Then Isaac his father answered and said to him:
“Behold, away from the fatness of the earth shall your dwelling be,
and away from the dew of heaven on high.
By your sword you shall live,
and you shall serve your brother;
but when you grow restless
you shall break his yoke from your neck.”
Now Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him, and Esau said to himself, “The days of mourning for my father are approaching; then I will kill my brother Jacob.” But the words of Esau her older son were told to Rebekah. So she sent and called Jacob her younger son and said to him, “Behold, your brother Esau comforts himself about you by planning to kill you. Now therefore, my son, obey my voice. Arise, flee to Laban my brother in Haran and stay with him a while, until your brother’s fury turns away— until your brother’s anger turns away from you, and he forgets what you have done to him. Then I will send and bring you from there. Why should I be bereft of you both in one day?”
Then Rebekah said to Isaac, “I loathe my life because of the Hittite women. If Jacob marries one of the Hittite women like these, one of the women of the land, what good will my life be to me?”
Comment: Esau pleaded for a replacement ‘blessing or inheritance’ from Isaac. Isaac’s words read more like a commentary on Esau’s character than a blessing! It seems as if Esau is going to have to live off the land in some way second to Jacob, but that some how he will become a free man, free from Jacob’s dominance.
A spiteful and unrepentant man, Esau vocalizes a plan to murder his brother after his father dies. Rebekah, finding it difficult to live near Esau’s Hittite wives, and with the threat of murder hanging over her favourite’s head sends ‘her Jacob’ hundreds of kilometres away to her brother’s keeping.
Prayer: Teach me to live at peace, as far as is possible, with all people. Certainly I don’t want to be spiteful and bitter, Father God.
As I read it! 