Jacob I: The Great Manipulator

Genesis 25:12-27:40

The listing of the descendents of Ishmael is interesting for two reasons: 1) that they are listed since he was not the natural heir and 2) because of the last sentence, “And they lived in hostility toward all their brothers.” The Ishmaelites tend to vanish from history, but the conflict between Jews and Arabs remains to this day.

Whatever dormant spiritual gifts Jacob has, we get very little of them. He shows capacity for wisdom and knowledge (gifts #8 and #9 of our study), but his motivations compromise him at every point. Jacob is aptly named, which means “grabber” or “trickster.” If Ronald Reagan was “the great communicator,” Jacob is “the great manipulator.” He seems to have been well taught the art of deception, certainly by his mother Rebekah, but we mustn’t forget that Abraham did his own share. Notice that Isaac, Jacob’s father, uses the old “she is my sister” routine his dad used twice before.
Jacob then works deception to a fine art, swindling his brother out of his birthright and he will later do the same in getting himself a wife.

The story of the theft of Esau’s blessing by Jacob is powerfully told with great passion. We wonder how Isaac could have been so duped by his wife and son. We are told that his eyesight had gone bad, but he really couldn’t tell the difference between the hair on Esau’s arms and that of an animal? One of the struggling points of this story is that God makes use of this deception, in choosing the younger over the older, a pattern we saw between Ishmael and Isaac. In truth, as we will see later, there may have been more spiritual gifts displayed by Esau than Jacob. The story of Jacob is one that really begs us to look carefully at our motivations. For Jacob, selfishness and ambition won the day, and Jacob ends up a tragic figure.