Genesis 27

Isaac, going blind, ends up getting snookered by Jacob and Rebekah into giving his blessing to the wrong son. Apparently, hairy arms are all that it takes to convince him that he's blessing Jacob instead of Esau. "Gee, my son, you sound an awful lot like Jacob. Oh, but you're hairy, so you must be Esau. Never mind!"

I'll be honest: Neither Jacob nor Esau rank very high on the list of Biblical people I admire. While Jacob's actions don't begin to approach the atrocities of, say, Jezebel or Haman, he pales in comparison to the other patriarchs of the Pentateuch. I feel that Jacob just squeezes by here because 1.) Esau witlessly gave up his birthright two chapters ago, and 2.) Esau vowed to kill Jacob after getting gypped out of his blessing. And these two reasons are because of Esau's folly, not anything good that Jacob himself did.

I've always felt bad for Esau. In fact, if it weren't for his two (admittedly grievous) blunders, I would be downright indignant about his unfair treatment. In this story (before he vows to avenge Jacob), he does nothing wrong. This epitome of masculinity gets reduced to tears in verse 38; I also truly feel his despair in verse 34 with his "loud and bitter cry." He ends up receiving a pretty crappy blessing--I mean, "away from the dew of heaven above" (verse 39)? How much worse can you get?

I admit that if I were in Esau's sandals, though I wouldn't want to kill Jacob, I would definitely be angry with God for being unfair. Are His blessings really so exclusive, reserved for one man per family--and never the women? Of course, we now know that Jesus accepts all who turn to Him, but even that leads to the question of why God waited so long to send His son down. I still wrestle with this issue, even though I have faith that God did this for a reason.

As we can see, deception hurts everyone involved. I've touched on this before in some of my earlier posts, so I'm too lazy to go over it again. This story, though, proves a little thornier: Jacob still received God's blessing (through Isaac), though he did end up receiving a taste of his own medicine from Laban. I guess it just runs in the family.