Scripture: Living by
His Wits
27:1 When Isaac was old and his eyes were dim so that he could not see, he called his elder son Esau and said to him, “My son”; and he answered, “Here I am.” 2 He said, “See, I am old; I do not know the day of my death. 3 Now then, take your weapons, your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field, and hunt game for me. 4 Then prepare for me savory food, such as I like, and bring it to me to eat, so that I may bless you before I die.”
Today’s scripture begins in the middle of the Jacob story. This particular scene is a classic in children’s Sunday School literature. Isaac is nearing the end of his life, and so it is time for him to pass on the family blessing to the firstborn son, Esau. You may recall that Jacob has already swindled Esau out of his birthright—that is, the special double inheritance that firstborn sons traditionally received in that part of the ancient world. Now the stage is being set for a second deception. Jacob has already grabbed the birthright inheritance. Now he’s about to grab the firstborn’s blessing.
15 Then Rebekah took the best garments of her elder son Esau, which were with her in the house, and put them on her younger son Jacob; 16 and she put the skins of the kids on his hands and on the smooth part of his neck. 17 Then she handed the savory food, and the bread that she had prepared, to her son Jacob.
Jacob’s name literally means something like “heel-grabber.” You might remember that at his birth, he emerged second with his hands grasping after Esau’s heels. Perhaps this is just proof that heel-grabbing is in Jacob’s nature. Look at how he was born. He’s a go-getter, someone who was wrestling in the womb, someone who was fighting from day one.
But in this particular scene we see that perhaps Jacob’s heel-grabbing isn’t just “nature,” it’s also “nurture.” In other words, here we see where Jacob may have learned some of his wits, some of his scheming—namely, his mother, Rebekah (who has preferred Jacob to Esau from day one). In fact, this particular deception seems to come primarily from Rebekah. She overhears Isaac talking to Esau; she prepares the food that Isaac has requested of Esau; she secures Esau’s best clothes for Jacob to wear; she even thinks to make Jacob feel hairier than he is, putting animal skins on his hands and neck to mimic the rough, hairy skin of his more rugged brother Esau.
18 So he [Jacob] went in to his father, and said, “My father”; and he said, “Here I am; who are you, my son?” 19 Jacob said to his father, “I am Esau your firstborn.” Traditionally readers have remarked on how rich this scene is in dramatic irony. Again and again, we wince (or perhaps chuckle ruefully) as we see poor, hapless Isaac mistake Jacob for Esau. We can see what Isaac cannot. But as I read through the story this past week, another dimension of the story emerged. Not the outer layer of appearances, but the inner landscape of Jacob’s soul.
Jacob lives by his wits. His heel-grabbing, go-getting character means he is continually looking for ways to outwit and outmaneuver his opponent or victim, whoever that is. In this scene, we see Jacob repeatedly lie to his father—sometimes by what he says, sometimes by what he doesn’t say. And with each lie, Jacob gets closer to his goal. But that’s not all. With each lie, he also gets farther away from the truth, from reality. I imagine that with each lie, he is progressively numbing his conscience, dulling his soul. Already he has lied to his father once, declaring himself to be Esau. Let’s see how else he lies.
He continues: “I have done as you told me; now sit up and eat of my game, so that you may bless me.” (Another little lie. Jacob did none of the things that Isaac told Esau.) 20 But Isaac said to his son, “How is it that you have found it so quickly, my son?” He answered, “Because the LORD your God granted me success.” Here’s a third lie. Jacob takes God’s name in vain, attributing to God what is actually a corrupt, godless scheme.
21 Then Isaac said to Jacob, “Come near, that I may feel you, my son, to know whether you are really my son Esau or not.” 22 So Jacob went up to his father Isaac, who felt him and said, “The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.” 23 He did not recognize him, because his hands were hairy like his brother Esau’s hands; so he blessed him.
By remaining silent, Jacob seals the deception. He says nothing to explain his voice nor to counter Isaac’s mistaken judgment of his artificially hairy hands.
As a result of all these lies, Jacob is successful. He gets what he wants. His father’s blessing.
Scripture: Jacob’s
First Encounter with God
But that’s not all he gets. Our scripture selection today omits part of the story, but you’ll likely remember what happens next. Jacob gets a very angry brother. When Esau learns that Jacob has outwitted him again and stolen his blessing, he falls into a murderous rage, and Jacob must flee for his life.
It is a pattern we see across the first half of Jacob’s life. He successfully swindles others and gets what he wants, but he has no peace, no rest. He’s always on the run. First from his brother. Later from his father-in-law, Laban.
Which brings us to the conclusion of today’s scripture, where we find Jacob on the run in the wilderness.
28:10 Jacob left Beer-sheba and went toward Haran. 11 He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place.
We are about to observe Jacob’s first encounter with God. Notice the setting. Jacob is lying down to sleep in the wilderness. Jacob, the heel-grabber, the go-getter, the outwitter, is about to do practically the one thing where he has no control over his surroundings.
Sleep is a very curious thing. We all do it. But to be more precise, we don’t do it. Sleep is not something that you do. Sleep is something that happens to you. You cannot control the moment that sleep happens. It overtakes you when it will. Sleep reminds us that we are not in control. Even more troublesome for Jacob, sleep leaves him helpless, defenseless. What if his brother should show up and steal back all that he has stolen? Steal even his life?
And yet it is precisely in this most vulnerable, most un-Jacob-like moment, that Jacob encounters God for the first time…
12 And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13 And the LORD stood beside him and said, “I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; 14 and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring.
I have to be honest, this promise of God seems crazy. Right now, the ancestral family can’t even bless itself without getting tangled up in a murderous knot. How will “all the families of the earth” be blessed by a family that can’t even bless itself?
For me, we can see the gospel most clearly in Genesis in the fact that the heroes—Abraham and Sarah, Rebekah and Jacob, and so on—are not heroic at all. They’re people just like you and me, with generally good intentions that often get hijacked by less-than-good impulses. Yet God abides with them and insists on blessing them with God’s presence and care. Even more, God insists that they will be his representatives of blessing unto all the world.
Centuries later, Paul will make the case that we too are children of Abraham. To live by faith in God through Christ is to join the same story. God insists on blessing us that all the families of the earth might know God’s blessing.
15 Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” 16 Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is in this place—and I did not know it!” 17 And he was afraid, and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”
In Jacob’s exuberant response to his dream, we catch another glimpse of his controlling character. He thinks that God is in this place specifically, that he has stumbled on a secret portal to God’s presence—as though God’s presence could be contained in a place or secured through a secret passageway.
Many years later in his life, however, he will discover in another nocturnal encounter—a painfully hip-wrenching confrontation—that God cannot be tamed. God’s blessing is not won by the strong or the smart, but received by the broken and the needful.
A Tale of Two
Blessings
And that, for me, is a major lesson learned in the story of Jacob.
Jacob’s life can be read as a tale of two blessings: the blessings of man and the blessings of God.
The first blessings that Jacob pursues are the blessings of man, which he wins by his superior wits. First, he swindles his brother Esau out of his birthright, which secures for Jacob a double portion of his father’s inheritance. Second, he tricks his father into giving him the blessing for the firstborn, a blessing that confirms his right to wealth and power. These blessings that Jacob wins by his wits are worldly blessings, material blessings. They are what most of our world today strives for. And it’s worth observing what success looks like for Jacob. Even as he secures these blessings, he is restless, always on the move, living in one lie or another. Is he actually happy, I wonder?
But as we see today in Jacob’s dream at Bethel, and as we see later in his wrestling with a mysterious divine figure at the ford of Jabbok, Jacob also receives a blessing from God. And this blessing he receives from God is astonishing in more ways than one. First, it is astonishing because of Jacob’s character. This is a man who has done everything not to deserve God’s favor, and yet God insists on blessing him. Second, it is astonishing in its contrast to worldly blessing. For each time Jacob receives God’s blessing, it is not by his wits but by his vulnerability. Each time the blessing comes at night. Once, when he is defenseless in the wilderness, at the moment of sleep when he must relinquish control and render himself vulnerable to the world. Another time, also in the wilderness, when his wits and his wrestling win him only a broken hip…and a new name. No longer shall he be called “Jacob,” “heel-grabber,” but rather Israel, “God-wrestler.” And what he has learned in wrestling God is that life is not about winning strength and power, but being broken and yet in that brokenness finding God. Indeed, if you trace the second half of Jacob’s life, you’ll notice that he is continually losing, continually encountering his own brokenness. As he will tell Pharaoh at the end of his life, “Few and hard have been the years of my life” (Gen 47:9). And yet Jacob’s story is preserved in the Bible because across the ups and downs of his life, he comes to rely less and less on himself and more and more upon the God who is faithful, a God whose love and forgiveness has the power to heal broken families and work good out of evil.
There is a remarkable preview of the gospel in Jacob’s life. Consider the people whom Jesus called blessed in his sermon on the mount:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth…” (Matt 5:1-12). And so on, as Jesus names, one after another, people who are broken and thus aware of their need for God and open to receive God’s blessing. Which is not a blessing of power and wealth, but a blessing of presence and relationship. What we have come to call in our faith tradition, “communion.”
In our part of the world today, I read and hear a lot of worrying things, many of which paint a struggle between two sides, a struggle that must be won. As I read Jacob’s story, however, I question whether anything is ever really “won.” As long as Jacob is winning, he’s also running and fighting. Is that the life God wants to give us? Is that how “all the families of the earth” will be blessed?
The many paradoxes of the gospel—die to live, lose to win, give to receive—suggest that the real struggle is not with people on the other side. It is with ourselves…and with God. It is acknowledging our brokenness and our need. And in this space, receiving the blessing that matters most, God’s blessing of communion with God and one another.
Prayer
Whose gift cannot be won
But only received with open hands—
Deliver us from the struggle
To be right, to win, to control.
Grant us peace in our brokenness
And communion in our need.
May your love be our most cherished blessing.
In Christ, crucified and risen: Amen.
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