Then he said, “Bring it to me, that I may eat of my son’s game and bless you.” So he brought it to him, and he ate; and he brought him wine, and he drank.
Then his father Isaac said to him, “Come near and kiss me, my son.”
So he came near and kissed him; and he smelled the smell of his garments, and blessed him, and said,
“Ah, the smell of my son
is like the smell of a field that the LORD has blessed.
May God give you of the dew of heaven,
and of the fatness of the earth,
and plenty of grain and wine.
Let peoples serve you,
and nations bow down to you.
Be lord over your brothers,
and may your mother’s sons bow down to you.
Cursed be everyone who curses you,
and blessed be everyone who blesses you!”
30 As soon as Isaac had finished blessing Jacob, when Jacob had scarcely gone out from the presence of his father Isaac, his brother Esau came in from his hunting.
He also prepared savory food, and brought it to his father. And he said to his father, “Let my father sit up and eat of his son’s game, so that you may bless me.”
His father Isaac said to him, “Who are you?” He answered, “I am your firstborn son, Esau.”
Then Isaac trembled violently, and said, “Who was it then that hunted game and brought it to me, and I ate it all [82 (#ulink_14a8ed5a-72c8-5ed6-bf17-f8263d6161c2)] before you came, and I have blessed him?—yes, and blessed he shall be!”
When Esau heard his father’s words, he cried out with an exceedingly great and bitter cry, and said to his father, “Bless me, me also, father!”
But he said, “Your brother came deceitfully, and he has taken away your blessing.”
Esau said, “Is he not rightly named Jacob? [83 (#ulink_501f2f38-af52-5544-b84c-bc841e442b76)] For he has supplanted me these two times. He took away my birthright; and look, now he has taken away my blessing.” Then he said, “Have you not reserved a blessing for me?”
Isaac answered Esau, “I have already made him your lord, and I have given him all his brothers as servants, and with grain and wine I have sustained him. What then can I do for you, my son?”
Esau said to his father, “Have you only one blessing, father? Bless me, me also, father!” And Esau lifted up his voice and wept.
39 Then his father Isaac answered him:
“See, away from[84 (#ulink_1729d781-064d-5159-85eb-c6515c496ece)] the fatness of the earth shall your home be,
and away from [85 (#ulink_ed25d61e-f6d2-56dd-9f20-8831d1f15168)] the dew of heaven on high.
By your sword you shall live,
and you shall serve your brother;
but when you break loose, [86 (#ulink_2d1f67b4-a78d-562f-8822-4daae5cd3f48)]
you shall break his yoke from your neck.”
41 Now Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him, and Esau said to himself, “The days of mourning for my father are approaching; then I will kill my brother Jacob.”
But the words of her elder son Esau were told to Rebekah; so she sent and called her younger son Jacob and said to him, “Your brother Esau is consoling himself by planning to kill you.
Now therefore, my son, obey my voice; flee at once to my brother Laban in Haran,
and stay with him a while, until your brother’s fury turns away—
until your brother’s anger against you turns away, and he forgets what you have done to him; then I will send, and bring you back from there. Why should I lose both of you in one day?”
46 Then Rebekah said to Isaac, “I am weary of my life because of the Hittite women. If Jacob marries one of the Hittite women such as these, one of the women of the land, what good will my life be to me?”
28 Then Isaac called Jacob and blessed him, and charged him, “You shall not marry one of the Canaanite women.
Go at once to Paddan-aram to the house of Bethuel, your mother’s father; and take as wife from there one of the daughters of Laban, your mother’s brother.
May God Almighty [87 (#ulink_2efdb697-c3ad-50b6-b7e6-b1356587bf48)] bless you and make you fruitful and numerous, that you may become a company of peoples.
May he give to you the blessing of Abraham, to you and to your offspring with you, so that you may take possession of the land where you now live as an alien—land that God gave to Abraham.”
Thus Isaac sent Jacob away; and he went to Paddan-aram, to Laban son of Bethuel the Aramean, the brother of Rebekah, Jacob’s and Esau’s mother.
6 Now Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Paddan-aram to take a wife from there, and that as he blessed him he charged him, “You shall not marry one of the Canaanite women,”
and that Jacob had obeyed his father and his mother and gone to Paddan-aram.
So when Esau saw that the Canaanite women did not please his father Isaac,
Esau went to Ishmael and took Mahalath daughter of Abraham’s son Ishmael, and sister of Nebaioth, to be his wife in addition to the wives he had.
GOD’S UNAVOIDABLE PRESENCE
What can you ever really know of other people’s souls—of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole creation you do know: and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands. If there is a God, you are, in a sense alone with Him. You cannot put Him off with speculations about your next door neighbours or memories of what you have read in books. What will all that chatter and hearsay count (will you even be able to remember it?) when the anaesthetic fog which we call “nature” or “the real world” fades away and the Presence in which you have always stood becomes palpable, immediate, and unavoidable?
—from Mere Christianity
For reflection
Genesis 28:16
