The deception of Isaac is quite possibly the most misunderstood story in the entire Bible. So much of the Old Testament is treated as disconnected fables, concerned with a simple moralistic point. Rarely is the Old Testament shown as it actually is, an integrated running narrative building a coherent theological point. It is all one story driving home a main point—man has fallen, but God is providing a chosen seed who will redeem humanity. He has made an unbreakable vow to this chosen seed and his line, and even human sin and rebellion will not stop God from fulfilling His promise. In this story, the villain is not Jacob as is so commonly told. The villain of this story is Isaac. But it is a story that shows us the villain can be redeemed, that repentance is possible, even when it seems totally unlikely. God’s grace will win in the end. If you go through the passage in detail, you actually get a totally different picture than what you have seen in VeggieTales or your storybook Bible. Isaac is now a very old man. And Isaac has gone blind. There is a theological-symbolic significance to Isaac’s blindness. Like the high priest, Eli, in 1 Samuel, Isaac’s blindness isn’t merely a physical disability, it is emblematic of a spiritual disability. He is unable to rightly judge things. Esau in the preceding chapters has been shown conclusively to be very wicked. Not only has he sold his birthright for a pot of lentils, he has chosen to marry Canaanite women. Isaac and Esau know that this must not be done. You’ll remember that Abraham had his servant travel all the way to Padan Aram to find Isaac a wife from among his kin. He absolutely could not intermarry with the people whom God had told the wicked children of Canaan whom they would dispossess. But Esau does this not once but twice! Yet Isaac prefers Esau because of the food he makes him. Isaac’s belly rules over him rendering him unable to discern anything judicially, and now his lack of spiritual discernment has become a total inability to see anything. In this context, Isaac calls Esau to him. He tells Esau he is going to die and he should go hunt and kill some game for him to eat so that he would bless Esau before Isaac dies. When you see the other covenantal blessings of the patriarch’s children (Abraham is not shown doing this either way), Jacob brings all his sons together publicly and blesses them individually. The fact that Isaac is doing this, it is apparently a private affair, and only Esau is included. What does this mean? It means that Jacob is excluded from any blessing at all. This is confirmed by the end of the story, when there is no blessing left for Esau (which was intended for Jacob). There is a biblical duty at the end of life to portion out your inheritance to your sons, with a double portion going to the eldest son. Esau is supposed to get two parts and Jacob one. But here, Esau is getting everything. Rebekah overhears all of this. She sees the tyranny of her husband. That he has been inspired by Satan to attack God’s chosen seed and give everything to the seed of the serpent, Esau. And so she takes action. Rebekah is a good wife, a submissive wife. But human authority and submission is not absolute. Only God’s authority and our submission to Him is absolute. She has a greater duty to God. And her husband is committing treason against God and what He has commanded. She has a duty to prevent great evil from occurring. If the household is a microcosm of political power writ large, she is operating as a lesser magistrate here. She is using her lesser authority to prevent great evil done by a greater authority. She is also fulfilling a typological role. The serpent deceived the woman, and what we see repeatedly throughout the Old Testament is the woman deceiving the serpent in return. Just as Sarah, Rachel, Tamar, the midwives in the Exodus, and Rahab deceive the serpent, protect the Seed, and prevent great evil from occurring, so too does Rebekah here. She calls her son Jacob to go to his father and pretend to be Esau. To put on Esau’s clothes and wear animal skins to appear as hairy as his brother. It is interesting to note that the very skins of the kids of the goats he killed to make the meal are the ones he wore to appear hairy. It is almost like the animals God killed to clothe Adam and Eve after their exile from the Garden. Jacob is concerned that the plot will be discovered and he will be cursed by his father. But Rebekah tells him that curse will be upon her instead of him. This shows clearly Rebekah’s concern in all of this is to protect the chosen Seed. She will take upon herself the curse should it come. In all of this Jacob is a dutiful, obedient son. Jacob’s statements to Isaac are also worth noting. When Isaac asks how he found the game so quickly, Jacob says something quite ambiguous, “because the Lord your God brought it to me.” In one sense, of course, this is true. The Lord did bring the food to Jacob by the hand of his mother. After eating and drinking, Jacob kisses Isaac, and Isaac blesses him. He asks that God may give him the dew of heaven, the fatness of the earth, and plenty of grain and wine. That peoples will serve him and nations will bow down before him. That he would rule over his brethren, and his mother’s sons would bow down to him (remember this was all intended for Esau!). Then a variation of God’s promise to Abraham: cursed be everyone who curses you and blessed be everyone who blesses you. Isaac has just given Jacob the full blessing. All the richness of the earth and rule over the nations of the world will be his and his descendants. Almost immediately after this, Esau returns with the food, and as soon as Isaac discovers what has happened he begins to tremble. Isaac’s statement in verse 33 is an interesting one as well. Why couldn’t he simply take back the blessing and now bless Esau. It is not as though this blessing were a magical incantation. It’s not as though if someone random named Doug or Bill wandered into the camp and pretended to be Esau they would get the blessing. What this statement seems to be indicative of is Isaac’s repentance. He always knew the blessing was supposed to go to Jacob. He is admitting here that his rebellion has been foiled. Esau’s reaction is fury. He blames Jacob, “heel-grabber” for grabbing his heel (supplanting him) these two times. Jacob is at fault for Esau despising his birthright. And Jacob is at fault for Isaac rebelliously giving the blessing to Esau. Isaac has to admit that he has given Jacob everything. "I have made him your master and I have given him all the grain and wine." Isaac is admitting his own wickedness here. He intended to make Esau the master of Jacob and to give everything to him! This is like Haman being asked to conjure up the honors he thinks will be given to him, which were instead for his hated archenemy Mordecai, or Haman being hung on the gallows he erected for Mordecai. God really loves the Uno Reverse card in His story! Isaac’s blessing to Esau is also intentionally ambiguous. He will dwell in the fatness of the earth and dew of heaven (but not possess it!), he will live by the sword (he will never be able to rest!) and he will rebel against his brother (and be cursed because of it!). Esau’s blessing sounds like a blessing to him, but is actually a curse! Esau wants to kill Isaac, Rebekah hears of it, and sends him away to her brother in Haran. The seed is not supposed to leave the land, but in this case, he does. The intention, however, was always to return and inherit. Rebekah tells Isaac Jacob must leave so that he would not marry a Canaanite, and Isaac blesses Jacob once more. This time the promises to him and to Abraham are passed onto Jacob, a further indication of Isaac’s repentance. TL/DR: The story is about Isaac's tyrannical usurpation of the covenant, it is not about "why lying is bad" or some other moralistic point ripped from the context of the larger theology of Genesis.The story of Jacob’s Ladder, so-called, is fairly well-known. But popularly, it is another in a series of random fables and fairy tales. "Here is a thing that happened for some indiscernible reason." Now fill in your coloring sheet of angels going up and down a ladder while Jacob sleeps with a rock for a pillow: But what if I told you that this episode actually has profound theological significance? What if I told you that this short passage, one of the shortest in Genesis, is the antitype of the Tower of Babel? What if I told you that this is the earliest picture of Pentecost and of the kingdom of God conquering the world? Jacob has gone out from Beersheba in the south of Canaan to go toward Haran (which is today in modern Turkey, just over the border with Syria). He is heading north and then east. He had gone about 60-70 miles by foot, likely a journey of a couple days, when he came to Bethel to stay for the night. We find out he is just outside the Canaanite city of Luz, but he doesn’t go into the city, he stays outside of it and finds a place to sleep. Often it is presented to us that this rock was used as a pillow, but it says it was at his head. He instead was using this rock for protection. Traveling alone is very precarious in the ancient world. Finding a safe place to sleep to not be robbed or murdered is a priority. As he slept, he dreamed, and in this dream he saw a stepped pyramid. That is the literal meaning of the word. Sul-lam. A stepped pyramid was set up on the earth. With a top that reaches to heaven! What does this sound like? It is just like the Tower of Babel. The word Babel, which came to mean confusion in Hebrew, is originally an ancient Mesopotamian word that means “the gate of God.” This is the true Babel, the true “Gate of God.” Here the angels ascend and descend, up and down from God’s presence. Many translations have a footnote on verse 13, showing that it can be translated as the Lord stood beside him, and given the context, that seems to be better. Here, God speaks to Jacob and reaffirms the covenant promises to him. He announces who He is: the God of Abraham your father (Jacob is covenantally the son of Abraham) and the God of Isaac. To Jacob and his descendants, God gives this land. What is God doing here? He is confirming that Jacob is the Seed. He has always been the Seed, and now in the most positive sense possible, this is acknowledged. The Seed line goes through him and not Esau or anyone else. Jacob's descendants shall be like the dust of the earth. All of humanity of course, came out of Adam who was formed out of the dust of the earth. This is a new Adamic race. And unlike the people of Babel who refused to be spread abroad, Jacob’s people will spread out to the west and east, the north and the south. Incidentally, Bethel is located in about the center of the Land of Promise. The statement is intentionally ambiguous. They will spread throughout the land in all four directions, but they will also spread throughout all the world as well. In Jacob and in His seed He will bless all the families of the earth. How does He do that? Israel is made a nation of priests mediating and interceding on behalf of all the nations of the earth. The priesthood of the Seed people reaches its fulfillment in the Great and Final High Priest, Jesus Christ, who has gone before us, and died as a sacrifice for all. God tells Jacob that He is with him, and that He will keep him (protect him) wherever he will go. He is going to bring him back to the land. The Seed must stay with the Land. And God is going to make certain that this happens. God has promised and it will be done. Jacob wakes up and is filled with awe and terror. He says that this place is the House (Beth) of God (el) and that this is the gate of heaven. What has happened here? He has been given the true Babel by God. And so he raises up this stone of protection and pours oil on top of it. Why would he do that? What is the significance of pouring oil on top of something. When something is anointed with oil it runs down. Priests were anointed with oil. Oil is symbolic of the Holy Spirit. You burn oil in lamps. Oil is liquid fire. The heavenly spirit is coming down this (tiny) mountain. Jacob renames this place Bethel, the House of God. Now he doesn’t have the power to do so. Luz is a big Canaanite city. They still call it Luz. But he re-founds the city in hope of God’s promises being true. There is something we definitely should take away from this. He renames the city because of the promises of God that will one day be fulfilled, but look in the moment like the furthest thing from ever happening. From here, Jacob makes a vow. There is a way that you can read this as if it is conditional, but that is nonsense because Jacob knows the conditions are most certainly going to be fulfilled—God has already promised He would be with him. Of course God is going to give him bread to eat and clothes to wear (incidentally the two things that God graciously did for Adam). God is going to return him to the Land. Therefore the Lord will be his God. If he was making a bargain with God, he would have asked for much more than merely the bare necessities of survival. Instead, he is acknowledging and responding in faith to God's promise of provision and protection. TL/DR: Jacob's "Ladder" is actually the beginning of the de-Babelification of the world.

The deception of Isaac is quite possibly the most misunderstood story in the entire Bible. So much of the Old Testament is treated as disconnected fables, concerned with a simple moralistic point. Rarely is the Old Testament shown as it actually is, an integrated running narrative building a coherent theological point. It is all one story driving home a main point—man has fallen, but God is providing a chosen seed who will redeem humanity. He has made an unbreakable vow to this chosen seed and his line, and even human sin and rebellion will not stop God from fulfilling His promise. In this story, the villain is not Jacob as is so commonly told. The villain of this story is Isaac. But it is a story that shows us the villain can be redeemed, that repentance is possible, even when it seems totally unlikely. God’s grace will win in the end. If you go through the passage in detail, you actually get a totally different picture than what you have seen in VeggieTales or your storybook Bible. Isaac is now a very old man. And Isaac has gone blind. There is a theological-symbolic significance to Isaac’s blindness. Like the high priest, Eli, in 1 Samuel, Isaac’s blindness isn’t merely a physical disability, it is emblematic of a spiritual disability. He is unable to rightly judge things. Esau in the preceding chapters has been shown conclusively to be very wicked. Not only has he sold his birthright for a pot of lentils, he has chosen to marry Canaanite women. Isaac and Esau know that this must not be done. You’ll remember that Abraham had his servant travel all the way to Padan Aram to find Isaac a wife from among his kin. He absolutely could not intermarry with the people whom God had told the wicked children of Canaan whom they would dispossess. But Esau does this not once but twice! Yet Isaac prefers Esau because of the food he makes him. Isaac’s belly rules over him rendering him unable to discern anything judicially, and now his lack of spiritual discernment has become a total inability to see anything. In this context, Isaac calls Esau to him. He tells Esau he is going to die and he should go hunt and kill some game for him to eat so that he would bless Esau before Isaac dies. When you see the other covenantal blessings of the patriarch’s children (Abraham is not shown doing this either way), Jacob brings all his sons together publicly and blesses them individually. The fact that Isaac is doing this, it is apparently a private affair, and only Esau is included. What does this mean? It means that Jacob is excluded from any blessing at all. This is confirmed by the end of the story, when there is no blessing left for Esau (which was intended for Jacob). There is a biblical duty at the end of life to portion out your inheritance to your sons, with a double portion going to the eldest son. Esau is supposed to get two parts and Jacob one. But here, Esau is getting everything. Rebekah overhears all of this. She sees the tyranny of her husband. That he has been inspired by Satan to attack God’s chosen seed and give everything to the seed of the serpent, Esau. And so she takes action. Rebekah is a good wife, a submissive wife. But human authority and submission is not absolute. Only God’s authority and our submission to Him is absolute. She has a greater duty to God. And her husband is committing treason against God and what He has commanded. She has a duty to prevent great evil from occurring. If the household is a microcosm of political power writ large, she is operating as a lesser magistrate here. She is using her lesser authority to prevent great evil done by a greater authority. She is also fulfilling a typological role. The serpent deceived the woman, and what we see repeatedly throughout the Old Testament is the woman deceiving the serpent in return. Just as Sarah, Rachel, Tamar, the midwives in the Exodus, and Rahab deceive the serpent, protect the Seed, and prevent great evil from occurring, so too does Rebekah here. She calls her son Jacob to go to his father and pretend to be Esau. To put on Esau’s clothes and wear animal skins to appear as hairy as his brother. It is interesting to note that the very skins of the kids of the goats he killed to make the meal are the ones he wore to appear hairy. It is almost like the animals God killed to clothe Adam and Eve after their exile from the Garden. Jacob is concerned that the plot will be discovered and he will be cursed by his father. But Rebekah tells him that curse will be upon her instead of him. This shows clearly Rebekah’s concern in all of this is to protect the chosen Seed. She will take upon herself the curse should it come. In all of this Jacob is a dutiful, obedient son. Jacob’s statements to Isaac are also worth noting. When Isaac asks how he found the game so quickly, Jacob says something quite ambiguous, “because the Lord your God brought it to me.” In one sense, of course, this is true. The Lord did bring the food to Jacob by the hand of his mother. After eating and drinking, Jacob kisses Isaac, and Isaac blesses him. He asks that God may give him the dew of heaven, the fatness of the earth, and plenty of grain and wine. That peoples will serve him and nations will bow down before him. That he would rule over his brethren, and his mother’s sons would bow down to him (remember this was all intended for Esau!). Then a variation of God’s promise to Abraham: cursed be everyone who curses you and blessed be everyone who blesses you. Isaac has just given Jacob the full blessing. All the richness of the earth and rule over the nations of the world will be his and his descendants. Almost immediately after this, Esau returns with the food, and as soon as Isaac discovers what has happened he begins to tremble. Isaac’s statement in verse 33 is an interesting one as well. Why couldn’t he simply take back the blessing and now bless Esau. It is not as though this blessing were a magical incantation. It’s not as though if someone random named Doug or Bill wandered into the camp and pretended to be Esau they would get the blessing. What this statement seems to be indicative of is Isaac’s repentance. He always knew the blessing was supposed to go to Jacob. He is admitting here that his rebellion has been foiled. Esau’s reaction is fury. He blames Jacob, “heel-grabber” for grabbing his heel (supplanting him) these two times. Jacob is at fault for Esau despising his birthright. And Jacob is at fault for Isaac rebelliously giving the blessing to Esau. Isaac has to admit that he has given Jacob everything. "I have made him your master and I have given him all the grain and wine." Isaac is admitting his own wickedness here. He intended to make Esau the master of Jacob and to give everything to him! This is like Haman being asked to conjure up the honors he thinks will be given to him, which were instead for his hated archenemy Mordecai, or Haman being hung on the gallows he erected for Mordecai. God really loves the Uno Reverse card in His story! Isaac’s blessing to Esau is also intentionally ambiguous. He will dwell in the fatness of the earth and dew of heaven (but not possess it!), he will live by the sword (he will never be able to rest!) and he will rebel against his brother (and be cursed because of it!). Esau’s blessing sounds like a blessing to him, but is actually a curse! Esau wants to kill Isaac, Rebekah hears of it, and sends him away to her brother in Haran. The seed is not supposed to leave the land, but in this case, he does. The intention, however, was always to return and inherit. Rebekah tells Isaac Jacob must leave so that he would not marry a Canaanite, and Isaac blesses Jacob once more. This time the promises to him and to Abraham are passed onto Jacob, a further indication of Isaac’s repentance. TL/DR: The story is about Isaac's tyrannical usurpation of the covenant, it is not about "why lying is bad" or some other moralistic point ripped from the context of the larger theology of Genesis. ... The story of Jacob’s Ladder, so-called, is fairly well-known. But popularly, it is another in a series of random fables and fairy tales. "Here is a thing that happened for some indiscernible reason." Now fill in your coloring sheet of angels going up and down a ladder while Jacob sleeps with a rock for a pillow: But what if I told you that this episode actually has profound theological significance? What if I told you that this short passage, one of the shortest in Genesis, is the antitype of the Tower of Babel? What if I told you that this is the earliest picture of Pentecost and of the kingdom of God conquering the world? Jacob has gone out from Beersheba in the south of Canaan to go toward Haran (which is today in modern Turkey, just over the border with Syria). He is heading north and then east. He had gone about 60-70 miles by foot, likely a journey of a couple days, when he came to Bethel to stay for the night. We find out he is just outside the Canaanite city of Luz, but he doesn’t go into the city, he stays outside of it and finds a place to sleep. Often it is presented to us that this rock was used as a pillow, but it says it was at his head. He instead was using this rock for protection. Traveling alone is very precarious in the ancient world. Finding a safe place to sleep to not be robbed or murdered is a priority. As he slept, he dreamed, and in this dream he saw a stepped pyramid. That is the literal meaning of the word. Sul-lam. A stepped pyramid was set up on the earth. With a top that reaches to heaven! What does this sound like? It is just like the Tower of Babel. The word Babel, which came to mean confusion in Hebrew, is originally an ancient Mesopotamian word that means “the gate of God.” This is the true Babel, the true “Gate of God.” Here the angels ascend and descend, up and down from God’s presence. Many translations have a footnote on verse 13, showing that it can be translated as the Lord stood beside him, and given the context, that seems to be better. Here, God speaks to Jacob and reaffirms the covenant promises to him. He announces who He is: the God of Abraham your father (Jacob is covenantally the son of Abraham) and the God of Isaac. To Jacob and his descendants, God gives this land. What is God doing here? He is confirming that Jacob is the Seed. He has always been the Seed, and now in the most positive sense possible, this is acknowledged. The Seed line goes through him and not Esau or anyone else. Jacob's descendants shall be like the dust of the earth. All of humanity of course, came out of Adam who was formed out of the dust of the earth. This is a new Adamic race. And unlike the people of Babel who refused to be spread abroad, Jacob’s people will spread out to the west and east, the north and the south. Incidentally, Bethel is located in about the center of the Land of Promise. The statement is intentionally ambiguous. They will spread throughout the land in all four directions, but they will also spread throughout all the world as well. In Jacob and in His seed He will bless all the families of the earth. How does He do that? Israel is made a nation of priests mediating and interceding on behalf of all the nations of the earth. The priesthood of the Seed people reaches its fulfillment in the Great and Final High Priest, Jesus Christ, who has gone before us, and died as a sacrifice for all. God tells Jacob that He is with him, and that He will keep him (protect him) wherever he will go. He is going to bring him back to the land. The Seed must stay with the Land. And God is going to make certain that this happens. God has promised and it will be done. Jacob wakes up and is filled with awe and terror. He says that this place is the House (Beth) of God (el) and that this is the gate of heaven. What has happened here? He has been given the true Babel by God. And so he raises up this stone of protection and pours oil on top of it. Why would he do that? What is the significance of pouring oil on top of something. When something is anointed with oil it runs down. Priests were anointed with oil. Oil is symbolic of the Holy Spirit. You burn oil in lamps. Oil is liquid fire. The heavenly spirit is coming down this (tiny) mountain. Jacob renames this place Bethel, the House of God. Now he doesn’t have the power to do so. Luz is a big Canaanite city. They still call it Luz. But he re-founds the city in hope of God’s promises being true. There is something we definitely should take away from this. He renames the city because of the promises of God that will one day be fulfilled, but look in the moment like the furthest thing from ever happening. From here, Jacob makes a vow. There is a way that you can read this as if it is conditional, but that is nonsense because Jacob knows the conditions are most certainly going to be fulfilled—God has already promised He would be with him. Of course God is going to give him bread to eat and clothes to wear (incidentally the two things that God graciously did for Adam). God is going to return him to the Land. Therefore the Lord will be his God. If he was making a bargain with God, he would have asked for much more than merely the bare necessities of survival. Instead, he is acknowledging and responding in faith to God's promise of provision and protection. TL/DR: Jacob's "Ladder" is actually the beginning of the de-Babelification of the world.