Genesis 28:1-4

2008.Oct.03 12:15

Extending the Blessing

Read Genesis 28:1-4 | Full Chapter

So Isaac called for Jacob and blessed him and commanded him: "Do not marry a Canaanite woman. Go at once to Paddan Aram, to the house of your mother's father Bethuel. Take a wife for yourself there, from among the daughters of Laban, your mother's brother. May God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and increase your numbers until you become a community of peoples. May he give you and your descendants the blessing given to Abraham, so that you may take possession of the land where you now live as an alien, the land God gave to Abraham."
(Genesis 28:1-4, NIV)

Isaac, after having been tricked, more or less, into giving the first-born blessing to the younger of his twins, now goes ahead and gives a similar blessing to Jacob, now explicitly adding that Jacob–not necessarily to the exclusion of Esau–shall inherit Yahweh’s promise to Abraham: he will have many descendents; they will possess the land of Canaan. In which the descendents of Abraham are aliens. Which is an increasingly difficult point to argue.

But Isaac takes the opportunity to give, if not a condition to the blessing, at least a clearly related instruction. “Jacob, go home,” he says, “and marry one of your cousins.” Or, more generally, do not marry a Canaanite. This particular point only comes up fifty thousand times in the Old Testament, so I won’t dwell on it here. At least, it now occurs to Isaac to state this desire, where I’m not sure it did in the case of Esau. Isaac, I am concluding, is not a great example of a father.

It’s also interesting that, in Genesis 24, Abraham made it clear to his servant that he did not want Isaac to leave Canaan at all, whereas Isaac explicitly sends Jacob off. It would have been interesting to see interaction between Laban and Isaac.