DAY 10

WRESTLING

JACOB – ESAU – THE CENTURION

Genesis 25 & 26 and Matthew 8:1-17

Do you have episodes in the Bible that you wrestle with, I imagine we all do. Some people wrestle with the flood, others with the “almost sacrifice of Isaac”. I struggle with the story of how Jacob and Esau interact, and how Jacob (and his mother) manipulated the situation for him to get the birth right in Genesis 25, 26 and 27.

Genesis 25 Before I get to the Jacob and Esau story, I was struck by the little gem in verse 9. “Isaac and Ishmael buried their father.” We don’t know the nature of the relationship between the two to them, but we can surmise they got along well enough to together lay their father to rest. Given all they had been through as a result of Sarah I am surprised. We then read in the Scripture the promise God made to Hagar’s son fulfilled as Ishmael’s descendants are listed.


The chapter then reports of the birth of Esau and Jacob with the notable details about the younger grasping at the heels of the older. Verse 26 reports Isaac favoring his oldest and Rebekah favoring the youngest. Then, after they are grown, Esau sells his birth right. I don’t understand this scene, and it is just a few sentences. I imagine it is written in manner that I am meant less to understand how Esau could do such a thing, and more know that he did it!

Genesis 26 is really the last chapter we will hear about Isaac’s life, except for his offering a blessing to his sons. Whereas with Abraham we have several episodes, here we have one moment where God promises Isaac the same promise he made to his father, and then we are off to an all too familiar story – a wife pretending to be a sister. Did Isaac learn this from his father? This Abimelech is apparently a different one (in an earlier blog I dealt with the translation of this name) but no less wise. He discerns that Rebekah is really Isaac’s wife and sends them away.

In both Genesis 25 and 26 (and in 27 where the rivalry will continue) I am wrestling with the manner in which God is carrying out his plan.

Matthew 8 for Jewish readers might cause them to “wrestle” a bit with how God is carrying out his plan. We need to appreciate that as Jesus is walking around, he is walking around as the Jewish Messiah. He is speaking primarily to Jews. He is inviting them to follow him as Israel’s long awaited redeemer. Now, after the Sermon on the Mount (which was no doubt to Jewish listeners) Jesus touches a leper (which no Rabbi, or person really would do), and not only meets with a Roman, but declares the Roman has greater faith that any Jewish person he has met! Wrestling, I think his countryman would be just a bit.

In all it is about faith. Do I have enough faith to read the Bible, or must every sentence make perfect sense to me the moment I read it? Do I have enough faith to let God be God? Do the Jewish followers of Jesus have enough faith to let Messiah Jesus be the Messiah Jesus that He is? Or…and here is the real situation going on all over the world today…will I force God into some mental construct that I have in my brain? Today I find so many people who reject God, Jesus and the Bible because it doesn’t meet with their image of God. Isn’t that what I was doing with Genesis 25 – 27? I think it was. The challenge of course in not to “check my brain” at the door, but simultaneously use my brain, and be open to what God might be saying and doing.