 |  |
immediately adds: "Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan." Here Jacob
follows in line with Isaac, as Isaac with Abraham (see Gen. 24: 37). Then follows that
blessing which Rebekah had schemed in vain to hear, and Jacob had deceived in vain to
receive:
"And God Almighty (El Shaddai, as in 17: 1) bless thee, and make thee fruitful, and
multiply thee, that thou mayest be a multitude of people" (Gen. 28: 3).
The margin renders "multitude" by "assembly". The LXX translates the word kahal
by sunagoge, "synagogue". This also is a peculiar item in the great promise to Abraham,
for it reappears as the change of Jacob's name to Israel:
"I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company (kahal,
LXX sunagoge) of nations shall be of thee" (Gen. 35: 11).
It occurs yet again in the passage where Jacob blesses Ephraim and Manasseh
(Gen. 48: 4). We do not know whether the note to the word "multitude"
(Gen. 48: 19) in The Companion Bible has been or will be corrected in later editions,
but the student should remember that in this verse the word is quite different from the
above, being the Hebrew melo, and involves a different idea. This is but an expansion of
the original promise: "In thee shall all families of the earth be blessed" (Gen. 12: 3).
Gen. 28: 4 continues:
"And give thee the blessing of Abraham, to thee, and to thy seed with thee; that thou
mayest inherit the land wherein thou art a stranger, which God gave unto Abraham."
Here, without the shadow of doubt, is the promise of Abraham, and given by faith to
Jacob by Isaac. If we contrast the blessing of Gen. 28: 1-4 with that of 27: 28, 29
we shall find that the former blessing, received by deception, was the firstborn's blessing,
while the latter, given freely and by faith, was the one for which Jacob had seized the
chance of birthright, and Rebekah had plotted in vain; for this promise was by grace, and
did not necessarily descend to the natural firstborn. This lesson is repeated in the second
instance given in Heb. 11: When the moment came for the two sons of Joseph to be
blessed, Joseph placed the firstborn at the right hand of Jacob:
"And Israel stretched out his right hand, and laid it upon Ephraim's head, who was
the younger, and his left hand upon Manasseh's head, guiding his hands wittingly;
for Manasseh was the firstborn . . . . . . . and he set Ephraim before Manasseh"
(Gen. 48: 14-20).
It is not our object to attempt an exposition here of these two blessings, which include
within their terms practically all that belongs to the purpose of God for the earth until the
end of the Millennium. Our purpose is rather to gather the lesson that may be learned for
ourselves, and to see how it is related to the need of the Hebrew believer and the theme of
the epistle.