History Has Its Eyes on You

A phrase from a song in the Broadway musical Hamilton has been playing on repeat through my mind this morning: History has its eyes on you. I mentioned a few posts back that Winston Churchill had famously spoken this quote: "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Which, as it turns out, is pretty appropriate in many ways to today's Scripture reading. 

Let me frontload this blog post with this note: God is the History-Maker. 

Okay, moving into Genesis 27, the story of a great deception worms into the leaves of my Bible. See, Isaac is blind (heh, see what I did there?), and has no recourse to corrective lenses, so he has to rely on those surrounding him whom he trusts.

Except... as we see here, he doesn't have a lot of trust-worthy family members. He can't rely on them as he hoped; they are bitten by sin, and they carry out its tragic work, and he. can't. see. it.

This says a whole lot about trust and truth. Jesus says: "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me." This gives rise to the question: If Isaac's trust had been in the Truth... would he have known the manipulations and games of the players surrounding him?

I'll just leave that there. Back to the story. Isaac is blind and old, and he knows he's going to die before too long, so he calls his oldest (and favorite) son Esau to him and tells him to go hunting. "Hey Esau, you know my favorite food. Go make me some of it. Then I'll give you my blessing."

He's not just talking about a thank you; he's talking about handing over the law of primogeniture to his oldest son, giving over the inheritance of his estate, which - from yesterday's blog post - is immense. Isaac is a wealthy guy. In this culture, the spoken blessing is as binding as a signed and sealed court document. So this meal that Esau is asked to make is a really big deal.

And Esau, forgetful of the fact that he had despised his birthright and sold it to Jacob years ago for a bowl of soup... is excited to claim his inheritance. So he straps on his bow and quiver and hunting knife and heads off into the hills.

Meanwhile, Rebekah has been puttering around the room, and she hears Isaac make his request to Esau. She pauses, and her mind swiftly runs back over the years to when the twins were still in her womb, and she remembers how she fell on her face before the Lord to ask why they struggled inside her so much. God's answer comes back to her mind now: Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger.

Let me just interject something here: Name meanings are super significant. In some ways, the meanings illustrate the way a spoken blessing acts as a binding oath in Scripture. For instance, Jesus, when He met Simon, said: "And I tell you that you are Peter (Peter = Rock), and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it" (Matthew 16:18). In Isaiah 62:2, it says: "You shall be called by a new name which the mouth of the Lord shall designate..."

There is so much wrapped up in the meaning of names throughout Scripture. So, with that said, the name Rebekah means: "Captivating," or, quite significantly, in the Semitic, it means: "to tie, to join together, or to snare."

Rebekah sure lives up to her name in this one. The entire chapter is a narrative where Rebekah grasps and operates the marionette strings. Immediately, she concocts her plan (which may have been nesting in her head for years since she first heard the Lord's prophecy regarding her two sons). She leaves Isaac's presence, goes to find Jacob, and tells him the plan she's decided to orchestrate. "Pretend to be your brother Esau. Isaac'll never know, and then you'll get the inheritance and Esau will get over it, and in doing all this... we'll fulfill the course of history that God already set out." No, she did not say those words, but that prophecy had been resounding in her head for years. It's incredibly likely it had an effect on her actions in this chapter.

What she did say is also incredibly significant in history. When Jacob pushes back just a bit: "Mom, Dad'll recognize me. I'm not hairy like Esau. If he figures it out, he'll curse me instead of bless me," Rebekah says in verse 13: "My son, let the curse fall on me. Just do what I say..."

How history-making is this betrayal! How reflective it is, when - centuries later - nearly those same words reverberate through the square where Pilate stands on his balcony looking out over the crowds, washing his hands in a basin. "I am innocent of this Man's [Jesus'] blood," he calls out over the tempest. "It is your responsibility." And the city trembles with the shouts: "Let His blood be on us and on our children!!"

Both of these are extremely decisive moments in history. In Rebekah's case: she manipulates the law of primogeniture to pass to her younger son, using her own manipulation to bring about the fulfillment of God's covenant to make the nation of Israel for all time - rather than waiting to see how He might have fulfilled His own Word had she allowed Him to work.

In the mob's case: the rich irony is that Jesus' shed blood does cover them and their children... but not in the way they intend. In their fury, they think they will be rid of Jesus, and will take the responsibility for sending Him to His death. They don't realize that by their actions, they are pushing through God's eternal, set-from-the-beginning plan for the redemption of all mankind throughout history.

Y'all... how often do we manipulate circumstances to bring about results... without checking with God the History-Maker? 

The thing is: God still designs History according to the story's plot points that He has already scripted. Neither of these scenarios can derail Him from His plan. The enemy stands in the square with the rioting mob, triumphant, listening to the shouts of the people, exultant when the Son of God, his eternal foe is hung on a tree...

Until Day 3, when God said: "No. My plan trumps your plan." He holds the last, the ultimate, the final Word.

So anyway, Rebekah's snare is set. She helps Jacob get ready to deceive Isaac, and Jacob takes the meal to his dad. Isaac is immediately suspicious, since Jacob sounds like Jacob and not so much like Esau. Isaac asks him how he found the game so quickly, and Jacob replies: "The Lord your God gave me success."

Jacob, whose name means "one who deceives" (!), does not claim God as his own until later in the narrative. 

Here, Isaac, still suspicious, must make a decision. He ends up giving his sense of touch higher revelatory integrity than his sense of hearing (maybe his ears were failing as well). He touches the goat hair on Jacob's smooth skin, inhales the fragrance (possibly stench? It's gotta be a strong smell; they didn't do laundry as often as we do today, and they spent a lot of time around animals) of Esau's clothing that Jacob has put on, and is convinced. 

Isaac blesses his son Jacob, and Jacob leaves his presence, nearly getting caught by Esau, who comes back from hunting around the same time as Jacob is leaving. He preps the meal, happily considering his rights and inheritance coming to a head in just a little bit, and takes a tray to his dad. "Here's your meal you asked for, Dad. Ready to give me your blessing?"

Verse 33 says: "Isaac trembled violently." All his suspicions had turned into horrifying, solid reality. He'd given away his first-born son's inheritance to the "one who deceives." His plans for Esau lay shattered on the ground in that one moment.

Esau sobs loudly. "Bless me, too, my father!" 

I mean... I have gotten teary-eyed over this before. I can just imagine the shocking revelation, the immediate rending of every hope and plan for years, the injustice that pours through that moment, the broken-hearted burst of emotion.

But it isn't long before broken shock turns to anger, which turns to blind rage. "Isn't he rightly named 'Jacob?'" Esau demands in verse 36. "He has deceived me these two times. He took my birthright, and now he's taken my blessing!"

The Mandela Effect is in full view here. Oh, Esau, lest you incorrectly remember, you despised your birthright and sold it to your brother Jacob for a bowl of soup. 

All of these things play into the making of History, and God, the great History-Maker, uses them to fulfill His ultimate plan. 

Did God want deception, trickery, deceit, manipulation, and snaring to be the order of the day?

1 John 1:5 says: "God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all." So, no - I don't think that was what He would have liked to have happened. But He did know that it would happen. We can go back and forth for a long time about foreknowledge and predestination...

But in the end, God sees the big picture. Isaiah 55:8-9 says: "'For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,' declares the Lord. 'As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.'"

He makes the history. He brings things to pass according to His good pleasure, to weave the most amazing tapestry imaginable, to tell the most riveting story ever recorded. He is the Author - the Beginner, the Originator, the Writer, the Planner - of salvation, and here in Genesis 27, we have the beginnings of that story, the rising action, the narrative that follows the story pyramid to the climax.

I love to actually be a character in the greatest story ever written, that is still being written! We each have a place in that story, in that history. Each character who has gone before watches the characters who come after (Hebrews 12:1); they keep their eyes on what God is doing. History has its eyes on you. I am so excited to see exactly how the History-Maker pulls out the final, breathless, climactic build-up to that last page.