The Story of Esau and Jacob

17 Jul

The Story of Esau and Jacob

There are lessons to be learned in today’s Church from the dysfunctional family of Isaac and Rebekah. Isaac’s story is found in Genesis 21 – 35. While he was growing up, his father and mother had instilled in him his part of the Abrahamic Covenant confirmed and the prophecy spoken to Abraham by God. And yet Isaac and his wife somehow missed the opportunities to pass this heritage on to their own sons, the twins Esau and Jacob. Instead, Esau and Jacob grew up in a home characterized by favoritism and deception,

God had visited Abraham and Abraham had called upon the name of the Lord numerous times. While Isaac also heard from God and saw answers to prayer, his life was evidently lived contrary to his beliefs so that his faith and understanding of God failed to reach his sons. Jacob’s response to his dream, in which God calls Himself the God of Abraham and of Isaac, included setting up a monument to God, naming the place “Beth-el” (House of God), and giving God a set of conditions by which to earn Jacob’s trust: “And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go, will give me bread to eat and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then shall the LORD be my God” (Gen. 28:20-21). If he had been taught what his father had been taught, he would have known that God deserves our unconditional trust and moves in our lives outside of conditions.

Even before the boys were born, Isaac and Rebekah knew that the younger of the two, Jacob, was the chosen one by whose line the Abrahamic Covenant would be transmitted to the future (Gen. 25:23). And yet Genesis 25:28 tells us that Isaac loved Esau, the hunter, and Rebekah loved Jacob. In spite of Isaac’s knowledge of Jacob’s covenantal position and of his possession of the birthright gained by trickery (cf. Gen. 25:29-34), Isaac still determined to give Esau everything and leave nothing for Jacob. Again by trickery and in collusion with his mother, Jacob took the blessing as well, which included covenant information (Gen. 27:1-40).

Rebekah overheard Esau’s subsequent angry threat to kill Jacob. She, the woman who learned deception and misdirection from both her brother and her husband, represented to Isaac the need for Jacob’s exile in terms of the necessity to take a wife from her own family. The two Hittite wives of Esau were a well-known burden of grief to both Isaac and Rebekah. Jacob’s gaining a wife from the same family line as himself wasn’t just about getting him away from Esau or about marrying to please his mother. It was about the Covenant with Abraham’s seed which included many nations, the promised land, and a special, everlasting relationship with God.

Esau had no understanding about this need for the genealogy of the Messiah to remain uncontaminated by those who would adulterate the relationship with God through blasphemous religious practices. Therefore, he decided that Jacob’s journey was about pleasing his parents with an appropriate choice of wife:

“… Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Padanaram to take him a wife from thence, and that, as he blessed him, he gave him a charge saying, ‘Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan’, that Jacob obeyed his father and his mother and was gone to Padanaram. Esau, seeing that the daughters of Canaan pleased not Isaac his father, then went unto Ishmael and took unto the wives which he had Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham’s son, the sister of Nebajoth, to be his wife” (Gen. 28:6-9).

Esau’s idea was that taking a cousin, Ishmael’s granddaughter, to be his wife might please his parents. What he failed to understand, and what had perhaps never been taught to him by his parents, was the concept of honoring God by obedience and spiritual purity. In Genesis 24, Abraham had believed God’s direction concerning the connection of spiritual purity with the cultural background of those involved and so had sent a servant to his family to negotiate for Isaac’s wife.

At the time Jacob and Esau lived, the overall directive to remain pure and not marry people outside Israel had not yet been codified. It was given to individuals by God Himself. Numbers 36 describes the Mosaic transmission of God’s instructions regarding marriage within one’s own tribe because of heritage. But the New Testament version of this concept, instruction given directly to Christians, is found in 2 Corinthians 6:14-18:

“Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what concord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has he that believes with an unbeliever? And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said, ‘I will dwell in them and walk in them, and I will be their God and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them and be separate,’ says the Lord. ‘And touch not the unclean thing and I will receive you and will be a Father unto you. And you shall be my sons and daughters,’ says the Lord Almighty.”

So here is what we can learn from the history of Jacob and Esau:

Our faith is not genetically transmitted. Each of our children needs to come to repentance and faith in God by the prompting of the Holy Spirit. We need to be careful to transmit our faith through teaching and living out Scripture in our own homes and sharing the stories of God’s grace in our own lives. Even so, not all children of Christian parents accept Jesus as Savior (Rom. 6:23).
Sharing the gospel with those who don’t know Jesus yet is our calling; but we are warned not to step into compromise with them or in connection to them, protecting ourselves from descent into sin. The old adage of “love the sinner but hate the sin” comes to mind (2 Cor. 6:14).
We need to be careful that our worship and ecclesiastical practices are aligned with biblical principles, not with misdirected piety. Many churches today explore entertainment as a means to bring people to Christ. But a lively and professional performance without the empowerment of the Holy Spirit is just a lively and professional performance (Phil. 3:1-3).
Preach the whole word of God, not just bits and pieces. We can’t mature fully if we only have part of God’s story (1 Tim. 4:6-7).
God isn’t done with us yet. He uses imperfect people, like us, to accomplish His will in this world. He lovingly drew Jacob throughout his lifetime, gradually breaking through his misguided belief system so that he appears in God’s Hall of Faith: “By faith Jacob, when he was a dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph and worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff” (Heb. 11:21).