Genesis 28.10-22 (19 July 2020)
Neil Millar
In the unfolding Jacob narrative, much has taken place since a youthful Jacob duped his twin-brother Esau into selling his birthright for ‘a mess of pottage’ (as the saying goes). Sometime after that incident, Jacob made a clean sweep of the inheritance process by tricking his father Isaac into giving him the blessing that was also due to Esau. Isaac by that stage was blind. With time running out, he told Esau to prepare his favourite game meal, that he might eat it and bless his son before he died (27.4). Rebekah overheard that conversation, and while Esau was still out hunting, she hatched a plan to deceive Isaac and ensure that Jacob got in first. You can read all the details in chapter 27. Things are a bit fraught; Isaac is suspicious but eventually convinced that it is Esau before him. He gives his blessing, and the die is cast. When Esau lumbers in to discover what’s happened, he cries out ‘with a great and very bitter outcry’. ‘Bless me, too, father!’, he begs, but it’s too late. ‘Your brother has come in deceit and has taken your blessing’, Isaac replies. ‘Was he not rightly named Jacob?’, Esau laments bitterly, ‘for he has now twice grabbed me by the heel [twice supplanted me]. My birthright he took, and look now he’s taken my blessing’. Esau was born first but Jacob has been getting in ahead ever since.
More reflection here