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Introduction

We learn a great deal from Isaac, Rebekah and the children. Their family life was an adventure covering several pages of the bible from Genesis till revelation. But surprisingly, Mrs Rebekah Isaac was omitted as a followable example of a matriarch amongst those listed in Hebrews 11. In this series, we shall make a trace of possible reasons why this may have been the case.

The Birthright

Esau grew up choosing the hunting profession. One because the game was his father’s treasured delicacy. Secondly, owing to his being an outdoor person. This nevertheless would not have been untraceable to Isaac’s connection with the fields. As a life pattern, Rebekah’s first glimpse of Isaac was on the field where he was meditating – perhaps praying for the success of his wife’s ultimate search’s adventure or musing over the general prospect of a future family with God – anything righteous and of an expectant bridegroom could have filled that time space. That notwithstanding, the aim of teaching Esau the same may have been what got Esau to the fields. And after a successful meditation, not wanting to come back home empty, he hunted for wild animals, killed them, and brought them home. And because the taste of games was more refreshing than the livestock Isaac was used to, Esau became so dear to him.

As a caveat, Esau’s skilful hunting escapade might have been taken by Isaac for a reward of successful meditation. Is he not like a man, who teaches his child early in life, the ways of righteousness, and then takes his academic, financial, or other related successes as evidence for his or her spiritual progress? Isaac chose this derailing profession because of the approval of his swayed father.

Jacob, on the other hand, being the one who was always home when Isaac took Esau a-meditating, coupled with the fact that a prophecy was ahead of him, naturally became an object of natural affection for Rebekah. Incomplete as her knowledge may have been of the Abrahamic covenant, she was dedicated to seeing God’s promises fulfilled. Sadly, her imperfect knowledge was what constituted her teaching to her son. And instead of quenching the rivalry between her children, she did everything to fuel it more. She taught the young man, Jacob, homeliness and cunningness added to the inherited, unlearned grabbing skills he had been exhibiting right from the womb. Jacob was now set in motion for a dangerous future against his brother’s wayward lifestyle. Check all of Jacob’s achievements until Peniel, none was without a cheating intent. He trusted his calculative lifestyle so much. If he conceived it, none could stop him from having it.

Certainly, the subject of Rebekah’s spiritual interaction with Jacob must have been the prophecy of the Abrahamic covenant, which God promised would rest on Jacob. However, in the traditional Israeli set up, there is something called the birthright, which must have been prevalent in the east and permitted by God. In this arrangement, the firstborn is the heir to everything, and the remaining are subservient to him. He gets the first share of everything including inheritance, and food when dining and his orders are meant to be obeyed as coming from their father. Jacob could not have stomached this nor submitted to such an unwarranted dominance. After all, Esau was only split seconds older than him.

Undiscerning, however, Jacob and his mum, equated this traditional blessing to a spiritual blessing. They felt he who got this traditional one was the favourite to get spiritual. What a blindfold scaled their eyes. What a lesson we learn from the man Jesus performed a twice healing miracle on, for his eyes to be finally opened! The eyes of Isaac and Rebekah were open to conception but as for child upbringing, they saw “men as trees.” And never did they return to God to seek guidance for raising them up. Little wonder why the whole home was so polarized. It was equally divided between party Jacob and party Esau.

There came a day when the pursuit of birthright as a means for attaining God’s blessing came to its fullest. Esau came home famished after an unsuccessful hunting spree. Although we cannot equate the birthright to Abrahamic blessing, it is not impracticable that God relies on a little issue like this one to measure what our faithfulness will be like in the bigger ones.

“Thus,” said the bible, “Isaac despised his birthright.” And having done this, he could and would equally despise the Abrahamic covenant. Even when he repented with tears, it was not genuine. Because immediately afterwards, He started plotting Jacob’s death. What repentance is in that! If he had humbled himself and prayed and turned from his wicked ways, he may have been helped by God. Just as He ate and stood up and set to hunt again, so we would see he wept and stood up and went about his normal life.

The blessing

Abraham did not have to nor specially prayed for Isaac to be blessed (Genesis 25:5-6). Neither Isaac nor Rebekah needed to help God choose whom the Abrahamic blessings should fall upon. Ishmael was sent away because he was totally alien to the promise. Isaac only wanted to make a case for and to justify why he would bless Esau over Jacob, hence the request for the venison he knew Jacob could not provide. Unknown to him that Rebekah, the ever-present help in the time of Jacob’s trouble, was eavesdropping.

The blessings of the Lord cannot be gotten by manipulation. Therefore, neither Esau – the careless hunter nor Jacob, the astute grabber, nor their parents – the unwarranted schemers were justified for wanting to bless and to be blessed. The blessing would have been bestowed in such a way that the guilty will declare the justice of God for being declared guilty, so the declared righteous too.

Let us observe distinctly what was outstanding in all their sojourn. The first day set to the records that Jacob left home, how slept making his pillow a stone in order to be alert to the motions of approaching beasts. Nonetheless, the Lord was his guide, the lights of the angels ascending, and descending were enough to scare all the animals away. When he woke and discovered himself to have communed with God, he rose and built an altar – a point of contact between him and God.

Conversely, in all of Esau’s profession being an outdoorsman, nothing of such was recorded about him. He went from dating one Canaanite lady to the other. This was enough to derail him even if his hunting spree arguably started from an effort made by his father Isaac to teach him meditation. The value of the altar is that when one would have strayed, there is a place to which one can trace his steps. This was the case for Jacob after 20 laborious years of yearly downward salary review.