Genesis 27:1 Commentary and Bible Study

Isaac is going to give Esau the great blessing. He is now around 130 years of age. Isaac had likely been quite ill and he is a little shaken, and perhaps thinking he is going to die at the same age as his brother died. Of course, his brother, Ishmael, was some 13 or 14 years older than him. So, in his infirmity, he calls Esau in order to extend to him the blessing. Isaac is not about to die; he lived to 180. We can be quite melodramatic about these things. People can think they are on their death bed, and they are dying, and collect sympathy. Well in this case he had about 50 years to go. However, he was infirm and he was blind at this stage. He wishes to perform one last solemn duty. He is fully aware of the high calling of God on his family and that it is a chosen family through which God has promised to bless all nations. But before he departs this world he wishes to bless one of his sons with a blessing that carries all the authority of God, so that the work of God can continue through his descendants. Why was Isaac’s blessing necessary? There is no record of Abraham blessing Isaac. Perhaps because the children were twins and Isaac wanted to underline his choice of one of the two twins. But the question is, which one? Esau the firstborn or Jacob the lastborn? In his own case he knows that the choice of God was very clear. God had made a distinction between Isaac the child of promise and Ishmael the child of the slave-woman. That choice had been painful to his father Abraham, but it had been a choice that the Lord had made very clear. His mother Sarah had had a part in that choice, insisting that ‘the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son’, and Abraham had finally acquiesced. Now a similar choice faces Isaac. He had already received clear intimation from the Lord what his will was. The remarkable prophecy given while the twins were still in the womb had shown God’s desire for the natural order to be reversed. There had also been the incident in which Jacob had purchased the birthright from his older brother, and Esau had treated it so lightly and relinquished it for the indulgence of a moment. There is therefore little doubt that Isaac knew that, in what he was about to do, he was working against the will of God. But parental favouritism overruled any other factor. Moses has already told us that, ‘Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebekah loved Jacob’ (Genesis 25:28-29). Isaac therefore calls Esau who is technically the older son with the intention of blessing him to the exclusion of Jacob. Esau is still living near to his parents, though he is married, indeed this is the cause of his parents’ distress, for they seem to have to endure the presence of these two wives as part of their daily life. The scene is set for what follows with the information that Isaac was becoming increasingly blind and could not therefore distinguish one son from the other by sight. Esau comes as requested and identifies himself meekly enough by his voice. Isaac tells him of his awareness that his life is drawing to a close and that he wishes to settle the matter of which of the twins will receive their father’s blessing. He chooses the son whom he had favoured because of his lifestyle and because of the game which he hunted and evidently habitually prepared for his father. This was a cherished time together for father and son. He also chooses the firstborn son or as the Hebrew says, ‘his great son’. Isaac favours Esau in spite of the distress that both parents felt at their elder son’s choice of wives. This is a further indication of paternal indulgence. The father’s blessing will follow in response to this meal prepared for him by his son. Esau says absolutely nothing at this point about the fact that he has sold his birthright to his younger brother. If there was any time when it was right to draw attention to this, it was now. But Esau is not about to have a fit of honesty. ‘And he said, behold now, I'm old. I know not the day of my death.’ Jacob and Esau are how old? Do we picture them as little boys or youngsters? They are more than seventy. Sometimes preachers say the two boys, the two boys: the two old boys! They are not youngsters; they are very experienced men. Esau is asked to go and to get the venison. His eye was still good, and he could shoot very straight, pick off those mountain goats or whatever it was he was collecting. Make me savoury meat. A solemn passing of a blessing demanded in their culture a meal to go alongside it. Almost everything was done with a meal, everything solemn, everything important. Jacob spells it out at the end of verse 4: ‘that my soul may bless thee before I die.’