What Are We to Make of This Patriarch?
Scripture
Read Genesis 27:1-17
Reflection
If Jacob was a character in one of my summer beach reads (which, thanks to COVID-19, have become summer sit-at-home reads), I would love him.
I love a crafty, conniving creature who refuses to take convention and the rules that order life as binding—who instead schemes up ways to make the world work for him.
At my core, I am a rule follower. A character like Jacob feels altogether wrong but yet still delicious because he behaves in ways that require more gumption than I manage in my best dreams.
But Jacob is not a character in my latest fiction page-turner. Jacob is a character in my Bible and, in those pages, he evokes my bewilderment, frustration, anger, and exasperation—but not my love.
Our scripture today comes from Genesis 27—the story where blind, possibly senile Isaac is near death and wants to bestow his blessing upon his eldest son Esau before he dies.
Isaac asks for his beloved son to hunt for game, prepare the meat, and bring it to him for a meal, after which Isaac will perform a ritual and right of passage, conferring his favor and blessing upon his lineage. But before this plan can even begin, Isaac’s wife Rebekah hatches a plot with her favorite son Jacob to fool Isaac into giving his blessing to the younger of his two sons rather than to Esau.
The preparation all belongs to Rebekah. She devises the plan, tells Jacob to kill two goats from their own herd, cooks the meal herself, and dresses her son in furs so that he would better resemble Esau in smell and feel.
But Jacob is all too eager to go along and while the preparation belonged to Rebekah, the deception belongs to Jacob.
The younger twin brings the meal to his father, who seems immediately skeptical. Twice Jacob lies and assures Isaac that he was Esau. Finally satisfied that it was Esau before him, Isaac gives Jacob Esau’s blessing.
Sure, Jacob had a major accomplice here, but not too long ago, Jacob swindled his brother out of his birthright with no one’s help.
Esau was hungry and in need and Jacob, seizing the opportunity to take advantage of someone in a vulnerable state, traded his abundant food for his brother’s livelihood and security. And later, Jacob would trick his way out of service to Laban.
This man exhibits a pattern—one that I wish our patriarch did not flaunt without repentance or moral conversion. This is why I love Jacob as a character in a novel but find his presence in our Living Word to be oh-so-problematic.
What are we to make of a patriarch — a hero of the faith — who so unapologetically used deceit, manipulation, and outright callousness to further his aims?
Growing up, I was taught that Esau was clearly not worthy of Isaac’s inheritance and blessing if he was willing to throw it all away for something as temporal as a meal when famished and that “right” person to carry out God’s plan would always “win” in the end.
After living a few more years, however, and seeing a few more instances of real-life people getting ahead due to deceit and disregard for people in need, I find this old lesson lacking.
So what are we to make of this patriarch?
This devotion has no neat and tidy answers at its conclusion. This devotion does, however, have an invitation for you to explore this question yourself.
What are we to make of Jacob’s motives and methods? I will remind us that Jacob does suffer from doses of his own medicine, so at least the Bible does not grant our trickster an unimpeded passage through life.
Laban will trick Jacob into marrying the wrong daughter (Leah), forcing Jacob to work in servitude for double the amount of time in order to marry his first choice, too (Rachel). And much later, Jacob’s sons will trick him into believing his most-beloved son Joseph was dead when they had instead sold Joseph into slavery.
And, at the very least, Jacob’s narrative is yet another example from the Bible of how God uses flawed humans to bolster an entire nation in spite of their faults and even evils.
Yet beyond that, what does Jacob’s story invoke in you? How do you find yourself reacting to his story? What do you wish was different? What can we learn from this flawed man who grounds so much of our faith?
Shelley Woodruff, Pastor for Community Engagement, First Baptist Decatur