And Isaac called Jacob, and I'm reading now
at verse 1 again, and I'll read on
from here.
And Isaac called Jacob, and blessed him, and
charged him, and said unto him, Thou shalt
not take a wife of the daughters of
Canaan.
Arise, go to Padnerim, to the house of
Bethuel, thy mother's father, and take thee a
wife from Thance, of the daughters of Laban,
thy mother's brother.
And God Almighty bless thee, and make thee
fruitful, and multiply thee, that thou mayest be
a multitude of people.
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.
Now, obviously, Isaac understands that the blessing that
had been given of God was transferred to
him, and now he understands it's to be
passed on to his son Jacob.
Verse 5, And Isaac sent away Jacob, and
he went to Padnerim unto Laban, son of
Bethuel, the Syrian, the brother of Rebekah, Jacob's
and Esau's mother.
When you ask the nationality of these people,
you have to say they're Syrians.
That's what they're called here in Scripture.
Now, you could say that actually of Abraham,
that he was a Syrian.
That is the way that you could designate
him.
Sometimes the question is asked, was Abraham a
Jew?
Was he an Israelite?
No, he was not.
He was not an Israelite until we come
to Israel, until you come to Jacob, not
until you see his 12 sons.
The line came from Abraham, but Abraham is
the father.
But you're not going to call Abraham a
Midianite, I hope, and yet he's the father
of the Midianites also.
Now, Isaac sends Jacob away, though, and he's
to make this trip.
Now notice verse 6, "...when Esau saw that
Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away
to Padnerim to take him a wife from
thence, and that as he blessed him, he
gave him a charge, saying, Thou shalt not
take a wife of the daughters of Canaan,
and that Jacob obeyed his father and his
mother, and was gone to Padnerim.
And Esau seeing that the daughters of Canaan
pleased not Isaac his father, then went Esau
unto Ishmael, and took unto the wives which
he had, Mahalath, the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham's
son, the sister of Neba, Joth, to be
his wife."
And here Esau goes out and marries daughters
of Ishmael.
He thinks that will please his father.
You see what a lack of spiritual perception
he had, that the Ishmaelites were as much
rejected as any of the Philistines were rejected,
or any of the Canaanites.