Patriarchs: What Comes Around Goes Around

 

Then God said to him, “I am the Sovereign God. Be fruitful and multiply! A nation – even a company or nations – will descend from you; kings will be among your descendants! The land I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will give to you. To your descendants I will also give this land.”  Genesis 35:11-12

 Today, as we consider the patriarchs of Genesis, we look at Jacob. He was his mother, Rebekah’s, favorite, though his father, Isaac, gave preference to his brother. I wonder if Rebekah preferred Jacob because in Genesis 25:23 God told her that the older of her sons would serve the younger? The Bible tells us in Genesis 25:28 that Isaac preferred Esau, the older brother, because he had a taste for wild game and Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the open country. Either way this family was set up for division and strife because the parents so openly displayed their favoritism.

 When it came time for Isaac to proclaim his blessing over his firstborn son (in Genesis 27), Rebekah not just encouraged but orchestrated a convincing plot to deceive her husband and steal the blessing of the firstborn for Jacob. This was the end of their time together because Esau was ready to kill Jacob so Rebekah hatched one last plan to save him and sent him to live with her brother, telling Isaac that it was because she wanted him to get a wife there. We never hear about Rebekah again for the rest of the story. Did she die while Jacob was in Harran with his uncle?

 Here's the crux of it, God knew all of this would happen before these boys were even born. I don’t at all think that God encouraged or supported Rebekah’s choices, or the couple’s favoritism,  but I do believe that He knew it would happen. He knew that Jacob would grow to become a powerful man with a large family. He knew that, eventually, Jacob’s descendants would rule over Esau’s.

 I got curious this morning as to how that all played out, and what I learned definitely surprised me! God Questions had a really helpful overview of Esau’s descendants, the Edomites, and their interactions with Jacob’s descendants, the Israelites. The two nations never really seemed to have a peace between then, although the Israelites were discouraged from attacking the Edomites due to their close heritage. The Edomites were eventually subjugated under King David, bringing full circle to the prophecy of Genesis 25:23. Here’s the bit that surprised me, that’s not where this rivalry ends.

 During the Maccabean Wars (167-160BC), the Jews once again took power over the Edomites, but this time they forced them to convert to Judaism. Is it just me, or does it just not make sense to force someone to convert to your religion? I don’t see that ever working out well in history, and this is no exception. About a hundred years later, another Edomite, Antipater, converted to Judaism, although the circumstances of his conversion are not well documented. What is clear though, is that this conversion paved the way for his son, Herod, to become King of Judea. Yep, you guessed that right, this is the self-same Herod that slaughtered countless infants in his failed attempt to kill Jesus. I had no idea before that Herod was an Edomite, but boy that adds to the drama of this historic rivalry! There’s a ton more political intrigue between Herod and Julius Caesar, Marc Antony and Cleopatra to be read about here if you’re so inclined. This stuff is crazy. I can’t believe they haven’t made a TV show about it yet!

Here's the Thing: Bringing this all back to Jacob and Esau, what I’m gleaning from today’s lesson is that God can, and does, use anyone. I’ve felt in the past that I’d need to be perfect for God to use me, that I’m too messed up, that I make too many mistakes. But the reality is, God is way above that. He sees the end from the beginning and has a perfect, intricate plan that takes into account all of our mistakes and even our intentional bad choices. It’s not that He encourages or supports them, but we are not big enough to mess up what He’s put together.