Genesis 27:46 Then Rebekah said to Isaac, “I’m disgusted with living because of these Hittite women. If Jacob takes a wife from among the women of this land, from Hittite women like these, my life will not be worth living.”
Do the ends justify the means? It can be easy, as we have seen repeatedly in recent history, to push for a result and ignore the guile that is used to get that result. But deception has been a part of the human story since the beginning. We have become very good, or at least we think we have become very good, at lying and blaming.
The speaker in our text is one of the heroes of the story, or at least we think she is. She received a promised from the LORD when she cried out in her distress when she was pregnant. There were twins in her womb. Double the kicking, double the size.
So in her distress, a result of the lack of trust of her ancestor in the Garden, things around conceiving, relationships with a husband and the sibling rivalries that seem to tear into a mother’s heart, this is what she is in the middle of experiencing. At that point in the story she is trying to figure out the pregnancy without ultrasound technology to allow her to see the twins. What a marvel ultrasounds can be!
“The older will serve the younger” was the promise she received while pregnant. Apparently she had never told her husband about this truth. She uses deception to gain the promise. She helps her son trick her husband into blessing the second-born son, when her husband thinks he is blessing the firstborn.
Didn’t Rebekah tell Isaac about what the LORD had told her about these two children, that the older would serve the younger? She too has joined those who take the role of the serpent in the story. Instead of trusting the LORD to work it out, she takes the bull by the horns and manipulates him into doing what she wants.
Then Isaac blesses Jacob even though Jacob has been caught in a deception. He passes along the blessing he received from the LORD to his second born son. I am wondering if Rebekah told Isaac the truth about the LORD’s promise to her AFTER Jacob had received the blessing under false pretenses. Isaac was under great distress after the deception.
Because of his wife’s distress about the women of that area, probably especially her son Esau’s two foreign wives, she goes and makes a request of her husband. Go get a wife from our relatives, just like she had been brought for the family clan.
Isaac makes sure his son goes and gets a wife from his own family line, not from the Hittite women of the surrounding land where they live. Esau hears of this blessing and instruction to get a wife from the family tribe, he goes and adds another unacceptable wife to his set. The two stories couldn’t be more different. Obedience and rebellion.
But in the middle of all this interpersonal human drama we read about the repeated faithfulness of the LORD in His pursuit at bring us back to Eden. He wants to bless His people. He wants them to experience the Garden, not just on occasion, but as a permanent, ongoing relationship with Him and of us with the world.
That is the blessing that the Jacob passes along to Jacob. The very blessing he had received from the LORD he passes along to his son, the deceiver. His trust in the LORD is so great, that he knows, even good things are possible for a deceiver. The LORD is able to bless even you and me.
The Arnold Journey 