Welcome back.
Thanks for joining us,
friends, on this Monday as we continue through,
as we continue through the book of Genesis.
Today,
I really kind of a new,
we start a new chapter,
not a new chapter in the book,
but a new part of the story.
And for the rest of Genesis,
we’re going to get major chunks of story,
and then we’ll get some other kind of stories
interspersed that are either tangential or just kind of off on their own.
But today, at least today, maybe today and tomorrow,
we will be looking at
the next characters
in the patriarchy story.
So, at this point,
Isaac is on the scene with Rebecca,
and we then
join their story in verse 19 of chapter 25.
So,
let me read this and we’ll talk about it.
These are the descendants of Isaac, Abraham’s son.
Abraham was the father of Isaac.
Isaac was sister,
Laban the Aramean.
Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife because she was barren,
and the Lord granted his prayer,
and his wife, Rebecca, conceived.
The children struggled together within her,
and she said, “If it’s to be this way,
why do I live?”
So, she went to inquire of the Lord,
and the Lord said to her,
“Two nations are in your womb,
and two peoples born of you shall be divided.
The one shall be stronger than the other.
The elder shall serve the younger.”
When will we stop there,
Michael?
So,
in some ways, echoes of familiar things that we’ve heard.
Before we get into the actual nuts and bolts of this story,
we’ve seen some of these things before.
We’ve seen barrenness.
We’ve seen that that is a common theme in Genesis,
where a couple is not
able.
Isaac himself is the product of that long period of not being able to have a child,
and in this case,
we have that in a
relatively short telling.
The narrative part of that
barrenness theme is really pretty easy here.
In fact,
we’re told he prays for her because
she was barren first.
We’re told he prayed for her because she was barren,
and the Lord granted his prayer.
Now, we don’t know what the time frame is here,
and it’s not to negate the
struggle of their story or the pain of that moment,
but it is to say,
as the story is told,
it’s not given a lot of emphasis.
It doesn’t have a weight in the way that it’s told here,
though we again see it as a theme.
Right, yeah.
So, God is continuing to work amidst the
human inability to force this promise to move forward.
God is the one who’s in the driver’s
seat such that he prays.
Isaac prays, and it is that supplication to the eternal God,
which we see having effect, which God grants,
and then this blessing comes.
You mentioned at the end of
our last conversation, Clint, which for some reason today feels like it was forever ago,
you mentioned how really shockingly in light of what we’ve just been through in the binding of
Isaac’s story, how we talked about how that was such a central turning point in Genesis,
what this story does is I think it accentuates the point you were making,
Clint, that ultimately Isaac is really not given a whole lot of emphasis in the book of Genesis, so that
Abraham’s story was teased out over chapters.
Isaac’s story,
in one verse, you go from barrenness to prayer to their children,
and really the substantial meaty part of this story is now immediately
going to move to Isaac’s sons and not to Isaac himself.
So, if there’s really anything notable
here for me, Clint, right off the bat is it’s how little we hear about Isaac, who’s really been
worked up to this entire time.
Once we get to Isaac,
the line just keeps on moving and it happens quickly.
Yeah, I want to be
generous here,
and this will not sound like,
this won’t sound like complimentary language,
but I don’t mean it
not to be.
In some stories,
in some way Isaac’s story is not particularly exciting,
and what I mean by that is there’s no real fundamental struggle.
You know,
Abraham,
we saw all of those kind of wrestling.
We’ll get a little bit of that in chapter 26 as Isaac interacts with some other people.
The Jacob and Esau story becomes very loaded with conflict and challenge and struggle.
We go layers deep in that story,
but Isaac is born,
he gets married,
he has children, and really we just see those high points.
We don’t have a lot
in terms of the narrative of Genesis.
We don’t have a lot that hangs on Isaac.
He’s an essential character,
but he’s not a very
fleshed out character.
In fact,
almost everything we learn about Isaac from this point on,
we learn not as his own story,
but as his role in other people’s story.
Is that fair?
Well, it’s not only fair.
I think the next time we’re really going to encounter Isaac in a substantial way,
it’s a show off between the two sons,
and he’s already of great age.
Fundamentally, there’s not substantial…
No, that’s not totally true,
but yeah, I think at some point you’ve got to reckon for the fact that the story arc is going to begin to move faster,
where we had really settled in on Abraham and Sarah and Ishmael and Hagar with these
interlocking,
fleshed out characters.
You even had Abraham’s nephew thrown into that mix.
Here, we’re not going to have that.
Here, we’re going to subtly hone in on the exact
line,
the sort of arc of God’s promise,
and we’re going to follow it,
and it’s going to
pick up speed here.
The other thing in this story that I think
can get lost, because where we go
from here is very much a story of kind of sibling rivalry,
of kind of classic competition,
of one-upsmanship.
That’s not only true in the Jacob-Esaur relationship,
but it’s true in Jacob’s
story in some other ways as well.
What can get lost in that is what is predicted here.
When Rebecca goes to inquire of God about the pain and the struggle that she’s in,
he says,
“Two nations are in your womb,
and two peoples born of you will be divided.” So,
it is hard to keep in mind,
but I think it’s very important to remember that this is a story,
not only about people,
but about peoples,
about nations,
about groups.
Jacob and Esau are going to,
as Abraham did before them,
symbolize people groups.
We’ve seen this before,
but it’s difficult when a story is trying to carry two realities at once,
not to focus more on one than the other.
I think just a reminder as we get into these stories,
that if you can hold on to the idea
that this isn’t just telling you about these brothers,
but about the people these brothers
will inevitably become and father,
I think it’s helpful.
I think that it provides something that
the story is intended to do in the way it’s told.
We’ve seen a lot of themes,
Clint, already worked into the book of Genesis.
We’ve certainly looked at faith and the lack of faith.
We’ve looked at the
idea of
debauchery or sinfulness versus righteousness.
We’ve looked very much at
impatience and pushing ahead,
trying to force God’s will.
Here,
with the introduction of Isaac
and moving so quickly to his sons,
we’re moving in with not a brand new theme,
but a new emphasis
with this idea of jealousy and reaching and grabbing and trying to hold and take for oneself.
We’ve not really had,
Abraham and Lot, you had the situation where they were quarreling over land,
and really Abraham made a very classy move in saying,
“Take whatever you want.”
There’s some other segments of the story there,
but here we’re going to see a kind of internal
family conflict set up,
which is going to both,
at that macro view,
do exactly what Clint is saying.
It’s going to show us these people groups,
how they get formed,
and why there may also continue
to be some rivalry between them.
But then it also sets up that this promise is now being tested
by the rivalry itself,
that there is some question,
which of these brothers is going to be the one
who’s going to get literally the upper hand?
Who’s going to be the one to be smarter or stronger as
it will play out?
And in asking that question,
we, the reader, are supposed to ask,
“Is there any human choice or element that is going to derail God’s plan?” Isaac becomes a very quick gateway
to asking a new set of questions about the fragility of this promise.
Right, and
in the first instance,
as we enter the story here,
it is natural that nation business,
that idea that these are people groups,
or that each of these boys represents a nationality or an identity,
is kind of off in the horizon.
So we enter it at the personal level.
So let me read
the rest of the passage here,
and then we can flesh it out.
“When her time came to give birth,
there were twins in her womb.
The first came out red,
his body all hairy,
and so they named him Esau.
Afterward, his brother came out with his hand gripping Esau’s heel,
so he was named Jacob.
Isaac was 60 years old when she bore them.
When the boys grew up,
Esau was a skillful hunter,
a man of the field,
while Jacob was a quiet man living in the tents.
Isaac loved Esau because he was fond of game,
but Rebekah loved Jacob.” So we learn so much in these few verses.
We learn that Esau,
he comes out ruddy,
red,
like a person who had been in the sun,
hairy.
These are traits assimilated or associated with masculinity.
His name has something to do with that idea.
And then we learn later that he’s a skillful hunter.
He’s a man of the field.
He is a kind of man’s man.
He goes out.
He hunts.
He gets food.
He kills things.
He’s comfortable outside.
He’s durable.
He’s all of those things.
And we see that even forecasted in his birth.
And then on the other hand, his brother is
something different.
Grabbing his heel, and the name Jacob means like
it literally means heel grabber or the one who supplants,
the one who replaces.
And we have this
promise hanging over their relationship that the younger will be served by the older.
That unlike the culture that says even though they’re separated only by moments,
the oldest has the inheritance.
The firstborn,
even if only by a minute,
is the one who is guaranteed the wealth
and riches of his family.
The secondborn is not privileged to the same amount of inheritance.
And yet this promise hanging over is that the younger is going to be blessed.
The younger is going to be served by the older.
And it’s not exactly clear how much or how little we’re being told here,
but Jacob is a man living in the tents.
Now that tends to be associated with
where the women hang out.
We’re going to find out later that Jacob cooks.
And evidently he cooks pretty well.
It’s not entirely clear that this is saying something effeminate because Jacob is going
to prove in his own way.
He’s very strong.
He’s very resilient.
He is very hearty.
But he is not,
he’s something other than Esau.
He’s quiet.
And he kind of sticks to himself.
And again, this is sort of a summary not only of these two boys,
but of two male types,
kind of archetypes of what it means to be a man.
And we have them clearly described here.
So I think there’s an interesting detail here that’s not even about Jacob or Esau per se,
but actually it’s about Isaac, verse 28.
Isaac loved Esau because he was fond of game,
which is a really a kind of functional form of love.
He likes to eat the food that Esau is
capable of getting and bringing back,
but it says Rebecca loved Jacob.
And here we see that the
conflict that we’ve already introduced between these two brothers also in some measure exists
between mother and father.
That we see this at the parental level existing not just between these
two brothers.
And so the question that hangs over this,
of course, is when you set it up with this
oracle,
this prophecy that the older will serve the younger,
we as the reader have been led into
that.
We know that already.
And of course, we’re naturally inquiring,
well,
how is that going to
work out?
And that’s exactly how this story serves.
It both sets up these macro stories of the nations
that Clint led with.
It also points us down the road to say this is where you need to look because
there’s something different going to happen in this story.
Even the name of supplanting is
really it’s giving us a clue.
There’s something substantial going to happen here.
And if this sounds strange to you,
you know, I think this is actually very contemporary.
Rochelle and I joke all the time because there are some things when we talk about our daughters
today, we joke about looking back at their birth,
how it was true then.
An example,
you know, Emily, we think of as being a very perceptive individual.
She’s always sort of studying her
world to see what’s happening.
I mean,
we look back to the very night that she was born and she
surprised the nurses because of her perceptiveness.
Her eyes were open.
She was bright.
It was a sort of odd behavior for a baby just born,
but she was really attentive.
Now, did we read into that story?
I mean, absolutely.
We’re casting a narrative backwards,
but I’m just, my point is Clint,
that I think this is a natural sort of parenting thing.
We look at who our children become.
We can’t help but look backwards and see those threads that stretched all the way
back to the beginning.
And here scripture is presenting it in such a way so that we can
really condense that life cycle.
We can jump right into the conflict,
which is the thing at
hand.
The thing at hand is going to be what will come of these two brothers and this tension between them.
But what is happening is with some great economy,
we’re being set up for how to get there.
Yeah, this text is very purposeful in drawing a division and if not inviting us to
take sides, at least asking us to realize that there are sides, right?
We start with Esau is this kind of man.
Jacob is this other kind of man.
Then we get Isaac
loved Esau and we get Rebecca
loved Jacob.
So we have this idea that there are clearly two teams.
And what that functions in the
story to do for us is to say the covenant promise is passed down through the oldest.
Everybody knows
that,
right?
Abraham said,
what about Ishmael?
What about, no, he’s not the real one.
I’m taking the other one.
I’m taking your
firstborn with Sarah.
What about all these other
kids he had with his second wife?
No,
they’re fine.
I’ll take care of them.
But Isaac is the one.
Here we have a clear cut case that Esau should be the one.
And yet hanging over this story, is that prophecy,
the younger will be served by the elder.
And now we have the division.
We have teams.
It’s Rebecca and Isaac.
I’m sorry, it’s Rebecca and Jacob.
It’s Isaac and Esau.
And we then move forward in this question mark,
in this tension of what does this all mean for
the covenant?
Who is going to bear this promise now going forward?
It has landed on Isaac.
We saw that, waited for it for years.
Now, where does it go?
And that’s the question this story will answer.
Well, the series of stories.
Yeah, right.
And Clint, isn’t the thing that makes us immediately uncomfortable, is that
human drama is in the middle of God’s story.
I mean, not only in the
middle, in some ways it is the bridge that God’s story is given to us through,
right?
This idea that brothers are fighting over a birthright,
even from the moment of birth that one is grasping,
is, I mean, in some way very uncomfortable to people who are reading this to see the revelation of God.
Yet,
it is in the messy human reality that we discover God is indeed alive and at work.
And it’s, of course, Christians, thousands of years later,
far beyond these texts who come to believe
and to proclaim that God took on flesh.
He didn’t even have his story and his purpose and his promise
go through human action,
that God would take on humanity in order to affect the change.
So, what we see here is uncomfortable.
The substance of the Christian faith goes even further,
and I find that striking as we read a story like this.
Yeah, we’ll have to cover some ground,
but I hope we can get through the
family stories this week
and keep them together,
because this is one of those fascinating moments in the Scripture
where God has a word that hangs over the text,
and then in the rest of the text,
God is really not mentioned.
The things that happen after this seem to be in keeping with
the prophetic word that God has uttered.
The older will serve the younger.
But when it comes
to the playing out of that,
even in some ways that look very questionable
and sketchy,
God really doesn’t have a role.
God doesn’t seem to speak on it one way.
It’s not clear that God
is in favor.
It’s not clear that God isn’t in favor.
And yet it brings about the very thing that
God said it would.
And which of those came first?
And I think those are fascinating questions.
We will do our best to get through that cycle of stories so that we don’t leave them hanging
over Christmas, because I do think they’re best understood if we can keep them together.
Yeah, and don’t miss these conversations.
This is a different pace.
It’s a different tone.
It’s a turn on the text.
It’s amazing that Genesis 25 chapters in still has things
to surprise us and to challenge us.
So we look forward to seeing you tomorrow.
Thanks, everybody.