We pick the story of Jacob in Genesis
exactly where we left off last week. You
may remember that Jacob has swindled his brother out of their father’s
blessing. This blessing wasn’t just some
ordinary words like you’d find in a Hallmark card. This blessing was to receive headship of the
family, which was far more than just land or money. It included the covenant that God made with
Abraham. You’ll remember God reinstated
this covenant when it was passed on to Abraham’s son Isaac. And now the covenant rested with Jacob. This was a covenant about being a nation,
God’s chosen people. The people who
would bear God’s name into the world.
How could Jacob have acquired for
himself such a covenant by means of trickery and theft? He and his mother had conspired to swindle it
from Esau, its rightful recipient. What
makes it even more complicated is that we remember that Jacob and his mother
are really only acting to bring about a word from God about Jacob and Esau
before they were born. They knew it was
to be God’s will that Jacob got the blessing, not Esau. They were merely acting to make it reality.
Last week I tried to show how puzzling
this all was. By what Genesis tells us
Esau appears to be a hard-working, decent, upright sort of man. Perhaps he’s a bit dim, but that’s hardly a
fatal drawback. On the other hand Jacob
has a history of manipulation and exploitation.
Why would God choose treacherous Jacob over good Esau?
I’ve been using four commentaries from
four different biblical experts as we’ve been working our way through Genesis;
trying to make sense of these difficult stories. The experts seldom agree with one another,
often outright refuting the other’s interpretation! That’s okay.
The biblical texts are complex and speak in different ways to different
times and places. It is okay to
interpret them differently. But for some
things we just want a bit more clarity.
With the whole Jacob and Esau situation we are left to realize that we
have to let God be God. God does things
in God’s own way and in God’s own time.
Sometimes things make sense to us.
Sometimes they don’t, but we are encouraged to trust all the same.
Well, not surprisingly, Esau is livid
when he finds out what Jacob has done.
He begins to plot to kill his brother because then all things will come
back to him. Of course killing someone
is not something to consider lightly.
Who knows if Esau was just blowing off steam or if he was really
planning to do it? Whatever the case,
Jacob realizes it is time to get out of town.
Picture him. He’s forty years old. He has no spouse, no children, no money, no
house. He has only the clothes on his
back. Who knows what’s going on in his
heart, but he certainly can’t feel good about the fact that he’s in this
situation because he obtained a holy blessing through deceitful means. He’s heading off for his uncle in Haran. The distance from Beer-sheba to Haran is no
short jaunt. He’s not going to do this
in an afternoon. It’s about 500 miles. On foot.
With nothing.
I think the Interpreter’s Bible
Commentary sets it up nicely for us. I
want to read a few paragraphs from it:
“In the Genesis story Jacob was a
wanderer; that is the first fact which makes his story so poignant for many a
heart. Men and women often feel
themselves in spiritual exile – not pilgrims, for there is no clear quest
before their eyes; but just poor, lonely travelers through what often seems an
empty land. They long for an experience
like Jacob’s, to show that in the most desolate place there can be a shining
something which bridges the gap between earth and heaven so that henceforth all
the horizons of hope and trust are lifted and enlarged. And the promise that lies in the story of
Bethel becomes the more touching when it is remember that Jacob was not only a
wanderer, but a guilty and burdened and remorseful one. He had not deserved a vision of God. But he needed it; and all his life in his
groping and unworthy way he had desired it…
“Thus is was in beauty and benediction
that the vision came to Jacob.
Notwithstanding all that he had done, communication between earth and
heaven was not broken. The Lord God of
Abraham, and the God of Isaac – the God of his fathers and of all the
inheritance of his home – was with him still, and would go with him on the way
ahead. In that experience of Jacob is
expressed what the Hebrew people felt about their whole contradictory history:
in the midst of ignorance and evil there is still the possibility of a saving
revelation. Even on the rocky slopes
where Jacob was alone there rose the shining stairway that brought the heavenly
glory, with angels going up like prayers of [humans] to God and angels coming
down like the grace of God to [humans].
That vision epitomizes the whole wonder of the Hebrew faith and hope as
they move through the Old Testament to their culmination in Christ.” (Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, Volume 1,
Pg. 689-90)
This vision is the first recorded time
that God has communicated directly with Jacob.
Who knows how Jacob felt about what he had done? Perhaps he was afraid of what God would do to
him because of his stealing the covenant position God had established with his
ancestors. Whatever the case, in the
vision God verifies that he will indeed be with Jacob. That includes all Jacob’s flaws and failings,
and his successes too.
It would be great if when we return to
Jacob next week we find him to be a reformed character; as if the vision had
caused him to mend his ways and start walking the straight and narrow
path. We’ll discover that is not the
case. He’s heading to his mother’s
brother, Uncle Laban. We’ll discover
that Laban and Rebekah are cut from the same cloth. Laban will be conniving and deceitful with
Jacob, and Jacob will continue to be conniving and deceitful himself;
ultimately fleeing again when his deeds catch up to him.
No, like an addict who can’t beat an
addiction, Jacob’s ways won’t change for a long long time. But we will read when he hits rock bottom,
and when he does then he does change.
For now he knows that God is with him, and God will stay with him.
Perhaps you’ve always felt like you
were a good person and that you deserved God’s blessings. If that’s the case then the story of Jacob
probably has little to teach you. But if
you are a person who’s made mistakes, and continued to make mistakes, and
sometimes found bad things inside yourself that are absolutely unbeatable no
matter how hard you try, then you can understand Jacob.
It would be great if God gave each of
us a vision when we were down and desperate.
(Actually it would be great if God gave us visions before we got to that
point!) But I suspect few if any of us
can truly claim such a thing. God seems
distant and silent.
But God is not. God speaks to us in many and various ways all
the time. We have benefits Jacob did not
have. Jacob was all alone. There was no church to go to, no synagogue,
no community of likeminded believers he could turn to. He had no Christ, no atoning sacrifice, no
sacraments, and no scripture to turn to.
All of this was yet to be, for we are still in Genesis, the story of
origins. It is hard to be a trail
blazer. We cannot read our life
situation onto Jacob.
Let’s conclude with the deal that
Jacob makes with God, for Jacob is still a wheeler-dealer. He makes a vow to God saying, “If God will be
with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat
and clothing to wear, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then
the Lord shall be my God, and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar,
shall be God’s house; and of all that you give me I will surely give one tenth
to you.”
This is the passage that gives root to
the idea of tithing ten percent. Jacob
is not asking God for a lot – not prosperity or land or prestige – just food,
clothing, and a peaceful return. He
acknowledges that what comes to him, by whatever means it comes, is coming from
God. This is actually a profound vow
coming from this accomplished manipulator.
We too do well to recognize that even if we’ve acquired something by
toil and hard work and the sweat of our brow, it is still coming from God. Only God can create from nothingness. I think blessings come to us all the
time. We just fool ourselves into
thinking we’ve earned them, and thus we deserve them. No, all things are God’s gifts.
We’ll leave Jacob there until next
week when we see him starting to get into the business of women, wives, and
children. Not surprisingly that’s not
going to go too well. But until then we
live in faith and hope and honoring the God who created us, loves us, and like
Jacob, is always with us.
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