoples of the earth, the blessings of the field would be especially evident among the descendants of Jacob. In other words, they would be listed among the "have" nations in contrast to the "have-nots." So while the fact that the United States has, historically, been blessed with some of the most productive farmland in the world and the northern European peoples, in contrast to the native peoples, have tended to make the most of the land wherever they have gone such as Australia, South Afrtica,etc. may not seem to be of much significance to some people or be much of an indication of their Israelite ancestry, it certainly does not disqualify them. In like manner the fact that Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem does not, by itself, make Him the Messiah and there are those that would say it proves nothing but it certainly is a prerequisite.

Rebekah advised Jacob to flee the wrath of Esau. In chapter 28, Isaac passes the blessing of Abraham on to Jacob of a multiplicity of seed and the title to the promised land.

Later in the chapter, as Jacob is on his journey to his relatives, when Jacob has his vision of angels ascending and descending a ladder, God says, among other things, "And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed." I suspect many fail to appreciate the scope of this statement. As the seed of Abraham through Jacob-Israel was to become many nations, there is no reason to believe that this spreading abroad would be confined to a small territory in the Middle East.