When Isaac was old and his eyes were so weak that he could no longer see, he called for Esau…
Even though Esau has married poorly, and God has already said that the blessing will be given to Jacob, Isaac is going to bless his firstborn anyways.
What if my father touches me? I would appear to be tricking him…
I would appear to be tricking him. Ha! Yeah, it probably would appear that way, since that’s exactly what would be happening.
Isaac trembled violently and said, “Who was it…I blessed him – and indeed he will be blessed!”
Obviously Isaac isn’t exactly thrilled about being deceived, but there’s no taking it back. This blessing is a pretty big deal, and it doesn’t come with do-overs.
“Bless me – me too, my father!”
“Your brother came deceitfully and took your blessing.”
While Esau will get his own sortof-blessing, that’s all he’s going to get. Similar to Ishmael, he simply isn’t the chosen one, and will only get a ‘secondhand’ blessing. Which, of course, isn’t exactly terrible in itself. Blessings of any kind are cool.
“Isn’t he rightly named Jacob? He has deceived me these two times: He took my birthright, and now he’s taken my blessing!”
Well, while the birthright sale was certainly a devious scheme by Jacob, it wasn’t exactly deception. Esau was completely aware of the terms, and freely agreed to them. Now that he’s had time to think it over, he realizes he got cheated, but he’s trying to retroactively shift the blame onto Jacob when it was really his own fault. Of course, the blessing deal is a different matter, and the straight-up deception is pretty obvious.
Esau held a grudge against Jacob…
“Your brother Esau is consoling himself with the thought of killing you.”
Well somebody has anger issues. Maybe Esau is tired of all this running away from fighting. Maybe he wanted to punch somebody the first time they tried to start a fight over the whole well-digging business, and he’s been holding back all that anger. Or maybe this one thing is just too much. He knows what that blessing means, and that it was supposed to be his. His father was going to give it to him. And then that little wimp Jacob stole it from right underneath him.
Then Rebekah said to Isaac, “I’m disgusted with living because of these Hittite women.”
Ta-da! An excuse for Jacob to leave. Not to mention the keeping pure of his line.
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