CHAPTER 28

(1760 B.C.)

JACOB

¹And Isaac called Jacob, and blessed him, and charged him, and said unto him, You shall not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan (it was not the Will of God for Esau or Jacob to marry the daughters of the land, but now that Jacob was the recipient of the Blessing, thereby the chosen one as it regards the birthright, which had to do with the coming of the Redeemer into the world, it was imperative that he not marry one of the Canaanite girls, as had his brother Esau; their lineage was of the cursed line of Canaan; he was rather to take a wife of one of the daughters of Laban, his mothers brother).

²Arise, go to Padan-aram, to the house of Bethuel your mothers father; and take you a wife from thence of the daughters of Laban your mothers brother (now we have the commencing of Gods special dealings with Jacob; now begins the making of a man).

³And God Almighty bless you, and make you fruitful, and multiply you, that you may be a multitude of people (the appellative God Almighty means El-Shaddai, and promises guardianship and companionship);

⁴And give you the Blessing of Abraham, to you, and to your seed with you; that you may inherit the land wherein you are a stranger, which God gave unto Abraham (Paul addressed the Blessing of Abraham [Gal. 3:14]; it means Justification by Faith; it refers to a believing sinner who is justified before God by simply having Faith in Christ and what Christ has done for us at the Cross).

⁵And Isaac sent away Jacob; and he went to Padan-aram unto Laban, son of Bethuel the Syrian, the brother of Rebekah, Jacobs and Esaus mother (Isaac now fully seems to have returned to the path of Faith; there is now no attempt to substitute Esau for Jacob, or to lessen the privileges of the latter, but, with hearty cheerfulness, he blesses the younger son, and confirms him in the possession of the whole Abrahamic Blessing).

⁶When Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob, and sent him away to Padan-aram, to take him a wife from thence; and that as he blessed him he gave him a charge, saying, You shall not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan (Esau, knowing nothing of the path of Faith, concludes erroneously that the reason that Isaac gave Jacob the Blessing is because he [Esau] had married Canaanite women);

⁷And that Jacob obeyed his father and his mother, and was gone to Padan-aram (the obedience mentioned here of Jacob was the opposite of that concerning Esau);

⁸And Esau seeing that the daughters of Canaan pleased not Isaac his father;

⁹Then went Esau unto Ishmael, and took unto the wives which he had Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael Abrahams son, the sister of Nebajoth, to be his wife. (In fact, Ishmael had been dead now for some years, so it refers to Esau going to the family of Ishmael. The truth is, Ishmael was no closer to acceptance than the daughters of Canaan. He had long before been rejected by the Holy Spirit, and had been thrust out of the family of Abraham. This portrays any Believer who doesnt understand the true path of Faith and tries to build his case on a work of the flesh. And, if the Believer doesnt understand the Cross, he will, without fail, resort to the flesh.)

JACOBS VISION

¹⁰And Jacob went out from Beer-sheba, and went toward Haran (Jacob is alone, but yet God and all the Holy Angels are with him, as we shall see).

¹¹And he stopped at a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep (the sleep represents him ceasing from his personal activity and God beginning His Personal activity; Jacob has much to learn, and it will begin here).

¹²And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the Earth, and the top of it reached to Heaven: and behold the Angels of God ascending and descending on it (in a sense, the ladder represents Christ; He Alone is the Way to Heaven; He would refer to this at the beginning of His Ministry [Jn. 1:51]).

¹³And, behold, the LORD stood above it, and said, I am the LORD God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon you lie, to you will I give it, and to your seed (the words above it in the original Hebrew actually should read beside him; not only did the Angels descend by it to him, but God Himself descended this stairway of glory and stood by him; the Patriarch, destitute and with a stone for a pillow, literally having to leave this land, is now told by the Lord, To you will I give it, and to your seed; only Faith could accept such a Promise);

¹⁴And your seed shall be as the dust of the Earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in you and in your seed shall all the families of the Earth be blessed (all of this speaks of Christ, Who Alone is the Blessing; His Gospel, through the Cross, would go and, in fact, has gone, to the entirety of the world).

¹⁵And, behold, I am with you, and will keep you in all places where you go, and will bring you again into this land; for I will not leave you, until I have done that which I have spoken to you of (the Lord said to Jacob: 1. I am with you; 2. I will keep you; 3. I will bring you again into this land; and, 4. I wont leave you, until I have done all that of which I have spoken to you; these same Promises are to us as well!).

JACOBS VOW

¹⁶And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not (for the first time, the Lord reveals Himself to Jacob; this is the night that Jacob was born from above; all of this tells us that all hopes of the flesh must die before the Spirit can properly be revealed to us).

¹⁷And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the House of God, and this is the Gate of Heaven (could be translated, How all-inspiring is this place!; the Gate of Heaven is Jesus Christ).

¹⁸And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it (the stone is a Type of Christ, with the oil serving as a symbol of the Holy Spirit; no doubt, he was inspired by the Lord to do this).

¹⁹And he called the name of that place Beth-el: but the name of that city was called Luz at the first (Beth-el means House of God; Luz means separation; the Lord can turn Luz into the House of God, only as the Believer is separated from the world).

²⁰And Jacob vowed a vow (the first recorded vow in the Bible), saying, If God be with me (should read, Since God be with me), and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on,

²¹So that I come again to my fathers house in peace (free from Esaus avenging threats); then shall the LORD be my God:

²²And this stone (representing Christ), which I have set for a pillar, shall be Gods House (all of this sets the stage for the Holy Spirit making the Believer His Sanctuary; it was all made possible by the Cross [Jn. 14:16-20]): and of all that You shall give me I will surely give the tenth unto you. (This obviously means that Jacob gave a tenth of his vast herds of sheep and cattle to the Lord as a Sacrifice. If that, in fact, was the case, we now find Jacob offering up Sacrifices to a degree as no one else. If the tithe which we propose to give to the Lord doesnt advance the grand Message of Jesus Christ and Him Crucified [I Cor. 1:23; 2:2], then we actually arent really paying tithe. The first occasion of tithing mentioned in the Bible was when Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek, who was a Type of Christ as our Great High Priest. Jesus would become this by dying on the Cross as a Sacrifice [14:18-20]. So both occasions of paying tithes speak to the Cross.)