Dear Rev. Know it all

Why did God choose to bless Jacob, but not Esau? 

Montague Capulet

Dear Monty, 

Who says God didn’t choose to bless Esau? Read Genesis Chapter 27. It was Isaac who could not bless Esau. It isn’t that he didn’t choose to bless Esau. He had no blessing left to give him. Read the story.  This happens all the time. We spend so much effort on the child who demands our resources and frequently, despite our best intentions, we have those middle children or that child who just gets the hand-me-downs, or the short end of things or less of our time or whatever. It is not important that Isaac couldn’t bless Esau. Esau’s reaction is what matters. “I will kill my brother Jacob.” (Genesis, chapter 27, verse 41.) 

Let me up the stakes a little. St. Paul quotes the book of Malachi when, in Romans 9:13, he points out that the Lord says through Malachi the prophet, “I loved Jacob but hated Esau.”  That’s worse than simply not choosing Esau. The footnote in the New American Study Bible piously points out that the verb “hate” in Hebrew is “sin’a” and can mean to “love less.” No Biblical text I know uses the word that way and besides it doesn’t answer the question. Why would God love one more than the other? Isn’t that just choosing one over the other, and anyway, the text in St. Paul is in Greek and that word is “misein” and “misein” is just plain old “hate.” So how could a good and loving God hate one and love the other? Could it be that  Jean Calvin the founder of Presbyterianism, Congregationalism, and eventually of this great country was right and God actually doesn’t love everyone? Sometimes we feel that way. Let us read Malachi, chapter 1vs 2-5 and put what St. Paul is saying in its context.

"I have loved you," says the LORD. "But you ask, 'How have you loved us?'

"Was not Esau Jacob's brother?" the LORD says. "Yet I have loved Jacob,  but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his mountains into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals."  Edom may say, "Though we have been crushed, we will rebuild the ruins." But this is what the LORD Almighty says: “They may build, but I will demolish. They will be called the Wicked Land, a people always under the wrath of the LORD.  You will see it with your own eyes and say, 'Great is the LORD -even beyond the borders of Israel!’”

So it wasn’t exactly Esau that God was talking about in the book of Malachi, it was his descendants the Edomites, or as the Romans called them the Idumeans. The Edomites/Idumeans were conquered by the Jews in 125BC and forcibly converted to Judaism. Herod the Great, the one who killed the babies, was an Edomite and therefore a descendant of Esau.

These things are symbolic. God did not hate Esau himself. He hated the descendants of Esau. Think symbolically for a second. He did not hate Esau. He hated what Esau had become. Do you know people who have a child that was the light of their eyes when he was little but became a heartache as he grew. They never hated the child, but they came to detest what he had become.  God never hates anyone. He hates the web of sin and self-destruction that we weave around ourselves.

The heart broken father in the parable never hated the prodigal son. He hated the vice and narcissism that had devoured the boy. The father recognized his son’s freedom and left that boy to his own devices. The boy chose a curse by leaving his devastated father.

Esau, when he thought he had been abandoned, found murder in his heart. When as the Scripture puts it, the boy “returned to himself,” he went home again and was showered with his father’s blessing. Perhaps, had Esau found forgiveness for his brother in his heart, his father’s stolen blessing would have been replaced by God’s better blessing. Look at the context again in St. Paul, “So it depends not upon a person's will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy.” and further on, “He has mercy upon whom he wills and He hardens whom he wills.” Paul is reminding us of Pharaoh, whose heart, say the Scriptures, God hardened.

This is not a denial of human freedom, though it may seem to be at first glance. On the contrary, it affirms our freedom. You see, the same sun that hardens the clay, softens the wax. God shows us who we are, who we have chosen to be by allowing us to get into certain circumstances. This is meant to give us the chance to see our decisions clearly and to find mercy in repentance.

Esau found murder in his heart, and his heritage of wrath bore fruit a thousand years later in Herod the king. Who knows what could have been had Esau accepted and forgiven instead of taking things into his own hands. It reminds me of the story of Sara and Hagar (Genesis 16.) Sara was barren and gave her serving girl to Abraham to be his concubine. She bore Ishmael. Then Sara conceived and bore Isaac. Sara then insisted that Abraham force Hagar and her son out into the desert, which Abraham, that hero of the Bible, actually agreed to do!!! Isaac is the ancestor of the Jews, Ishmael of the Arabs. 4,000 years later, we are paying for that little spat . The world is on the point of war because Sara took matters into her own hands and refused to trust God. 

We are free and our freedom has consequences that run through history like waves through the ocean. The decisions of our hearts affect generations yet unborn. So what are we to do?  St. Paul continues, “Righteousness comes from faith.” (Roman 9:30) Remember, for “faith” read “trust.” Faith is usually better translated as trust. Righteousness comes from trust. If the prodigal had trusted his father, if Esau had trusted God when Isaac stole the blessing, if Sara had trusted God and not forced Hagar on Abraham in the first place, if you had only trusted your parents. If your children would only trust you...

Verse 33 of Romans 9 says it all. “Behold I am laying a stone in Zion....whoever trusts Him shall not be put to shame.” The more you can trust Jesus and take Him at his word, the better it will all work out. Trust me.

Rev. Know-it-all