Genesis Chapter 28

¹ And Isaac called Jacob, and blessed him, and charged him, and said unto him, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan.

When it came time for Isaac to marry, Abraham called his servant to him to find a wife for Isaac. One of the things Abraham made his servant swear he wouldn’t do was to find a wife for Isaac in the Canaanites. When I studied Genesis 24 I found a study on why the Canaanites were considered a bad people to marry into…. from that blog Genesis Chapter 24 The Canaanites came from one of the sons of Noah… Ham (Cham). In Genesis 5:22 it says, “And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without.” This seems to be more than simply walking in on his father naked, this is quite possibly that Ham violated his father while his father was passed out drunk, then told his brothers about it who went in to cover their father up. For a write up about that belief https://torah.org/torah-portion/rabbis-notebook-5762-noach/ . The end result of this violation was a curse on Canaan, and Abraham didn’t want his son to marry into this cursed people, so he made his servant swear an oath to prevent this from happening.

² Arise, go to Padanaram, to the house of Bethuel thy mother’s father; and take thee a wife from thence of the daughers of Laban thy mother’s brother.

Paddan-aram (Haran)

This map is from this website —> https://bibleatlas.org/paddan-aram.htm

³ And God Almighty bless thee, and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, that thou mayest be a multitude of people;

⁴ And give thee the blessing of Abraham, to thee, and to thy seed with thee; that thou mayest inherit the land wherein thou art a stranger, which God gave unto Abraham.

⁵ And Isaac sent away Jacob: and he went to Padanaram unto Laban, son of Bethuel the Syrian, the brother of Rebekah, Jacob’s and Esau’s mother.

⁶ When Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob, and sent him away to Padanaram, to take him a wife from thence; and that as he blessed him he gave him a charge, saying, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan;

⁷ And that Jacob obeyed his father and his mother, and was gone to Padanaram;

⁸ And Esau seeing that the daughters of Canaan pleased not Isaac his father;

⁹ Then went Esau unto Ishmael, and took unto the wives which he had Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael Abraham’s son, the sister of Nebajoth, to be his wife.

It seems to me that after Esau lost his birthright and blessing, he began to act more mindfully. He had already taken 2 wives of the Canaanites….something his father would not have approved of. I wonder if Esau only became aware of his father’s feelings about the Canaanites being an unsuitable people to find wives among when his father instructed his brother Jacob against marrying them. He obviously never consulted Isaac when he took Judith and Basemath from the Canaanites as wives, but now that he has to step back and see the blessings and instructions he forfeited being given to his brother Jacob….maybe his repentance for his actions is causing him to act more mindfully….so because he now knows how his father feels about the Canaanites, Esau selected a wife from his half uncle Ishmael’s daughters. I could be way off, but this part of Esau’s story on the heals of losing his birthright gives me the impression that Esau is suddenly sober and engaged in his life…. like for the first time he is acting mindfully and not just going by his desires and passions…. now he knows how important it is to think through things and not just act.

¹⁰ And Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went toward Haran.

¹¹ And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep.

¹² And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.

¹³ And, behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed;

¹⁴ And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

¹⁵ And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.

God confirms the blessings and promises that he gave to Abraham and Abraham gave to Isaac and Isaac gave to Jacob. God ends the encounter assuring Jacob that he is with him and will watch over him no matter where he goes. He promises him he will never leave him and will complete what he promised him. God is so faithful to us…. he always keeps his word.

¹⁶ And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not.

¹⁷ And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.

Before I started my bible study, I was looking at videos on facebook and saw one from a wonderful pastor named Pastor Trent of TrentTribe. Brother Trent talked about an encounter with God he had one night and how he felt about this encounter…go watch the video, it’s a blessing—->https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=388431737383944 His encounter wasn’t one of those wonderful encounters where we come away feeling wonderful and blessed….. his encounter was more like the one Jacob had here… where you come away with the sobering reality of how mighty our God really is. After I watched brother Trent’s video, I pondered what a visit like that might be like. God sees us exactly as we are… he knows us better than we know ourselves…. every thought we had, he heard before we even thought it…there is nothing a person can say or do that God doesn’t already know. We’re just there…raw with complete knowledge that we exist entirely at his mercy and grace. I closed the video and came here to read and study this chapter and when I got to Jacobs encounter I thought of the video, so I went back to link it here because the way Brother Trent details his encounter and the lesson he brings forth is really a good one and goes nicely with the one I’m learning today.
So there was Jacob with this reality and then God tells him he’s going to be taking care of him no matter where he goes, he’s got him.
Imagine waking up to that…

¹⁸ And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it.

¹⁹ And he called the name of that place Bethel: but the name of that city was called Luz at the first.

²⁰ And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on,

²¹ So that I come again to my father’s house in peace; then shall the Lord be my God:

²² And this stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be God’s house: and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee.