In the Beginning: A Study in Genesis 15-26Намуна

How Does God Work Through Generations of a Family?

In our day of blended families, we can easily forget that, in the Old Testament, the family dynamics were even more complicated. As if Abraham’s life had not been complicated enough by fathering sons with multiple women, in Genesis 25, there is another shocking plot twist in his life.

With Sarah now dead, and Isaac married to his lovely bride Rebekah, the stage is set for Abraham’s life to come to an end. Before he does, Abraham surprisingly takes another wife (or possibly had taken this wife some years earlier) and apparently, apart from any miracle, the very old man fathered six more sons before dying at the ripe old age of 175. Abraham left everything to his son Isaac, and his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried their father in the land he had purchased for the burial of Sarah.

Despite Abraham’s faults, flaws, and failures, God proves faithful. God had made a series of promises to Abraham that are fulfilled by the end of his life:

•God promised to bless him (12:2)

•God promised the Promised Land he was buried in (12:7) with Sarah (23:19)

•God promised a son through Sarah (15:4)

•God promised that Abraham would live to a good old age (15:15)

•God promised Abraham that nations would come from him (17:5, 17:16)

•God promised Abraham that kings would come from him (17:6, 17:16)

•God promised that salvation and faith would continue into future generations (17:7)

With Abraham, his wife Sarah, and son Ishmael now all dead, Moses moves the Genesis story forward to focus on the birth of Isaac’s sons, Jacob and Esau. Isaac was 40 years old when he married Rebekah and, like Isaac’s mother, she was unable to conceive a child. Isaac trusted that God could and would give Rebekah a son just as God had given him to his barren mother Sarah. Importantly, Isaac will remain faithful to his wife unlike his father Abraham, so the sin of adultery is not passed on to the next generation. Instead, Isaac prayed in faith for 20 years for the blessing of children and God answered the prayer, giving the couple twin boys when Isaac was sixty years of age. Isaac married Rebekah at the age of 40 and, though he had to wait some 20 years for the birth of his promised son, he did not make the same mistake as his father Abraham and attempt to take matters into his own hands by fathering a child with a woman other than his wife.

Curiously, while the other family lines in Genesis are usually quite large, Isaac only has two sons. But, while the 12 sons of Isaac’s half-brother Ishmael are mentioned in only a few verses, Isaac’s sons Esau and Jacob receive nearly 12 chapters of attention in Genesis (25:19-37:1) because they relate to the promises of the covenant.

The conflict between the boys began in the womb as they wrestled for preeminence. Curious as to what was occurring in her womb, Rebekah prayed to God for insight, and He told her that the boys would struggle throughout their life as the older would serve the younger and each boy would grow into a nation in conflict with the other (Esau became the nation of Edom and Jacob became the nation of Israel). This battle between the nation of Israel through Jacob and the nation of Edom through Esau continues throughout the Old Testament and culminates with Herod the Edomite king seeking to kill the young King of Israel, Jesus Christ.

The first son born was Esau meaning “hairy”, also called Edom “red”, so he was a red and hairy child perhaps like Elmo on Sesame Street. The second son born was Jacob which means “trickster” as he came out of the womb grasping his brother’s heel. As the boys grew, Esau was the man’s man who hunted, ate wild game, and was favored by his father. Jacob was a momma’s boy who preferred to stay around the house and be doted over by his mother. This sort of favoritism became a damaging sin that Jacob also committed years later as a father himself. The warning against parental favoritism between children is a recurring theme in Genesis.

As the firstborn, Esau was entitled to the family birthright which would grant him a double portion of his father’s estate and leave him as the head of the family upon his father’s death, as well as enable him to receive a special blessing from his father. One day, Esau came home hungry and his brother, Jacob, the trickster, got his brother to trade his birthright for a meal. In this account, the younger brother displaced the older as had happened previously in Genesis with Cain and Abel as well as Isaac and Ishmael. At the bottom of Esau’s sin was an indifference about God’s covenant promise to bless the nations through the descendants of Abraham that would ultimately bring forth Jesus Christ, flippantly dismissing God’s covenant for a meal. His act also reminds us that people will sometimes give up everything for a fleeting moment of pleasure.

In this scene, we are starkly reminded that once sin enters human history, it is often most painfully felt in our families. The key is to stay close to the Lord and live in obedience to His will, something Isaac does despite the death of his mother and father, evilness of his brother, barrenness of his wife, and godlessness of his son. Human history is moving forward, despite human sin, to bring forth from this family Jesus Christ as the Savior of the world.

Question:

What does this story teach us about God’s sovereignty over the womb and His timing in answering prayer?