Genesis 27:41–28:9 (ESV),
Now 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.” But the words of Esau her older son were told to Rebekah. So she sent and called Jacob her younger son and said to him, “Behold, your brother Esau comforts himself about you by planning to kill you. Now therefore, my son, obey my voice. Arise, flee to Laban my brother in Haran and stay with him a while, 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. Then I will send and bring you from there. Why should I be bereft of you both in one day?” Then Rebekah said to Isaac, “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?”
Then Isaac called Jacob and blessed him and directed him, “You must not take a wife from the Canaanite women. Arise, go to Paddan-aram 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!” Thus Isaac sent Jacob away, and he went to Paddan-aram, to Laban, the son of Bethuel the Aramean, the brother of Rebekah, Jacob's and Esau's mother.
Now Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Paddan-aram to take a wife from there, and that as he blessed him he directed him, “You must not take a wife from the Canaanite women,” and that Jacob had obeyed his father and his mother and gone to Paddan-aram. So when Esau saw that the Canaanite women did not please Isaac his father, 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.
The Aftermath of Deception
So Esau's hatred drives the plot forward in the story. He plans to kill Jacob as soon as Isaac dies, and Rebekah urges Jacob to flee to her brother Laban, promising to send for him when Esau's anger has subsided. So she couches her request to Isaac in terms of marriage, lamenting the Hittite women.
And Isaac blesses Jacob again, but this time he does so knowingly. And he uses the covenant language. So Isaac seems to have changed his tune here. He is now aware that Jacob is the heir to the promise. Or perhaps even if he knew that before and acted against it, he seems to now have submitted to God's plan for Jacob to bless him and to make him the Lord over Esau.
And Esau, noticing that the Canaanite women displease his parents, marries the daughter of Ishmael. But he does not leave his Hittite wives. And so this sets up a conflict that will continue throughout many, many generations between Isaac's descendants—so Jacob and Esau.
The Theme of Reaping What We Sow
Again, this story continues the theme that we've been listening to over the last few days. You reap what you sow. In this case, it turns to anger and lingering consequences of sin. So Jacob's deceit and his mother's deceit has torn this family apart. Rebekah will in fact never see her favorite son again. And before he comes back to his father, she actually dies.
It is true that sin often brings about the very suffering that we're trying to avoid. We see the same thing in Esau. Esau's marriage to Mahalath is just another misguided attempt for this child to try and please his parents.
Pointing Forward to Christ
Now, of course, like almost all stories in the Old Testament, this passage is a passage that also points us forward to Jesus Christ. And in this case, the passage points us to Christ in that Jacob, the undeserving heir, becomes a fugitive and an exile for the sake of the promise.
But one day Jesus, the true heir, left his father's house and became a man of sorrows. He was exiled, in a sense, from heaven. He chose exile from heaven in order to secure our blessing.
And at the same time, Esau's hatred shows the world's hatred of Christ and his followers. So if you're a Christian today, you should expect to be an enemy of the world, just like Jacob was an enemy of his brother Esau.
And ultimately, of course, we know that all of this culminates in the fact that Jesus died as an exile and a sojourner on this place in order to allow us to be adopted and welcomed into the father's household. So his exile actually purchases our welcome and adoption.
Applications for Our Lives
Now, this passage applies to us in a number of different ways. Firstly, there's the obvious application that we are to guard against hatred. Esau here has let bitterness and resentment consume him, and he ultimately plans to kill Jacob. And this shows us how destructive the power of resentment really is.
As Christians, this has no place in our lives. We must forgive those who wrong us, even though they wrong us severely, as is the case here with Jacob and Esau. We must trust that God is the righteous judge, who will ultimately judge righteously, and we should leave that up to Him.
The second and admittedly secondary application here is that we are to seek our spouses from within the covenant community. So Isaac and Rebekah want Jacob to marry within the family, within the covenant family. And so too believers today ought to seek spouses, husbands and wives who share their faith, not so that we can earn God's favor like Esau tries to do by marrying Mahalath.
But because God gives us this instruction in the New Testament, being unevenly yoked is a problem and inevitably leads to complications and difficulty within a relationship.
And finally, I think this passage reminds us that we should trust God when consequences follow sin. Jacob did the wrong thing. And as a result of his deceit, he ended up in exile. He runs away and he would never see his mother again. She dies before he's ever reunited with his family.
When we sin, we often face the consequences of that sin. We should repent, yes. We should say sorry to God and commit to leaving our life of sin. But that doesn't mean that God will take away the consequences of our sin. Instead, as we face the consequences of sin, we should trust that God will override this and use this to redeem our story as well.
Closing Prayer
Lord, we thank you that you give us these stories and that you teach us through them. We pray that you will guard our hearts against hatred and against bitterness, that we will not become like Esau, seeking to avenge the wrong that is done to us, but leaving that up to you as our righteous God. We pray that you will help us to find people in our lives, spouses who we can marry fully trusting that they share our faith in you. And finally, we pray that you will allow us and help us to trust you when the consequences of our sin come to haunt us, knowing that Jesus has already taken the punishment from you of that sin on himself, and that whatever you are doing through this consequence will be ultimately for our good. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.