I was totally unaware that Abraham had more sons by another concubine after Sarah's death. Clearly this, among other things, illustrates that not all "sons of Abraham" were members of the righteous line, not all Jews at the time of Christ (who considered themselves sons of Abraham) are destined to be saved. These sons represent tribes of the Arabian desert, including the Midianites, who would later prove so helpful and welcoming to another "son of Abraham", Moses. When Jesus came and extended the New Covenant to all the peoples of the world who believe, no longer just to a chosen, righteous lineage/tribe/kingdom, these other sons of Abraham were gathered back into the fold. He also treats them fairly, leaving them a fair inheritance, even though the bulk of the inherited blessings would go to Isaac.
The places where Abraham is buried and where Isaac goes to live after Abraham's death are full of symbolism and seem to be representative of their lives. Abraham is buried in the cave at Machpelah, in his first legal foothold in the promised land. He faces Mamre, where he met God and where he found out that Isaac would be born. In death, he continues to look God in the face and watch over the place where God's promises were so beautiful to him and Sarah. Isaac goes to live at the Well of God Seeing us (Beer-lahai-roi) where Hagar saw the angel and inherits the holy ground she stood on carrying Ishmael. Her son, while a son of Abraham and therefore blessed by this, is not the one to fulfill God's promises. Abraham and Sarah spend eternity looking on the place they were promised so much, and the son of those promises lives on to inherit even the legacy of Hagar's encounter with Deity.
Ishmael's inheritance seems to be permanently stuck between two statuses. As child of Abraham, his family becomes great and inhabit a lot of land, but as Hagar's child, his descendents are wild and fight amongst themselves often. They live between Egypt, the place of worldly plenty but spiritual emptiness, and Canaan, the land of spiritual promise. Again, I cannot help but think of the legacy of those who claim Ishmael as a founding ancestor. They are permanently stuck between bearing a great light as spiritual sons of Abraham and degenerating into infighting, living between the promise of great spiritual truth and violence because of the lack of full truth.
Once again, the suffering of barrenness, felt by many women today, is used by God to bring about amazing things. Rebekah finds out that she, as so many women before her in this story the Bible, is going to bear two distinct sons with two very different legacies, and that the blessings the two receive will be based on their relationship with God, not any chance circumstances like birth order. God wants to drive home the point over and over again that these children are special, longed for for so long, and that He has granted them as a gift, in His own timing and for His own reasons.
The Bible pauses here to describe in many parallel ways and with many symbols just who these two men are, Esau and Jacob. They both have faults and they both have virtues, but the Lord who looks into the heart knew who these men really were, and blessed Jacob as his favored one because of that. Esau and Jacob are born, and Esau is red (fiery-tempered), hairy (unclean and uncivilized). Jacob, on the other hand, is grasping at his heel, trying to either hold his brother back from being the first born, or trying to rely on Esau to get him out. Esau is a hunter, his brother a shepherd. The two descriptions can lead to both vices and virtues. Esau is rough around the edges and could be seen as brutish, violent, and concerned with base things, but likely could be admired as a plainspoken, straightforward man, hardworking, and a good provider. Jacob is smoother, cleaner, a "prettyboy" with a natural pastoral leadership quality, a man of peaceful pursuits and friendly, congenial demeanor. He could also easily become a deceptively smooth talker, a politician-type who says what you want to hear and then backstabs you.
In the story told about them, we see both sides of both of them. Esau is tired and hungry after providing for the family, but he is also genuinely over-concerned with his stomach, just getting what he needs, to the point where he trades away blessings to get some stew. He doesn't think that what God has provided for him, in the form of a birthright inheritance, is as valuable as his own need to eat something right now. He is one in a long line of people who lose what is important by ravenous gluttony... Adam's gluttony for knowledge led to eating the fruit, Noah's gluttony for wine made him vulnerable to Ham's sin against him and unable to stop it. Jacob is a trickster in his method of exploiting his brother's weak moment, but he has his priorities in order. He wants blessings and a relationship with God so much that he takes charge when he can. He doesn't force the birthright away from Esau by violence, doesn't kill him or usurp his power, just bargains for it. In the end, both men are a balance of darkness and light, but Jacob's heart is found more favorable when God examines him.
Isaac wandering toward Egypt (again!) in an attempt to avoid famine and to protect his worldly wealth and power and again runs into a King Abimelech. He repeats his father's mistake of claiming that his wife was his sister, with some similarity in the results. The first time Abraham did this, in Egypt, he was far far away from his Promised Land, far out of touch with God, and he got pretty deep into his sin before being rescued from it by God. The second time, he was closer to the promised Land and while Sarah was still taken into the harem, the consequences were less dire and the breach between Abraham and Abimelech was less severe. In this third case, Isaac is less far from the Promised Land, Abimelech notices Isaac's lie before he goes forward and acts on it, and Rebekah is never taken into his harem. In justice, Abimelech here is not required to make restitution for a sin he hasn't committed, unlike Pharaoh and Abimelech previously, and Isaac earns envy for his subsequent prosperity instead of it being seen as just compensation. He's blessed for what he does right, and cursed with other people's envy for what he does wrong here. Not all foreigners in the Bible are bad, bad people, and not all are even less good than the lineage of the patriarchs, but the lineage of the patriarchs is in unique relationship with God and has been chosen to bring salvation to the other nations.
Isaac brings back the wells, bringing back the flow of God's blessings and restoring his loving relationship with God. In doing so, he puts himself back into practical opposition to the people of the area, who start to fight with him over the rights to the water. The great blessing of salvation would belong to Isaac's descendant Jesus, who would restore the real "living water" of Baptism and send the Holy Spirit on his followers to do their work. The other local people could only draw on the benefits...their true ownership belonged to Isaac, just as was true with Abraham the last time the wells were open. Isaac finally comes to the Well of the Seven/the Oath (Beersheba) and again makes a covenant with the local people in the same way God has made a covenant with his family, and God's promises and Isaac's to Abimelech strengthen and echo Abraham's. He even is able to go a step farther, bring a new well and new blessings of his own to add.
The scene closes with Esau further demonstrating how far he is going to wander from the loving relationship God wants with him. Isaac and Rebekah have each chosen a son as their favored one, a division that is going to only sow misery in the family. Esau, by marrying not just one but two foreign pagan women, adds more to the drama in the family and makes God's plan for these people harder to smoothly bring about. God transforms the trickery and divisiveness in this family into a tool for His glory, but imagine what it would have been like without this! Isaac, in favoring Esau, is showing a very human tendency to see worldly marks of goodness and success. Rebekah, in favoring Jacob, is showing a very human and womanly tendency to favor a son that causes you less pain and strife, whose looks and smooth words are soothing rather than irritating. Neither sees as God sees.
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