Forbidden Bible Verses — Genesis 28:1-5

The three-year Lectionary that many Catholics and Protestants hear in public worship gives us a great variety of Holy Scripture.

Yet, it doesn’t tell the whole story.

My series Forbidden Bible Verses — ones the Lectionary editors and their clergy omit — examines the passages we do not hear in church. These missing verses are also Essential Bible Verses, ones we should study with care and attention. Often, we find that they carry difficult messages and warnings.

Today’s reading is from the English Standard Version Anglicised (ESVUK) with commentary by Matthew Henry.

Genesis 28:1-5

28 So Isaac called for Jacob and blessed him. Then he commanded him: ‘Do not marry a Canaanite woman. ² Go at once to Paddan Aram,^[a] to the house of your mother’s father Bethuel. Take a wife for yourself there, from among the daughters of Laban, your mother’s brother. ³ May God Almighty^[b] bless you and make you fruitful and increase your numbers until you become a community of peoples. ⁴ May he give you and your descendants the blessing given to Abraham, so that you may take possession of the land where you now reside as a foreigner, the land God gave to Abraham.’ ⁵ Then Isaac sent Jacob on his way, and he went to Paddan Aram, to Laban son of Bethuel the Aramean, the brother of Rebekah, who was the mother of Jacob and Esau.

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Last week’s post discussed last week’s accord between Isaac and Abimelek and gave us an insight as to the trouble that would follow between Isaac and Rebekah’s sons, Jacob and Esau.

That post included excerpts from Genesis 25, wherein Esau sold Jacob his own birthright for a mess of pottage and concluded with an excerpt from Genesis 27, wherein Rebekah, their mother, helped Jacob deceive Isaac with regard to his inheritance.

The chapter concludes with Rebekah’s disgust at Esau’s Hittite — pagan — wives (emphases mine):

⁴⁶ Then Rebekah said to Isaac, ‘I’m disgusted with living because of these Hittite women. If Jacob takes a wife from among the women of this land, from Hittite women like these, my life will not be worth living.’

So Isaac called for Jacob (over Esau) and blessed him, then he commanded him not to marry a Canaanite woman (verse 1).

Therefore, Isaac, deceived by Jacob with Rebekah’s help, thought that he was Esau, who had, without their father’s knowledge, given his birthright to Jacob for the bowl of stew.

Rebekah had always preferred Jacob while Isaac preferred Esau for his hunting prowess.

Esau was incensed that Jacob had received Isaac’s blessing and wanted to kill his brother. Therefore, Jacob had to escape.

All of this led to a highly complicated situation for Jacob. Rebekah told him to go to her brother’s — Laban’s — home for refuge. Laban lived with his and Rebekah’s father Bethuel.

Matthew Henry’s commentary describes the all too common situation of mixed blessings. Jacob’s was a primary illustration of that. He had sinned, paid the price and, yet, would reap the divine reward, a continuation of that upon his father and grandfather:

Jacob had no sooner obtained the blessing than immediately he was forced to flee from his country; and, as it if were not enough that he was a stranger and sojourner there, he must go to be more so, and no better than an exile, in another country. Now Jacob fled into Syria, Hos 12 12. He was blessed with plenty of corn and wine, and yet he went away poor, was blessed with government, and yet went out to service, a hard service. This was, 1. Perhaps to correct him for his dealing fraudulently with his father. The blessing shall be confirmed to him, and yet he shall smart for the indirect course he took to obtain it. While there is such an alloy as there is of sin in our duties, we must expect an alloy of trouble in our comforts. However, 2. It was to teach us that those who inherit the blessing must expect persecution; those who have peace in Christ shall have tribulation in the world, John 16 33. Being told of this before, we must not think it strange, and, being assured of a recompence hereafter, we must not think it hard. We may observe, likewise, that God’s providences often seem to contradict his promises, and to go cross to them; and yet, when the mystery of God shall be finished, we shall see that all was for the best, and that cross providences did but render the promises and the accomplishment of them the more illustrious.

As for not marrying a Canaanite woman, no doubt Jacob listened attentively to what his father Isaac and grandfather Abraham had said about not marrying them, which makes Esau’s bigamy of taking two Hittite — Canaan-related — wives all the worse.

Henry says:

If Jacob be an heir of promise, he must not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan; those that profess religion should not marry those that are irreligious.

To reinforce this prohibition against Canaanites, Isaac commanded Jacob to go to Paddan Aram, where Bethuel’s house was, and take one of his cousins — one of Laban’s daughters — for his wife (verse 2). There was still no divine prohibition against such a union at that time.

Henry posits that Isaac wanted Jacob’s line to be pure. ‘Peculiar’ in Henry’s era indicated ‘special’ or ‘distinguished’:

Those that are entitled to peculiar favours must be a peculiar people.

Isaac passed on a blessing that God gave to Abraham, ‘May God Almighty^[b] bless you and make you fruitful and increase your numbers until you become a community of peoples’ (verse 3).

Henry explains this bountiful blessing upon Jacob, the future father of the twelve tribes of Israel, a foretelling of the Church, for Abraham is our father in faith — still invoked today in traditional church liturgies:

He had before blessed him unwittingly; now he does it designedly, for the greater encouragement of Jacob in that melancholy condition to which he was now removing. This blessing is more express and full than the former; it is an entail of the blessing of Abraham, that blessing which was poured on the head of Abraham like the anointing oil, thence to run down to his chosen seed, as the skirts of his garments. It is a gospel blessing, the blessing of church-privileges, that is the blessing of Abraham, which upon the Gentiles through faith, Gal 3 14. It is a blessing from God Almighty, by which name God appeared to the patriarchs, Exod 6 3. Those are blessed indeed whom God Almighty blesses; for he commands and effects the blessing. Two great promises Abraham was blessed with, and Isaac here entails them both upon Jacob.

The first blessing involves many children and descendants:

(1.) Through his loins should descend from Abraham that people who should be numerous as the stars of heaven, and the sand of the sea, and who should increase more than the rest of the nations, so as to be an assembly of people, as the margin reads it. And never was such a multitude of people so often gathered into one assembly as the tribes of Israel were in the wilderness, and afterwards. (2.) Through his loins should descend from Abraham that person in whom all the families of the earth should be blessed, and to whom the gathering of the people should be. Jacob had in him a multitude of people indeed, for all things in heaven and earth are united in Christ (Eph 1 10), all centre in him, that corn of wheat, which falling to the ground, produced much fruit, John 12 24.

Isaac further invoked his father by asking that God give Jacob the same blessing with regard to territory, ‘so that you may take possession of the land where you now reside as a foreigner, the land God gave to Abraham’ (verse 4).

This is the second blessing — the Promised Land, Canaan, which God later commanded the Israelites to reclaim in His name:

That thou mayest inherit the land of thy sojournings, v. 4. Canaan was hereby entailed upon the seed of Jacob, exclusive of the seed of Esau. Isaac was now sending Jacob away into a distant country, to settle there for some time; and, lest this should look like disinheriting him, he here confirms the settlement of it upon him, that he might be assured that the discontinuance of his possession should be no defeasance of his right. Observe, He is here told that he should inherit the land wherein he sojourned. Those that are sojourners now shall be heirs for ever: and, even now, those do most inherit the earth (though they do not inherit most of it) that are most like strangers in it. Those have the best enjoyment of present things that sit most loose to them. This promise looks as high as heaven, of which Canaan was a type. This was the better country, which Jacob, with the other patriarchs, had in his eye, when he confessed himself a stranger and pilgrim upon the earth, Heb 11 13.

With those blessings, Isaac sent Jacob on his way to Paddan Aram, to his uncle Laban, son of Bethuel the Aramean, the brother of Rebekah, who was the mother of Jacob and Esau (verse 5).

Paddan Aram was in northwest Mesopotamia.

Henry expands on Jacob’s trial ahead but says that we must be content with our lot and not contrast it with that of our forebears, who might have had a simpler way forward. He also adds a note about Rebekah:

Jacob, having taken leave of his father, was hastened away with all speed, lest his brother should find an opportunity to do him a mischief, and away he went to Padan-aram, v. 5. How unlike was his taking a wife thence to his father’s! Isaac had servants and camels sent to fetch his; Jacob must go himself, go alone, and go afoot, to fetch his: he must go too in a fright from his father’s house, not knowing when he might return. Note, If God, in his providence, disable us, we must be content, though we cannot keep up the state and grandeur of our ancestors. We should be more in care to maintain their piety than to maintain their dignity, and to be as good as they were than to be as great. Rebekah is here called Jacob’s and Esau’s mother. Jacob is named first, not only because he had always been his mother’s darling, but because he was now make his father’s heir, and Esau was, in this sense, set aside. Note, The time will come when piety will have precedency, whatever it has now.

Yes, I pray when piety will have precedence in our time.

Next week, we find out about Esau’s reaction to these events.

Next time — Genesis 28:6-9