Genesis 28

Updated
2001-05-26; 14:31:36utc

JACOB, THE TRIPPER

Chapter 28:1 - 37:1.

Of course, the story of Jacob does not begin here. It is partly intertwined with Isaac's story. It was hard to say before whether a part was Abraham's life or Isaac's life. We have seen already that Jacob was born after Esau, as the second of a set of twins. We studied how he tricked his brother in giving up his birthright and how later he stole the blessing from his father Isaac, as if he was the oldest son. But at the beginning of chapter 28 Jacob becomes independent. He leaves his father's house. He will never see his mother again.

The reason for Jacob's being sent away was primarily that Esau wouldn't kill him. There is no indication that Isaac was aware of this kind of plot. Rebekah deceives her husband once more, by not telling him the truth of the matter. It could be that Isaac, who was heavily prejudiced toward Esau, would not have believed that his son would commit such a crime. Isaac may have been blind in more than one way. We read in chapter 27:46 "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.'" Rebekah uses all the leverage she has to persuade Isaac to officially send Jacob away. That way the impression that Jacob flees for his life is avoided and a double goal is achieved: Jacob's life is safe and the heir will marry within the family.

There is no doubt that in all this the will of God is worked out, but whether this is done in the Lord's way is questionable. The deception is not so gross as when Jacob was put up by his mother to steal the blessing of his birthright, but it remains a deception.

So Jacob receives his father's once again, this time while Isaac knows whom he is blessing. Also Jacob is commanded to leave. For the first time, as far as we know, Isaac uses his authority in his boy's life. Better late than never.

This time also the blessing Isaac pronounces is the passing on of the real blessing God had given to Abraham. In verse 4 Isaac says specifically: "May he (God) give you and your descendants the blessing given to Abraham, so that you may take possession of the land where you now live as an alien, the land God gave to Abraham." It seems to me that these words are a demonstration of the spiritual awakening that has taken place in Isaac's heart. The violent trembling of his body had shaken things loose in his soul. He realized anew what were the things that mattered and what God was planning to do through him and his family.

So Jacob is sent back to his roots. This time there is no caravan with camels, servants and bride prices. Jacob goes alone as a refugee. And when he finally does marry, he pays for it himself with years of heavy labor. It seems to me that God is making Jacob pay for the things he stole. Dishonesty, cheating to get a cheap deal is very expensive, especially for a child of God. As we said before, Jacob paid more for the soup he gave to Esau than Esau did.

We are tempted to speculate what would have happened if Jacob had behaved differently. The way things went for him was not God's way. The Lord made things turn out for good for him, but we may be sure that Jacob was not inspired by God's Spirit when he bargained with Esau about the birthright and when he deceived his father. We are not told what would have happened, but it seems likely that Jacob would have spared himself much suffering had he been honest and had he trusted God's promises.

In verse 6-9 our story is interrupted briefly to give us Esau's reaction to Jacob's flight. He seems genuinely desirous to please his father. Whether his marrying Mahalath, the daughter if Ishmael, achieved this goal, we are not told. The addition of another wife to the two he already had does not seem to solve the problems caused by the presence of the first two wives. As with his other deeds, Esau's act does not seem to be thought through. It could be that he considered that his father would be happier with the children Esau would get by Mahalath, than with his offspring from the Canaanite women. Mahalath is called Bashemath in chapter 36:3.

The night Jacob spends at Luz is told to us in detail. In vs.10 it is called "a certain place," but from vs.19 we learn that the place was called Luz and later it came to be known as Bethel, because Jacob named it so. According to The Adam Clarke's Commentary Luz was about 48 miles from Beersheba, so it is hardly likely that this was Jacob's first night on the trail. Why he decides to spend the night in the open field instead of going into the city, we are not told. It could be that darkness fell upon him before he got that far, as Adam Clarke suggests. It is also possible that the cities of Canaan had already acquired notoriety, like Sodom and Gomorrah a century earlier and that Jacob was wise in avoiding such places. After all Esau's wives made life unbearable for Isaac and Rebekah and they came from places like this.

Jacob's bed was not the most comfortable. He foreshadowed "the Son of Man," who testified in Matt.8:20 - "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head." But this barren, most uncomfortable place became the first spiritual experience Jacob ever had. Here he made the first discovery that God was the living God. It must have shocked him deeply and yet it would take him another twenty years or more, before he finally underwent that inward change of heart that made him a man of God.

God's revelation comes to him in a dream. Dreams are part of the unsolved mystery of man's mind. Most of the time dreams are probably our soul's effort to sort out thoughts and impressions we receive throughout our life. Sometimes it seems more a scramble than a sorting out and most of our dreams look like mixed up fantasies that make little or no sense to us. But, because in our dreaming our sensory guards are down, we are more open to outside spiritual influences, either good or evil. Animists attach great value to dreams. They think that their spirit leaves the body during a dream and actually experiences the things it dreams. There can be no doubt about the spiritual reality of Jacob's dream. God spoke to him and repeated the promise of blessing that Abraham had received over one century earlier.

The Pulpit Commentary has an interesting comment on the terrain upon which Jacob laid down and had his dream. Quoting "Sinai and Palestine" by Standley, it says: "The track (of pilgrims) winds through an uneven valley, covered, as with gravestones, by large sheets of bare rock; some few here and there standing up like the cromlechs of Druidical monuments." On about the vision of the ladder it adds: "the rough stones of the mountain appearing to form themselves into a vast staircase." The last thing Jacob saw before he closed his eyes was this mountain staircase reaching toward heaven and so in a certain manner his dream was closely connected to the sensory impressions of the previous moments. I often dream about portions of the book I read just before falling asleep. Jacob's dream seems to have started out in a normal and natural way. But then the Spirit of the Lord takes over. We can hardly assume that Jacob, fleeing for his life, with the burden of his treachery still upon his heart, would have been in the frame of mind to have pious thoughts. The presence of the Lord was probably the farthest thing possible from his troubled mind.

In verse 12 and 13 we read: " He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. There above it stood the LORD, and he said: 'I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac.

I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying.'"

One of the amazing features of the dream is first of all the movement of the angels. They do not come down the stairway first, but they are ascending before they descend. This implies that angels surrounded Jacob even before he closed his eyes. It is wonderful how much we can see when we close our eyes. Our eyes are perfect instruments for the observation of things in this world, but we make a mistake if we think that we get the picture of all or reality through them. The Apostle Paul states this well in II Cor.4:18 - "So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."

In his dream Jacob hears God repeat the blessing that Isaac had given to him, just before he left home. He and his children would possess the land on which he was sleeping. There is also the promise of a multitude of people, who will be his offspring. But most of all there is the blessing, that is the essence of all blessing, "All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring." (Verse 14). That is the promise of the Messiah, who would restore fellowship with God for man and pour out the Holy Spirit upon those who would believe. In Gal 3:14 Paul says about this blessing: "He (God) redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit."

There is no doubt about it, but that Jacob did not understand the full extend of what God promised him. He may have gotten the point that he was an important link in God's plan. That is was a plan of redemption would probably not have penetrated to him. Man in general, even God's chosen people, have very little understanding of their own importance. When we think we are important, we usually build our presumption upon false premises. We are not all links in God's plan like Jacob was. If Jacob would have died prematurely, the Messiah would not have come and no man would be saved. But for most of us our importance to God goes far beyond our own comprehension.

If Jacob had understood anything of what God would do through him, he would never have tried to obtain that privilege by buying it off Esau with a bowl of soup. As he grew older and drew closer to God, he must have felt more and more ashamed of this part of his earlier life.

Verse 15 probably made the deepest impact upon him. This was the short-range kind of promise that he could understand. God says "I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you." From further events in his life we see that this was borne out to the letter, but Jacob never trusted himself completely to the promise until the very end. It took years before he kicked the habit of trying to work things out for himself, usually in an unethical way. He kept on tripping up people, grabbing their heels, so he could keep standing straight. Had he taken God seriously, he would have understood that there was no need for this. We have the same great promise for our lives, as Hebr.13:5,6 states it: "Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, 'Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.' So we say with confidence, 'The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?'"

We read Jacob's reaction in verse 16 "When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, 'Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it.'" I prefer the RSV here: "Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, 'Surely the LORD is in this place; and I did not know it.'" Jacob was still a long way from knowing the Lord. Actually he never entered into the deep spiritual relationship his grandfather Abraham had known. But here at Bethel he becomes aware of the fact that God is there, that He is alive and that He speaks to people. This awareness will later develop into a crisis experience of forgiveness and regeneration. The presence of God causes him to fear. In verse 17 he says: "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven."

Before we continue with Jacob's reaction, we have to go to the Gospel of John where Jesus makes a reference to Jacob's experience. In John 1:51 Jesus says to Nathanael: "I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man." This reference is rather cryptic. Some of the great Bible commentators, such as Luther and Calvin, see in Jesus' words an identification of the Lord with the ladder, the bridge between heaven and earth. The Pulpit Commentary suggests that Jesus identifies Himself with Jacob. This does not seem to me to be a logical explanation. Jesus says in John 10:7 "I am the gate," or as the RSV and KJV put it: "I am the door." Here He seems to say: "I am the stairway."

So Jacob sees heaven opened and he is afraid. He calls it "awesome" and he builds a monument. It is a wise thing to put a stone or plant a stick at the place where we meet the Lord. Our weak memory needs points of fixation like that. It helps us to remember when the devil attacks and tries to make us doubt.

It has been suggested that Jacob followed a local heathen tradition by pouring oil on a stone, but there is no proof that this was done. What he does looks more like the putting down of the first stone for a building to be erected. Probably this is what he had in mind when he announced that the place would be in fact "God's house." As a matter of fact, what Jacob does is rather impressive. It seems he had very little with him as he was travelling alone. Pouring out the oil, he gives all he has. For a man of Jacob's character that was an indication of a radical change. The discovery of God being alive and the actual encounter with Him has affected him deeply.

Yet the old Jacob is still very much alive. The vow he makes in verse 20-22 sounds like a shameless bargain. He makes the fact whether God will be his God or not dependent on the way God will keep His promise toward Jacob. I remember a sermon preached by a fellow student in the Brussels Bible Institute about these verses. The gist was that God is not the kind of Person one can bargain with. We should anticipate to be turned down by God if we approach Him the way Jacob did. But the amazing feature of grace is that God accepts Jacob's proposal and actually does much more for him than he asks for. Years later at Peniel he says to God: "I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant. I had only my staff when I crossed this Jordan, but now I have become two groups." (Ch. 32:10) But listen to him here: "If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear so that I return safely to my father's house, then the LORD will be my God." (verse 20,21). Jacob had met God, but he still did not know whom he was talking to. He did not trust God, like his grandfather had done when he took God at his word and received God's righteousness as a gift imputed to him. (See Ch. 15:6).

God is so much more humble than we are. As sinful human beings we are worth nothing compared to the eternal glorious God. But God bows down before us and serves us. We have the assurances of the Bible, like in Jesus' words in Matt 20:28 "Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to

serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." In Phil 2:6-8 "Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, But made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled

Himself and became obedient to death; even death on a cross!" And the most amazing verse in the Bible, John 12:26 "Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me."

On the other hand there are Bible commentators who interpret these last verses in a completely opposite way. They believe that Jacob simply confirms the promise of God. It is hard to decide who is right. The literal sense of Jacob's words seems to be that he wants to test the veracity of God's promise. This attitude seems to be more in accordance with Jacob's character and with human nature in general.

Finally, Jacob makes three pledges: The LORD will be his God, the stone he has erected will be a shrine and he will tithe his income.

"The LORD will be my God" is literally "YHWH will be my Elohim." The proponents of "Higher Criticism" must have a hard time cataloguing this verse under the Yahwist or Elohist sources. But we won't make that our problem. In using these terms Jacob sees himself as the other party in the covenant God, the Creator, makes with man. It is a recognition that the promise God had given to Abraham was real. Jacob realized that he would be a link in God's chain of revelation. But, as we saw above, he feels that he still has to try God out.

It seems a little harder to know what Jacob intended the stone to be. I do not think he meant more than to keep the memory of the moment alive. He is not planning to build a temple at this spot. But he does return to Bethel later in his life. God reminds him of Bethel while he is still in Haran, as we read in Gen 31:13 - "I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar and where you made a vow to me. Now leave this land at once and go back to your native land." And in Ch. 35:1-7 we read that Jacob goes back and builds an altar at that place.

Thirdly, Jacob promises to tithe. We know very little about the origin of tithing. From Ch. 14:20 we understand that the practice was know in Abraham's days. When Melkisedik blesses Abraham, Abraham gives him a tenth of the spoil gained on the Babylonian kings. Jacob must have learned the custom at home. Tithing probably consisted in sacrificing every tenth animal and the tenth of a harvest.

The principle implied in tithing is the recognition that everything we have belongs to the Lord. We are in reality giving nothing to the Lord. He gives to us. Tithing is not a fee we pay, but an acknowledgement of the reality that we depend upon God for everything we need to live. We borrow our time from Him, us sustenance, our very breath.