Genesis 25:19-34

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This week we begin a new series on the Life of Jacob: Encountering God in the ordinary and often messy stuff of life. Paul Stevens writes,

The Bible is not an instruction manual that contains principles of spirituality. It is a story—a story about God in search of humankind and his progressive establishment of his kingdom on earth…And the amazing thing about this God is that he condescends to come right into the midst our mundane, messy worlds of home, work and play as the stage where this ‘holy’ work occurs.1

Each week we will discover how God is at work forging Jacob’s identity in the midst of a very dysfunctional and fragmented family, one that may be strikingly similar to our own. Jacob grows up with an emotionally distant father, an overbearing mother and an overpowering brother. Exiled from home, he finds himself with wives he cannot please, a father-in-law who enslaves him and children alienated from God and one another. It is in this messy complexity of family life that Jacob’s identity, vocation and spirituality are forged and hammered in the heat of everyday life from the womb to the tomb. Jacob’s journey is a gateway and invitation for us as well. Anyone could walk up the mountain with Jacob and see their own story reflected multiple times along the way.

In this series, we’re going to do something new. In our Wednesday night class on the Jacob story last year, we worked through reflection questions in small groups. They opened people up and helped them see how God was at work in their life even at the most difficult and painful moments. When we took the Jacob story to Romania last summer, these reflections broke people open in a way we never could have anticipated. Don’t worry, I’m not going to make all of you break open publicly on Sunday mornings. But each week I will include the questions for you to take home, in hopes you’ll work through them and find God in all parts of your story.

So now let’s enter into Jacob’s world the way he did—in the womb. I’m always amazed at how much God shapes and teaches us through carrying children, often by derailing our plans. When Emily and I were newlyweds, I planned to attend seminary. We had hoped to use her teaching credential to support us through this; then, following graduation, we would start our family. But Emily had a strong desire to begin our family immediately. This was scary for a young husband, but I felt I should at least pray about it. I shared my concern with our pastor’s wife, Elaine Stedman. She just smiled and asked, “Why do you think God gives us children when we have no experience and can least afford them?” I said I had no clue. Then came her uncanny wisdom, “So that you learn to trust him!” That is what we did. I had no idea what I was embarking on, but what happened in Emily’s womb did more to shape me spiritually than any seminary could have.

Such is the case with all the patriarchs’ wives: What went on in their wombs would give each a graduate degree in theology. We pick up the story immediately after the story of Abraham, when the narrator gives the account of the wondrous things happening in Rebekah’s womb.

Introduction: The “Toledoth” of Isaac (Gen 25:19–20)

Before describing the birth, the narrator introduces the next round of stories in Genesis with a surprising title:

These are the generations of Isaac, Abraham’s son: Abraham fathered Isaac, and Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel the Aramean of Paddan-aram, the sister of Laban the Aramean, to be his wife. (Gen 25:19–20 esv)

The book of Genesis consists of ten divisions, each titled with the Hebrew term toledot 2. The word is derived from the verb yalad, “to give birth to.” Translated “begettings” or “generations,” it speaks of the family history that issues forth from a particular individual. Thus the “generations of Noah” speak about the stories of Noah’s