On Genesis, Part 38: The Rejection of Esau

Then Isaac had twin sons, Jacob and Esau, but neither would both of these sons share in the inheritance of their father, so the number of heirs was ultimately narrowed to one of them, and out of his eight sons and many more grandsons, only Jacob would inherit the blessings of Abraham. Like Sarah before her, Rebekah, the mother of Jacob and Esau, had also conceived with a promise, where she was told, as it is recorded in Genesis chapter 25, that “23 … Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.” There it is fully evident that Jacob and Esau would have very different destinies, even though they were both in the loins of their father when he was dedicated on the altar to Yahweh. So they both belonged to God, as Paul wrote of them much later, in Romans chapter 9, and asked “21 Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?” From there, he proceeded to explain that from one lump there had been created vessels of destruction, but from the other there had been created vessels of mercy, and these are Esau and Jacob and their respective descendants.

But the path to dishonor and destruction was made by Esau himself. His father Isaac was unmarried until he was forty years old, and had taken a wife only as soon as he had learned that his own father Abraham had procured a wife for him. Then Isaac had evidently remained content with that one wife for his entire life. His brother Jacob would remain unmarried, as we shall see here in this chapter and subsequent chapters of Genesis, until his father Isaac had sent him to Haran with instructions to take a wife from the house of his mother’s kindred. Many people seem to assume without studying, that Jacob was a young man when this happened, but in truth, he was seventy years old, which we shall discuss later. Then once Jacob arrived in Haran, when Rebekah’s brother Laban had laid upon Jacob a heavy burden in exchange for a wife, Jacob complied, choosing obedience to his parents rather than rebelling and returning to Palestine.

But as for Esau, he had evidently taken wives without any counsel from Isaac his father, by which he became the master of his own destiny. So Paul wrote later, describing Esau and making an example for Christians, in Hebrews chapter 12 where he had admonished his readers to be diligent “15 … lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled; 16 Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. 17 For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.” There Paul indirectly informs us that the rejection of Esau was not only from Rebekah, but from Yahweh God Himself, and for the explicit reason that he was a fornicator. Yahweh God had foreseen Esau’s sin, and for that reason the Word of God informs us in Malachi chapter 1 that “2 … I loved Jacob, 3 And I hated Esau, …” a Scripture which Paul had cited in Romans chapter 9. That is also why Yahweh had informed Rebekah that her twin sons would have diverging destinies.

On Genesis, Part 37: The Incontinence of Men

In our last discussion in Genesis, The Children of the Flesh, we hope to have fully elucidated the meaning of the words of Paul of Tarsus where he wrote in Romans chapter 9, as it is in the Christogenea New Testament, and he said: “8 That is to say, the children of the flesh, these are not children of Yahweh, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.” Saying that, Paul then went on to describe the promise to Sarah, and then to Rebekah, whereby he illustrated the fact that only Jacob was ultimately the heir of Abraham, and out of all of the children of Abraham, the promises of God are given only to Jacob’s descendants. This was also the same illustration which he made in a different manner in Galatians chapter 3, an epistle which he actually wrote about two years prior to his having written Romans. Now from this point on in Genesis, Ishmael and the sons of Keturah are removed from the picture, and all future history, Biblical and otherwise, would revolve around the descendants of Jacob and Esau, as Jacob had merited the birthright which his older brother had despised, although after he lost it, Esau had hated his brother and wanted it back.

So the Edomites became predominant in Judaea in the centuries leading up to the ministry of Christ, and even today the descendants of Esau still think that they can have back the inheritance, in a rather indirect manner. But they never shall attain it, since they are all bastards, and the works of men are vanity in the eyes of God. But this dynamic nevertheless drives world events to this very day, as the Edomite Jews have forever been plotting to dominate and destroy Christians so that they may have the world to themselves, and this observation is true in spite of the fact that both parties are generally oblivious to this truth. In Romans chapter 9, where Paul had continued his discussion of the issue concerning the seed of Abraham, he compared Jacob and Esau, and described the descendants of Jacob as vessels of mercy, but the descendants of Esau as vessels of destruction. Doing all of this, in Paul’s epistles he was not innovating, but rather he was instructing Christians as to how the will of Yahweh God which was expressed in Genesis affects the Christian world, as the Word of God has not and does not change. To this day, the children of Esau and Ishmael and the others are still excluded from the promises of God, and they always shall be excluded, along with any other races who were not of Abraham or even of Adam in the first place.

On Genesis, Part 35: A Proper Marriage

Discussing Genesis chapter 23 and the cave in Hebron which Abraham had purchased from the Hittites in order to bury his wife, we made an analogy by cross-referencing a statement concerning Abraham, and especially Sarah, which is found in Isaiah chapter 51. Perhaps the analogy was not decent, or appropriate for children, but it is nonetheless true. As it is in Isaiah, we can look at all of our mothers as a figurative pit from which we had emerged, as Sarah was described in that manner. Then we could only pray that our fathers are rocks like Abraham, who seems never to have wavered in his faith, and for that reason alone he was considered righteous by Yahweh God. But that does not mean that a woman is a mere pit, and in the end, as we also continued our analogy of the cave which Abraham had bought, all men also ultimately end up in some sort of pit, or at least, they all return to the dust and ashes from which they were made. However a proper woman is certainly more than a hole, and the grave is also More Than a Hole, at least for the children of Yahweh. So for that reason especially, both our women and our deceased ancestors should be venerated, because Yahweh shall once again raise all of those who have maintained the sanctity of their race out of the pit. It would be appropriate to repeat the analogy when we contrast Jacob and Esau in light of the actions of Rebekah, but perhaps we shall leave it here.

Now, coming to Genesis chapter 24, we have already discussed the first few verses of the chapter, in order to describe what should have been the first example to Esau as well as to all of the future progeny of Isaac. The example made here should have been followed by all of the seed of Abraham and Sarah, if they had indeed venerated and honored their ancestors, since if they seek the righteousness of God they are instructed to “1 … look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged. 2 Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you: for I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him”, as it is written in that chapter of Isaiah. The only way we can look unto them is to examine these accounts and consider the lessons which they offer, and the only way we can honor them is to imitate them, having learned from those lessons. Sarah knew that the son of a bondwoman should not have any shared inheritance with her son, and Abraham knew that Isaac should marry a woman of his own race, a woman who was much more than a mere hole, because thereby a man would only be committing fornication rather than being engaged in a proper marriage.

On Genesis, Part 34: More Than a Hole

In the last presentation in our commentary on Genesis, which was titled The Dedication of Isaac, we had described the sacrifice of Isaac in that manner because it was not a sacrifice at all. Rather, it was a dedication, and Yahweh God never truly intended to have Isaac sacrificed in the first place, because He had already made promises to Sarah concerning the fate of the son which she had born when she was ninety years of age. Therefore Abraham, confident in the fact that Yahweh would keep his promises, seemed to have been relatively untroubled by the demand that he sacrifice his son, and proceeded to fulfill that demand without any qualms or objections. Doing that, he acted with absolute faith and a degree of obedience which throughout history has only been surpassed in the sacrifice of Christ Himself. The act of sacrifice for the reasons which Abraham was willing to comply with it, and for the reasons for which Christ had submitted to it, is in itself a profession in the eternal existence of the Adamic spirit and the ability of Yahweh God to resurrect that spirit from beyond death.

In the ancient world, fathers had property rights over their wives and their children, and the authority to determine their fates so long as they lived. In ancient Rome, these rights were codified into law as the Patria potestas, or Paternal power, wherein only the family patriarch had any rights in private law, only he had lawfully held all of the family property regardless of who in the family had earned it, and he even had the power of life and death over his children. Furthermore, he had that authority until he died, since there was no concept of an age of majority, or adulthood, as there is in Western society today, and while fathers could grant emancipation to a son, their daughters were typically consigned to the control of another man through marriage. If the daughter remained unmarried, when her father died she fell under the authority of her eldest brother. [1] So Abraham had every right to consign his son to his God, and in accordance with ancient custom, when a man placed something on an altar and dedicated it to a god, the object – or even a person presented at the altar – became the property of that god. When Abraham placed Isaac on the altar and dedicated him to Yahweh, he essentially relinquished to Yahweh his paternal rights over his son. That is also an act of sacrifice, as Isaac was dedicated by Abraham to the service of Yahweh, at the explicit request of Yahweh. A father had a right to do this in the ancient world, just as he had a right to expose an infant, if he so chose to do such a horrible thing, or to place a son or daughter up for adoption, or to sell one into slavery.

This recording has been appended to the Christogenea Saturdays program for January 27th, 2018. It merits this separate posting.

What if Jesus were descended from the Israelite tribe of Judah, as the Scripture says that He is? Well, of course He is, because the Scriptures do not lie. But what if the people known as Jews today were NOT of the tribe of Judah? Nor even of Benjamin or Levi? Then how could Jesus possibly be a Jew? The answer is easy, Jesus is not a Jew because the people known as Jews today are not of Judah. The Bible itself tells us this.

For this reason Jesus Himself told the church at Smyrna, in Revelation 2:9: "I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan."

Just in case that is not understood, Jesus also said to the church at Philadelphia, in Revelation 3:9: "Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee."

So according to Jesus Himself, the people calling themselves Jews at this time are not "real" Jews, meaning that they are not actually of the tribe of Judah. But how can that be? First, we will see that Paul of Tarsus agrees with Jesus, and the events which Luke recorded in Acts chapter 26 had actually transpired about 35 years before John recorded the Revelation.