The family of Abraham, Issac and Jacob did not like living among the Cannanites. Abraham kept the evil at a distance, while Lot was, in a fashion, attracted to it. Evil corrupts the good; the good will not improve the evil (Matt. 7:17–18; 1Cor. 15:33). Abraham understood this; Isaac understood this; and that is why we read in the Torah reading תולדות Toldot/Toledot (“generations,” Gen. 25:19–28:9) that Isaac and Rebekah sent Jacob away to find a wife so that he would not be influenced by Canaanite culture either.
“And Isaac prayed to the Lord opposite his wife because she was barren, and the Lord accepted his prayer, and Rebecca his wife conceived.”
Gen. 25:21
Isaac and Rebekah prayed for each other for 20 years, asking God to heal Rebekah’s womb and allow her to conceive children. That is a long time. I don’t have that kind of patience. I can’t imagine praying for the same thing for 20 years and expecting an answer. There’s an old saying, “Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.”
Yeshua1Hebrew name of Jesus Christ explains the value of persistent prayer in Luke 11:1–13 and taught His disciples how to pray and why they should persist in prayer. Isaac and Rebekah were far more persistent and insistent in prayer than I would be. God will answer our prayers in the fashion He sees fit. Isaac and Rebekah asked for one child, and He gave them two.
Why were Jacob and Esau struggling?
There was a great struggle between Jacob and Esau, who are fighting over territory even while in Rebekah’s womb. What was the struggle about? One gets the promise and the blessing, and the other doesn’t.
As parents, we want all their children to be blessed. What kind of parents would we be if we didn’t want all our children to live a life of blessing? But God sees beyond the horizon in a way we don’t.
How is it that Esau did not know that Isaac and Rebecca loathed his Hittite wives? In most families, if the parents loath their son or daughter in law, their child will know about it. This shows us how unobservant and self-absorbed Esau really is.
Jacob and Esau were polar opposites. Jacob lived in tents, and Esau lived in the wild. Jacob valued family life, and Esau did not. Abraham and Isaac were not hunters. Ishmael and Esau were hunters. Abraham was a nomad, not a hunter. Isaac followed in his footsteps, but Isaac also began to dabble in agriculture too. They were interested in raising animals and raising crops.
A land of “milk and honey” is a land that one can raise animals and grow crops. God didn’t bless Israel with a wild land but a land that can be cultivated. It can take a lifetime to make a plot of land productive, it requires patience.
Hunters do not have this kind of patience. Hunters life by taking and by brute force. They don’t nurture and create. Hunters take a life; they don’t raise it. It takes more patience to be a farmer, shepherd or rancher than it does to be a hunter.
Hunting is not wrong, but God did not bless hunters such as Ishmael and Esau in the way He blessed Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Esau also took two Hittite wives without thought for what kind of wives would be the best mothers to raise his children to nurture and raise the next generations. He was not thinking about his children. He had no long-term vision for his life. He only cared about the her and now and what was right in front of him. It didn’t dawn on Esau that he should married a honorable woman until after Jacob was sent away to find a wife. It was only after Jacob left to find a proper wife that Esau realized that he should find a decent wife, which he did by marrying one of Ishmael’s daughters.
Esau did not follow God and he did not transmit a knowledge of God to his descendants, Esau did not choose wives who would help him transmit a knowledge of God in the world, while Abraham, Isaac and Jacob followed God to the best of their ability and chose to marry women who would help them transmit a knowledge of God to the next generation.
How can God hate someone before he’s born? (Malachi 1:1–2:7)
The haftarah2Hebrew: Parallel passage, often in reference to a reading from the Prophets or Writings. passage for Toledot spells out more completely what God was doing with Esau and Jacob.
We find out why God even created Esau if He didn’t plan to bless him in a concrete way? God cursed Esau’s descendants forever, which doesn’t settle well with us. How can God hold the descendants responsible for their forefather’s sin when He tells Ezekiel that He doesn’t hold children responsible for their son’s sins? God selected Esau to be destroyed from infancy, and in a way, Ishmael also was selected for destruction. Why?
God created both Esau and Jacob for His own purposes, God tells Jacob’s descendants through Malachi that they were no better than Esau or Ishmael. Why did God make these people? Apostle Paul explains why.
Who is a true descendant of Israel? (Romans 9)
If Esau and Jacob were both Isaac’s sons, which one was truly Isaac’s son? Jacob.
If Ishmael and Isaac were both Abraham’s sons, which was truly Abraham’s son? Isaac.
Both Jacob and Isaac were truly their father’s sons, not merely in their biological descent but in their spiritual descent, too. Although both Ishmael and Isaac were descendants of Abraham, only Isaac carried Abraham’s name both literally and figuratively. God chose one son over the other. God chose the seed, the path. He chose Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, even before they were conceived.
Let me give another example. David killed men, yet God showed him mercy in a way that He didn’t show to Ahab, who had also killed men. Their crime was the same but God shows mercy on those who He sees fit. How was God justified in this? God placed Esau, Ishmael and even Pharaoh on the earth so people would know God. We wouldn’t know the difference between God’s blessing and God’s cursing if God only gave blessing and never cursed or if He only cursed and never blessed. Humans can’t fully understand what is good without understanding evil. God raises some up to be wicked, cursed, wiped out so we can learn from them and now to walk in their ways.
You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?” On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, “Why did you make me like this,” will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles.
Romans 9:19–24 NASB
Just as all who profess to be of Abraham aren’t actually truly descendants of him (John 8:39–47), so too, those who claim to be in Messiah are not actually in Him (Matt. 7:21–24). Not all of Jacob’s physical descendants are of the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Would we know how evil men can be and how they can be deluded into thinking their evil had a good purpose if the Holocaust hadn’t happened? I doubt it.
Evil men are raised up in every generation so we can have real-life examples to contrast righteousness to evil. We wouldn’t understand how powerful God is without both examples in each generation.
There are reasons that God allows things to happen that we don’t understand but He does not have to explain Himself, nor does He have to answer to us. We answer to Him. God is always right.
Summary: Tammy