In yesterday's study we looked at the descendants of Abraham's son Ishmael. Today we move on to his son Isaac's children.
"This is the account of the family line of Abraham's son Isaac. Abraham became the father of Isaac, and Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah daughter of Bethuel the Aramean from Paddan Aram and sister of Laban the Aramean. Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was childless." (Genesis 25:19-21a) Isaac and Rebekah have been married for twenty years, as we will learn later in our passage today, and have conceived no children. Something is obviously wrong, so Isaac takes the problem to the best source of help: the Lord.
The Lord answers. "The Lord answered his prayer, and his wife Rebekah became pregnant. The babies jostled each other within her, and she said, 'Why is this happening to me?' So she went to inquire of the Lord." (Genesis 25:21b-22) She's experiencing something other than the normal moving about of babies in the womb. The Bible says these twins "jostled each other" and the definition of "jostle" is "to push, elbow, or bump against someone roughly". In modern times twins will occasionally be hugging each other in the womb in ultrasound images, but these two babies are not hugging each other. They're struggling against each other. Rebekah knows this is not normal and she asks the Lord why it's happening.
"The Lord said to her, 'Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the elder will serve the younger.'" (Genesis 25:23) The Lord knows what kind of men each of these babies will grow up to be. He knows which one He has chosen to be the ancestor of the coming Messiah. God, because He knows everything anyone will ever do, is able to make a choice like this before these babies are even born.
"When the time came for her to give birth, there were twin boys in her womb. The first to come out was red, and his whole body was like a hairy garment; so they named him Esau." (Genesis 25:24-25) His name means "hairy or rough" and it derives from the Hebrew word "seir". Some babies, especially if they are born premature, will have a covering of fine hair on their bodies. Twins are usually born earlier than single babies, and if Esau were the smaller of the two, this might explain why he has a covering of hair when he's born. However, we will learn later in Genesis 25 that he remained quite hairy all of his life.
The twins Rebekah bears are likely fraternal twins and not identical twins. If Esau and his brother looked alike, I don't think mention would have been made of Esau's redness and hairiness. I think they looked different from each other. "After this, his brother came out, with his hand grasping Esau's heel; so he was named Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when Rebekah gave birth to him." (Genesis 25:26) Jacob's name means something like "to assail, circumvent, or supplant". A secondary definition is "to overreach, to be deceitful". When Jacob came out of the womb holding onto his brother's heel, this was taken as a sign that he wants to be the firstborn. It was a sign that he literally wants to take the place of his brother. We know already that it's the Lord's will for him to take the preeminence over his brother, but Jacob will not go about it in the right way. Instead of allowing God to work the details out, he will take matters into his own hands and obtain the rights of the firstborn by deceitful means.
Right now Jacob sounds like a naughty person and Esau appears to be an innocent party, but as we move through Chapter 25 and Chapter 26 we will learn that Jacob has a heart for the Lord and Esau does not. Jacob is not always going to be an admirable character, but the same could be said of each of us, couldn't it? No matter how much we love the Lord, we mess up sometimes. We go about things the wrong way. We get ahead of the Lord and instead of waiting Him to work things out we take charge and get what we want in ways that don't honor Him. We become impatient and we take hold of things at the wrong time. This is what's going to happen to Jacob. The one who took hold of his brother's heel will take hold of his brother's rights as firstborn and snatch them away from him. The Lord intends to give Jacob the rights of the firstborn, but Jacob won't wait for Him to work it out in the right time and in the right way. The fallout from the method Jacob uses won't be pleasant for anyone in the family, and it will take many years for the Lord to shape him into the man he needs to be, but when that happens he will no longer be called Jacob (the supplanter, the deceitful one). The Lord will rename him "Israel".
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