Notes On The Life Of Jacob

by J. Miller | Category: Notes On The Life Of Jacob | Jun 1951

What Isaac said to Esau is not called a blessing. "Isaac his father answered and said unto him, Behold of the fatness of the earth shall be thy dwelling, And of the dew of heaven above; And by thy sword shalt thou live, and thou shalt serve thy brother; And it shall come to pass when thou shalt break loose, That thou shalt shake his yoke from off thy neck."

It was a true prophecy concerning the future of Esau and his seed. Instead of continuing according to what was God's mind for him, that he should be subject to his brother, the time would come when he would break loose from his brother and shake off his yoke. Following the prophetic words which Isaac spake about Esau, we read: "And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing wherewith his father had blessed him: and Esau said in his heart, The days of mourning for my father are at hand; then will I slay my brother Jacob. And the words of Esau her elder son were told Rebekah." Rebekah called Jacob and told him of Esau's intention and told him that he should flee to Laban her brother for a few days until Esau's anger had cooled down. She told Isaac her husband of what he well knew concerning the conduct of Esau's Canaanitish wives, and of what an evil it would be if Jacob married a wife of the same kind. As a result of this, "Isaac called Jacob .... blessed him, and charged him, .... Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan. Arise, go to Paddan-aram, to the house of Bethuel thy mother's father; and take thee a wife from thence of the daughters of Laban thy mother's brother. And God Almighty bless thee, and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, that thou mayest be a company of people; and give thee the blessing of Abraham, to thee, and to thy seed with thee; that thou mayest inherit the land of thy sojourning, which God gave unto Abraham. And Isaac sent away Jacob: and he went to Paddan-aram unto Laban."

It is evident from these words that Isaac was now fully awake to the truth regarding Jacob and God's purposes in him; but how near he had come to disaster in his intention to bless Esau with the first-born's blessing! There is no doubt that Rebekah and Jacob were in the right, and Isaac and Esau in the wrong, though Rebekah's plan of securing the blessing for Jacob, and which Jacob carried through, can hardly be justified, though we cannot offer any suggestions of how it could have been secured otherwise.

Jacob set out on his long trek from Beer-sheba to Haran. We are told that in his journey "he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took one of the stones of the place, and p ut it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold 'a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it." The marginal reading of the R.V. of "a certain place" is "the place." It was indeed THE place, and those who have learned some little of the truth of God's house, as Jacob did, know that the house of God is "the Place," as no place else is or can be. God has but one house at any one time. Jacob was in the place which he shortly after called Bethel,-" the house of God," but at the first he did not realize where he was. Where he was outside the city of Luz. Indeed he was outside everything. Behind him lay his father's house at Beer-sheba, a place to him of great danger because of Esau's anger. Before him lay an unknown future. But above him was heaven AND GOD, the God of Abraham and Isaac, and his chosen God also. Though an outsider, he had in his possession, the greatest of birthrights and the greatest of blessings, blessings that would reach over nations and people, which would be fulfilled in his Seed, the. Christ of God, and in which Jacob would enjoy his share. Jacob, outside men's cities and men's plans, lay alone and sleep, unconscious of his greatness and the privileged' place in which he was. Earth was dark, but heaven was bright and clear. He saw the ladder reaching from earth to heaven; he saw the angels ascending and descending upon it, and Jehovah Himself was above it. He heard many promises, and was assured that the LQRD would not leave him until He had fulfilled that of, which He had spoken to him.

Jacob awoke and was afraid, and said that surely God is in this place. He said, "How dreadful is this place! this is none other, but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven." Here is the beginning of a line of truth concerning the house of God, that stretches over all time and right into eternity when the Tabernacle of God shall be with men, and He shall dwell with them (Revelation 21.}. The history of the house of God is one of revival and departure, and more of departure than revival. But as the name of Bethel was Luz at the first, which means a place of departure or perverseness, so the house of God seems to alternate between the fact that it is God's dwelling place and a place of departure. Not only did Jacob leave the place where he was told that he should dwell there, but his descendants left the place where only they could serve God, and turned aside after high places.

Because of the condition of His people God forsook His house, as He did in the days of Eli, when He forsook Shiloh, and later Jerusalem, in the days of Zedekiah, But none of such incidents is mixed with such sadness, as when the Lord Himself turned away from the temple saying, "Your house is left unto you desolate." In this dispensation the story is the same. The closing epistles of the New Testament with the book of Revelation show the same trend of departure from God and from His house. But despite all this, God has never cast away His desire to have a house, and may we rise to the opportunity of building our God a dwelling place!

The simple elements of truth of what the house of God is may he clearly understood from what is said in Genesis 28. Jacob called the place where he lay the house of God, and he also said, "This stone which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God's house." These facts are corroborated by the words of David at a later time when he said of the threshing floor of Oman, "This is the house of the LORD God, and this is the altar of burnt offering for Israel" (1 Chronicles, 22. 1). We too are responsible to find the place and tjier.ein to build with others in the dwelling place of our God. But, Paul says, "Let each man take heed how he buildeth thereof," when he reaches the place of the foundation, as Jacob and David did.

J. Miller | Jun 1951
Notes On The Life Of Jacob