(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)
“Isaac called Jacob, blessed him, and commanded him, “You shall not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan. Arise, go to Paddan Aram, to the house of Bethuel your mother’s father. Take a wife from there from the daughters of Laban, your mother’s brother. May God Almighty bless you, and make you fruitful, and multiply you, that you may be a company of peoples, and give you the blessing of Abraham, to you and to your offspring with you, that you may inherit the land where you travel, which God gave to Abraham.” Isaac sent Jacob away. He went to Paddan Aram to Laban, son of Bethuel the Syrian, the brother of Rebekah, Jacob’s and Esau’s mother.”
(Genesis 28:1-5)
In spite of the previous deception where Esau’s blessing was stolen, here Isaac gives Jacob the blessing always intended for Jacob. It had never been said that Jacob would receive NO blessing. Only that Esau would get the first blessing, the blessing of the eldest son. Knowing who Jacob was, Isaac speaks to him the blessing always reserved for him.
Isaac tries to give Jacob the blessing God gave Abraham – which was not his to give since only God can bestow God’s blessings. Being blessed by God Himself. Being fruitful. In good standing with other people. And that he would inherit the Land that had been given to Abraham. None of this had been included in Esau’s blessing. This was the superior blessing because it was a more spiritual blessing. It wasn’t rooted in the flesh, in the natural world. It was rooted in God and in relationship with God.
Isaac agreed with Rebekah about a wife for Jacob. He had no desire to see Jacob matched with any of the nations that surrounded them. He approved of going to her people and instructed Jacob exactly who to seek out and where. Jacob obeyed and left his father’s camp to go off on his own for the first time in his life – and he was around 77 years old at this point.
Looking at what Isaac knowingly blessed Jacob with, it can be seen that all the deceit and scheming was completely pointless. The superior blessing was always meant for Jacob. He would have lost NOTHING by letting Esau be blessed. Rebekah spearheaded the whole thing and only ended up hurting herself. Esau ended up estranged from her, and Jacob left and would not return in her lifetime. She broke her family trying to force God’s promise to come true, instead of seeking God for what to do as circumstances came up.
The Torah: A Women’s Commentary writes: ‘As the people of Israel formulates its own identity in tension with surrounding cultures, its traditions frequently express anxiety about Israelite men marrying Canaanite women. Thus with regard to Isaac, Genesis 24 strongly advocated endogamy—that is, marriage within the family’s kinship group. In this parashah, Esau’s marriage to Canaanite women upsets his parents (26:35, 27:46, 28:8). The concern seems less when the foreign woman comes from a non-Canaanite family (see, for example, Deuteronomy 21:10–14). “your mother’s father…your mother’s brother.” Isaac’s way of referring to Jacob’s destination further highlights the bond between mother and son.’
The sage Rav Hirsch writes: ‘V. 2 There, where a woman like your mother was born, and, in spite of a Laban brought up to be what she is, there it is quite possible that you, too, could find the right wife. V. 3 You need take nothing with you but God, He will bless you, i.e. give you the means to found a household, and then give you the strength to beget children, and to bring them up in your own spirit, that you repeat and multiply yourself in them, and you will have, what I did not succeed in having, עמים, children of different kinds, roots of the future divers tribes, but they will still be a קהל, form one united body, there will be no פסול amongst them. V. 4 אתך, not אחריך, the future kernel for a united nation will not develop only out of your later generations. None of your children will be estranged from you, all of them will inherit with you the blessing that had been promised to Abraham. When we compare the contents of this blessing which was given with full consciousness to Jacob, to the one apportioned above to Esau, in which no trace of the Abrahamitic mission was contained, then the way we have taken the meaning of that latter seems fully justified. But the final seal of the whole is that which is recounted in V. 6. When Esau saw etc. and that his father blessed Jacob etc. etc., only after he had seen all this, he got some faint idea that his Canaanite wives must not seem quite right to his father. Of all the heartache and worry which the wives he had hitherto married had brought to his parents Esau seems to have had no conception: Only now when some glimmering of it dawns on him — what does he do? Divorce his Canaanite wives? Not a bit of it! He just took another wife in addition to his wives, על נשיו לו לאשה. So little did Esau have any feeling or understanding for what really was necessary for the building up and continuing the House of Abraham. And just by that was Rebecca’s judgment of his complete unfitness for the future guidance of that House fully and completely justified.’
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