Genesis25chapter 25

Genesis 25:1-4

Abraham marries again after Sarah's death and fathers six more sons, so the man whose body Paul calls as good as dead at a hundred years old ends with eight. Midian stands fourth in the list, and Midianite traders will draw Joseph out of a pit and sell him into Egypt, while Moses will marry the daughter of a priest of Midian. The sons Abraham fathers this late do not leave the book; they come back into it at its turning points.

Genesis 25:5-6

The whole estate goes to one son, and the rest are given gifts and sent away while their father is still alive to see it done. Clarke reads the timing as deliberate, so that nobody could contest a settlement in Canaan with Isaac once the funeral was over. The direction is stated twice in one verse, eastward, unto the east country, and Genesis has moved men east before, Cain to a land east of Eden and Lot toward the plain, every time away from the promise.

Genesis 25:7-8

He lives a hundred and seventy-five years, which is exactly a hundred years after he left Haran at seventy-five and came into Canaan. God had told him in chapter 15 that he would go to his fathers in peace and be buried in a good old age, and the wording of that promise comes back here almost unchanged. The text says he was gathered to his people before it says one word about a grave, and it keeps the two apart.

Genesis 25:9-10

his sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him: The two sons who had been apart for most of their lives stand at one grave, and Isaac is named first although he is the younger. Genesis opened with a man killing his brother, and it keeps bringing rival brothers back together over a father's burial, Esau with Jacob at Isaac's grave in chapter 35 and Joseph weeping on the men who sold him. The only ground Abraham holds in the land promised to him is the field he paid four hundred shekels for, and Hebrews says he died in faith without having received the promises.

Genesis 25:11

God blessed his son Isaac: The blessing passes at the funeral, and the sentence carrying it says only that God blessed Isaac and that Isaac lived at the well Lahai-roi. That is the well where the angel found Hagar running away in chapter 16, and she named it for the God who sees her; it is also where Isaac was walking at evening when Rebekah first looked up and saw him. The heir of the covenant settles for years at a well named by the slave woman whose son was sent out of the house.

Genesis 25:12-16

Ishmael is given a division line of his own, and Genesis follows its habit of putting the branch outside the covenant on record and closing it before the chosen line goes on, as it did with Cain before Seth and will do with Esau in chapter 36 before Jacob in chapter 37. Twelve princes are counted out by name, which is exactly what God promised Abraham for this son in chapter 17. His mother is still called Hagar the Egyptian here, decades on, so the reader is not allowed to forget where the household got her. Missler built his whole reading of the book on these eleven division lines, each one narrowing the family further.

Genesis 25:17-18

Ishmael dies at a hundred and thirty-seven and is gathered to his people, which is the phrase used of his father nine verses earlier and used of nobody else in between. His account closes with the words he died in the presence of all his brethren, and that answers the angel's word to Hagar in chapter 16 that he would dwell in the presence of all his brethren. A promise spoken to a runaway slave girl beside a spring is reported as kept, in the same vocabulary, a hundred and thirty-seven years later.

Genesis 25:19-20

The division line of Isaac is announced and then Isaac himself barely appears inside it, because what follows is the story of his sons. Wesley noticed that little is told of the man except as it touches his father before him and his boys after him. Rebekah is introduced again by her family, daughter of Bethuel, sister to Laban, and Laban is planted here long before Jacob needs somewhere to run and twenty years before he gets clear of him.

Genesis 25:21

Rebekah is barren for twenty years, since Isaac married her at forty and was sixty when the twins came. Sarah had waited twenty-five years for Isaac, and Rachel will wait through the whole run of Leah's children before God remembers her, so the line of promise never once arrives by ordinary fertility. Isaac prays rather than reaching for a second woman, which is what his own parents did in chapter 16, and Wesley makes the point that a promise did not excuse him from asking for the thing promised.

Genesis 25:22-23

The fighting starts before either child is born, and Rebekah carries the question to the LORD rather than to a woman who has seen births before. The answer comes back about nations before it is about brothers, two peoples, one stronger than the other, and the elder shall serve the younger. That reversal has already run through Abel over Cain and Isaac over Ishmael, and it will run on through Pharez, through Ephraim under a blind man's crossed hands, and through Judah over Reuben. Paul quotes this line in Romans 9, and Henry reads it as God making a difference between two who had as yet done neither good nor evil.

Genesis 25:24-26

Genesis reports twins twice, here and at the birth of Tamar's sons in chapter 38, and both times the order the elder expects is overturned at the delivery. Esau comes out red and hairy like a garment, and in chapter 27 Jacob will counterfeit exactly that with the skins of kids on his hands and his neck. The second child comes out gripping the heel and is named for it, and Esau throws the name back at him after the blessing is gone, asking whether he was not rightly called a supplanter. Isaac is sixty, and both boys are already described by the things that will tear the house apart.

Genesis 25:27-28

The boys grow into opposite men, one out in the open country and one settled among the tents, and the household divides along the line between them. Isaac loves Esau for one stated reason, that he ate of his venison, and no reason at all is given for Rebekah loving Jacob. That single line about food is the hinge of chapter 27, where an old man's appetite for a dish of meat is the thing the whole deception is built on.

Genesis 25:29-30

Jacob has the pot on when Esau comes in from the field faint, and the older writers are divided over whether that was accident or waiting. Esau asks for the food by its colour, that same red, and does not appear to know or care what is in the bowl. The nickname is fixed from that sentence, and Edom becomes the nation that fights Israel down the centuries, with Obadiah's whole book given over to one oracle against it.

Genesis 25:31-34

This is the first place the word birthright stands in the Bible, and it stands in a demand that one be sold. Jacob makes him swear to it, and Genesis never commends the way he takes it; he will spend twenty years under Laban being handled by the same methods. The last verse runs five verbs at speed, he did eat and drink and rose up and went his way, and then delivers the one verdict the writer pronounces here, that Esau despised his birthright. Hebrews picks up that judgment and calls him a profane man who sold what was his for a single meal.