On Genesis, Part 40: The First Stones
When Abraham had received his promises from God, and the accompanying unconditional covenants, Yahweh God had committed the world of his time to the eventual dominance and ultimate possession of Abraham’s seed. But not all of Abraham’s seed would share the same fate. Ishmael, the oldest son, would become a considerable nation, but he would be entirely pushed out of the inheritance in favor of Isaac. Later, the six sons which Abraham had with Keturah would be pushed out in a similar manner. Then of the sons of Isaac, Esau and Jacob, the one would despise his inheritance and ultimately lose it to his brother, although he declared that he would seek revenge against him, by which he may have even imagined that he could have it back.
Esau was a worldly man who sought to carve out his own destiny apart from his father and his God. But the other son, Jacob, had committed himself into the hands of his father and his God, and apparently it was for that reason that he had never taken any initiative to plan for his own future. Jacob was the obedient son who worked for his father’s estate, rather than worrying about his own, and who waited patiently for any reward that may come, rather than seeking his own profit or adventure. For his patience, he was rewarded, and he was told that if he fulfilled his father’s wishes then it would be he alone who would inherit the blessings and promises of Abraham. This was all within the plan of God from the beginning, as Yahweh had spoken to Rebekah his mother. Then, in Jacob’s vision of the ladder which is recorded in Genesis chapter 28 where he was on his journey to Padanaram, Yahweh God Himself had confirmed those words of Isaac. Perhaps it is symbolic, that Jacob laid his head on stones to sleep, and in his dream he saw a vision of his own descendants ascending to and descending from heaven. Those descendants had already been destined to be the stones in the Kingdom of God.
But Esau would not go away, and neither would Ishmael or any of the others, even if they seem to have eventually disappeared both historically and biologically. Ishmael was only one man, but both his wife and his mother were Egyptians, and his progeny would eventually mingle themselves with the Edomites, the subsequent children of Esau, and also with all of the other Shemites, Hamites and Canaanites of South Arabia, as well as many other races, especially the black races of Africa. The same would eventually be true of the sons of Keturah. Esau himself would settle in Mount Seir with his Canaanite wives, and his Ishmaelite wife, and then join himself to the Horites, or Hurrians, another branch of the Canaanites, to the extent that the Hurrians of Mount Seir were written directly into the genealogy of Esau which was recorded by Moses in Genesis chapter 36. So in truth, hardly a trace of the original character of either Ishmael or Esau could possibly exist in the genes of their descendants. Having continually mixed with the Canaanites, the seed of the Kenites and the Nephilim is far more prevalent in them than the seed of Abraham, and in that manner the enmity of Genesis 3:15 is carried on in the world to this very day.