The Sweet Spot

“Then Isaac trembled very violently.”

If Isaac had gotten his way, Esau would have become a great nation. Jacob’s offspring would have served his elder brother’s children. Maybe Hamas would be targeting Edomites today instead of Israelis.

If Isaac had gotten his way, God would have undeservedly blessed a son who despised his own birthright, and back-burnered the son who valued it.

If Isaac had gotten his way, one of three unbelieving women would have entered the Messianic line in its second generation, though even their father-in-law detested their habits and characters.

Most importantly, if Isaac had gotten his way, he would have successfully thwarted God’s revealed will. The divine promise to Rebekah would have failed.

Spoiler alert: Isaac didn’t get his way. It wasn’t for lack of trying.

Isaac Trembled Violently

Why did Isaac tremble so violently upon discovering he had inadvertently given his blessing to Jacob instead of Esau? It could be that he experienced the rage and frustration we all feel when we don’t get something we want very, very badly. It could have been the shock of realizing his wife and younger son had conspired to deceive him. It could be that he empathized viscerally with his elder son’s pain at being twice outmaneuvered by his brother.

On the other hand, it could be that the sovereignty of God hit him like a ton of bricks, and he suddenly realized that the Lord had preserved him from doing something genuinely evil and self-willed. Okay, probably not, though we’d like to hope so.

The scripture does not tell us why Isaac trembled violently, but perhaps you have had one of those moments too, when it dawns on you that but for the grace of God you would have followed your own appetites down the road to disaster. I know I have. Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game. How shabby and carnal a reason is that? Isaac’s elder son had nothing more impressive to commend him than appalling taste in women, a knack for killing things and being a dab hand in the kitchen. That last one is not to be sniffed at, admittedly. Then again, Esau’s mother could make goat taste like game. There’s little doubt who was the real culinary whiz in that family.

Setting the Stage

If we were all novelists instead of just readers, we might have picked up on the subtleties with which the sovereign God laid the foundation for the accomplishment of his purposes in prior chapters of Genesis. We might begin to clue in as early as Abraham’s strange insistence on finding Isaac a wife from his own family hundreds of miles away rather than one of the local girls. We might wonder at the unlikely timing of Rebekah’s appearance in response to a servant’s prayer, or at Rebekah’s willingness to leave everything she knew to marry a man she had never met in a foreign country. It might strike us as odd that God would reveal the truth that “the older shall serve the younger” to the prophet’s wife rather than the prophet. God planted a manipulator in Isaac’s house decades before she engineered Esau’s downfall and her husband’s embarrassment, and he stoked her up with a prophetic word she believed with all her heart.

Did the Lord need Rebekah’s connivance to accomplish his will? Of course not. As Job once confessed, “I know that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.” Rebekah paid a stiff price for her trickery, having to send away the son she loved to save his life. There’s no indication in scripture that she ever saw Jacob’s face again.

No, God didn’t tempt Rebekah to deceive her husband. But he certainly used it.

He Will Have His Way

There’s a sweet spot in there somewhere between trying to hotwire the will of God in the strength of the flesh and being steamrollered by it. Neither is a good place to be. The lesson we learn repeatedly in scripture is that God will have his way with us regardless.

How much more blessed to simply cooperate with him. Mary was in the sweet spot when she said, “Let it be to me according to your word.” Amen to that.