The Patriarchs / Being Meditations upon Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Job; The Canticles, Heaven and Earth.

by J. G. Bellett

But even into pollution such as this Isaac seems to have been betrayed. "Take, I pray thee," says he to Esau, "thy weapons, thy quiver and thy bow, and go to the field, and take me some venison: and make me savoury meat, such as I love, and bring it to me, that I may eat; that my soul may bless thee before I die." He was going to do the last religious act of a patriarchal priest, and he calls as for wine and strong drink, the food of mere animal life, to raise and endow him for the service!

This was sad indeed, thus to deliberate on the venison at such a moment. We may all be conscious how much of nature soils our holy things, how much of the mere animation of the flesh may be mistaken for the easy and strong current of the Spirit. We may be aware of this, in the place of communion. And this is to be our sorrow and our humbling--we are to confess it as evil, or at least as weakness, and to watch against it. But to prepare for it, carefully to mix the wine and strong drink, to take a full draught, after this manner, this exceeds in defilement.

And nothing comes of all this but dishonour and loss. The whole of this family pollution is judged in the holiness of God, because this was a family of God in the earth. "You only have I known of all the families of the earth, therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities." Isaac is laid aside, Rebecca never sees Jacob again, and the calculating supplanter finds himself in the midst of toils and wrongs and hardships, supplanted and deceived himself again and again; for twenty long years an alien from the house of his father. Nothing comes of all this, whether we look at the crooked policy of the one party, or at the fleshly favouritism of the other; all is disappointment and shame, under the rebuke of the holiness of the Lord.

There is, however, one relief, and it is a very important one, in the midst of this otherwise foul and gloomy scene. "By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come." This is the Holy Ghost's own reference to this chapter in Hebrews xi.

But ere I speak of the relief or comfort which this has for us when thinking of Isaac, I take occasion to inquire, What was the nature or character of this blessing by the patriarchs upon their children, which we find again and again in the Book of Genesis?

A blessing was in the hand of Melchizedek in chap. xiv.; as again, long after, there was a blessing in the hand of Aaron in Num. vi. These instances we may easily understand--these blessings were conferred or pronounced by reason of office. They were delivered through priesthood ordained of God. There was nothing prophetic or oracular in them. The words which these priests used were rather prepared than inspired; words already prescribed by divine provision, rather than communicated at the moment by divine illumination, at least in the case of Aaron.

With the patriarchal blessing, however, it was as clearly otherwise. There was a prophecy or an oracle in Isaac's words on Esau and Jacob here in chap. xxvii.; and so was there afterwards in Jacob's words on his children in chap. xlix., and in his words on Joseph's children in chap. xlviii.; and so was there before, in Noah's words, in chap. ix., on Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

But why, I inquire, was this great matter thus committed to the patriarchs?

If I mistake not, some of the secrets of patriarchal religion, patriarchal worship and ministry, are involved in the answer to this. Religion had, in these earliest days, the same great truths which it still has for its spirit and principle. The Fall and Recovery of man, or Ruin and Redemption, were then made known, and they were received by faith. The altars of the fathers, and the ordinance of clean and unclean, tell us of faith and of the apprehensions of faith in those days. The tent of the living patriarchs, and the Machpelah of the departed patriarchs, tell us that they understood the stranger's calling, and a coming resurrection; and Abraham's grove at Beersheba (chap. xxi.), and his alliance with the Gentile at the well of the oath, tell us likewise, in clear though symbolic language, that they understood some of the bright and happy secrets of the millennial age, or of "the world to come."

And worship and ministry, in those infant days, were in their simplest forms. I may say, nature suggested that the father or head of the house should be the prophet, priest, and king, there. In after times, when the condition of things spread out, and when, with enlargement and age, corruption came in, the holiness of God demanded a separated or circumcised people; and, connected with such, a separated or anointed priesthood. Now, in our day, in the day of the kingdom of God, which is, as we know, "not in word, but in power," it is required that ministry should be something more than nature would suggest, or than holiness would demand; there must be power, such as the Spirit Himself prepares and imparts. But in the early days of Genesis, those family days--those infant, earliest days--the voice of nature was listened to, and duly and seasonably so; and accordingly, the head of the family was the minister of God to the family, and both the dignities and the services of prophets, priests, and kings, within the range of the homestead, or in the family temple, centred in the father.