When Rebekah found out that her son Esau wanted to kill her favourite son Jacob, her agile brain went to work again. First on her list was get to Jacob, and tell him to leave as soon as possible, head north on the 500 mile journey to her brother Laban in Haran, and hang out with him until Esau had cooled down. She’d then get word to Jacob when it was safe for him to come home (Genesis 27:42-45).
To cover Jacob’s tracks and explain why he was in such a hurry to leave she had to get to Isaac next. So in another truly Oscar winning performance, she pouts to her poor old blind husband that she’s sick to her stomach “having to live with all these awful Hittite women, so if Jacob marries one of them my life won’t be worth living” (46).
Again it works a treat. Isaac immediately calls for Jacob (28:1) and tells him not to marry a local girl, but to head off to the very same spot Rebekah is sending Jacob to. So when Jacob heads off to Paddam Aram on his father’s orders (2) to find a wife “from among the daughters of Laban (Rebekah’s brother),” Isaac is none the wiser that his lovely Rebekah had the same trip in mind to save her beloved Jacob’s skin.
But even Rebekah must’ve been surprised when Isaac comes out with the most amazing farewell blessing for Jacob: “May God Almighty bless you and give you many children. And may your descendants multiply and become many nations. May God pass on to you and your descendants the blessings he promised to Abraham. May you own this land where you are now living as a foreigner, for God gave this land to Abraham” (28:3-4).
I imagine Rebekah could hardly believe her ears, because now it was official: all the blessings YHWH had promised to Abraham were now continuing through Jacob. That hadn’t happened in Isaac’s original blessing to Jacob (meant for Esau) back in Genesis 27:28-29. There’d been no mention of YHWH’s blessings to Abraham back then, but now because of Rebekah’s trumped up scheme to save Jacob’s bacon, that part of God’s master plan had fallen beautifully into place too.
So off Jacob went to his uncle, with no mention at all that he understood what the blessing his Dad had given him meant, or that it was now his turn on the stage of YHWH’s great cosmic master plan for humanity. And what a part he was about to play, with a revealing clue in his brother’s statement about him: “Isn’t he rightly named Jacob?”….(next blog)
Buck To Basics 