Genesis 28:3 Commentary and Bible Study

Here is the clearest recognition on Isaac’s part that Jacob is the promised seed. The blessing of God is going to come through Jacob however much Isaac feels drawn to Esau, and now Isaac is prepared to acknowledge it. What wonderful blessings Jacob had! All this was promised to him before the experience in which he first saw that there was a way to God, a ladder that joined earth to heaven. Isaac saw that although Jacob had used deceit to obtain the blessing from him, strange as it was, the Lord had been in this and (Aalders) he himself had not been without fault. Therefore, he says nothing about Jacob’s sin in this but accepts it as the will of God.The blessings of Abraham were his. The covenant was made by God primarily with Abraham and it was in Abraham that his seed was blessed. Now it was renewed with Isaac and Jacob. These blessings included the promise of an ethnic people descended from him, the promise of a land for them to dwell in, and the promise of a far greater and more wonderful seed related not by natural birth but by common faith in the Living God. Isaac’s mention of Abraham in connection with the blessing of Jacob shows that he had this covenant in mind, and saw that it was only through this covenant that the promised blessing could come. The same promises belong to the same covenant.Jacob became the father of a great nation that under David had extensive land and power. In the calling of the Gentiles, he has an even greater seed which includes people from every nation, tribe, tongue, and people. But during his own lifetime he did not see any of this and together with his fathers they had to live, as Calvin says, ‘driven about as strangers and pilgrims in the very land, the possession of which had been divinely assigned them a hundred years before.’ This required faith and by faith they enjoyed what was not yet their possession. In this they were a pattern to us who similarly look forward to what we do not yet possess. This must not diminish our enjoyment of the blessing in any degree. ‘This’, says Calvin, ‘is the true trial of faith; when relying on the word of God alone, although tossed on the waves of the world, we stand as firmly as if our abode were already fixed in heaven.’ This had been Isaac’s experience and he saw that it would be his son’s experience also. Therefore Isaac calls the land, ‘the land wherein thou art a stranger’. The land was given to him and his descendants by God, and yet he was about to leave it for twenty-one years, and his brother Esau would continue to dwell in the land even though he was not to be the possessor of it. That land was given to Jacob as well as his descendants. How could he enjoy it if he never actually possessed it? Hebrews tells us that like all the patriarchs he desired ‘a better country, that is, an heavenly’ (Hebrews 11:16), and that better country he would indeed possess.