CHAPTERS 27-31

^[p. 155] CHAPTERS 27-31

Esau and Jacob. Jacob gets the blessing as he had got the birthright, by deceit. He goes down to what represents the world to get his wife. Not as Isaac, who got a wife sent up. He looks for blessings and earthly promises, and vows tithes to God if God will take care of him. However, God does so. This is very low ground, but still there is faith. He uses duplicity towards man, and he is cheated himself — “paid in his own coin,” so to speak.

He gets Leah instead of Rachel. He has got the Gentiles looked at as on earth; still the Jews are loved — Rachel. He represents the Lord in His ways, not in his conduct: he loves Rachel. The Gentile, Leah, never loved like the Jews upon earth; but God blesses Leah.

God brings back Israel with his children, after having been a slave for twenty-one years, to his land.

The instruction we get is this: the Lord takes care of the believer, but he is cheated, and worried, and slaved, and reaps in discipline the fruit of his own ways. We mark a wretched state of faith in him: there was faith, but his was a dismal., earthly history — attempting to get his object in a carnal way., and he is chastened all through.