CHAPTER XI.
THE PATRIARCHS.
Isaac.
THE story of Isaac is brief; his life uneventful, perhaps we might say monotonous. The record shows that the Lord appeared to him on two distinct occasions; at Gerar (Gen. 26: 2–5), renewing the covenant previously made with Abraham, with a very full restatement of all its salient points; also at Beersheba (26: 23–25) where we are told “he builded an altar and called on the name of the Lord,” in the steps of his godly father.——We see a point of his character in the fact stated incidentally, that Esau’s marriage into Hittite families “was a grief of mind to Isaac and to Rebekah.” Esau lacked sympathy with the spirit of the pious patriarchs and utterly failed to appreciate the inheritance of blessings which had lain so near the heart of his grandfather Abraham and of his father Isaac—facts which the historian touches briefly—“Thus Esau despised his birthright.” The writer to the Hebrews puts the case forcibly: “Who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright” (12: 16).——We have no means of knowing how persistently and wisely Rebekah had labored to win and hold him by her maternal opportunities and power. In later years she seems to have withdrawn her heart from him to give it (with apparently extreme partiality) to Jacob.——Of her duplicity in the matter of the paternal blessing, it can scarcely be necessary to say that the fact of its being recorded by no means proves that the Lord justified it. Indeed the absence of any explicit condemnation can not be taken as equivalent to a justification. Jacob’s exile from his father’s house and home for twenty long years—so manifestly the result of this duplicity—must have been to her mind painfully suggestive. It seems plainly to have been one of God’s ways in providence to rebuke and chasten herfor this wrong, and perhaps we may add, to save Jacob’s soul by removing him from a maternal influence which was so defective—not to say faulty and pernicious.
As to Isaac, one point only is named of him by the writer to the Hebrews in his catalogue of illustrious examples of faith: “By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come” (11: 20). These benedictions (recorded Gen. 27: 28, 29, 33, 37, 39, 40) must be regarded as far more than a venerable father’s good wishes—indeed as nothing less than prophetic benedictions—words uttered under the divine impulses of the Holy Ghost. Their broad outlook embraced the great outlines of the future history of the two nations that were before him in the person of his two sons.
Jacob.
In Jacob’s history there is no lack of stirring incident and critical exigency; in his character, no lack of positive elements and vigorous force. Bethel where he seems to have found God first; Mahanaim where the double hosts of God met him and the murderous rage of Esau threatened every precious life in all his household, and he found help only as he wrestled with the angel of the covenant till he prevailed; the scenes of his sojourning in Canaan where Joseph first comes to view, envied and hated of his brethren, and his father mourned for him many days as dead; and finally Goshen where the aged patriarch found his lost Joseph yet alive and lord of all Egypt; stood before Pharaoh; saw his sons and sons’ sons—a growing host; gave them his blessing and was gathered to his fathers:—surely these salient points of his history indicate no lack of adventure, and in the religious point of view, abundant scenes of moral trial—exigencies that tasked his virtue and endurance, his faith and patience, and in the end brought forth his chastened soul purified by the discipline of suffering and strong in the faith of Abraham’s God.
To understand well the scenes of Bethel, we must think of a young man, emerging from boyhood—his fond mother’s chief beloved—not to say, her pet boy—never yet thrown upon his own resources; an heir to wealth; a child of ease—perhaps of maternalindulgence;—but now suddenly brought into peril of life from his twin brother’s indignant rage and violence. It would be so horrible to the mother to see her Jacob slain by his own brother’s hand and to “lose them both in one day”! (Gen. 27: 45). Safety seemed to be only in flight, so she must needs send him secretly to the distant land of her birth—the old maternal family home. Therefore, with many a pang of heart, and (let us hope) with many a prayer, she commended him to the God of the covenant and sent him away.
One day of thoughtful travel had passed slowly over Jacob, his mind traversing by many rapid transitions from the home he had left behind to the new scenes that met his eye; from the brother before whose fury he was fleeing, to the unknown experiences of life among friends he had never seen. At last the sun had gone down; the eye had nothing more to see; weariness called for rest and sleep. With a stone for his pillow, with his tunic wrapt about him, and the broad heavens above for his canopy, he slept and dreamed—dreamed of a ladder with its foot on the earth beside him and its top in the heavens; and wonderful to see! the angels of God descending and ascending upon it! A new sense of communication between earth and heaven came upon him, assuming a strange reality when he saw the Lord standing above it and heard him say, “I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father and the God of Isaac.” Before this Jacob had heard of that wonderful covenant of God so often ratified with his venerable grandfather and his father. The transfer of blessing from Isaac to himself as the lineal heir of both birthright and blessing was a thing of quite recent experience. How fully he had comprehended its glorious significance before does not appear; but now that he is cast out alone upon the wide, unknown world—now that he so much needs the Great God for his friend—it comes over him with solemn, precious interest. The words spoken were full of comfort. They reminded him of the great family promise to Abraham, renewed to his father Isaac: “A God to thee and to thy seed after thee,” and he felt that the promise put its finger upon his own aching, solitary heart. He had a fresh assurance that his life would not come to nought and be a failure, for the Lord said: “The land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it andto thy seed; and thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the West and to the East; to the North and to the South; and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” And lest these blessings might seem too remote to meet his sense of present peril and need, the Lord kindly added—“And behold I am with thee and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again to this land; for I will not leave thee until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.” How deeply these scenes and words impressed the soul of the youthful Jacob is apparent in the few words which fell from his lips when he came to the full consciousness of wakeful life. “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not”! I had not thought to meet God here and to meet him so! I thought I was utterly alone but lo! God is here!——We must suppose that Jacob had never been so near to God before. Such a meeting with the Majesty of heaven was new to his experience, and a sense of solemn awe—of reverence amounting to fear, came upon him:—as the record is, “he was afraid and said, How dreadful is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” The ladder stretching upward, its foot resting beside him and its top in the heavens, the open door far in the sky through which the angels seemed to come and go; the voice of the Lord himself and withal uttering such words—ah indeed, the whole effect was as if God and heaven had truly dropped down upon him, and this was God’s dwelling-place and heaven’s door was there!
The scene was entirely too precious to be suffered to pass into oblivion; so Jacob’s thought turned to some memorial of the scene and to a moral adjustment of his future life to this heavenly call. First, he took the stone which had served him for a pillow and set it up for a pillar and poured oil upon the top of it—a sacred unction.——To the place he gave the significant name “Bethel”—house of God—by which it was ever after known. Then, by a solemn vow, he gave himself to the Lord who had thus called and comforted him with promise. We read, “Jacob vowed a vow, saying, ‘If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and raiment to put on so thatI come again to my father’s house in peace, then shall the Lord be my God, and this stone which I have set for a pillar shall be God’s house; and of all that thou shalt give me, I will surely give the tenth unto thee.’”——If we press the word “if” at the head of this sentence so as to make it thoroughly conditional, and withal suggesting some shades of doubt whether God would prove faithful, we shall wrong Jacob, imputing to him what manifestly he could not have meant. His words must be taken thus:—Inasmuch as God has so kindly promised to be with me in all my otherwise doubtful way, and to bring me back despite of all peril to my father’s house again, I accept him as in very deed my God; and out of all my accumulated wealth, I will surely give one tenth to him.——The spirit is that of one drawn by God’s promised mercy—not of one who stands in grave doubt whether God will come up to the full height of his promise. These are the words of one who has no doubt on that point and who refers to that promise only to say that because of it, under the joyful assurance of it, he gives himself to God in full, prompt, and perpetual consecration. A reverent soul brought so near to God, impressed with a sense that heaven and God are verily here, does not tempt and provoke God by expressing the fear that he will not prove faithful to his promises!——Late into the morning Jacob lingered in this hallowed spot as one loth to close such an interview with God and break the charm of such sacred associations. And when at length he must go on his journey, it was with far other heart than in his solitary journey of the day before.