Biblion Bible Commentary
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Bless me, even me also, my father
Genesis 27:30-46
30 As soon as Isaac had finished blessing Jacob, and Jacob had just gone out from the presence of Isaac his father, Esau his brother came in from his hunting. · WEB
The discovery scene is the saddest in Genesis, and the man who despised his birthright weeps for what he sold.
The timing is a hair's breadth: As soon as Isaac had finished blessing Jacob, and Jacob had just gone out from the presence of Isaac his father, Esau his brother came in from his hunting.
Esau's opening is cheerful and unbearable to read, because he does not know: Let my father arise, and eat of his son's venison, that your soul may bless me. Then the question that ends everything: Who are you?
Isaac trembled violently. The phrase is as strong as Hebrew has, and what he says through it is the theological center of the chapter. He recounts what happened — someone came, he ate, he blessed him — and then, with no pause and no attempt to undo it: Yes, he will be blessed.
That is not resignation. A blessing in this world was a performative act, not a wish, and once spoken it stood. But something more than custom is at work, because Isaac had been proceeding against a word God gave before the boys were born, and the moment he discovers what has happened he stops resisting it. The trembling is a man realizing he has been overruled.
Esau's response is the most affecting sound in Genesis: he cried with an exceedingly great and bitter cry, and asked, twice, Bless me, even me also, my father. He weeps. Whatever he had thought about the birthright over a bowl of stew, he understands now what has gone.
His question about the name is bitter and accurate: Isn't he rightly named Jacob? For he has supplanted me these two times. He took away my birthright. See, now he has taken away my blessing. The accounting is not quite fair — he sold the first — but he is right about the second, and right about the name.
And Isaac has nothing to give him. What then will I do for you, my son? The blessing has been spent; there is no second one. What Esau receives is a word about the fatness of the earth and the dew, a life by the sword, service to his brother, and eventually a breaking loose. It is a real future and it is not the covenant, and the New Testament reads this moment as the one that could not be reversed — he found no place for a change of mind though he sought it diligently with tears Hebrews 12:17.
The consequences arrive at once. Esau resolves to kill Jacob after their father's mourning, and Rebekah hears of it, as she hears of everything. Her instruction to Jacob is the same phrase she used to arrange the fraud — obey my voice — and this time it sends him away.
She says a few days. It was twenty years, and she never saw him again; her death is not even recorded. She had said let your curse be on me, and this is what it cost her.
And she manages Isaac in the last verse by a half-truth about Esau's wives — which is true, and is not the reason. The family's habit holds to the end of the chapter.
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