The deceiver gets deceived - big time! Jacob’s name means “he cheats,” and the name fits. Jacob went through life cheating others out of what was not rightfully his, Esau his brother in particular. Jacob cheated Esau out of his birthright and out of his blessing. Pretty clever guy right? Well all is fine until the shoe is on the other foot!
Jacob goes to live with Laban, his uncle, and falls head-over-hills in love with Laban’s daughter, Rachel. In fact, he loves her with so much blinding passion that he agreed with Laban to work 7 years to have her as his wife, and those years of hard work “seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her.” So now the wedding day has finally arrived! There’s a big celebration, Jacob takes his new wife into the bedchamber, wakes up the next morning, and IT’S LEAH! He has taken Leah, Rachel’s sister into his bed, not Rachel, the love of his life. (I have no idea how this takes place, but nonetheless, it happened!) Bottom line - Jacob has been deceived by Laban! Now he knows how it feels.
As it turns out though, teaching Jacob a lesson is not the only result at work here. It is hardly ever the case that God is only doing one thing! He is usually doing multiple things at once in our lives. Through all this tale of the deceiver getting deceived, God is doing something far beyond Jacob! Leah, not Rachel, bears a son named Judah, and it is from Judah that the Messiah will come. Therefore, behind-the-scenes God is working to fulfill his promise to Abraham in the blessing of every family on earth, and he is doing so in the most unlikely of places, which is his usual course! It is true what goes around, comes around. It is also true that in the going and coming around, God is accomplishing his will and keeping his promises!
Here's a question from the notes to the ESV Bible, which I am studying along with reading through the Word. I'd never heard this said just this way before, so I'm really curious about it. On the footnote for Gen. 28:12 the commentator talks about "God is still committed to making the earth His dwelling place." This is also in the notes on p. 42 (last full paragraph of the page) in the intro. to Genesis. I also read an allusion to this idea in the notes for Genesis 2:1-3. This "reverberated" this last Christmas as I thought about "Immanuel": God with us. How come this sounds like a new thought to me? My ears always tune in to a new idea, because after 51 years in a Christian home and Bible-teaching churches, I'm not hearing them as often. Maybe that says something not-so-good about me?? What are they talking about? The Millenium Kingdom? I'm not meaning to open an eschatological can of worms, just to savor something a bit new. . .
ReplyDeletePlease don't feel that you need to respond to each of my comments, I am just challenged to think about what I am reading by writing out some of my questions and thoughts. If they are useful ideas, use them. If they are good questions, I'd love to hear your answers!
I initially think it refers to the new heaven and the new earth, which will actually be this earth recreated like we will be who we are just glorified.
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