Genesis 28:5

The chapter before ends with a family in pieces. Jacob has taken the blessing Isaac meant for Esau (Genesis 27:28–29), Esau plans to kill him, and Rebekah has arranged for Jacob to escape to her brother Laban in Haran (Genesis 27:41–45). Now Isaac calls Jacob to him and blesses him again. The verb is bârak, whose root sense is to kneel and which by implication means to bless. When people bless God it is an act of adoration, and when a man is blessed it is a benefit given to him. Isaac’s blessing is a solemn word of good spoken over his son, a prayer for God’s favour on him as he leaves, and it builds on the blessing Jacob already holds.

Isaac “charged him”, and the verb tsâvâh means to constitute or enjoin, to give a command. What Isaac says next is a weighty instruction that Jacob is bound to obey. Its first words forbid: “Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan.” The word for daughters, bath, is the feminine of the word for son and comes from a root meaning to build. It is used broadly for the women of a people, so “the daughters of Canaan” are the women of the Canaanite peoples.

The family had already felt the cost of such marriages. Esau had married Hittite women, and they “were a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah” (Genesis 26:34–35). Isaac is also following his own father. Abraham made his servant swear to find Isaac a wife among his own kindred, away from the daughters of the Canaanites (Genesis 24:3–4), and the whole of Genesis 24 tells how that wife was found.

The reason is the faith of the family. The Canaanites worshipped many gods and served idols, with practices that were abhorrent to the LORD, among them child sacrifice and ritual prostitution. A wife bears the children and shapes the home, and marriage into those peoples would draw the covenant family toward their gods. The law of Moses later says this plainly when it forbids Israel to marry them: “For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods” (Deuteronomy 7:3–4). Israel’s history bore it out, for in the days of the judges the people took the daughters of the land as wives and served their gods (Judges 3:5–7).

The line Isaac guards is the line of promise. God had promised Abraham a great nation and a blessing for all the families of the earth (Genesis 12:1–3), and through that line the Messiah would one day come. Keeping Jacob’s marriage within the faith of his fathers keeps that people distinct for the work God had given it.

The same concern carries into the New Testament as a principle for believers: “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers” (2 Corinthians 6:14). A husband or wife shapes a believer’s walk with God, the faith of the children, and the faithfulness of the whole household.

Isaac’s command moves at once from where Jacob must stay away from to where he must go. “Arise” is qûwm, to rise up or get up, and here it calls Jacob to get up and set out. “Go” is yâlak, to walk or go. The destination is Padanaram, Paddân ʼĂrâm, the field of Aram in Mesopotamia, the region where Haran lay. Abraham’s family had lived at Haran before they came into Canaan (Genesis 11:31), and Padanaram was Rebekah’s homeland.

Isaac names the household twice over, “the house of Bethuel thy mother’s father” and “Laban thy mother’s brother”. Bᵉthûwʼêl is Jacob’s grandfather and Lâbân his uncle. The repeated “mother’s” ties the whole journey to Rebekah’s side of the family, where Jacob could expect to be welcomed and helped.

“Take thee a wife” uses lâqach, to take in a broad sense that includes to fetch, acquire or receive. Here it means taking a wife in the accepted way, by agreement within the family. The same word bath comes again in “the daughters of Laban”. The plural shows that Laban had more than one daughter, and the story ahead shows that the choice among them would be only partly Jacob’s own.

Among the patriarchs marriage was a family matter. Marrying within the wider family kept property and standing together, and for Abraham’s descendants it also kept their faith and their identity apart from the peoples around them.

In verse 3 Isaac calls on God by the name “God Almighty”, ʼêl Shadday. ʼêl means God, and its definition also carries strength, power and might. Shadday is the title “Almighty”. Its exact meaning is uncertain, and one lexicon gives “All-Sufficient One” as a possible meaning. By that name Isaac commits his son to the God who has the power to do all he has promised. Jacob is leaving home alone and in danger, and the hope that he will become a people rests entirely on God’s power.

The blessing is “make thee fruitful, and multiply thee”. pârâh means to bear fruit or be fruitful, and also to sprout, grow and increase. râbâh in this form means to make many, to increase. The two verbs run together through Genesis as the wording of God’s promise of offspring. God told Abraham, “I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee” (Genesis 17:6), and God himself will later speak to Jacob as God Almighty and tell him to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 35:11). It came true in Egypt, where “the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied” (Exodus 1:7).

The aim is “that thou mayest be a multitude of people”. The word qâhâl comes from a verb meaning to call together or assemble. It means an assembly or congregation, and also a company, multitude or crowd. Isaac prays that Jacob’s descendants will become a great company of people, and so they did. Jacob’s twelve sons became the tribes of Israel, and Jacob in his old age blessed them as Isaac blesses him here.

Verse 4 names what Isaac is handing on: “the blessing of Abraham”. The noun Bᵉrâkâh is formed from bârak and means blessing, and also prosperity, a gift or a present. Here it gathers up everything God promised Abraham. In Genesis 12:1–3 God promised him a great nation, a great name, blessing on those who blessed him and a curse on those who cursed him, and “in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” He promised the land of Canaan to Abraham’s descendants (Genesis 13:15) “for an everlasting possession” (Genesis 17:7–8). Isaac passes the whole of this to Jacob, and with it he names Jacob, the younger son, as the heir of God’s promises.

“To thee, and to thy seed with thee” carries the promise down the generations. zeraʻ means seed or grain, and also offspring. It is the word God used again and again for Abraham’s descendants, and Paul draws out that it is singular and points to Christ.

“That thou mayest inherit the land wherein thou art a stranger” holds a promise and a present fact side by side. yârash means to occupy and possess, in Strong’s words “by driving out previous tenants, and possessing in their place”, and also to inherit. The land is ʼerets. Jacob is a stranger in it, and mâgûwr means a temporary dwelling or a sojourning, the life of someone who lives in a place he does not own. Abraham and Isaac had lived in the land that way before him.

The last words, “which God gave unto Abraham”, rest the promise on God’s own gift. “Gave” is nâthan, the common verb to give, used very widely. “God” here is ʼĕlôhîym, plural in form, which when it names the true God is a plural of majesty. Isaac can promise the land because God has already given it.

“And Isaac sent away Jacob”. shâlach means to send, send away or stretch out. Isaac sends his son off with a purpose, to keep him safe from Esau and to find him a wife among his kin. “And he went”, yâlak, to walk or go: Jacob does what his father says and sets out at once.

The verse then spells out who Laban is: “son of Bethuel the Syrian, the brother of Rebekah”. bên is “son”, from a root meaning to build. Bethuel is called “the Syrian”, that is, an Aramean, because he lived in Aram, the region of Padanaram. That marks Rebekah’s family as one from outside Canaan, the kind of family Isaac wanted Jacob to marry into. The verse closes by naming Rebekah as “Jacob’s and Esau’s mother”, the mother of both sons.

Two concerns sent Jacob on this road. Rebekah feared for his life (Genesis 27:41–45), and Isaac cared about his marriage. God was at work in both. He brings his purposes about through human sin and family conflict, as Joseph would later say to his own brothers: “But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good” (Genesis 50:20). Jacob’s long years away would shape him, and when he came back God met him again at Bethel, the place where he first stopped on this journey, renewed the covenant and named him Israel (Genesis 35:9–15).

The care taken over Jacob’s marriage keeps the line of promise that leads to Christ, whose descent through Abraham and Jacob is traced in Matthew 1:1–17 and Luke 3:23–38. Paul says the promises were made to Abraham and his seed, and “He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ” (Galatians 3:16). Christ is the heir of the blessing Isaac passes to Jacob. Scripture, “foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed” (Galatians 3:8), and through Christ that blessing reaches every nation.

Those who belong to Christ share in it, whatever their earthly descent: “And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:28–29). They become children of God, born “not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12–13), through “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). The “multitude of people” Isaac prayed for finds its fullest answer in “a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues” standing before the throne (Revelation 7:9–10).

Fruitfulness has its spiritual side too. Jesus says, “Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit” (John 15:8). The Spirit brings forth his fruit in believers (Galatians 5:22–23), and the church multiplies as disciples are made of all nations (Matthew 28:19–20). The inheritance, too, reaches beyond Canaan to the new heaven and new earth, where God dwells with his people (Revelation 21:1–4).

Isaac guarded his son’s marriage so that the people of promise would stay holy to God. Christ loved the church and gave himself for it, “that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:25–27). His people are set apart from the world for him, as Jacob was kept from the ways of Canaan.

Jacob leaves his father’s house in a hurry, sent away because of a quarrel he helped to cause, and he carries with him the greatest thing his father had to give. The blessing holds God Almighty, a people beyond counting, a land, and the blessing of Abraham for all the families of the earth. Isaac could give it only because God had given it first, and God goes on keeping it through family quarrels, long journeys and the failings of the very people who carry it.

In Christ that blessing has come to us. By faith we are Abraham’s seed and heirs of the promise, and for now we live like Jacob on the road to Padanaram, strangers who have been promised an inheritance that is certain. The God who prayed through Isaac’s lips that Jacob would become a multitude is gathering that multitude from every nation. And the care Isaac took over his son’s marriage shows how much a household of shared faith matters to God.