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- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
- [00:06]
B
Hey, this is Shelby and Scott. We're going through the book of Genesis. We are in chapters 28 through 30 today. We ended yesterday on a really big cliffhanger. Yes, Scott sure did. Can you resolve this cliffhanger for us?
- [00:21]
A
I'd be glad to. So Esau. Jacob stole Esau's blessing from their father Isaac, and now Esau wants him dead, which is an understandable reaction. Yeah, he takes that about as well as you would expect. He's furious. And so Rebecca concocts this plan to convince Isaac to send Jacob away to her brother Laban, just until Esau kind of cools down a little bit. There's this comment she makes, though, at the very, very end of chapter 27 where she tells Jacob to stay with Laban for a few days until Esau can cool down and says, I will send for you and bring you back from there. And I point that out. That's just a really sad comment to me, because what she thought was a few days ended up being about 20 years. And as far as we know, she never saw her son again, the son that she loves. And so just a sad moment for me that she. She thinks she'll see him again pretty soon, that she never does. So Jacob leaves, though, and it's important in 28 to point out that both Isaac and then God himself reiterates these promises now to Jacob. So just as God had given Abraham these promises pass those promises on to Isaac in chapter 26, here in 28, God passes these promises on to Jacob. And, you know, again, these are the promises to multiply the descendants of this family, to give them the land of Canaan to dwell in, and then to bless all the families of the earth. And then God promises in this chapter, you know, Jacob's on his way out of this promised land, but God sends him out. He promises to bring Jacob back to this land. And for now, though, Jacob's gotta leave. He goes to his Uncle Laban. And, you know, and here it's funny because Jacob, who's been a deceiver, gets deceived, so he gets a taste of his own medicine from his Uncle Laban here.
- [02:19]
B
Yeah, can you walk us through that a little bit? Because what happens is Jacob believes that he's marrying Rachel, but when he wakes up in the morning, it's actually Leah. But how could you actually mistake a person that. That. That far?
- [02:35]
A
I've wondered that so much in my life, and I remember reading some commentaries on this, and it actually makes a lot of sense, I guess. What do you Think about it. So, like, there's a few factors. You know, some or all of these might be at play here. For one thing, Leah may have been veiled, which would have been customary at the time. Also, you know, electric lighting is just not a thing. And so when it's. When it's night, it's dark. Really, really dark. Plus, there's a good chance Jacob and all the feasting is a bit tipsy here. And so he's not fully in control of his awareness. And so if you add all these things up, I think it makes sense that he would not recognize this is not the woman he married. So he eventually does get to marry the woman he wanted, just alongside a woman he did not want. So now he has two wives, and, you know, he finally gets to marry Rachel on the condition he serves Laban for another seven years. So, Shelby, in these chapters, I mean, what we get here is like reality TV show level of dysfunction. I mean, these sisters who are now married to the same men, you know, they hate each other, they want what each other has. They're giving their servants to sleep with their husband to produce offspring, which was, you know, a custom at the time. But still, things are getting quite messy. And, you know, this is a family. God is, this is the hope of the world, right? Family God's going to use to bless all the nations of the earth. And it's not looking so great. But you do see God's mercy in some ways in these chapters as well. I mean, you see God cause Jacob to start to become very, very prosperous. And you do see his family start to grow. I mean, so this family up to this point in Genesis has been relatively small. And now you start to see a lot of sons being born. You got 11 sons. You have a daughter Dina being born. So again, remember the promise to multiply this family. So you start to get hints that that's, you know, beginning to expand. And then the promise that. That all the nations would be blessed through this family. And I get a small hint toward that promise from one particular baby in this chapter, which is Judah, because Judah will play an important role in Genesis, but also just in the whole Bible, because it's from Judah that we get Jesus, who through his life, death, resurrection, and ascension, brings blessings to all the nations of the earth.
- [05:04]
B
Yeah, I'm so glad you've walked us through that. And I think my takeaway from these chapters is I often want to see, like, myself as the hero of my story. And even, you know, when we think about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, like we may think of them as the heroes of the Old Testament or of our faith, but we clearly see here that they're not the heroes. God is the hero in this situation who is working in their dysfunction despite of them. And so even hearing their stories is kind of putting me in my own right place that I am not the hero of my own story, in my own dysfunction. In despite of me, God is the hero. And so.
- [05:44]
A
Good word.
- [05:45]
B
Yeah. We're going to walk through so much more of this story, and it just continues, you know, to get messier and messier, but we also continue to see God's faithfulness through it. So we'll be back tomorrow to keep walking through Genesis.