Ge. 27: Con-Man in the Family

By this time, Isaac is doddering around the tent, and mainly just being old. The word says his vision was failing, so basically all he could do is taste and smell.

He calls in Esau and tells him to go hunt him some of his favorite game, and cook him up something tasty so that Isaac could deliver his blessing. Isaac still favored Esau here, in spite of the LORD telling Rebekah in Gen 25:23 that Jacob would be served by Esau. Rebekah as we know favored Isaac, so she planned to have Jacob deceive his old man. The ruse: Dressing up as and smelling like Esau and bringing Isaac some goats prepared from their own flock. Jacob did not need to be coerced at all by his mother Rebekah. He basically went along with it from the beginning. But this was different from back in chapter 25 when Jacob took advantage of the short-sighted and hungry Esau by trading stew for his birthright.

And the Bible doesn't editorialize here. It reports. I decide. I decide that Jacob is a jerk for taking advantage of Esau, and then falsely claiming God provided for him when Isaac asked how "Esau" got the food so quickly, and Rebekah is just as conniving, and I wonder what changed between who she is here, and the camel-watering servant girl from chapter 24. Wealth?

So the trick works, and Isaac doles out this magnificent blessing upon Jacob, ending with "May those who curse you be cursed, and those who bless you be blessed." I wonder what ran through Jacob's mind as he heard these blessings spoken, realizing they were not intended for him, and what would have been.

So Jacob bails, and Esau returns, bearing tasty game. Sure enough, a horrified Isaac realized he's been tricked, but there's not much he can do now. It was heartbreaking to read how Esau reacted, bursting out with a loud and bitter cry. This was it, this was major, and how his future would be directed. And it was gone, and Esau knew it. So maybe he made some wrong decisions along the way, it doesn't detract from my sympathy for him.

"Bless me - me too, my father." I can imagine Esau weeping aloud in his desperation for something great from his father, anything good.

Isaac simply says, "Jacob took your blessing."

Esau refers to Jacob's name apparently meaning deception, in that he grasps the heel. He refers to the stew episode.

As Isaac gave Jacob everything, he could give Esau only servitude, poverty and violence. What a downer. So much so that Esau looked forward to mourning his father so he could kill Jacob. Rebekah found out about it, and warned Jacob to go hide with her brother Laban until Esau gets over it. Which...is going to take some kind of cosmic miracle.

Then, in order to cover for Jacob, she tells Isaac she's sick of these (local) Hittite women, creating a story that Jacob went to live with Laban to find a wife. Rebekah just has all the bases covered.

OK, so, I'm seeing a lot of intermarriage here, and close relatives hooking up. I don't mean to skim over it, just that I assume it was a better option than marrying pagan women outside of God's covenant. I don't mean to skim over it, because I shudder at the thought of marrying a half-sister or something, but this was how they did it back then, and apparently it simply wasn't as taboo as it is today.