It is good to see that Esau and Jacob's love continued. Death indeed in a family, may well induce affection in the survivors. It is awful to see relations, sometimes for a little property, fighting over the graves of their friends, while they themselves are falling after them. Genesis 27:41.Genesis 35:1
REFLECTIONS
Reader! while we pass over this Chapter to admire and adore the divine goodness manifested in so many sweet and repeated visits of his love to the Patriarch Jacob; let us examine our own hearts for the like tokens of such Bethel enjoyments. Will you look within, and ask your own heart; (for I desire continually to put the same questions to mine); when did the visions of GOD begin with my soul? When did JESUS, (according to his most sure promise to his people), manifest himself to me otherwise than he doth to the world? When did I experience the renewings of the HOLY GHOST? Reader! do not dismiss these questions unanswered?
In the sorrows of the Patriarch's household, let us seriously contemplate the lot of a fallen state. Sin hath indeed entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passeth upon all men because all have sinned. But my soul, look with an eye of faith beyond the grave. What though thy friends, children, servants, die; nay, thou thyself art hastening after them? yet JESUS, thy JESUS liveth. And am I not his in an everlasting covenant, and is he not mine? And shall I mourn then with such bright prospects in view? Dearest LORD! when all friends leave me, and when my heart and strength fail, be thou the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
One look more at Isaac before we dose the Chapter, and drop the Patriarch's history. I delight in every person and in everything, which receives in scripture the particular notice of GOD the HOLY GHOST, to trace somewhat which may lead my heart to JESUS. And is there nothing striking to this amount in Isaac's life? Was not the Redeemer long promised, long looked for, with a devout earnestness by all the church, and at length born into the world in a method contrary to the established course of natural causes; similar, but infinitely beyond the example of Isaac's birth? And were there not Ishmaels to mock the LORD JESUS in the long and trying persecutions he sustained, like the son of Hagar the Egyptian, despising Isaac? In the cheerful acquiescence which Isaac made to his father's will for sacrifice; carrying the wood; being bound upon the altar; and not offering a repining word when Abraham took the knife to slay his son; can I not, as a type, trace somewhat of thine unequalled love; oh! thou Lamb of GOD, who voluntarily didst undertake, by the sacrifice of thyself, the redemption of thy people; when fainting beneath thy cross, thou wast led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so openedst not thou thy mouth! Oh! may my soul live in the constant, daily, hourly meditation of thy love! May everything tend to lead my heart unto thee! And may thy love at length awaken mine, and induce all those precious effects of loving thee who hast so loved me, as to have given thyself for me.