This Ain't Over: Isaac's story  

First off, sorry I missed a day there. I'm not sure what happened.

Abraham has been "gathered to his ancestors" so now Isaac becomes our main man. He has a lot of similarities to his father, but he takes a backseat to one of his sons pretty quickly.

Synopsis

I began to get confused over whom I was reading about, because Isaac shares a lot in common with his father. The both have barren wives that the Lord provides for. They both lie to a guy named Abimelek about their wives and end up rich because of it. Their sons have a sibling rivalry. And, most importantly, God makes the same promises to Isaac that he made to his father.

Overall, though Isaac's story feels much less significant simply because it's shorter. Rebekah is barren for about a sentence before her twin sons are born. The slightly older, hairier, more outdoorsy one is Esau, and the trickster is Jacob. Jacob means "he grabs the heel" which according to the translation footnote is a Hebrew idiom for "deceives." This is clearly an appropriate name since the baby comes out literally grabbing his brother's heel. But that's not all. When Esau comes in hungry one day, Jacob tricks him into giving up his birthright for some stew. Interesting.

There's a famine but God appears to Isaac and tells him not to go to Egypt, that he'll take care of him. Then he gives the full gamut of blessings that he gave to Abraham: blessings, a great nation, the land, and blessing all nations through him. Isaac gets them all.

Now, Isaac just ends up crazy rich, way richer than Abraham. He pulls that same trick, lying about his wife trick, which gets him protection. His crops reap one hundred fold. All his wells get filled up because everyone is so jealous of his wealth. In fact they ask him to move away because they're afraid of him since he's so freakin' rich. After God tells him again how many descendant's he'll have on account of Abraham, Abimelek shows up and asks him to sign of a treaty because it is obvious Isaac is super-blessed by God.

Esau marries some Hittite women (women native to the area) and they are a big pain.

So when Isaac is so old he's blind, he attempts to pass on his blessings, his promises from God, to Esau. I'm not going to go into all the details, but basically Rebekah and Jacob come up with some crazy tricks and lie about 10 times and Isaac ends up accidently blessing Jacob when he thinks he's blessing Esau. He really blesses him, and says he will rule over his brother.

Esau comes back and the truth is found out, but it's too late and Esau doesn't get much of a blessing. In fact, Isaac tells him he'll serve Jacob, although he will overcome him in the end. Esau's pretty upset and, fearing for his life, Jacob takes his mother's advice and runs for it. Isaac sends him to his brother-in-law's house. Here, Isaac indeed confirms that Jacob gets the blessing.

(By the way, Esau figures out how much his parents hate his wives, so he marries one of Ishmael's kids.)

On the way to Harran, Jacob sees the majesty of God in a dream, and God promises him all the promises he had given Isaac, in my mind, passing on main-character-duties to Jacob. Jacob wakes up, decides that if God indeed does all he promises, then he'll be Jacob's God and he'll give a tenth of what he has to God (geez, good call, Sherlock).

Jacob arrives to his uncle Laban's house, meeting his daughter Rachel and being welcomed in by Uncle Laban.

Analysis

Wow, I had read more than I thought. There's plenty going on there. Isaac more or less just gets really rich and receives God's Abrahamic promises, although I notice they don't mention Jacob and Esau getting circumcised, but who knows.

Jacob really steals the show as soon as he shows up. He really proves himself as a trickster. He cheats his brother out of his birthright and, way more importantly, God's blessings. I can understand why Esau was upset. Yet, despite this, God indeed gives him Abraham's promises on his journey to Uncle Laban's.

Response

We don't really learn new things about God in this section. It's more like "the continuing story," showing that God continues his work with Abraham through Isaac and eventually through Jacob.

What's really interesting to me is how constantly, in Genesis, the characters' moral failings are more or less irrelevant to what God is doing with them. Lie about your wife? Get richer! Have a kid with your slave instead of trusting me? Get two great nations! Cheat your brother out of your blessings? I'll bless you!

The funny thing is, at this point, God is saying that he'll bless Isaac because all the great stuff Abraham did, and Abraham did do great stuff, but really only because God developed him to that point despite many failures.

In some ways, Genesis isn't so concerned about how right or wrong the characters' actions are, so much as showing how God is moving forward with his plans.

It shows that God is concerned with bigger things than striking me with lightning because I told a lie or something. Especially in Genesis, it seems his overall goal is to restore creation to the way he originally made it: Filled with beauty and justice and harmony and with man leading the way justly and under God's wing.

With the people he's dealing with, he's got a long way to go.