Genesis 25:19-34 Commentary

Commentator’s Note: The genius of the latter half of Genesis is the way it tells stories of fascinating characters — interesting to us not primarily because they are foreign or strange but precisely because we see our own families, stories, dramas, traumas and redemptions on display.

What I’ve created here is a narrative, created under the stern tutelage of commentaries and scholars. Though I have imagined into the silences a bit, the whole thing should read true to the text. For example, it *is* the case that Isaac is nearly a non-character in this great narrative of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It is the case that Rebekah chooses for herself when to leave and marry Isaac sight-unseen. It is the case that Jacob is a grasping wrestler from day one and Esau is a bit of a hairy oaf. It is the case that God upturns the societal priority of the first born and chooses Jacob instead — though it’s hard to figure the sense in that move. It is the case, as one commentator put it: “There are no meetings with the Holy God apart from the realities of troubled human life.”

The narrator of this family drama doesn’t take off the rough edges. And what we see is that covenant breeds conflict. That chosenness is no simple thing. And that it’s only ever in brokenness that God bestows blessing. 

Commentary:

REBEKAH

I watch as the skin on my belly, stretched tight, ripples from side to side, tumbles from top to bottom. I rest my hands against the chaos inside, willing it to stillness but here, as many other places, my fierce will has nothing to do with it.

God, just what is going on here? Do you have a plan for all of this?

And maybe you’ll think I’m crazy but I heard an answer —

Two nations at war in my belly.

One stronger than the other.

The younger will rise above the older.

How does a prophecy like this work? I wondered in the fleeting quiet moments of my pregnancy. Why would God tell me such a thing? How was I going to love Esau fairly? How could I not love Jacob all the more? How does chosenness work, after all? I can’t unhear that God has covenant designs on the younger. I can’t unhear that God will bless the weaker instead of the stronger. When it comes down to it, of course I played favorites. After all, God picked sides first. And, hey, I chose God’s guy.

The conflict inside was born, conflicted, into the world. Never mind the diapers and onesies, I should have registered for whistles and a black and white striped jersey in women’s medium.

All those years later, there was hardly anything surprising in the story Jacob told me about the absurd trade made over a bowl of stew. Both boys acted as they had since they were children. Good-natured, practical, now-centered Esau agrees to his brother’s demand. “Yeah, yeah, whatever”. That’s not how a birth-right works, after all. I can almost see him waving his hand, dismissing his brother’s words, digging into his food. Silly man-child never thinking of it again — or at least not until it was too late. But that is a story for another day.

As for Jacob, I’ll never know if it was a spur-of-the-moment whim that Jacob asked Esau for the birth-right. Or if he’d manipulated the situation all along. I’ll never know if he took to heart the words I whispered over him at restless bedtimes, those words spoken over my restless belly all those years ago. Did that embolden him? Should it have? What am I to make of how those words of chosenness, of covenant, of blessing have shaped everything since. I wonder if it doesn’t seem to you like all conflict, all brokenness ever since.

What I want you to know about my boys — all 3 of them … and Father Abraham if it comes to that — is that covenant doesn’t come easy. It never has. Abraham and Isaac will always have a mountain between them.  Isaac lived, so it seemed, to defy his Father, to be different from him. And then there was the time he asked me to pose as his sister instead of his wife.  And I wonder where he learned that trick.

Both Jacob and Esau were so different — and so very much like — their father, who was so different and so very much like his father — how could anything but conflict mark these relationships? Is this how chosenness works?

Chosenness doesn’t block out brokenness. Trust me, we have plenty of brokenness here. Fathers and sons. Husbands and wives. Sons and their mother. Brothers.

Here it is, written down for you in God’s Holy Word — my family is a mess and so is yours. But covenant isn’t thwarted by conflicts. My family is full of jagged, broken lines detailing our relationships with one another and so is yours. But covenant doesn’t break when we do. And “There are no meetings with the Holy God apart from the realities of troubled human life.”

It is smack dab in the middle of the brokenness that blessings emerge. It is smack dab in the middle of our humanity that Christ was born.  It is smack dab in the middle of our stubborn, wrong-headed graspings at kingdom and power that Christ will come again and set all things new.

God is still wrestling a blessing out of this and every brokenness.