Four Looks Away from God’s Sovereign Purposes

For many, the end of Genesis 25 signals a classic warning against the sin of favoritism. Certainly that is an important theme and application. 

“When the boys grew up, Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man, dwelling in tents. Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebekah loved Jacob” (vv. 27-28).

Belcher notes that, “Each parent is going to show loyalty to one of the sons based on their character.”1 Favoritism was a bigger deal with the birthright, as Deuteronomy 21:15-17 makes it unlawful for favoritism to be shown to the son of the preferred woman if a man has two wives and the firstborn is of the unloved woman. That would not be the problem for Isaac, but it would for Jacob.

I have seen fit to put a Bunyan-esque lens over this passage, giving, as he does in his allegorical masterpiece, The Pilgrim’s Progress, names to characters that are simple and obvious descriptions of their peculiar vices.

• Mr. Rugged

• Mrs. Relationship

• Mr. Material

• Mr. Manipulation

Doctrine. There are many natural and spiritual ways to look away from God’s sovereign purposes.    

Mr. Rugged

This might seem like the most shallow of the four when it says, ‘Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game’ (v. 28a), since it had already said, ‘Esau was a skillful hunter’ (v. 27a). I think there is more to this affection than the prospects that Esau “hooked him up” with his favorite food while Isaac sat on the couch on game day! One level down under the surface of utter superficiality we find the potential for something serious. He is also described as ‘a man of the field’ (v. 27a). Some may be inclined to see that as an added emphasis on “skilled hunter,” another way to say the same thing. Other commentaries point to the virtue of “separation from the mainstream of society.”2 Esau could be the opposite of what their great uncle Lot had become. He could happily live separate from the world. Now things aren’t so shallow.

So, how is this a “look away” from God’s sovereign purposes? What looks at first like “rugged” in the sense of a fearless abandonment of the anxieties of this world, diligence that keeps one out of the debt of man—is, in reality, an alternative faith in the strength of man.

“It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in man. It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in princes” (Ps. 118:8-9).

Mrs. Relationship

When it says, ‘but Rebekah loved Jacob’ (v. 28b), there is no further elaboration; yet what sort of man Jacob was growing to be was already described: ‘Jacob was a quiet man, dwelling in tents’ (v. 27b). The crass way to say this in times past would be that Jacob was a “momma’s boy,” which was never a compliment. Now why would a mother love such a son? At the very least, she knows him more. He is easy going. He is not wild. He gives evidence that his frontal lobe won’t wait till he’s like 30 to develop—and after all, “a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother” (Prov. 10:1).

Now it may be entertained that since Sarah manipulated to the benefit of Isaac in the first generation, and now Rebekah will manipulate to the benefit of Jacob in the second generation—and since these are the true heirs; therefore the mother’s sin here is either lessened, or, perhaps one might take the position that there is no sin at all on their part. But how is this a “look away” from God’s sovereign purposes? Rebekah’s taking to Jacob would turn into a taking up of his cause above all others. And when we do this even for our children, this is to create some alternative safety for the beloved. “I will protect them from …” From what? From God?

In his book Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis observed that none of our instincts are what we Christians mean by the morally right and good. In other words, none of our instincts, or what we are feeling on the inside, is to be confused with the requirements of God’s law. He uses the imagery of a piano and a sheet of music.

“We all know what it feels like to be prompted by instinct … But feeling a desire to help [another person] is quite different from feeling that you ought to help whether you want to or not … [In other words, our instincts (or feelings) are at war] … Now this thing that judges between two instincts, that decides which should be encouraged, cannot itself be either of them. You might as well say that the sheet of music which tells you, at a given moment, to play one note on the piano and not another, is itself one of the notes on the keyboard. The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys.”3

Beyond that, if any of our instincts were purely and simply Good, then they would be always good all the time, but then he examines even the best of them like patriotism, the fighting instinct, or, yes, even a mother’s love, and he concludes that, “There is none of our impulses which the Moral Law may not sometimes tell us to suppress, and none which it may not sometimes tell us to encourage.”4 You have heard of a one-note Johnny? Well, Rebekah was a one-note mommy on that piano: namely, her sentiment for Jacob. Without the divine and sovereign sheet of music, she was left to an impulse. A very wholesome-looking impulse. An impulse we can sympathize with, but an impulse all the same.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9)

Love can blind us if it is the mere shadow of love instead of its light. Human love is like a fruit plucked from its tree, corrupting the moment it departs from its true source. And that’s Mrs. Relationship.

Mr. Material

As I briefly mentioned last time—from verse 25—about the link between Esau to the people group, the Edomites and even Idumeans, that it is this word in the Hebrew, ’aḏmōnî, that is the word for “red” or “ruddy.” The original Esau was between that meaning and the word for “hairy” (śê‘ār).5 Now here is what sets the climactic scene between the brothers:

“Once when Jacob was cooking stew, Esau came in from the field, and he was exhausted. And Esau said to Jacob, ‘Let me eat some of that red stew, for I am exhausted!’ (Therefore his name was called Edom.) (vv. 29-30).

Before getting to Jacob’s role here, just note the low view that Esau had of anything besides his immediate, temporal, bodily needs: ‘Esau said, ‘I am about to die; of what use is a birthright to me?’ (v. 32) Notice that it never occurred to Isaac to say that as he was being bound for his own sacrificial death, though he would inherit. But it also shows a carnal view of the birthright itself, as if the whole substance of it would be gone after death. We might think of Paul’s words: “If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Cor. 15:19). Evidently, Esau thought that this inheritance was nothing but a means to a greater material end in this life, and that it was all gone at death.

It should be a bit clearer how this represents a “look away” from God’s sovereign purposes. As Hughes notes in his commentary, “In no way was Esau about to die. He was simply hungry and impertinent.”6

If anyone doubts that this is about more than simply a dropping of his guard, the last words of the narrative seal the right impression: ‘Thus Esau despised his birthright’ (v. 34). Kidner calls this “Embracing the present and the tangible at any cost.”7 Remember Paul’s words of those he positioned as enemies of the cross of Christ:

“Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things” (Phi. 3:19).

Even the nineteenth century Scottish essayist and historian Thomas Carlyle could see this clearly, writing of Esau:

“He is the kind of man of whom we are in the habit of charitably saying that he is nobody’s enemy but his own. But, in truth, he is God’s enemy, because he wastes the splendid manhood which God has given to him. Passionate, impatient, impulsive, incapable of looking before him, refusing to estimate the worth of anything which does not immediately appeal to his sense, preferring the animal over the spiritual, he is rightly called a ‘profane person.’”8

So, we have Mr. Rugged, Mrs. Relationship, and Mr. Material. Finally, there is,

Mr. Manipulation

Now the name Jacob also involves a play on words in the Hebrew, since ya‘ăqōḇ is linked to the word for “heel” (‘āqêḇ). This body part is used as a metaphor for a liar and a cheat. So we read a few chapters later,

“Esau said, ‘Is he not rightly named Jacob? For he has cheated me these two times. He took away my birthright, and behold, now he has taken away my blessing” (Gen. 27:36).

Other support comes from the Psalms: “Even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me” (41:9); “Why should I fear in times of trouble, when the iniquity of those who cheat me surrounds me?” (49:5)—where the word that the ESV translates as those who cheat is עֲקֵבַ֣י, prompting other translations to render it: “when the iniquity at my heels shall compass me about?” The point is that it is the same Hebrew root.

We may have to conclude a double use of lying—literal “lying,” that is, deception, and what we sometimes call “lying in wait,” that is, conspiring for an opportunity to seize what is not yours. He is a conniving opportunist, a schemer, looking for a weak point in others to strike if and when he thinks it will be to his advantage.

Without that background in the word play and the other supporting verses, of the four, this may seem the most “spiritual” sin. It has its eyes on loftier things than mere food and shelter and the moment. But it still to “look away” from God’s sovereign purposes. A ‘a quiet man, dwelling in tents’ (v. 27) may be a gentleman and a scholar. But he may also be playing it safe out of fear of man. He may have cultivated fake virtues in a society that privileges female sensibilities—not that the Evangelical world is not under the thumb of such smooth men right now.

I am not in the habit of quoting the so-called sages of our present culture, but there was one zinger worth repeating, courtesy of Jordan Peterson. He said, “If you think that strong men are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of.” I think he is on to something there. Sometimes we say of a man that his strength is his weakness. For Jacob, it was reversed: His weakness was his strength, as he lie in wait for the inheritance from the comfort of the tents.   

Practical Use of the Doctrine

Use 1. Admonition. These four views may seem entirely innocent. But through the Prophet, “Thus says the LORD: ‘Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the LORD” (Jer. 17:5). That is really what all four views have in common. They have transferred a trust to man that belongs properly to God alone. In fixing the lens of their trust on this or that creaturely good, their whole heart is turning away from God.

There is an apparently odd warning in the Prophet, who says,

“Let everyone beware of his neighbor, and put no trust in any brother, for every brother is a deceiver, and every neighbor goes about as a slanderer” (Jer. 9:4).

Put no trust in the slightest glimmer of goodness of the best, since the best of men is a man at best. Not the wholesomeness of that mother’s love, or the innocence of that father’s pride, or any other such excuses for what might seem practical or spiritual. The smallest of vices in our eyes is an infinite opening to damnation to the vision of God’s sovereign purposes. And besides, the supposed small “size” of the sin, such as a bite of stew by Esau, is as critical to the individual sinner as the bite of the forbidden fruit.

In fact, in a sense, the smaller to us, the greater the offense. In a small sin, the sinner says that Christ is so inglorious as that I would exchange all that He is and all that He offers for this little bowl of stew. And as Thomas Watson put it very bluntly,

“What fools are they who, for a drop of pleasure, drink a sea of wrath!”

Use 2. Consolation. One commentator, when examining the different passages that shed light on Jacob’s name, has a small parenthetical note pointing forward to Genesis 49:18. It is a very brief sentence. But it sticks out of the larger section on Jacob’s blessings to the children and the tribes of Israel that emerge from them. When he blessed Dan, it is as though he is describing himself: “Dan shall be a serpent in the way, a viper by the path, that bites the horse’s heels so that his rider falls backward” (Gen. 49:17); and then, as if out of nowhere, Jacob interjects (one can only imagine, with a sigh): “I wait for your salvation, O LORD” (v. 18). And then he gets back to the blessings—Where did that come from! I think when he saw the future of Dan, he saw the past of himself. And yet he saw beyond that, to God’s salvation. What does this show us? If you are in Christ, you are not identified with your past. Not with your sin. Not even with those sins which so characterized you that people thought of naming you according to that sin.

It may be that when people think of you, they think of that.

It may be that when you think of you, you think of that.

But when God thinks of you, He thinks of Christ, so there is nothing from that old you left to think about.

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1. Belcher, Genesis, 172.

2. Belcher, Genesis, 173; cf. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary, 391.

3. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 22, 23.

4. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 23.

5. Belcher comments, “The connection between hairy (śê‘ār) and Esau (‘êśāw) is not etymological; rather, there is a sound play between the two with the reversal of the Hebrew consonants ś and ‘.” (Genesis, 172).

6. Hughes, Genesis, 337.

7. Kidner, Genesis, 162.

8. Thomas Carlyle, quoted in Hughes, Genesis, 336.