Genesis 28.1-5-Isaac Blesses Jacob and Sends Him Away to Paddan Aram
Wednesday June 7, 2006
Genesis: Genesis 28:1-5-Isaac Blesses Jacob and Sends Him Away to Paddan Aram
Lesson # 158
Please turn in your Bibles to Genesis 28:1.
This evening we will study Genesis 28:1-5, which records Isaac blessing Jacob and agreeing with Rebekah’s idea to send Jacob away to her relatives and warning him not to take a wife among the Canaanites but from Rebekah’s relatives.
Now, the idea of sending Jacob to Paddan Aram and “out of the land of Canaan” would put Jacob out of the “geographical” will of God, which means that there is a specific geographical place that God has ordained for the believer to serve Him.
Therefore, we can see that Rebekah’s plan is against the will of the Lord and Isaac agrees to it and shouldn’t have.
Esau’s plot to kill Jacob shouldn’t have prompted his being sent out of the land of Canaan but rather if she was concerned about his safety, she simply should have sent him away to some other place in the land of Canaan.
Isaac should have done what his father Abraham had done and sent a trusted servant to secure a bride among Rebekah’s relatives.
Remember, Isaac never left the Promised Land, the land of Canaan.
However, Abraham left the land of Canaan by taking a trip to Egypt where he and Sarah were delivered from the hands of Pharaoh (See Genesis 12).
We are going to see Jacob getting into trouble with Laban in Paddan Aram, which he would never have gotten into if he stayed in the land of Canaan.
Now, even though, Rebekah and Isaac failed in this area and put their son Jacob out of the will of God, God was still able to use the situation with Laban to build the character of Jacob.
Therefore, we see that the “directive” will of God was for Jacob and all the patriarchs to stay in the land of Canaan but His “permissive” will, permitted Jacob to leave the land in order to teach him spiritual lessons and build his character.
Now, Rebekah’s plan to have Jacob marry one of his cousins seems shocking to us in the 21st century but in those days, it happened all the time and was not yet prohibited by God!
As we have noted in our previous studies in the book of Genesis, since God created only one man and one woman, it was essential for brothers to marry sisters in order to continue the human race.
In the first generations, all marriages were brother and sister marriages and there were no mutant genes in the genetic systems of any of these children so that no genetic harm could have resulted from close marriages.
Many, many generations later, during the time of Moses, such mutations had accumulated to the point where such unions were genetically dangerous so that incest was thenceforth prohibited in the Mosaic Law (Lev. 18:6-18).
Since earth’s population was still relatively young in the days of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, there was as yet no genetic danger from inbreeding.
After many further centuries had elapsed, however, the accumulation of mutations and the associated danger of congenital defects had become sufficiently serious to cause God to declare incestuous marriages illegal (Lev. 18:6-14).
So this evening we will study Genesis 28:1-5, which gives us the record of Isaac agreeing to Rebekah’s plan to send Jacob away to marry one of his cousins and prohibiting Jacob from marrying one of the Canaanites as Esau did.
Genesis 28:1, “So Isaac called Jacob and blessed him and charged him, and said to him, ‘You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan.’”
Isaac agrees to Rebekah’s plan to send Jacob to marry one of his cousins but does not know that her real reason for sending Jacob away was to avoid Esau’s plot to kill Jacob once Isaac had died.
So Rebekah uses her and Isaac’s dislike of Esau’s Hittite wives as a pretext for sending Jacob away to her relatives to secure a bride.
Notice how she manipulates Isaac using a persuasive argument to get Isaac to do what she wants.
She doesn’t relate to Isaac, Esau’s plot to kill Jacob since she knew that Isaac would have not believed that his favorite son would do such a thing.
Rebekah let it be known how distressed she was over the Canaanite women whom Esau had taken as wives (cf. 26:34 35) and then she insinuated that if Jacob did the same she would not be fit to live with.
No wonder Isaac agreed to Rebekah’s plan since what man wants to live with a bitchy wife!
Proverbs 21:9, “It is better to live in a corner of a roof than in a house shared with a contentious woman.”
Isaac “blessed” Jacob in the sense that he publicly honored and acknowledged and recognized that Jacob is the true heir of the promises, privileges, responsibilities and blessings of the Abrahamic Covenant.
This act on the part of Isaac also demonstrates that he is recovered from his folly in attempting to bless Esau against the will of the Lord.
Genesis 28:2, “Arise, go to Paddan-aram, to the house of Bethuel your mother's father; and from there take to yourself a wife from the daughters of Laban your mother's brother.”
“Paddan Aram” (/D^P^m! sR*a&) is another name for “Aram Naharaim,” and is synonymous with the name “Mesopotamia,” and refers to the city of Nahor where Abraham’s brother founded a city and named it after himself and was the place that Abraham’s servant found Rebekah, Isaac’s wife.
The prohibition to not marry a Canaanite woman and the command to marry a cousin corresponds to the prohibition and command recorded in Genesis 24:2-4 that Abraham gave his servant Eliezer regarding a bride for Isaac.
The family of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was prohibited by God from entering into marriage with the Canaanites and instead were to marry Shemites since Noah prophesied in Genesis 9:20-27 that Canaan was under a curse and that Shem was in the line of Christ.
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were Shemites meaning that they were descendants of Shem and were therefore to marry other Shemites.
Rebekah’s family were Shemites and therefore, Jacob is sent away to marry one of his cousins.
Neither Jacob nor Esau had ever previously been taught by their parents that marriage to Canaanite women was against the will of God and unsatisfactory to their parents.
We know this to be the case since Isaac’s prohibition to Jacob to not marry a Canaanite was never in the past given to either Jacob or Esau since nowhere previously has this instruction been given.
This is further confirmed by Esau’s response to learning that his Canaanite wives were displeasing to his father when he went and married an Ishmaelite, which is recorded in Genesis 28:6-9.
Therefore, it appears that Isaac and Rebekah failed as parents in the eyes of the Lord since they did not teach Jacob and Esau Noah’s prophecy recorded in Genesis 9:24-27.
The Word of God teaches that Christian parents are responsible for bringing up their children in the ways of the Lord (See Deuteronomy 6:1-7).
Ephesians 6:4, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”
Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it.”
2 Timothy 3:16, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.”
Your child’s knowledge of the Lord should be received primarily in the home from the parents and not in public school or even Sunday school.
Genesis 28:3, “May God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may become a company of peoples.”
The expression “God Almighty” (Hebrew: El Shaddai) was first used by God of Himself when speaking to Abraham, recorded in Genesis 17:1.
Genesis 17:1, “Now when Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; Walk before Me, and be blameless.’”
The title El Shaddai, “God Almighty” emphasizes the omnipotence of God and describes the Lord as being able to make Jacob’s descendants numerous.
The title El Shaddai, “God Almighty” also signifies that the blessing contained in Genesis 28:3-5 recalls the covenant with Abraham recorded in Genesis 17:1-8.
“Bless” is the verb barakh (Er^B*), which means, “to endue with power for success, prosperity, fecundity, longevity, etc.”
Therefore, the verb barakh indicates Isaac’s desire for Jacob that he would be endued with power by the Lord for success, prosperity, fecundity (offspring in great numbers) and longevity.”
Like his grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac, the Lord would bless Jacob in the sense that the Lord would multiply his descendants so that his posterity was great in number both, racially and spiritually and multiply his possessions and livestock and prosper him financially.
Isaac’s desire for Jacob that the Lord would make Jacob “fruitful” means that the Lord would give Jacob the capacity to be prolific in that he would be the progenitor of a multitude of children in both a biological and spiritual sense.
Isaac’s desire for Jacob that the Lord would make him fruitful and multiply him refers to the Lord enduing Jacob and his descendants with the ability to be prolific in terms of posterity.
The expression “a company of peoples” refers to a community of nations that will originate from Jacob and echoes the Lord’s promise to his grandfather Abraham that he would become “the father of a multitude of nations” (Genesis 17:4-5) and “the father of nations” (Genesis 17:6).
The Lord’s promise to Abraham to make him “the father of a multitude of nations” and Isaac’s desire that the Lord would make Jacob a “company of peoples” would be fulfilled in a two-fold sense: (1) Biological (2) Spiritual.
The promise to make Abraham a father or progenitor of many nations was fulfilled in a “biological” sense through: (1) Hagar where he is the progenitor of the Ishmaelites (Gen. 17:20; 21:13; 25:12-18) (2) Through Keturah, the Midianites and others (Gen. 25:1-4) (3) Through Isaac and Rebekah, the Edomites (Gen. 25:23; 36:1-43).
This is all substantiated by the genealogies of Keturah (Gen. 25:1-4), Ishmael (Gen. 25:12-18) and Edom (Gen. 36).
In a “biological” or “racial” sense, the company of peoples that would originate from Jacob was the nation of Israel and in a “spiritual” sense the company of peoples would be all those who exercise faith alone in Christ alone who would be composed of all nations and races, both male and female, slave and freeman.
The Lord’s promise to make Abraham a father or progenitor of many nations was fulfilled and continues to be fulfilled in a “spiritual” sense through those individuals who exercised faith alone in Christ alone (John 3:1-7; 1 Cor. 12:13; Gal. 3:26-28).
This is how the Lord’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:3 that in him “all the families of the earth would be blessed” would be accomplished.
In the same way, that Abraham became a father in a “spiritual” sense to those individuals who exercised faith in Christ so also Jacob would become the father in a “spiritual” sense to all those who exercised faith in Christ.
Genesis 28:4, “May He also give you the blessing of Abraham, to you and to your descendants with you that you may possess the land of your sojournings, which God gave to Abraham.”
By making this statement, Isaac is agreeing with the Lord that Jacob is the rightful heir and will inherit the privileges, responsibilities, promises and blessings of the Abrahamic Covenant.
“The blessing of Abraham” refers to the fact that Jacob would inherit the promises, privileges, responsibilities and blessings of the covenant that the Lord established with Abraham, which are recorded Genesis 12:2-3, 7; 13:14-17; 15:1-6, 18; 17:1-8; 22:15-18; 24:7.
The “Abrahamic” covenant included not only “personal” (Isaac and land of Canaan) and “national” (Israel) promises to Abraham but also contained the “universal” promise of eternal salvation to all mankind through faith in Jesus Christ who is a descendant of Isaac, the son of Abraham and Sarah.
“The blessing of Abraham” also means that Jacob would be in the line of Christ, the Promised Seed.
The possession of the land refers to the “Palestinian” Covenant, which was a confirmation and enlargement of the original “Abrahamic” covenant and amplified the land features of the “Abrahamic” covenant (Gen. 13:14-15; 15:18).
The “Palestinian” Covenant stipulated that the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob who exercise faith alone in Christ alone would not only come into permanent possession of the land of Canaan but also most of the land in Turkey, East Africa, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman and Red Sea, Syria, Iraq, Jordan.
The boundaries of this land grant are on the Mediterranean, Aegean Sea, Euphrates River and the Nile River (See Genesis 15:18).
The Lord promises that this land would be given to Abram’s descendants and this promise was fulfilled to a certain extent by Israel under Joshua (Josh. 21:43-45; cf. 13:1-7) and David and Solomon (1 Kgs. 4:20-25; Neh. 9:8).
The “Palestinian” covenant will have its literal and ultimate fulfillment during the millennial reign of Christ (Isa. 11:11-12; Jer. 31-37; Ezek. 34:11-16; Hos. 1:10-11; Joel 3:17-21; Amos 9:11-15; Micah 4:6-7; Zeph. 3:14-20; Zech. 8:4-8).
Genesis 28:5, “Then Isaac sent Jacob away, and he went to Paddan-aram to Laban, son of Bethuel the Aramean, the brother of Rebekah, the mother of Jacob and Esau.”
The journey to be taken by Jacob to Paddan Aram would be the same one taken by Eliezer to secure a bride for Isaac and would be approximately a seven hundred mile journey.
Jacob’s name is listed first followed by Esau to demonstrate that both Isaac and Rebekah are now unified in their recognition that Jacob will receive the blessings of the birthright and the promises, privileges, responsibilities and blessings of the Abrahamic Covenant and not Esau.
Esau’s name is listed in order to establish a smooth transition with the information about Esau recorded in Genesis 28:6-9.