ESAU AND JACOB

Esau lost his soul in a moment and his repentance in tears was not acceptable to God. “For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears” (Hebrews 12:17). He had to choose between the things of God on the one hand and a pottage of lentils on the other, and he chose the pottage of lentils. His action was so heinous that apparently he was not given time to repent, as was the case with Jezebel. Esau was not an atheist. He believed in God but his faith was dead because he only loved the things he saw and not spiritual things. Later we learn more about the true character of Esau.

Jacob earned his father's blessing by using deceit. When Esau found out, he immediately blamed his brother, saying that he had betrayed him twice, once with the birthright and once with Isaac's blessing. “And he said, Is not he rightly named Jacob? for he hath supplanted me these two times: he took away my birthright; and, behold, now he hath taken away my blessing” (Genesis 27:36). It's a typical disrespectful mentality, when something happens, it's everyone else's fault but him. Esau himself was the author of his own damnation, not Jacob. In the case of the lost birthright it is clear. Later on when Jacob proceeded with the plot to take the blessing of his father Isaac, Esau should be at peace and not feel betrayed. Eventually blessing comes from God and even if Esau still had the birthright, Isaac's blessing would be void. It was valid on the one hand, because God had already rejected Esau, but invalid on the other hand, because it was not Jacob's time to be blessed, as proved by the story later in his life. Jacob had to go through a difficult life far from the one he desired, under the supervision of his bad uncle Laban. The real time for Jacob's blessing came when he asked for it from the angel of the God with whom he wrestled. God first had to crush the free will in Jacob that was driven by his ego, and his mentality that craftiness and human wisdom - not God’s wisdom, are legitimate tools in God's way. Esau continued to rebel against God, even when Isaac, who loved Esau more than Jacob, told Esau “(you) shall serve your brother" realizing now that it was God's will. I quote Genesis 27:41: “And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing wherewith his father blessed him: and Esau said in his heart, The days of mourning for my father are at hand; then will I slay my brother Jacob.”

Genesis 25:28 says “And Isaac loved Esau, because he did eat of his venison: but Rebekah loved Jacob.” Here we see that Isaac’s love for Esau, even a faulty one for the wrong reasons, meant little for Esau. Isaac had previously told Esau "Behold now, I am old, I know not the day of my death" (Genesis 27:2) and Esau was waiting impatiently for the moment his father would die so that he could kill his brother. That's how much respect he had for his father. His decision to kill his brother puts him in the same category of people as Cain who killed his brother Abel. Jesus said in a parable “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matthew 25:40). This puts Esau and Cain in the same category of people as the chief priests of the Pharisees who plotted to kill Jesus, and did.

Esau hated his brother, and not only hated him, he wanted to kill him. In 1 John 4:20 says “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” Jesus eliminated the separation line between brother in the flesh and brother in the spiritual sense in Matthew 12:49 and Luke 8:21. Jacob was also guilty of the sin of hating his brother, so he had the audacity to ask him for his birthright in exchange for a pottage of lentils. His motives however were not envy in the biblical sense, as in the case of the chief priests who were envious of Jesus (Matthew 27:18). In their case, if the crowds in Israel believed in Him, they would lose their glory and their authority. John 12:43 says “For they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God”. Jacob's grievance was the feeling of injustice, and for this reason he acted this way, to seek the birthright of his brother. The resentment of Jacob is understandable. Esau won the birthright because he was born probably a minute before Jacob, and not a year or years before Jacob. This is what God had decided, which sounds like a rejection of Jacob from the womb.

Even worse for his mental world, Isaac was not a random person, but the son of God's chosen one, Abraham. God confirmed two times when he spoke to Isaac that he is his chosen one and his blessed one. The behavior of a man of God to love his unprincipled son because he brought him venison to eat, and not his good son Jacob, was possibly disheartening for Jacob, who again could be left with the impression that before his birth, God had rejected him. Rebecca knew that her older son would serve the younger. God told her so (Gen 25:23). She probably didn't tell her children and it seems she didn't tell her husband either, who would otherwise have a different opinion for his two sons, if he believed her of course.

Jacob wanted the birthright and the blessing of God because he felt cursed and rejected, but that does not justify the methods he used to earn them. Evidence of his deeper motives is what he said to the angel of God with whom he wrestled "And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me” (Genesis 32:26). He persisted with the same diligence to obtain the blessing of God, so it wasn’t a matter of envy to his brother when he endeavored for the same thing years earlier. I will add that Jacob never got to the point of looking to kill his brother whom he disliked. He had the perfect chance to kill him, when Esau came back from the field faint from hunger, and there was not a soul around, otherwise he would have gone to eat elsewhere. Jacob never thought of killing his uncle Laban, whose behavior for 20 years was awful and irritating.

Later on, from Rebekah's conversation with Isaac, it seems that they knew all along that the daughters of Heth who inhabited that land were bad women (Genesis 27:46). Esau went and married not one, but two of them (Genesis 26:34,35). Obviously, such details about his life partner like their mental world or their manners were indifferent to him. The behavior of his wives bothered his parents but not him. If he regretted taking them as wives or if his wives brought sorrow to him we would probably read it in the book of Genesis.

If we read Genesis 33 alone, we will conclude that Esau is a beloved child of God. If we also isolate the scene in Genesis 33:4: “And Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him: and they wept”, we may be impressed what a nice brother Jacob had. But it is the same Esau whom God hated, and the same Esau who loved the world and hated God and lost his salvation. We see him embracing and kissing a man of God and weeping at the same time and in another place we see him again in tears when he repented of his sins before God, but they were not forgiven. This teaches us that the children of the devil who are brothers inside the churches may have any outward appearance and pray, embrace, kiss, and weep in front of other people. They could be humble, like Esau in Genesis 33:9 when he refused the gifts of his brother Jacob "I have enough my brother...".

In Genesis 36:6,7 it appears that Esau was blessed on earthly possessions with wives and children and great riches. Jesus had to say about people like Esau "But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation" (Luke 6:24). It is the man in the parable of the foolish rich man who said "And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?” (Luke 12:19,20). “For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark” (Matthew 24:38, Luke 17:27).

Esau complained in his early years that Jacob stole the blessing of his father that rightfully belonged to him. If it was material blessings, he was rewarded with plenty of those and it seems he enjoyed a good life at the time his brother Jacob was oppressed by his uncle Laban, while being given minimum salaries for his labor as a farmer. If Esau complained that Jacob took the spiritual blessings that rightfully belonged to him as a firstborn, then he shouldn’t complain at all. He did it to himself, he gave away his birthright in exchange for a meal.

When Jacob left Canaan to avoid being killed by his brother for stealing Isaac's blessing, that same night God spoke to him and told him that he would always be with him and bless him, making the great nation, a blessed nation out of his descendants. (Genesis 28:12-15). It is perhaps an unexpected response from God to a thief who just stole the blessing from his brother, and before it he grabbed his birthright without any respect for his brother and his rights. God's conduct is befitting one of his elect who previously passed a great test with excellence, and not one who dresses himself in goat's hair and pretends to his father that he is Esau, perhaps imitating his voice too. Indeed, Jacob even with ungodly methods, passed a test that Jesus said in a verse "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied" (Matthew 5:6).

When Esau and Jacob were born, it seemed that God would fulfill his promise to Abraham and Isaac, to turn their seed into a great nation through which all the nations of the earth would be blessed (Genesis 12:3, 18:18, 22:18, 26:4) and He would do it with the firstborn Esau. It seemed that Jacob would be just a servant to his brother, someone you could call an outcast. His stubbornness to receive spiritual blessings from God was rewarded. A reminder of Jacob's attitude to God is a Gentile woman's persistent request to Jesus to save her daughter from a demon. Jesus initially refused, saying that he came only for the lost sheep of Israel. The woman did not leave him and begged him two more times even though she was apparently not entitled to the blessings of Jesus in his ministry. In the end, according to Matthew 15:28 “Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour” (Matthew 15:22-28, Mark 7:25-30).

God did not save Jacob from mental anguish by showing him in a dream when he was a child that he is his chosen one, in a similar way that he later did to Joseph. Then Jacob would take God for granted in his life and perhaps forget him. Possibly his faith would not pass the test described earlier. Jacob reaped what he sowed, he used deception and coercion to achieve his goals and now he was manipulated himself by his uncle and forced into choices like taking a wife he didn’t want. However the claim by many interpreters of Jacob's story, that God sent him one like him, his uncle Laban, to discipline him, is completely wrong. Laban was very different from Jacob. He was not a man of God. He loved only himself and had injustice in his blood. He knew about the God of Abraham, and he knew that he was superior to his gods, but he didn’t care. (Genesis 30:27, 31:29). Even when the true God of Jacob spoke in Laban's sleep, Laban immediately insisted on taking his gods, his idols from Jacob who fled his land. When God spoke to Laban, he did not introduce himself to him, because even if he did, Laban would be indifferent. “And God came to Laban the Syrian in a dream by night, and said unto him, Take heed that thou speak not to Jacob either good or bad” (Genesis 31:24). God himself followed His rule not to give the holy to the dogs and the pearls to the pigs (Matthew 7:6). How is it possible for God himself to speak to you and not be interested in learning anything more about him?

The way God worked in Jacob was to make his life miserable under the free will of his selfish uncle to teach him a lesson. In walking with God you do the will of God and you don’t follow the methods of the world, like coercing, stealing and deceiving as in the case of Jacob. For this reason he needed to be disciplined for years to become the vessel God wanted. God has the first say in how the believer's life will be and when he will be blessed. This is because knows more than any man how to make people happy and blessed. I recall parts of the Lord’s Prayer: “Father which art in heaven… Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth… And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil” (Luke 11:2-4). In Matthew 6:31-33 Jesus said “Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” You can’t disconnect the blessing you expect, from God’s righteousness or justice. Seek the kingdom of God and His justice is a more suitable translation from Greek to English. The Greek word dikeosini has both meanings, justice and righteousness. Jacob should have sought the blessing of God the honorable way from the very start.