Genesis 27:21 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Genesis 27:21

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Jacob went near to Isaac, but Isaac is not convinced, both because of the voice and the fact that Esau has apparently returned so soon. Jacob has had to come earlier than he might have liked because he knew he had to complete this business well before Esau himself returns, who will otherwise expose him as an impostor. Isaac asks how Esau could have found game so soon? It is therefore likely that he has remained waiting for his son’s return. Whether Jacob expected this line of questioning or not, he is very quick with a ready response. To make this pious claim is the height of hypocrisy and brings God in on the side of his lie. Isaac openly expresses his uncertainty about this son’s identity in spite of the assurance he has received. The voice of the one speaking to him sounds like the voice of Jacob and he is suspicious. He is blind and so must go by touch and smell. Knowing the difference in the skin of the two sons, he wants to tell by touch whether this is really Esau or not. But he is no match for the Jacob’s cunning. Jacob therefore comes to his father knowing that he is under scrutiny; he must have approached his father with some trepidation; this is the very thing that he has been worried about. Is his shameful deception going to be exposed, bringing upon him the opposite of what he sought to obtain? But no, his father is taken in by the ploy with the skin of the kids, which his mother has skilfully fitted to his hands and neck. Faced with this conflicting information, his father gives him the benefit of the doubt and accepts the verdict. He badly wants to bless Esau and so desires to be convinced, yet with a further question he probes the honesty of this son again. Are you really Esau? Jacob lies once more and Isaac proceeds with just a little doubt remaining. In all these things God overruled to carry out his purposes. We see that the Lord is master of every situation and turns every event to precisely the outcome that he wishes. He had ordained in advance that Jacob would be blessed rather than Esau. The Lord cannot be tempted, neither does he tempt any man, but nothing is outside the control of his sovereign will. He even uses Jacob’s lies to bring to pass that which he purposes. Calvin says, ‘It pleased the Lord to render his (Isaac’s) senses dull, partly for the purpose of showing how vain it is for men to strive to change what he has once decreed, and partly for the purpose of correcting, by this kind of chastisement, the absurd attachment by which Isaac was too closely bound to his first-born.’

Application

Those remarkable words at the end of verse 22 used to be greatly misapplied by the old preachers, but in a good cause. ‘The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.’ This was when somebody was preaching the right things, and doing the wrong things. It is not the meaning of the passage, but they applied it to someone who claimed to be a believer in the right things, and yet was promoting wrong things. It is a verse that used to be quoted years ago a very great deal. When the people of God were alive to the problem of compromise, it was used a good deal. If somebody on the right track, out of the right motives, was setting out to do something which was right, but decided to do it in the wrong way, you would get this phrase used.

The Puritans had this problem with people who preached the right doctrines, but wanted high church sacraments, and they would quote Isaac: ‘The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.’ It is plucked out of context, but what a statement. We can say that today about some of these television celebrity preachers who appear to preach so much right doctrine – actually it is not all right – but they appear to be. They are famous. All manner of people listen to them: ‘I like so-and-so.’ The Internet celebrity Calvinistic preachers, and yet in between their preaching is crashing rock music. The world is everywhere, and you think of what the old preachers, the old Puritans, would have said: ‘The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.’ They say the right things but what they do is worldliness and treachery. Be very careful who you approve.

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Genesis 27:21 Commentary and Bible Study