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Jacob – A Bad Rap

Whenever you hear a message involving Jacob, you hear about how he was such a deceiver, manipulator, and cheating scoundrel.  AT best, these messages are superficial in their analysis of the story of Jacob and Esau. It is often cloaked in some misled intent of showing that God saves and blesses even the sinner. But this is the overwhelming message of the bible – God saves sinners. However, it is not contrary to that message to recognize good characters in the bible, knowing all the while that they also are sinners in need of grace. Daniel and Joseph are perfect examples. They were men of good, even sterling, character, yet we don’t get misled and think that they had no sin.

Jacob, though one of the most honorable men of the bible and the man after whom God names his own people – Israel – seems to be singled out for abuse. It is a slander of a good and honorable man whom we as Christians should emulate. It is time to reform our understanding of Jacob’s character. First, it is a given that Jacob was not chosen by God for being a good man. In fact, he is used as an example in the New Testament of a person chosen by grace alone. “It was said to her [Rebecca], ‘The older shall serve the younger.’” Romans 9:12. Why would Esau serve Jacob? “(For the children not yet being born, nor having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of Him who calls).” God chose Jacob to be the chosen son before he was even born, before he could even earn it. (Any argument that Jacob was chosen only because God foreknew that Esau would despise his birthright contradicts the grace message of Paul, denies salvation by grace by saying one earns it after the fact, and is potentially subject to the condemnation of Galatians 1.) Let’s not confuse the message God saves the worst of sinners with the message of Jacob’s life and ignore the fact that it is an example of how to follow Christ. Yes, you read that right. I said it is an example of how to follow Christ.

Second, Jacob’s life is one to emulate. Why did he buy the birthright? And he did buy it; he did not cheat Esau. How did he know that Esau would be willing to sell it? They had been brothers for decades, and he knew Esau’s character. He knew what Esau valued. He also knew that his father favored Esau; therefore, how could Jacob think that he would ever collect on the bargain? Esau was no pushover; later he would scheme to kill Jacob. Isaac, who irrationally favored Esau in spite of his demonstrated character flaws, was a patriarch, responsible for a significant estate of much property and hundreds of servants, inherited from Abraham and built up since then. So, Isaac was no pushover either. Therefore, Jacob had no human way of collecting on the bargain.  In order to make the deal with Esau, he must have acted in faith that God would ensure that Esau would never collect the birthright for himself.

Let’s look at this economically. What did Esau get? He got something he could see and touch. Commentators fault him for choosing to please his base appetite, a bowl of soup over the birthright. But let’s give him some credit – he did get something. What did Jacob get? Nothing . . . yet. Jacob saw the invisible; he saw what was more valuable. And he must have known there is a divine bill collector who will see the deal and enforce the deal by holding Esau to his word. Jacob was a man of faith, seeing the invisible and valuing it more than the temporal. And that which is invisible is eternal. II Corinthians 4:18.

What do Christians choose when they give up everything in this life, perhaps even their own lives, to obtain Christ and his inheritance? The invisible, the eternal. Jacob lived that way – by faith – for the rest of his life. After the deception of his father, instigated by his mother by the way, he was sent to live with Rebecca’s family, where he worked for Laban. Jacob worked for Laban for fourteen years, yet was paid barely enough to survive, even though he was married to two of Laban’s daughters. Talk about a deceptive unsavory character! That was Laban. If anyone was a deceptive schemer, it was Laban.

Often Jacob’s dealings with Laban are discussed as if Jacob were reaping what he had sowed. Laban was out to scam Jacob out of everything. At the end of fourteen years, Jacob negotiated what he thought was reasonable compensation for his work, while also being a generous deal for Laban. Laban got to keep the best of the flock. Apparently, at that time, the speckled and spotted were considered less valuable than the pure colored flocks of goats and sheep. So Jacob was generous enough to work out a deal with Laban such that Jacob received the lesser-valued animals. Laban agreed then behind Jacob’s back, had his sons take all the speckled and spotted animals and hide them far from where Jacob kept Laban’s flocks. Because that left nothing but unspotted animals in the herd from which Jacob could choose, Laban made it practically impossible for Jacob to make a living of any substance.

But Jacob saw with the eyes of faith, and placing poplar branches in front of the watering troughs, envisioned the flocks as speckled and spotted. What was amazing was not that some unspotted animals gave birth to spotted animals, but that God ensured that so many spotted and speckled animals were born. Only God could have changed the population of animals to favor Jacob, and he clearly did so to pay Jacob back for the manner in which Laban had cheated him. Jacob himself explains the injustice of his situation when Laban chases after him to do who knows what because God had blessed Jacob.

“These twenty years I have been with you; your ewes and your female goats have not miscarried their young, and I have not eaten the rams of your flock. That which was torn by beasts I did not bring to you; I bore the loss of it. You required it from my hand, whether stolen by day or stolen by night. There I was! In the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night, and my sleep departed from my eyes. Thus I have been in your house twenty years; I served you fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your flock, and you have changed my wages ten times. Unless the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, had been with me, surely now you would have sent me away empty-handed. God has seen my affliction and the labor of my hands, and rebuked you last night.”  Gen. 31:38-42.

Cont’d in next post.