WEEKLY SUNDAY SCHOOL LESSON
An international Sunday school lesson commentary
For Sunday November 11, 2018
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JACOB’S DECEPTION
(Jacob steals Esau’s blessing)
(Genesis 27)
Genesis 27
shows us how “parental favoritism” can literally tear a family apart and
destroy the relationships of the siblings, potentially, forever. The parental
favoritism of Isaac and Rebekah was exposed to us in Genesis 25:28. There we
see that Isaac favored Esau, the oldest son, while Rebekah favored Jacob, the
younger son. This attitude by the parents ultimately led to a fragmented
relationship between Jacob and Esau that would last for the rest of their
lives, and also would affect their families for generations to come.
This chapter
begins, where we see an aging Isaac, now, almost totally blind, call for Esau,
his oldest and favorite son, as he feels that it is now time to pass on the
blessings and promise of GOD to the next generation. And even though he was
aware of GOD’s message to Rebekah (Genesis 25:23) that the Covenant promise
would be passed on through the youngest son, Jacob, instead, he seemed to be
dead set on following Hebrew tradition, and his own mind, rather than following
the course that GOD has already set for them.
In those days,
the “oral blessings” of a father had the same force as a “written Will” has in
today’s society, and that oral blessing would always stand up in court. Here
Isaac shows us how important it is to pass down, not just a gift of material
things, but also, it is more important to be able to pass down “a legacy of
faith”, or, in other words, pass down the wisdom of “the importance of having an
experiential relationship with GOD”.
Nevertheless, Isaac’s
sin of “favoritism” toward Esau had blinded him to the fact that Esau had
exhibited a disregard for “spiritual things” throughout his entire adult life.
He placed absolutely no value whatsoever on “spiritual reasoning”. He always
made it perfectly clear that he was only interested in the moment, and, in
satisfying his physical needs, whatever they might be, at the time (Genesis 25:29-34).
Here in this
passage, it seems as though Isaac is foolishly trying to force GOD’s hand
toward Esau, when he had known since before the boys were born, that, “Hebrew
tradition” would not prevail in this case, but rather, “GOD’s Will” would
overcome his selfish desires. And as I
stated before, GOD’s Will, had already been made known to he and Rebekah,
before she gave birth to the boys.
And so, while
Isaac was preparing to hand off his blessings to Esau, as GOD would have it,
his plans were overheard by Rebekah, and she quickly began to hatch up a scheme
of her own. However, Rebekah’s scheme, as crooked as it may seem on the
surface, was more in line with GOD’s plan, than what her husband was trying to
do.
Rebekah, who by
now was in “panic mode”, immediately ran to Jacob, her favorite son, and let
him in on what his father was about to do. Then she instructed Jacob to go out
to the flock and bring her two fine young goats. Jacob reluctantly replied, “He
(his father Isaac) won’t be fooled that easily. Think how hairy Esau is and how
smooth my skin is! What if my father touches me? He’ll see that I’m trying to
trick him, and then he’ll curse me instead of blessing me”.
In verse 13 of
this passage, we get a glimpse of how motivated and determined Rebekah is to
successfully carry out her scheme. There she tells young Jacob, “Let the curse
fall on me, dear son” (if they get caught in this scheme). Just go and do what
I tell you. Go out and get the goats”. I guest she was saying in effect that, “I’d
rather see myself in Hell, than for you to miss out on this blessing from your
father, my favorite son”.
Rebekah finally convinced
Jacob to play along and he went out and retrieved the goats, and she prepared
one of Isaac’s favorite meat dishes, from them. Then, she took Esau’s best
clothes and dressed Jacob in them, and afterwards, she made a pair of gloves
from the goatskin of the animals they had just killed. She also placed some of
the goat’s hair around Jacob’s neck.
After Rebekah prepared the meal and added
some fresh baked bread to the menu, she told Jacob to take it to his father and
pretend to be Esau so that he might deceitfully intercept Esau’s blessing from
a blind and unwitting Isaac. And so Jacob did as he was told, and carried the
food to his father.
Arriving in
Isaac’s presence, Jacob is given another opportunity to change his mind, and
not go through with this seemingly crooked scheme, but as fate would have it,
he doesn’t. In verse 18b, Isaac asks him, “Who is it? Is it Esau or Jacob?
Instead of telling the truth, Jacob claimed to be his older brother, Esau.
Ironically, in
verse 20, Jacob is met with another question from Isaac, in which the answer,
on the surface, might sound like a lie, but here the young man answers with
wisdom from GOD that he did not know he had. Here Isaac asks him, “How were you
able to find it (the meat) so quickly my son?” And an unwitting Jacob responds,
“Because the LORD your GOD put it in my path! He had no idea how right he was.
By allowing
Rebekah to overhear Isaac’s conversation with Esau, GOD was placing the
blessing of Isaac directly in the path of Jacob. Deep in his heart, Isaac knew
that he was supposed to pass down the blessing to Jacob, but because of his
steadfast adherence to tradition, and his desire to do what he wanted to do, he
was determined to pass it down to Esau, “his oldest and favorite son”.
In verse 21,
unable to depend on his “sense of sight”, and still not convinced that the
person standing before him was Esau, Isaac asks his son to come closer so that
he might be able to use his “sense of touch” to make a determination. Isaac’s
“sense of hearing”, was detecting what he thought may be the voice of Jacob,
and he wanted to be sure that he wasn’t just being paranoid, because his
conscience, probably by now, was convicting him because he was seeking to go
against what he knew was GOD’s wishes (to anoint Jacob instead of Esau).
Because of the
goat’s hair that his mother had put on him, Jacob passed the touch test. Isaac
accepted the food from him, and ate it. Still feeling a little leery, probably
because the meat didn’t “taste” exactly like it should (wild game has a
different taste from domesticated goat meat), Isaac decided to use the only
other sense he had, his “sense of smell”, to try and make absolutely sure that
it was Esau, and not Jacob.
And so in verse 26
of this passage, Isaac asked his son to kiss him, that way he would be close
enough to be able to see if he smelled like someone who had been out in the
open fields, the way Esau always smelt. Jacob was able to pass the “smell test”
because the animal skins that he was wearing emitted an outdoors smell like the
animals of the wild. And so now Isaac was convinced, and he unwittingly blessed
Jacob, who GOD had chosen, and thereby, had to later deny Esau, whom he had
chosen.
When Esau
returned from his hunt with the wild game, Isaac had to break the bad news to
him that Jacob had tricked him out of his blessing. Esau let out a loud cry,
and as I said earlier, not being able to fully grasp the spiritual implications
of what it all meant, he asked his father to give him the blessing too. Isaac
regretfully had to explain to him that there can be only one blessing of this sort,
and Jacob had received it, and “it was irrevocable”.
By this time,
Isaac, no doubt, had realized how GOD had usurped his foolish, selfish plan to
do things his way. He knew that he had tried to tamper with GOD’s plan and
failed miserably, literally destroying Esau in the process. And as a result of
what happened, Esau hated Jacob, and he made a promise to himself that he would
kill him as soon as their father, Isaac, had passed away.
When Esau began
to share his sentiments concerning Jacob with others, one of the people he told
passed the news on to Rebekak. As a result, Rebekah sent Jacob away to her
uncle Laban’s house in Padan-aram (450 miles away), where she thought he would
be safe. However, again, as the LORD would have it, now the stage was being set
for Jacob to learn a hard lesson of his own, of what it feels like, to be
deceived. Stay tuned.
A Sunday school lesson by,
Larry D. Alexander
LARRY D. ALEXANDER-
Official Website
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