CRITICAL NOTES.—
Genesis 27:15. Goodly raiment of her eldest son Esau.] Heb. The desirable garments. The choicest garments belonging to Esau were put upon Jacob. From Genesis 27:27 it would appear that somewhat of the odour of the field clung to these garments. “They were probably best, or state garments of ‘my lord’ Esau, in which he sought the companies of his brother hunters, and redolent (Genesis 27:29) of the aromatic shrubs of the wilderness which they had hasted through.” (Alford.)—
Genesis 27:16. Skins of the kids of the goats.] These were the skins of the Syrian goat, the hair of which, though black, is long and soft. It looks and feels very much like human hair, whence the Romans employed it for wigs and other artificial coverings of the head.—
Genesis 27:20. The Lord thy God brought it to me. The name for the covenant God of the patriarchs is used. Heb. Made to meet before me. The meaning is, God hath brought it in my way by making circumstances to meet together for my success.—
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Genesis 27:11-24
REBEKAH’S CUNNING PLOT ACCEPTED AND CARRIED OUT BY JACOB
I. Reveals some qualities of Jacob’s character.
1. He was a weak and pliable man. He had little moral strength to resist temptation.
2. He lacked the power of self-determination. He had no skill of invention or contrivance. Hence he fell in with the designs of his mother.
3. He was fearful of consequences. He objects not to what is wrong in the proposed action, but to the risk he is running. (Genesis 27:12.) It is enough, if he can only be assured of success.
4. He could long indulge the thought of that which was forbidden. He had formed the steady purpose to complete the sin which he had committed against his brother in taking away his birthright. He had long meditated evil things, and to such a man the opportunity, sooner or later, will present itself. The ambition to obtain the coveted blessing was long cherished, and the hour of temptation came and secured him as an easy victim.
II. Reveals the gradual debasement of Jacob’s character. He did not intend to cast off all moral restraints, and to allow himself to fall into the ways of wickedness. But he had little strength to resist temptation, and almost unknown to himself his character degenerates, he loses his former simplicity and becomes an accomplished deceiver. He who was once so diffident now shrinks at nothing.
1. He overcomes difficulties in the way of sin. He was cool and thoughtful enough, at first, to see that he should run a risk, even with his blind father. (Genesis 27:12.) But if he can surmount the fear of consequences, he cares not for the sin.
2. He learns to act a falsehood. He covered himself with skins that he might appear hairy like his brother. (Genesis 27:16.)
3. He proceeds to the direct falsehood. (Genesis 27:19.) And in this he scruples not to make an impious use of the name of God. (Genesis 27:20.) When once a man has entered upon a course of evil, new difficulties arise and he is led into deeper guilt.
4. He allows himself to be led into sin under the idea that he is carrying out the purpose of God. He knew that the end he contemplated was according to the declared will of God, and therefore considered that any means used to attain it must be right. How many evils have been wrought in the course of human history under colour of devotion to some religious idea! But neither the wrath nor the craft of man can work out the righteousness of God.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Genesis 27:11-12. Sin is often feared, not for itself but for its consequences.
Our Heavenly Father will certainly feel us, and better feel us; and we shall feel Him, too, in His fatherly corrections before He bless us.—(Trapp.)
Genesis 27:13. We cannot help regarding with a sort of admiration her lofty appreciation of that result which she sought, and her self-forgetful devotion to her beloved son; but it is as we feel the same sort of admiration for Lady Macbeth—with full consciousness of, and never forgetting, her crime.—(Alford.)
There is a touch of womanhood observable in her recklessness of personal consequences. So that only he might gain, she did not care: “upon me be thy curse, my son.” And it is this which forces us, even while we most condemn, to compassionate. Throughout the whole of this revolting scene of deceit and fraud we never can forget that Rebekah was a mother; hence a certain interest in and sympathy with her are sustained. And we mark another feminine trait; her act sprang from devotion to a person rather than to a principle. A man’s idolatry is for an idea, a woman’s for a person. A man suffers for a monarchy, a woman for a king. A man’s martyrdom differs from a woman’s. Nay, even in their religion personality marks the one, attachment to an idea or principle the other. Woman adores God in His personality; man in His attributes; at least, that is on the whole the characteristic difference. Here we have the idolatry of the woman, sacrificing husband, elder son, her own soul for an idolized person. For this was properly speaking, idolatry. Rebekah loved her son more than truth, that is more than God. This was to idolize; and hence Christ says, “If any man love father or mother more than Me, he is not worthy of Me.”—(Robertson.)
There are persons who would romantically admire this devotion of Rebekah, and call it beautiful. To sacrifice all, even principle, for another; what higher proof of affection can there be? O miserable sophistry! the only true affection is that which is subordinate to a higher. It has been truly said that in those who love little love is a primary affection, a secondary one in those who love much. Be sure he cannot love another much, “who loves not honour more.” For that higher affection sustains and elevates the lower one, casting round it a glory which mere personal feeling could never give. Compare, e.g., Rebekah’s love with that of Abraham for his son. Abraham was ready to sacrifice his son to duty; Rebekah sacrificed truth and duty to her son. Which loved a son the most? Which was the nobler love? Even as a question of permanence, which would last the longer? For consider what respect this guilty son and guilty mother could retain for each other after this! Would not love dwindle into shame, and love itself in recriminations? For affection will not long survive respect, however it may protract its life by effort.—(Robertson.)
Genesis 27:14. Had his remonstrance arisen from an aversion to the evil, he would not so readily have yielded to her suggestions; but where temptation finds the heart fortified by nothing stronger than a regard to present consequences, it is very certain to prevail. Let us beware, however, how we are drawn by any authority whatever to the commission of evil. It will be of little avail to say, my adviser was my father or my mother; there is a plain path, from which no authority under heaven should induce us to swerve.—(Bush.)
Genesis 27:15. Some suppose that this was a priestly robe worn by the elder son as priest of the household (Genesis 49:3). But this is not implied in the text, though the terms used in the Greek are such as are applied to the holy garments of the priesthood, and may here denote the desirable robes of the birthright-son, kept in the tent as of sacred value. And though Isaac could not see them, he could identify them by the feeling.—(Jacobus.)
Genesis 27:16-17. He suffers himself without remonstrance to be arrayed in the skin borrowed from a senseless animal, and the robes stolen from an unwitting brother. And led by the false fondness of a mother into the chamber which the seeming approach of death, as well as the solemn transaction then on hand, should have hallowed with an awful reverence of truth and righteousness,—he heaps he upon he with unscrupulous effrontery; abuses the simple confidence of the blind old man; and almost, if we may so speak, betraying his father with a kiss,—steals from him the birthright-blessing.—(Candlish.)
Genesis 27:18. Jacob stands ready to do the mother’s bidding in this work of deception. How his soul must have quaked in consequence of the fraud he was practising upon his aged father! He will find the way of transgressors to be hard. Who art thou? Is he not already detected? How his heart sinks at such a question.—(Jacobus.)
Genesis 27:19. Here he utters three lies in a breath besides intituling God to that he did (Genesis 27:20), so taking that revered name in vain. This was his sin, and he smarted for it to his dying day; for he had scarce a merry hour after this; but God followed him with one sorrow upon another, to teach him and us what an “evil and bitter thing sin is” (Jeremiah 2:19), and how it ensnares us. The Scripture reckons a lie among monstrous sins (Revelation 21:8). Indeed, every lie is pernicious to ourselves or to others, or both; because flatly forbidden of God, and because it is against the order of nature, and for that “no lie is of the truth” (1 John 2:21), but of the Devil, who began and still upholds his kingdom by lies. (John 8:44.) Contrarily, God is truth, and His children are such as will not lie. (Isaiah 63:8; Revelation 14:5.)—(Trapp.)
To act and speak a falsehood requires boldness and a readiness to plunge into deeper sin, for one lie requires another to maintain it.
Genesis 27:20. The answer is cunning but profane. Oh! how the man who undertakes to lie gets into deep water and mire, and must load his conscience with awful burdens of falsehood before he gets through! Here he must even bring in God Himself as having helped him to this result, when he knew that God must abhor the falsity. All this has come perhaps from a perverted conscience, supposing that because the birthright was his, of right, and his by Divine intent, therefore he could use wicked means to secure the end. As though God could not accomplish His own plan, or as though He was not to be trusted to do it.—(Jacobus.)
It is well to have God’s Word on our side, but we should not attempt to fulfil that word by acting contrary to the known laws of righteousness.
Many are alarmed when they find that some known truth of nature is likely to contradict some truth of Scripture, as if God’s Word were about to fail. They come forward with some scheme of their own to defend Divine truth, using all the arts and devices of special pleading. But God requires no man to act or speak wickedly for the vindication of His truth.
The answer intimates that his speedy success was owing to a particular Divine interference on his behalf! It is not easy to conceive a more daring piece of effrontery than this. It was bad enough to deal in so many gross equivocations, but to bring in the Lord God of his father in order to give them the appearance of truth was much worse, and what we should scarcely have expected but from one of the most depraved of men. But this was the natural result of a first wrong step. Jacob probably had no idea of going beyond a little stroke of dissimulation and fraud, yet here we find him treading upon the borders of absolute blasphemy, by making God Himself confederate in his sin!—(Bush.)
Genesis 27:21. There is something about falsehood which, though it may silence, yet will not ordinarily satisfy. Isaac is yet suspicious, and therefore desires to feel his hands; and here the deception answered.—(Fuller.)
Oh, what a thrill of horror must this have sent through the deceiver’s soul! Luther says, “I should probably have run away with horror and let the dish fall”—(Jacobus.)
Genesis 27:22. Now the cunning device of his mother proves a success. If this precaution had lacked, the whole scheme would have failed. If, like Abraham, Rebekah had possessed a faith that would have even lifted the knife to slay her son at the call of duty, trusting in God to raise him up, how much happier would have been the whole company? All of them suffer for this wrong. How the deceiver is recompensed by deceits practised upon him in the beautiful coat of Joseph! (Genesis 37).—(Jacobus.)
And now she wishes she could borrow Esau’s tongue as well as his garments, that she might securely deceive all the senses of him, which had suffered himself to be more dangerously deceived with his affection. But this is past her remedy: her son must name himself Esau with the voice of Jacob. It is hard if our tongue do not betray what we are, in spite of our habit. This was enough to work Isaac to a suspicion, to an inquiry, not to an incredulity. He that is good of himself, will hardly believe evil of another; and will rather distrust his own senses than the fidelity of those he trusted. All the senses are set to examine; none sticketh at the judgment but the ear; to deceive that, Jacob must second his dissimulation with three lies at one breath: I am Esau; as thou badest me; my venison. One sin entertained fetcheth in another; and if it be forced to lodge alone, either departeth, or dieth. I love Jacob’s blessing, but I hate his lie. I would not do that willingly which Jacob did weakly, upon condition of a blessing. (Bp. Hall.)
The hands, he thinks are Esau’s; but still it is mysterious, for “the voice is Jacob’s. Were it not for some such things as these, we might overlook the wisdom and goodness of God in affording so many marks by which to detect imposture, and distinguish man from man. Of all the multitudes of faces, voices, and figures in the world no two are perfectly alike; and if one sense fail us, the others are frequently improved.—(Fuller.)
Genesis 27:23. The deed was done and could not be revoked. It was not done at this instant, but after eating the venison. (Genesis 27:27.) We see how God works by various instruments; good and bad, and brings to pass His purposes by such strange links in the chain of events.—(Jacobus.)
Genesis 27:24. Thus one sin entertained fetcheth in another; a lie especially, which being a blushful sin, is either denied by the liar who is ashamed to be taken with it, or else covered by another and another lie, as we see here in Jacob, who being once over shoes will be over boots too, but he will persuade his father that he is his very son Esau.—(Trapp.)
The father still again puts the question, and in a most pointed way, as if his suspicions were not yet utterly quieted. There seems to him something doubtful in this voice and in all the circumstances. He would put the question so pointedly as to admit of no evasion. It would seem that he knew Jacob’s character for cunning; and when one has lost confidence—when he has forfeited his character for straightforward and honest and truthful conduct—it is hard to put away doubt, and every little item stirs the suspicion afresh.—(Jacobus.)
Here was nothing but counterfeiting; a feigned person, a feigned name, feigned venison, a feigned answer, and yet behold a true blessing; but to the man, not to the means. Those were so unsound, that Jacob himself doth more fear their curse, than hope for their success. Isaac was now both simple and old; yet if he had perceived the fraud, Jacob had been more sure of a curse, than he could be sure that he should not be perceived.—(Bp. Hall.)