Augustine once asked, “Who ought to be, or who are more friendly than those who live in the same family?” He answered that question with another question, “Yet who can rely even on this friendship, seeing that secret treachery has often broken it up, and produced enmity as bitter as the amity (friendliness) was sweet?” With friends like this, who needs holiday get-togethers?

Family can be the worst. We expect that family members will care for one another instead of cheat or criticize one another. Sometimes it seems as if things would be better if a certain family member would just leave, and they won’t even do that. It’s like having your feet stuck in relational concrete while trying to dodge cars. You know you’re going to get hit, the best you can hope for is that the collision won’t be head on.

The relational dynamics in Isaac’s house were impaired, and it started with the head of the house. Isaac preferred one son over another. He preferred that son’s cooking over his wife’s. When it seemed to Isaac that he was nearing his time to die, he called his favorite son to make some barbecue for him and then he would give a blessing back.

Isaac schemes to deceive Jacob, and it seems mostly driven by his desire for “delicious food, such as I love.” Both of his boys, Esau and Jacob, were in the inheritance line. By law the firstborn deserved more, but by law every legitimate son deserved some. By law Jacob now owned the birthright of the firstborn since Esau sold it to him. Against the law and the prophecy (see Genesis 25:23) Isaac conspires to cheat Jacob out of anything and Esau agrees.

Rebekah overheard and came up with her own idea to cheat the cheaters. She found her favorite son and instructed Jacob how he could deceive his dad and get the blessing he “deserved.”

Did he “deserve” it? No, but it was promised to him (even “though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God’s purpose of election might continue” Romans 9:11). Was Rebekah acting out of trust in God’s word to her about the older serving the younger? Perhaps in one way, but not all the way. Rebekah becomes an example in a long line of wives who try to “help” their husbands do the right thing by doing the wrong thing. It isn’t respectful to deceive your husband even with a verse to prove what you want.

Jacob follows his mom’s lead, kills a couple kids, that is, goats. She made the “tasty morsel” and repurposed the skin onto her son for sake of making him more hairy. Then Jacob took the food to Isaac. Isaac tested him in a number of senses, then pronounced the blessing: “Let peoples serve you, / and nations bow down to you. / Be lord over your brothers… / Cursed be everyone who curses you.” Jacob got what he lied for and left.

There are three more parts to the episode, Esau’s Discovery (27:30-40), Jacob’s Escape (27:41-28:5), and Esau’s Attempt (28:6-9).

Esau’s Discovery (27:30-40)

Esau is not too late, he’s just a second too late. As soon as Jacob Isaac had finished blessing Jacob, when Jacob had scarcely gone out from the presence of his father, Esau his brother came in from his hunting. I imagine the hanging-bead door was still swinging when Esau arrived.

Esau killed his game and it seems that it didn’t take very long. He prepared delicious food and announced, ”Let my father arise and eat of his son’s game, that he may bless me.” How high must Esau have been feeling? What goes up, must get deflated by a brother.

If this were being performed on stage, when Isaac answered, the crowd gasps. ”Who are you?” Esau said it was him. What other son with food was his dad expecting? Then Isaac trembled violently and said, in our way of expression, “Oh no! Someone was already here and I blessed him and I can’t take it back! What’s done is done.”

Esau responded loudly in return. He cried out with an exceedingly great and bitter cry and said to his father, “Bless me, even me also, O my father!” As if he said, “This can’t be! You’ve got to have something for me!”

But there was nothing, at least nothing positive (see verses 39-40 upcoming). Isaac realized what happened: Jacob deceived him. Esau jumps on the blame-train. ”Is he not rightly named Jacob? For he has cheated me these two times. He took away my birthright and behold, now he has taken away my blessing.” One of these complaints is legit, but Esau sold his birthright in full awareness. He was hungry, but no one was twisting his arm. Esau won’t take any blame; his brother is his problem.

Esau again asks for a blessing, maybe something from the reserve tank only to be used in special situations. But his dad explained that he gave it all to Jacob. Isaac rehearsed the dominion and abundance given away in verse 37. ”What then can I do for you, my son? Esau still doesn’t give up, and whines again, ”Bless me, even me also, O my father!” And Esau lifted up his voice and wept. This is desperate, not manly, all selfish.

Isaac feels bad and gives a blessing, but it is more of an anti-blessing. Esau will not have prosperity or power like his brother.

Then Isaac his father answered and said to him:
“Behold, away from the fatness of the earth shall your dwelling be,
and away from the dew of heaven on high.
By your sword you shall live,
and you shall serve your brother;
but when you grow restless
you shall break his yoke from your neck.”
(Genesis 27:39–40)

Esau will be away from the dew and fatness and plenty. By your sword you shall live means that he will always be at odds, always on guard or on attack. The battles between Israel and Edom are many as described later in the Old Testament. Esau will not have peoples or nations bow down to him, but he will serve his brother until some point he gets tired of it and breaks his yoke from the neck. This is prophetic but not flattering. Esau may have wished his father had kept his mouth shut after all.

Jacob’s Exile (27:41-28:5)

Of course Esau was mad. Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him, and Esau said to himself, “The days of mourning for my father are approaching; then I will kill my brother Jacob.” Esau is not only like Cain, he may be worse than Cain, premeditating what and when. If he can’t have the blessing, neither will his brother.

Why wait? Is there some possibility that Isaac will change his mind after all? Why not kill the brother and take the blessing? For some reason, like every pause of the bad guy before shooting the good guy, Esau waits.

Somehow word got out. He must have told someone else, so the words of Esau her older son were told to Rebekah. And like before, she went immediately to Jacob, not her husband, and told him what she thought he should do. She knew that Esau wanted revenge, ”he comforts himself about you by planning to kill you.” But like before, she has a plan for Jacob, this time to manipulate Isaac with a half-truth rather than deceive him with a full-lie.

Rebekah wanted Jacob to go to the land of her brother, not for a marriage but for a refuge, ”until your brother’s fury turns away—until your brother’s anger turns away from you, and he forgets what you have done to him.” She doesn’t mention that the reason Esau wanted to kill Jacob was her idea, of course. It’s the old, “time heals all wounds.” She doesn’t want to lose both sons in one day, one murdered and the other executed for murdering. But she miscalculated Esau’s commitment level. She thought things would blow over sooner than later, so she would send and bring you from there. But that never happened. She did lose Jacob that day.

Rebekah didn’t tell Isaac about Esau’s plan to kill Jacob, he may not have believed her anyway since he favored Esau. She doesn’t invent a reason, but she certainly exaggerates her reasoning. ”I loathe my life because of the Hittite women. If Jacob marries one of the Hittite women like these, one of the women of the land, what good will my life be to me?” Esau’s wives made life bitter for the both of them (Genesis 26:35). She plays off of, and plays up, the problem in order to make it seem like it’s Isaac’s idea to send Jacob away. She steers him with a sensitive and subtle threat.

Chapter 28 continues the scene. Rebekah foreshadows her future misery, and implied that she would be a relational terrorist, and Isaac can’t have that. So he calls Jacob, actually knowing who it is this time, and affirms things from the Abrahamic covenant in a much more explicit way than in 27:27-29. Unaware that Esau intended to kill Jacob, Isaac commissions Jacob to go and get a family wife, to the house of Bethuel, your mother’s father, and take as your wife from there one of the daughters of Laban your mother’s brother.”

God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may become a company of peoples. May he give the blessing of Abraham to you and to your offspring with you, that you may take possession of the land of your sojournings that God gave to Abraham!” (Genesis 28:3–4)

God Almighty is El Shaddai. Here is offspring and land, the two key elements of Yahweh’s commitment to Abraham, a commitment reaffirmed to Isaac and now passed on to Jacob. Isaac knows who he’s blessing this time.

It was also of the greatest importance that now, at length, Jacob should be blessed by his father, knowingly and willingly; lest at a future time a doubt, arising from the recollection of his father’s mistake and of his own fraud, might steal over his mind. (Calvin)

He sent Jacob away thinking that he would be back.

Esau’s Attempt (28:6-9)

The section started in 26:34-35 with Esau’s wives. It’s far too late now, but Esau still holds onto hope that he can get something. He saw that (his dad) had blessed Jacob and sent him away…and directed him, “You shall not take a wife from the Canaanite women.” It seems that the light bulb over Esau’s head didn’t turn on until right now. Maybe there was still some blessing left if he took a wife from family.

But Esau couldn’t even do that right. Esau went to Ishmael and took as his wife, besides the wives he had, Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham’s son, the sister of Nebaioth. “Oh, I see! These wives are bad, let me add one that will please you!” Except Ishmael and his line were out. They were family, but not part of the covenant with the LORD. Esau is late and close, but not enough. One commentator “describes Esau as the family member always beside the point” (quoted in Waltke).

Conclusion

At the end of this scene Isaac is more alone. The son he wanted to bless get’s nothing; it was Isaac’s fault. What was his relationship with Rebekah like going forward? Even the second helping of “delicious food” wasn’t a consolation.

Esau is more angry, more desperate, and more troubled. How did his Canaanite wives respond to the new addition? If Esau had desired true blessing, he would have grieved over his sin, submitted himself to his brother, and sought more than temporal blessing. Esau is a case study of bad repentance, knowing only the fruit of self-sorrow.

Rebekah lost the only son she really cared for, not to death, but to exile; she never saw him again. She herself isn’t mentioned again in Genesis until her burial. Rebekah models the strong temptation and an often justified pursuit to seek God’s blessing some other way than obedience. “I know he said don’t do this, but I know He wants me to be happy.”

And Jacob has the blessing, to take with him on the run. He has to escape from his brother. What did he think was going to happen?

No one got everything they wanted. Though there were some good intentions, those intentions were mixed. Faith and flesh do not bring about the righteousness of God, even if we know that the sovereign will of God is unfolding.

It is ironic that in Psalm 24:3-6, “the God of Jacob” only receives those who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully. Our hands are clean and our hearts are pure only by grace, only those who seek Him first shall stand in His holy place. May we be those who desire the blessing of desiring His blessings the right way.