Episode 290 - "Jacob's obedience and Esau's spite" - Genesis 28:1-9

Gen. 28:1 Then Isaac called Jacob and blessed him and directed him, “You must not take a wife from the Canaanite women. 2 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. 3 God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may become a company of peoples. 4 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!” 5 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.

Gen. 28:6 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,” 7 and that Jacob had obeyed his father and his mother and gone to Paddan-aram. 8 So when Esau saw that the Canaanite women did not please Isaac his father, 9 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.

I don’t know about you. But Isaac seemed pretty upset when he realized that Jacob had deceived him, causing him to give Jacob the blessing he intended to give Esau. Yet, in this segment, Jacob appears to have a “What’s done is done” attitude. There’s no apparent conflict between Isaac and Rebekah for her part in the scheme. Of course, I’m assuming that Isaac knew Rebekah had a part in the deception. More importantly, it appears to me that Moses is showing us how Isaac is acting according to the pattern of his father Abraham, and concurs with Rebekah that Jacob should go to the land of their family, where Abraham had come from, and where Abraham had sent his servant to find a wife for Isaac. He sent Jacob there with another blessing. In this blessing, he instructs or reminds Jacob from where his blessings will come. We have no indication yet that Jacob trusts his father’s God. Yet he does obey his parents.

This sets up the contrast to what Moses reveals next concerning Esau. Esau had already taken multiple wives who were Hittites, which echoes back to Cain's descendant Lamech, who married two wives and was very defiant to the LORD (Gen 4:17-19). Now, Esau decided he would spite his parents even more by taking another wife, and this time it was a daughter of Ishmael. This is a slap in the face to Isaac. Esau was quite willing to do what his dad wanted, anticipating what he would get in return. But when Jacob deceived Isaac and stole the blessing, Esau revealed that he was never worthy himself to receive the blessing. Later, when Jacob’s descendants left Egypt after 400 years in bondage, the LORD gave them the Law, primarily summed up in the Ten Commandments. One of the commandments was to “Honor your father and mother.” (Ex. 20:12)

I was tempted to continue further into the text again this week. But I found this section to make me think about how things don’t always go as I would like. Sometimes, I may feel cheated in some capacity, that some injustice has been done, and my inclination might be to desire retribution on everyone I believe to have had a part in it. But that’s not right. I think Isaac shows us the right way. Our priority is to act in a right way and pray that the LORD will bless those he wants to bless through the situation. He’s the one in control, and the LORD can turn the circumstances into something very special.

Next week, we’ll look into Jacob’s experience on his flight to his uncle Laban’s home.

Episode 231 - "Death for Disobedience" - Genesis 2:10-17

Gen. 2:10 A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. 11 The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. 13 The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. 14 And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

Gen. 2:15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

I believe that there’s a good reason for every word that is in the Scriptures. However, it is hard to discern the purpose for some of the details. Genesis 2:10-14 is an example of this. For example, why are these details concerning the location of Eden and its garden important when it would have been long gone by the time this book was written? Why would people need to know where it was and about the valuable resources that had been there?

Here are some thoughts. First of all, what we do recognize and know are the current locations of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. They are both in modern-day Iraq. We know that Cush later in the Bible is identified as modern-day Ethiopia. However, there is disagreement over whether it’s referring to a river running through Ethiopia. There is a common agreement that no one knows where Havilah is. The point is we don’t really know where Eden was located. Furthermore, wherever it was, surely there were significant changes in the courses of these rivers after the flood, which we’ll read about soon, and rivers often change their course over time. But don’t miss the point that there is specific detail to where it was. This suggests that the author is not making up a mythical place with no basis of geography and reality. The detail suggests that it was a real place.

Another potential purpose for the detail is to describe a lush and luxurious place that might indicate a place of God’s presence. The prophets later speak of the Promised Land becoming like Eden. (Ezekiel 36:35, Joel 2:3, Isaiah 51:3, Zechariah 14:8, Revelation 22:1-2) See also Haggai 2:7-8 and Revelation 21:18. Admittedly, I am pushing the text a bit more than what is given in the immediate context. But I don’t think it’s wrong to point out that what this setting in Eden looked like at the beginning of time when God created it and how it parallels the New Jerusalem we read about at the end of time. This is an important observation as we begin to read Genesis because it begins a long story about God and his perfect creation, the conflict that arises and brings chaos into the world, and the long road to resolution when God brings his followers back to a garden of Eden like setting to live for eternity. The Bible is a grand story of God and we don’t want to quickly gloss over this information as though it is irrelevant.

At the very least, this description of Eden paints a beautiful scene in which God’s story will quickly unfold. It describes his creativity and goodness. The rivers help sustain life for plants, animals, and humanity, and this scene describes an abundance of God’s provision.

In both Genesis 2:8 and Genesis 2:15, the author says that God “put” the man in the garden. But the verb that is translated as “put” in each of the verses is different than the other. John Sailhamer, in The Bible Expository Commentary, Genesis, points out that the verb in verse 15 is used elsewhere in the Scriptures to indicate “God’s ‘rest’ or ‘safety,’ which he gives to man in the land (e.g., Gen 19:16; Deut 3:20; 12:10; 25:19), and the ‘dedication’ of something in the presence of the Lord (Exod 16:33-34; Lev 16:23; Num 17:4; Deut 26:4, 10.” If this is the intent of the verb used in verse 15, it would lend support to the description of Eden in verses 10-14 as a place of God’s presence. The idea is that in giving man responsibility, it was not a labor of toil but purpose and fellowship with God.

Verses 16-17 contain some of the most important words uttered in the history of the world. God commanded the man to eat freely of every tree in the garden except from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you recall, this tree and the tree of life were said to be in the center of the garden. So, the man could eat as much from the tree of life as he wanted. It would seem that doing so would sustain his life. But eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would result in certain death.

When our sons were young, they sometimes asked, “Why did God put that tree of the knowledge of good and evil there for people to eat if he didn’t want them eating it?” That’s a good question and the answer is not in the text. My speculation is that it was a test to see if people would listen to their Creator or do whatever they wanted to do. It clearly wasn’t a trap. God made it clear what was expected and what would happen if he disobeyed. Furthermore, God encouraged him to eat the variety of good things he had provided in the garden. It’s not like the man had no options. Lastly, being made in the image of God indicates to me that man needed to exercise his will on what he would and wouldn’t do. God exercised his will to make the earth and life and to make it very good for us. Enjoying the abundance of God’s provision and trusting the One who made it all sounds like a good choice to make.

This is a valuable lesson for us. Do we believe that God is good? Do we believe that God wants what is best for us and that he wants us to trust him? When some of Jesus’ followers abandoned him, Peter expressed that Jesus had the words of eternal life. Like Peter, we may not always understand what God is doing. But we need to trust that he alone gave us life and can give us eternal life.