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Hebrews11:20
By faith Isaac invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau. Rebecca's ruse in concealing Jacob and taking advantage of Isaac's blindness to extort from him the blessing that would otherwise be wasted on spiritually void and unworthy Esau lends itself to much speculating: does God endorse lying and deception? Certainly not! This text though can provide for the unspiritual soul an acceptable excuse for such practices. Far be it from Hashem to endorse the darkness of devilish lies; in presenting us with such a story, the God of Light actually reveals to us an eternal messianic truth. The Jewish people had certain expectation for a Messiah, expectations that are right, and true. Many expected the Messianic Redeemer to be a great military hero like King David or the judges of old, one who would deliver them from the tyrannical hand of Rome. The Messiah truly is all that, but as Balaam prophesied, I shall see him, but not now: I shall behold him, but not nigh (Numbers 24:17), the Messiah’s coming follows a pattern of concealment. In musing on the coming of the Messiah we are reminded of Nehemiah. Before revealing his kingly mandate to rebuild Jerusalem, Nehemiah spent time under the cover of night to scout out Jerusalem incognito (Nehemiah 2:11-16). We see the same pattern in Queen Esther, who concealed her identity before she was able to put her life on the line to save the nation (Esther in Hebrew means: concealed). We also remember how Joseph received the brothers he would later save under the concealed identity of an Egyptian Viceroy so he could test them (Genesis 42-45). Jacob shows us that the Messiah will initiate His mission in a concealed manner. We also learn from the patriarch that the Messiah will spend a long time in the exile of the nations until He finally returns in glory to the land of His birth. The Messiah did come to His people to fulfill their deepest yearning and expectation, but His coming was concealed. Until this day He appears to them under the identity of a stranger but oh, what a rejoicing it will be for the whole world the day He reveals Himself to His people. It will dwarf the rejoicing of Joseph’s brothers, even that of the Hebrew nation as they were saved from the clutch of Haman. Far from teaching us to lie and deceive, the story of Jacob and Isaac teaches an eternal truth, a truth concealed under a seeming lie. Rebecca received the promise that Jacob should inherit the blessing of Abraham, so instead of deception, their story teaches us love, devotion, and faith for the Commandment and the Promises of God. In our daily discoveries in the Words of Truth, may we do more than read and study; may Abba grant us also to understand the Truth that is concealed underneath the Words.
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Romans 9:13
"Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated." Jacob and Esau live in each of us. When in Rebecca’s womb, before they had even done anything right or wrong, Hashem already knew the difference between the two brothers. Their nature was within them from conception, a pattern left for us today to serve as a moral map. Esau, the wild man whose sword is against everyone especially his brother, is the resurrection of Cain. He lives and fights against all that is conformed to God. His very nature is to defy, reject, and challenge whatever is of God and to endorse the very antithesis of everything that is good, true, and pure. We call him the ‘old self’ (Ephesians 4:22), the ‘mind that is set on the flesh’ (Romans 8:7), a small representation of the anti-Messiah that is within each of us (1 John 4:3). Rebecca’s complaint “If it is thus, why is this happening to me?" (Genesis 25:22) expresses the cry of every man and woman who fervently desires to follow God’s ways of righteousness yet as the Master’s apostle says, through trouble and persecution (2 Timothy 3:12). Jacob on the contrary allowed Hashem to search his heart. He allowed the Spirit, the Flame of the Almighty God to search him through and through, to clean him from deceit, corruption, disobedience, rebellion, and all other forms of unrighteousness. He lived for twenty-one years in exile in the house of idolatrous Laban and returned home purer than before. The narration tells us of a camp of angels welcoming him as he returned to the Land of Cana'an with his family, which he snatched from Babylon (Genesis 32:1). Though God had already accepted him (Genesis 27:26-29; 28:11-21), Jacob worked out his salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12), and when ‘graduation’ time came, Jacob took hold of the kingdom's blessing with passionate love and violence (Genesis 32:24-32; Matthew 11:12). None of us is a helpless victim of our generation and godless environment. Each one of us is given the choice to emulate 'Jacob' or 'Esau', to obey the 'Jacob' or the "Esau' within us, to yield to the ‘old self’ and the ‘flesh’ within us, or to combat our innate human nature in order to live in 'Jacob', the resurrected new man who holds on to the Angel until the blessing is bestowed, even at a price. The choice is ours to make! Galatians 5:6
… Only faith working through love …. I recently read a story about the mother of an Israeli soldier in the I.D.F. Like all good Jewish mothers, she had for her boy ambitions that defied the rules of the possible (Matthew 20:20-23). When approaching the Chief Officer of her son’s battalion to make her motherly impossible request, the officer replied: ‘Jewish mothers are one step above army chief officers, so we’ll see what we can do’. When she saw that God was ‘lingering’ in fulfilling His own Word, Sarah decided to help Him out (sarcasm intended) using the stratagem with Hagar. Rebecca who took over the role of matriarch after Sara’s death proved herself to be cut of the same cloth. She had received a personal prophecy that Jacob should receive Isaac’s blessing and not Esau, and she was going to make sure God did not ‘mess up’ (again, sarcasm intended!) about it. First we can wonder about God; ‘What takes Him so long anyways?’ (Don’t our wives always get on case for procrastinating on ‘important’ projects, especially theirs?) It is easy also to wonder about these two women’s ways. Did they not trust God? Other questions beg to be asked though: ‘Did these women by their actions show unreserved dedication and faith in the prophetic destiny of their lineage, even at the cost of a seeming lack of integrity? Could they maybe have been more interested in the Word of God being fulfilled than in themselves and their own reputation?’ It takes a mother, a Jewish one at that, to fight with the devil himself on these kinds of terms. We tend to judge people through the screening of personal virtue, but it seems that Hashem judges us more by virtue of the force of our dedication and love for him. About the kingdom of God, Yeshua did mention that we break into it through forceful determination. This is not to say that the ‘end justifies the means’. It is only to reiterate the words of dear Apostle Paul in which he explains that the most important element of our spiritual walk is a faith working through love (Galatians 5:6). Our love for the Master (oh, could it ever match Hashem’s love for us (John 3:16)) needs to go beyond the concerns of our personal posture. Our love for Him needs to expand; it needs to live in utter abandonment, above and beyond the restricted borders of the acceptable, breaking through the narrow confines of the possible. Does it in your life? Yeshua made Himself of no reputation for us. Can we, should we do the same for Him and what he asks us to do? James 1:23
For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror (the Torah). For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. Jacob may have inherited the promises made to Abraham, but he nevertheless had to come clean before being mightily blessed by the Almighty. He had to face up his lies by meeting Esau; come to term with his own demons before meeting the angels on the way to the Promised Land (Genesis 32-33). These chapters may speak to us about the struggle Israel faces today as it returns to the Promised Land after a long exile ‘Babylon’, but it also tells us about our own lives. As believers in Yeshua the Messiah, each one of us inherits a share of the elements of the promises made to Abraham. The fact that we are inheritors though doesn’t mean that we are not asked to ‘work out this ‘salvation’ in fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12). We may be allegeable, but we still have to show our worthiness. This does not come in the form of ‘works’ in order to deserve the blessings, but as a statement of integrity, like an entrance exam after being found allegeable to enter the university. Grant it, life is a fight, life is a struggle, and there is no way around it. But if we are to labor, may we labor for that ‘meat which does not perish’ (John 6:27). If we are going to contend, may we contend for the incorruptible price, for that crown of life Hashem has promised to them who love Him (James 1:12). If we are going to be soldiers, may we fight for that city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God (Hebrews 11:10). Can we stand with Jacob and meet the Angel of the Lord in our lives? Can we meet He who puts us face to face with the lies we’ve ignored for so long, with the rationalizations that make us deny His Name daily in front of others through disobedience? Can we stand Him to bless us by crippling our pride forever, change our name and truly make us a new creature, not fashioned after the pride we so dearly hold on to, but after the meekness of those who inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5)? Jacob had to learn not to hold and a grudge; do you hold a grudge/grudges? Jacob had to learn to forgive his enemy; do you forgive your enemy/ennemies? Jacob had to learn to solely rely on God for vindication; do you try to vindicate yourself in front of others? We are always so concerned about straightening up others that we forget that our primary duty is to be faced daily with the Word of Torah, that we may learn to be fashioned according to the ways of God. May we accept what this Word tells us. May we allow It to even cripple us for life, take our pride and arrogance away, that we may inherit the eternal price. Romans 11:25-26
Blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: The Book of Genesis tells us the story of Isaac, a father blinded to his son’s wickedness. Isaac could have been fooled by Jacob’s ruse but Rebecca his wife had been given a prophecy about the future of her two children. Did Isaac know about this? And how could Isaac be oblivious to Esau’s marriages with several Canaanite women? It seems also that Isaac was unaware of the birthright-for-‘red-stuff’ (that it how the dish was called in the Hebrew text) deal between Esau and Jacob. Many Talmudic commentators attribute Isaac’s blindness to an act of God’s mercy to spare him the distress of seeing his son Esau’s wicked behavior. Some also suggest that it was due to Esau’s smoke-screen of hypocrisy, pretending to be so righteous in front of his father. It could also simply be that he was old and had cataracts. Interesting elements are unveiled when we look at this story as the prophetic foreshadow of a future situation, as the microcosm of a larger concept. Not only was Isaac blinded to Esau’s wickedness, but so was he to Jacob’s righteousness. Here we have Isaac, the promised seed of Abraham, blinded to the righteousness of he who in essence would carry the seed of Messiah in him, which caused him to leave his mother’s tent for exile. We must remember also that Rebecca lived in Sarah’s tent which was in the eyes of the sages compared to Jerusalem. Jacob therefore is exiled from ‘Jerusalem’, and we never hear of Rebecca again. Jacob later returns to the Land with an angelic escort (Genesis 34). Two thousand years ago, Hashem ‘blinded’ the eyes of Israel to the early messianic movement (Romans 11:7, 25). The apostle Paul also started out blinded to the fulfillment of the promises made to the fathers. This forced the Messianic believers of Israel, which were mostly a Temple sect of Jerusalem found gathering by Solomon’s Portico, to leave the Land and go into exile. Today, as Jacob escorted by angels (Genesis 32:1) that seed is returning to the Promised Land as a growing Messianic movement. Though they face many ‘Esau’s, angels also escort them and will see them to destination in conquering the Land until, as in the story of old, The Messiah who is also called David (Hoseah 3:5) arrives and establishes his Kingdom in Jerusalem from where the whole world will learn to live by the Torah of God. May it be soon Abba, even in our days! |
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