Get Your Blessing

Plotting in a Dysfunctional Family

In the beginning, we see how sin tears apart everything. Adam and Eve’s sin not only separated them from God, but also from each other. God created Man and Woman and called this relationship “good”, but sin has a way of taking God’s “good” and making it “not good”.

The ripple effects of that first sin continue to spread out across space and time, even all the way down to Isaac and Rebekah. We might notice something is off in this story by what read just a few chapters before, “Isaac loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob.” Playing favorites is a dangerous game in your family. This dysfunction caused by favoritism is something we’ll see again when we come to Joseph’s story later on in Genesis.

This favoritism naturally creates an inequality within Isaac’s family, and inequality creates distrust, and distrust creates dishonesty and deceit.

As Isaac gets older, he decides he wants to give his blessing to his sons. This was a big deal in the ANE, the final blessing was binding, and held almost a supernatural kind of power to it. Oddly, however, Isaac decides to only bless one child, Esau. You see, it would have been customary to invite all of one’s children into the room as each one receives a blessing, but Isaac seems to want to keep this blessing a secret, hidden from Jacob and Rebekah. Unfortunately for him, however, Rebekah overhears his scheme, and she begins to plot a scheme of her own.

She decides to trick and deceive her husband and steal that blessing for the younger son, Jacob, the son that’s her favorite. And so we get the story everyone knows from Sunday school. Rebekah takes goat hides and puts them on Jacob, in order to fool Isaac (who’s sight has gone bad) into thinking that Jacob is his much hairier brother, Esau.

There’s a lot in the story that should sound familiar to us, and not just because we’ve heard it in Sunday school before.

As Rebekah begins to plot with Jacob, she says, “Now my son, listen to my voice...” She tells Jacob to go and take some goats from the field to trick his father, and she is going to prepare food for her husband, and Isaac will eat of it. Jacob, however protests, “What if I bring a curse on myself and not a blessing?” to which Rebekah once again replies, “Don’t worry about the curse, just listen to my voice.”

Did you pick up on what’s happening here? Once again, we see the story of Adam and Eve playing out in this family. As Rebekah and Isaac plot and scheme to bless their chosen child, you can almost hear the whisper of that ancient serpent. Sin has slithered out of the garden and into the family of Isaac. And, once again, it seems to be endangering the blessing of God.

Everyone Wants a Blessing

But, perhaps we are shouldn’t be too hard on Jacob and Rebekah for this. Afterall, everyone wants a blessing. Isaac has very clearly not intended to bless Jacob. That much becomes evident once we see Esau return and ask for his blessing. Isaac doesn’t have anything left to give him! He’d never intended to bless Jacob, the younger son, at all. And the blessing he manages to scrounge up for his grieving son Esau can hardly be called a blessing at all.

Once Rebekah realizes what Isaac is plotting, can we really blame her for wanting to look out for her beloved child Jacob? Everyone wants a blessing, and every parent wants to bless their children.

The father’s blessing meant everything in their society. These special words, this powerful ritual, had real effects. This is why, once a blessing was spoken, it could not be revoked. There is a certain kind of power associated with words here that might seem strange or foreign to us. Sometimes we seem to take words a little too lightly. We don’t consider that what we say has real effects on the world and on those around us. We may be too quick to go back on a promise, but for Isaac and his family, this was not so. Words were binding. Words had power and very real effects on the world. And the final blessing of a father was especially powerful.

So who wouldn’t want such a thing? No one wants to live a life unblessed. No one wants to go without such powerful words spoken over them.

So yes, this story may make us somewhat uncomfortable. The idea that God’s chosen people receive his blessing through trickery and deceit might be a little disturbing. But on the other hand, what other choice did Jacob have? Was he supposed to sit idly by and live an unblessed life?

No one wants such a fate. We see this most clearly in Esau, as he realizes what his brother has done. Both Esau and Isaac break down into tears. This is, of course, partly Isaac’s fault, because he had intended to leave no blessing at all for Jacob. Nevertheless, we can feel Isaac’s pain as he realizes the son he loves has to live a life devoid of blessing. And, like any good father, Isaac wants to fix it. But he can’t

This is because, on a certain level, this whole story was out of Isaac’s hands. Though Isaac desperately wanted to fix the situation, there seems to be more at work against him than just Jacob and Rebekah. God had already declared that this would be, and there’s not really anything Isaac can do to go against what God has already spoken.

The Irony of Blessing: Turning the Tables

God had already chosen who would receive his blessing before Jacob and Esau were even born. And yet, something about the story warns us that even Jacob and Rebekah didn’t really know what they were getting into. If one thing is clear here, it is that all of this human scheming, trickery, and deceit still can’t quite grasp onto the blessing of the promises of God.

Isaac would take the blessing for Esau. Rebekah would take it for Jacob. And yet, in the end, we might wonder whether either of them ever really grasped the blessing at all. The irony is that after all their scheming, when Jacob finally does get the blessing, it’s not at all what he and his mother imagined. In a twist of irony, the blessing is the very thing that sends Jacob into exile and makes him a fugitive, running for his life. In the end, God’s blessing has its own way, unphased by the intent of the four humans plotting and scheming to take it for themselves.

For all their striving after God’s blessing, it seems that none of the people in this story really understood the blessing they so desperately wanted. And blessing, as it turned out, became a burden for Jacob. That’s certainly not something he or Rebekah ever expected.

Get Your Blessing

Like Rebekah and Jacob, Esau, and Isaac, no one wants to live a life unblessed. We too desire to receive the blessing of God. Many a prosperity gospel preacher would declare to us that there’s nothing more important in life than to “get your blessing”.

Perhaps we’ve heard “I can do all things through Christ,” or “Knock, and the door will be opened to you.” Many who have preached on such verses before would suggest that God has a blessing in store for you, you just have to go get it!

This passage seriously challenges any such simplistic notion of the blessing of God. Firstly, the blessing is not yours, or mine, or anyone’s to “go and get”. The blessing is God’s to give to whom he pleases.

And secondly, the blessing may, in fact, be a great burden to us. It may, as it did with Jacob, cause us to become a fugitive from the world. The blessing of God is, perhaps, not quite what we expect it to be.

“For”, as Paul says, “the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”

The kingdom of God is not of this world. It is not a kingdom with a king who sits on a gilded throne, nor a kingdom with armies and soldiers fighting to take what is theirs. It is a kingdom of servants whose King sits enthroned on a cross.

This is an upside down kingdom. And to be blessed by the king of this kingdom is not for our own benefit, as the blessings of this world are, but for the benefit of the whole world. Christ blesses us in the same way that God first blessed Abraham, not just for our good, but for the good of all.

For God says, “ I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing”

In all of their scheming to get the blessing, this was the thing that Isaac’s family never really seemed to understand about the blessing. God’s blessing wasn’t theirs to take, and it wasn’t really for them anyway. The blessing was a burden, a responsibility not to be blessed for your own sake, but to be blessed so that you may become a blessing.

Christ has invited all to get their blessing. And here’s how he has told us we can do it:

The New Revised Standard Version The Cross and Self-Denial

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?

B- Everyone wants a Blessing

C- The Irony of God’s Blessing: Turning the Tables

D- Get Your Blessing