Jacob and Esau

Karim and Abou read about Jacob and Esau in the Torah

 

Karim closed the book he was reading and put it down hard on the table.  There is a frown on his face. He sat quietly for a while, deep in thought.

His friend Abou had explained to him that a great blessing for the world would come from the line of Abraham. God had said to Abraham, “In you all the nations of the earth will be blessed.”  Abou explained that Jesus was to be born from the family line of Abraham and through Jesus all the earth would be blessed. After Abraham came Isaac, then Jacob and Jacob’s son Judah.  Jesus was called the Lion from the tribe of Judah. But now, as he was reading the story of Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, Karim discovered that already in the third generation there was a lot of deceit in the family line. Jacob was filled with guile, meanness, craftiness and deceit. How can anything good come out of so much dishonesty?  How can God bless nations from dishonest ancestors?  Imagine tricking his dying blind father into stealing a spiritual blessing that was meant for his older brother, the firstborn of the family!

Abou said that Jesus was more than a prophet. Jesus was truth and Jesus Himself said that truth will set man free.   As a matter of fact Abou quoted Jesus’ saying, “I am the way, the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

Karim loved the history of Abraham.  Abraham was a good and honest man who had a relationship with the living God.  But his grandson Jacob had gone away from this line of honesty.

Karim had a serious question. How could a man, who believed in God, the Almighty, be as deceitful as Jacob? 

As Karim went on with his daily task of building houses, he tried to forget about what he read in the book, but his mind kept going back to the story of Jacob and his father Isaac.

Isaac was old and blind.  He called his older son, Esau, and asked him to go out into the field and shoot him a deer, then come back home and prepare the meat the way Isaac liked it best and bring it to him to eat.  Then Isaac would give Esau the spiritual blessing due to the firstborn son.

Rebekah overheard the conversation between Isaac and Esau.  She quickly called Jacob, told him about Isaac’s plan to bless Esau.  Then she sent him to the flock to get two choice young goats.  Jacob did as his mother commanded.  Rebekah prepared the meat the way Isaac liked it – with spices and garlic like the people of the East preferred their food. 

Jacob was very different from Esau.  Esau was the outdoor type.  From birth he was more hairy than his brother, Jacob.  Rebekah  took some of the goat’s skin and worked it around Jacob’s arms and neck, so when his father would touch him, he would feel the hairy skin of the goat.  Also Jacob  dressed up in the attire of his brother.  Esau’s clothes smelt of the field where he spent his days.   With the disguise complete, Jacob took the good smelling food to his blind father who was fooled and Jacob, instead of Esau, received the blessing of the first born son. 

Karim sat down on the unfinished wall of the house he was building. For about half an hour he pondered the facts of the story.  Then he decided he would go back to Abou and discuss the problem with him.

Perhaps Abou would be able to explain the behaviour of Jacob and Rebekah.

The next day was Saturday. Karim got up early, got dressed, took the book and travelled to Abou’s town.  He found his friend busy planting banana trees in his garden. 

 “Good morning, Karim!  What’s news?  You are early and I am starving.  I have not had morning tea.  Shall we have breakfast together?”  Abou invited him in.  As soon as tea was served, Abou came straight to the point.  “Is there something I can help you with?”  he asked his friend. “I know you well enough by now to know that you will not come to me this early on a Saturday morning without a reason.”

”I have read the story of Jacob,” Karim explained.  “I am disturbed by the story.  How can you say for sure that Jesus was an honest prophet, or more than a prophet, but He came from a family as deceitful as Jacob?  Jacob lied to his old father and he stole a blessing from his brother.”

Abou looked at Karim with a kind expression in his eyes.

“You know, Karim, I think you are on the brink of discovering something very interesting in God’s Holy book. God always gives us clues to help us understand.  Sometimes there is a clue in a paragraph or even in a sentence.  We tend to read over them.

“Do you remember when Rebekah was pregnant, she did not know what was going on with her and she went to God for an answer?”

“Yes, I remember,” Karim answered.  “It is right here in the story”:  The LORD said to her, “Two nations are within you; you will give birth to two rival peoples. One will be stronger than the other; the older will serve the younger.”

 “Now, here we have the first clue: God telling Rebekah that the older boy will serve the younger one.

“Years later, when these boys were grown-up, we read the interesting strory of Esau coming from the field very hungry.  Jacob was preparing a sauce.  It must have smelt  very good and Esau was hungry. Let’s read it as it was written.”  

  Esau said to Jacob, “I’m starving; give me some of that red stuff.” 

 Jacob answered, “I will give it to you if you give me your rights as the first-born son.”

 Esau said, “All right! I am about to die; what good will my rights do me?”

 Jacob answered, “First make a vow that you will give me your rights.” Esau made the vow and gave his rights to Jacob. Then Jacob gave him some bread and some of the sauce. He ate and drank and then got up and left. That was all Esau cared about his rights as the first-born son.

“We can gather from this that Esau had a very careless attitude.  He was also rebellious. We read that  Esau married two women, Judith and  Basemath and that they made life miserable for Isaac and Rebekah.

“These facts give us a better insight into the character of Esau.  Let us recall now again the incident with the old father who told him that he was ready to bless him as the first born son. What do you think Esau should have said?”

“Most probably that he was not the first born any more,” Ahmed said.

Abou agrees. “You’re right!  To my understanding he was not acting truthfully here.”

“And Rebekah?”

“She was a mother who tried to solve a difficult situation.  A mother never forgets and she must still have heard God’s words ringing in her ears: “The older boy shall serve the younger one.”

But in reflecting on this story, I agree with you that Jacob was not acting as a man of God.  Jacob and his mother had no reason to try to  help God achieve His divine purposes. He is sovereign. He will achieve what He has set out to do. But  God had a plan with Jacob because for Him character is more important than age.  As you continue reading you will find how God dealt with Jacob in hard ways to make him the man He wanted him to be.  He was an exile from his family for years. He was dealt with even more treacherously by his uncle. He lost his father and mother while in exile and he lost his wife. On his return to his father’s land, God wrestled with him for a whole night.  These are all things God uses to work character and integrity in a man’s life. After these experiences his character was completely changed. God even changed his name from Jacob to Israel, which means God’s Prince or God’s Soldier.

“If you continue to read the Holy Scriptures, you will find that all the people in the family line of Jesus were ordinary people like you and me who needed a saviour to cleanse them from their sins.”

Abou explained to Karim that the Holy Scriptures from the first book of the Tor’ah to the last book of the Injil, consist of 66 books written by 40 different authors over a period of 1500 years. The purpose of the Book is not to show how God dealt with one nation, but the purpose of the Book is to show God’s plan of salvation to mankind so that all nations in the world could be blessed as He promised to Abraham 4000 years ago.

“Do not laugh at me, Abou, but I still do not quite understand what this blessing is that came from Abraham’s seed?”

“Not what, Ahmed, but Who! The blessing is a person:  JESUS!  Remember He said:  I am the way, the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through ME.” 

“From the very beginning God made a plan to help man out of sin and eternal destruction.  To accept Jesus is to accept God’s way of salvation.

When Ahmed left Abou’s house that morning he had peace in his heart.

“What a marvelous God this is,” he thought.  In spite of the fact that man sins against Him, He still makes a plan to save man and bring man back to Him!”

“This is truly a God I want to serve with all my heart”, he says out loud to himself as he stands there at the roadside waiting for a taxi to take him back home.

  

                  

 

The story of Abraham and his descendants was taken from the book of Genesis in the Torah, chapters 12-33;  and the words of Jesus from the book of John in the Injil, chapter 14.