Genesis 27 & 28
The Birthright that Matters

Genesis 27

Jacob’s Deception

1 Now it came about, when Isaac was old and his eyes were too dim to see, that he called his older son Esau and said to him, “My son.” And he said to him, “Here I am.” 2 Isaac said, “Behold now, I am old and I do not know the day of my death. 3 “Now then, please take your gear, your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field and hunt game for me; 4 and prepare a savory dish for me such as I love, and bring it to me that I may eat, so that my soul may bless you before I die.”

5 Rebekah was listening while Isaac spoke to his son Esau. So when Esau went to the field to hunt for game to bring home, 6 Rebekah said to her son Jacob, “Behold, I heard your father speak to your brother Esau, saying, 7 ‘Bring me some game and prepare a savory dish for me, that I may eat, and bless you in the presence of the LORD before my death.’ 8 “Now therefore, my son, listen to me as I command you. 9 “Go now to the flock and bring me two choice young goats from there, that I may prepare them as a savory dish for your father, such as he loves. 10 “Then you shall bring it to your father, that he may eat, so that he may bless you before his death.” 11 Jacob answered his mother Rebekah, “Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man and I am a smooth man. 12 “Perhaps my father will feel me, then I will be as a deceiver in his sight, and I will bring upon myself a curse and not a blessing.” 13 But his mother said to him, “Your curse be on me, my son; only obey my voice, and go, get them for me.” 14 So he went and got them, and brought them to his mother; and his mother made savory food such as his father loved. 15 Then Rebekah took the best garments of Esau her elder son, which were with her in the house, and put them on Jacob her younger son. 16 And she put the skins of the young goats on his hands and on the smooth part of his neck. 17 She also gave the savory food and the bread, which she had made, to her son Jacob.

18 Then he came 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; I have done as you told me. Get up, please, sit and eat of my game, that you may bless me.” 20 Isaac said to his son, “How is it that you have it so quickly, my son?” And he said, “Because the LORD your God caused it to happen to me.” 21 Then Isaac said to Jacob, “Please come close, that I may feel you, my son, whether you are really my son Esau or not.” 22 So Jacob came close to Isaac his father, and he felt him and said, “The voice is the voice of Jacob, 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. 24 And he said, “Are you really my son Esau?” And he said, “I am.” 25 So he said, “Bring it to me, and I will eat of my son’s game, that I may bless you.” And he brought it to him, and he ate; he also brought him wine and he drank. 26 Then his father Isaac said to him, “Please come close and kiss me, my son.” 27 So he came close and kissed him; and when he smelled the smell of his garments, he blessed him and said, “See, the smell of my son Is like the smell of a field which the LORD has blessed; 28 Now may God give you of the dew of heaven, And of the fatness of the earth, And an abundance of grain and new wine; 29 May peoples serve you, And nations bow down to you; Be master of your brothers, And may your mother’s sons bow down to you. Cursed be those who curse you, And blessed be those who bless you.”

The Stolen Blessing

30 Now it came about, as soon as Isaac had finished blessing Jacob, and Jacob had hardly gone out from the presence of Isaac his father, that Esau his brother came in from his hunting. 31 Then he also made savory food, and brought it to his father; and he said to his father, “Let my father arise and eat of his son’s game, that you may bless me.” 32 Isaac his father said to him, “Who are you?” And he said, “I am your son, your firstborn, Esau.” 33 Then Isaac trembled violently, and said, “Who was he then that hunted game and brought it to me, so that I ate of all of it before you came, and blessed him? Yes, and he shall be blessed.” 34 When Esau heard the words of his father, he cried out with an exceedingly great and bitter cry, and said to his father, “Bless me, even me also, O my father!” 35 And he said, “Your brother came deceitfully and has taken away your blessing.” 36 Then he said, “Is he not rightly named Jacob, for he has supplanted me these two times? He took away my birthright, and behold, now he has taken away my blessing.” And he said, “Have you not reserved a blessing for me?” 37 But Isaac replied to Esau, “Behold, I have made him your master, and all his relatives I have given to him as servants; and with grain and new wine I have sustained him. Now as for you then, what can I do, my son?” 38 Esau said to his father, “Do you have only one blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, O my father.” So Esau lifted his voice and wept.

39 Then Isaac his father answered and said to him, “Behold, away from the fertility of the earth shall be your dwelling, And away from the dew of heaven from above. 40 “By your sword you shall live, And your brother you shall serve; But it shall come about when you become restless, That you will break his yoke from your neck.”

41 So Esau bore a grudge against Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him; and Esau said to himself, “The days of mourning for my father are near; then I will kill my brother Jacob.” 42 Now when the words of her elder son Esau were reported to Rebekah, she sent and called her younger son Jacob, and said to him, “Behold your brother Esau is consoling himself concerning you by planning to kill you. 43 “Now therefore, my son, obey my voice, and arise, flee to Haran, to my brother Laban! 44 “Stay with him a few days, until your brother’s fury subsides, 45 until your brother’s anger against you subsides and he forgets what you did to him. Then I will send and get you from there. Why should I be bereaved of you both in one day?”

46 Rebekah said to Isaac, “I am tired of living because of the daughters of Heth; if Jacob takes a wife from the daughters of Heth, like these, from the daughters of the land, what good will my life be to me?”

Genesis 28

1 So Isaac called Jacob and blessed him and charged him, and said to him, “You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan. 2 “Arise, go to Paddan-aram, to the house of Bethuel your mother’s father; and from there take to yourself a wife from the daughters of Laban your mother’s brother. 3 “May God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may become a company of peoples. 4 “May He also give you the blessing of Abraham, to you and to your descendants with you, that you may possess the land of your sojournings, which God gave to Abraham.” 5 Then Isaac sent Jacob away, and he went to Paddan-aram to Laban, son of Bethuel the Aramean, the brother of Rebekah, the mother of Jacob and Esau.

6 Now Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Paddan-aram to take to himself a wife from there, and that when he blessed him he charged him, saying, “You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan,” 7 and that Jacob had obeyed his father and his mother and had gone to Paddan-aram. 8 So Esau saw that the daughters of Canaan displeased his father Isaac; 9 and Esau went to Ishmael, and married, besides the wives that he had, Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham’s son, the sister of Nebaioth.

Jacob’s Dream

10 Then Jacob departed from Beersheba and went toward Haran. 11 He came to a certain place and spent the night there, because the sun had set; and he took one of the stones of the place and put it under his head, and lay down in that place. 12 He had a dream, and behold, a ladder was set on the earth with its top reaching to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13 And behold, the LORD stood above it and said, “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie, I will give it to you and to your descendants. 14 “Your descendants will also be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and in you and in your descendants shall all the families of the earth be blessed. 15 “Behold, 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 awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.” 17 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.”

18 So Jacob rose early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on its top. 19 He called the name of that place Bethel; however, previously the name of the city had been Luz. 20 Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God will be with me and will keep me on this journey that I take, and will give me food to eat and garments to wear, 21 and I return to my father’s house in safety, then the LORD will be my God. 22 “This stone, which I have set up as a pillar, will be God’s house, and of all that You give me I will surely give a tenth to You.”

Unpacking Genesis 27 & 28

By God’s grace, I’m a changed person. If someone didn’t believe in the power of the Gospel to change a person’s life, they could look at my life before Christ as though I was still that same person today. They could cry, “Hypocrite!” and cite all my past sins. Thankfully I am not the same person I once was, and if you’re in Christ, you’re not who you once were either. As Paul says in Philippians 1:6, “He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” We’ll see these truths of spiritual transformation in today’s study of the life of Jacob.

Our study in Genesis 27 opens with Isaac essentially blind. He knows his days are not long on the earth, and he wants to pass his patriarchal blessings on to Esau while he still can. So, in verse 3, Isaac tells Esau to hunt for some meat, and when he comes back, they’ll have a feast where Isaac will transfer his blessing onto Esau.

These “blessings ceremonies” were super important in those days. They were official and solemn and binding. The head of the family would pass the role of patriarch onto the next. They were often celebrated with a feast. That is what Isaac wanted to do here in Genesis 27.

Now, this should cause us to ask the question, “Why was Isaac conferring this blessing on Esau? After all, the Lord has already told Rebekah that the older son would serve the younger. Why would Isaac go against God’s clear instructions?”

We can’t say for sure, but it’s reasonable to surmise that Isaac’s thinking reflected the culture of his day. It seems likely that Isaac couldn’t get past the cultural conventions of his day for how families functioned and decisions were made. In other words, at this moment, Isaac was following the values of the world rather than the values of God’s kingdom. Therefore, he struggled to submit to the Lord’s will.

Genesis 27 continues with the record of what transpires after this. Rebekah overheard Isaac talking with Esau, so she schemes with Jacob to subvert Isaac’s plan. She tells Jacob to figure out how to put some goat skins on his arms while she cooks a meal. Jacob is supposed to take the meal to Isaac, claiming to be Esau. Isaac would think Jacob was Esau and give him the family blessing instead. Somehow this would be binding and codify the fact that the older son would serve the younger. Even if you’ve heard this story a hundred times before, this all still sounds pretty strange. Perhaps Rebekah justified this deception because the Lord had told her Esau would serve Jacob; maybe that’s even what she told Jacob to convince him to comply.

Either way, Jacob agrees to go along with this ruse, and in verse 18, he brings Isaac a freshly cooked meal, claiming to be Esau. When Isaac is surprised that “Esau” came back so quickly, Jacob lies and attributes his success to the Lord. In verse 21, Isaac is still skeptical and calls Jacob to come closer. In verse 22, Isaac says, “The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau.” He asks in verse 24, “are you really my Son Esau?” Jacob lies again, saying, “I am.” Yikes.

Then we come to the ceremony Jacob was scheming for. Isaac says to him in verses 28 to 29: “Now may God give you of the dew of heaven, And of the fatness of the earth, And an abundance of grain and new wine; May peoples serve you, And nations bow down to you; Be master of your brothers, And may your mother’s sons bow down to you. Cursed be those who curse you, and blessed be those who bless you.”

This is a profound blessing that included four elements:

·Agricultural prosperity (verse 28).

·International respect and success (verse 29).

·Authority for Jacob to be master over the family (verse 29).

·A curse and blessing for those who would curse or bless Jacob (verse 29).

Of course, we know these blessings were given predicated on a lie, yet in ancient cultures, these blessings were tantamount to law. The family was required to obey the father’s words; thus, Isaac’s pronouncement would carry forward into the next generation as if they were set in stone.

In verse 30, Esau returns and learns he’s been cheated out of the family blessing. He cries out, hoping Isaac would give him a blessing too. Isaac does, but it’s not the blessing Esau wanted. In verse 47, Isaac declares that Esau would have difficulty and serve Jacob. Is that really a blessing? Well, let’s keep reading.

Going on to Genesis 28, Genesis 28 opens with the record of Isaac’s blessings and counsel to Jacob. For one thing, Jacob was not to marry a Canaanite woman. Instead, he should go to the region of Paddan-aram and find a wife from among the daughters of Rebekah’s brother Laban. That would be a significant difference from Esau’s marital choice. We should note that Jacob obeys Isaac. In fact, verse 7 specifically says Jacob obeyed his father and mother. Although Jacob may be a “deceiver,” he was still on board with the identity and purpose of his father’s people.

Likewise, in verses 3 and 4, Isaac gives Jacob a sincere blessing. This second blessing confirms the validity of the first. Isaac tells Jacob, “May God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may become a company of peoples. May He also give you the blessing of Abraham, to you and to your descendants with you, that you may possess the land of your sojournings, which God gave to Abraham.”

This second blessing included two primary points: First, God would make Jacob fruitful, and he would become a large nation of people. Second, they would possess the Promised Land. These blessings demonstrate that Isaac was now finally on board with God's choice of Jacob over Esau.

At this point, things are looking better for Jacob. However, he still has to sort out things with Esau. The whole goat-skin-arm-caper has just happened, and back in Genesis 27:41, Esau promised to kill Jacob once Isaac passed away. Esau would get that birthright one way or another. So, fearing for his life, Jacob flees to Haran (Genesis 28:10). You might remember that Haran is where Abraham lived for a while back in Genesis 11. That’s also where his uncle Laban lived.

On the journey to Haran, Jacob experienced an extremely important event in his life, known as “Jacob’s Ladder.” This is where God blesses Jacob too! It’s one thing to receive a blessing from your dad; it’s another thing to receive one from God! This event occurred in a dream that Jacob had in Genesis 28:12-15.

In this dream, Jacob sees a ladder reaching to heaven with angels going up and down it. The Lord then makes a covenant with Jacob 1) to give him land, the Promised Land, 2) that his descendants would be as numerous as the dust of the earth, and 3) through them, all the nations of the world would be blessed. If this sounds a lot like God’s covenant with Abraham and Isaac, it should. This is another reiteration of what theologians call the “Abrahamic Covenant” that we first discussed in Genesis 12.

The repetition of these promises to Jacob is important for several reasons. First, God is making the same promises to Jacob as He made to Isaac and Abraham; thus, God’s promises to Abraham and Isaac still stand. Second, notice who God is not making this covenant with. Esau. God has not made His covenant with the older son but with the younger. This is important because as the story of Jacob unfolds, it will appear that although Jacob technically inherited Isaac’s birthright, Esau inherited Isaac’s prosperity. By the end of Genesis 33, Esau appears quite wealthy and powerful, especially in comparison with Jacob. He could afford to be magnanimous with his scheming younger brother. Yet even in this, Jacob still inherited the birthright that matters: God’s promises.

Genesis 28 ends with Jacob building an altar to the Lord and a commitment to invest in God’s kingdom financially. He fully believes God’s promises; he is fully on board with God’s plan for his life, and he begins to change the way he lives in light of God’s agenda for himself and his people.

Later, in Genesis 29:9-12, he would wrestle with the Angel of the Lord and have his name changed to “Israel,” which means “contends/struggles with God.” The Lord would also appear to him in Genesis 35:9-13 and affirm that Jacob would be fruitful and multiply, that his descendants would inherit the land, and kings would come from him.

In Jacob, we see the kind of faith we saw in Abraham. Although Jacob was not a perfect man, he heard God’s promises, believed them, and changed his life because of them, and by Genesis 49, Jacob ended his days as a godly patriarch. Jacob’s life stands as a testimony to the transforming grace of God.

Study and Discussion Questions

Listening to the Key Chapters Podcast on this chapter provides further insights into the following questions.

1.In Genesis 25:23, God told Rebekah He would bless Jacob over Esau. What does the fact Isaac was going to bless Esau show about Isaac’s struggle to believe and submit to the Lord? Have you seen this same kind of struggle in your own life? If so, when and why? How was that struggle resolved?

2. Using a Bible atlas or an online atlas, on the map to the right, locate Beersheba (Isaac’s home) and Paddam-aram (Laban’s home). What would it be like for Jacob to have moved so far from where he grew up? What people group lived in that region? Why was it important for Jacob to find a wife from among them? What does this show us about Jacob’s heart to follow God’s promises and lead God’s covenant people?

3. How did Jacob deceive Isaac? Who was involved? What does this indicate about the dynamics of Isaac’s family?

4. What blessings does Isaac intentionally give to Jacob in Genesis 28:3-4? What does this show us about the change in Isaac’s understanding of the situation?

5. God’s promises to Jacob in Genesis 28:13-15 sounds very similar to the promises God made to Abraham and Isaac. This is the true birthright that matters. What does this tell us about God’s affirmation of Jacob as the one through whom God’s promises would come?

6. How does Jacob respond to God’s promises? How does his commitment to giving a tenth of his income to the Lord in Genesis 28:22 demonstrate his willingness to invest in God’s kingdom personally? Why do you think he was willing to give to the Lord’s work? How do you personally invest in God’s kingdom?

7. How does this passage continue to show us the kind of faith God calls His people to walk in? Is there any situation you are facing in your life today requiring you to walk in faith? What would “walking in faith” look like in that situation?

8. Jacob was not a perfect man, but he followed God, and God blessed him. What encouragement does this fact give you in your own walk with the Lord?