[Granville-Hough] 9 Feb 2009 - Bible Study about Isaac

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Date: Mon, 09 Feb 2009 17:57:49 -0800
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: Bible Study about Isaac - 9  Feb 2009

    Isaac, who got done to.

    I wanted to note some little facets I noticed in my review of Isaac
for my Alzheimer's Bible Study a couple of years ago.  Isaac seemed to
be the fellow between
Abraham and Jacob who did not seem too active.  Things happened to him,
but he himself was always being done to.  We see him carrying the load
of faggots up Mount Moriah for his own sacrifice.  We see him sending
off a servant, on his mother Sarah's initiative, to find a wife in the
old country.  He seemed uncertain about things, and it took 20 years for
his wife Rebekah to achieve pregnancy.  When the twins, Esau and Jacob appeared,he favored one and Rebekah the other. Then he became blind and gave the
blessing, and all his property, to the wrong child, Jacob instead of
Esau.   And so it went.
     When Esau was forty, he married two Hittite women, Judith and
Basemath.  Then follows one of the more descriptive and cryptic verses
of the bible, Genesis 26:35, "They were a source of grief to Isaac and
Rebekah."  You can write books about that verse.  The Hittites were town
folks, from streets and houses; while Isaac and Rebekah were tent
dwellers, country folks, who moved with their herds.  Undoubtedly there
was a generation gap.  The Hittite girls surely had no idea how to keep or move
tents.  Unlike Rebekah, they did not know how to water camels.  Their
children may have been destructive to tentkeeping.  There were cultural
differences, and the Hittite girls probably found diversions during
Esau's long hunting trips.  One must know a little about human nature,
and the ways of Satan, before visualizing just what caused the
grief to Isaac and Rebekah.
    When Rebekah overheard the agreement between Esau and Isaac about
the wild game barbeque and the final blessing, she was beset with
anger.  In no way was she going to let those Hittite women and bratty
grandchildren get what she had help develop.  So she found a way to
deceive old Isaac and give Jacob a chance.
    So for many women since Rebekah, she has been an example.
Sometimes, it helps to entice, encourage, support, guide, and even
deceive your man into doing what you think he should have already done.
Some might call it the Jewish wife or Jewish mother approach.  Whether
Rebekah's approaches would be popular today is another question.  How
many men would admit they have been done to?
    After Jacob was sent back to the old country to find a wife among
his kin, Esau had a bright idea.  If marrying a cousin was expected, he
could do that without going too far.  So he went out in the desert among
the Ishmaelites, his uncle Ishmael's grandchildren, and took a third
wife.  That hardly endeared him to either Isaac or Rebekah, who had this
deep antagonism about brother Ishmael and all he represented.  So Esau
perhaps decided he couldn't get it right, so contented himself with
becoming a clan leader and the most powerful force in the area.