This article is much harder to write than the Abraham article because I spent so many years hating Jacob. His polygamy and concubinage are disgusting. His scheming Esau out of his birthright, first with food, then by disguising himself as Esau to deceive their father (my favorite patriarch) was lower than low, and his favoritism for Joseph nearly proved deadly. His faith seemed mercenary, as he pledged in Genesis 28 to worship God IF God gave him bread, clothing, and safety on his journey. Even at birth he was grasping for first place.
It’s noteworthy that Jesus himself points out Jacob’s sins. When Jesus first sees Nathanael (Bartholomew) in John 1:47, he says: Behold, an Israelite in whom there is no guile. This is a clear reference to the original Israel (Jacob), who came to Isaac with guile.
The problem with Jacob is that his misdeeds are highlighted in great detail, while his repentance and faith are more subtle. A key passage is Genesis 31:38-42:
These twenty years I have been with you; your ewes and your she-goats have not miscarried, and I have not eaten the rams of your flocks. That which was torn by wild beasts I did not bring to you; I bore the loss of it myself’ of my hand you required it, whether stolen by day or stolen by night. Thus I was; by day the heat consumed me, and the cold by night, and my sleep fled from my eyes. These twenty years I have been in your house; I served you fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your flock, and you have changed my wages ten times. If the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, had not been on my side, surely now you would have sent me away empty-handed. God saw my affliction and the labor of my hands, and rebuked you last night.
Imagine working for the same boss for 20 years in dangerous conditions with your every mistake coming out of your salary, which itself gets changed on the whim of the boss. Imagine living with your in-laws for 20 years. Now combine the two. Would any of us be willing to endure this to build our family? I struggle getting up in the middle of the night with my kids, working during a hot summer day, or spending a night at my in-laws’ even once.
It is important to remember that Jacob started life as a mama’s boy who was goaded by his mother to steal his brother’s fatherly blessing, and likely the birthright as well. Jacob was probably also resentful of his father’s favoritism for Esau, which was due mainly to Isaac’s love for savory meat dishes (this is mentioned five times in Scripture).
Moreover, Jacob pays dearly for decades, and bears it like a man.
Immediately following his deception of Isaac he is forced to flee home, never to see his mother again. As with Abraham, such a journey all by itself is highly dangerous.
And now for the polygamy. Jacob worked in good faith for Laban (shown as greedy even in the days when Abraham’s servant visited to find a wife for Isaac in Genesis 24) for seven years to earn Laban’s blessing to marry Rachel. Then Laban tricks Jacob into marrying (and consummating) with Leah, twisting the knife by saying “It is not so done in our country to give the younger before the first-born”. This is Scripture’s way of showing the punishment Jacob receives for his own deception in taking what belonged to his elder brother.
What was the right thing for Jacob to do at that point? Forego marrying Rachel, whom he had loved for seven years and who presumably had pledged herself to him for that same time? Divorce Leah and leave her without a husband and sons to support her, at the mercy of her mercenary father and brothers? She was already unmarried at an older age: no man would have taken her after she consummated a marriage with Jacob. Remain legally married to Leah but only have relations with Rachel? Judging by Leah purchasing a night with her husband with her son’s mandrakes, this seems close to what happened.
And at least Jacob married Semite wives as commanded by Abraham and Rebekah. Esau’s Canaanite wives made his parents miserable, and Judah’s Canaanite wives gave rise to wicked sons.
The liaisons with the maids Bilhah and Zilpah were unforced errors, but those were prompted by Rachel and Leah. Even then, Jacob is punished for one of them when his eldest son Reuben sleeps with Bilhah to show the family who’s boss once his father grows old.
The punishments don’t stop there. In returning home to find his brother Esau approaching with 400 men, Jacob sends more than 550 animals as a gift to Esau. Jacob is essentially restoring the material wealth that came from the blessing Jacob stole from Esau. This after Jacob has already had to work for 20 hard years to obtain such wealth.
Here Jacob illustrates full awareness that this wealth and success is not of his own making:
I am not worth of the least of all the mercy and all the faithfulness which you have shown to your servant, for with only my staff I crossed this Jordan; and now I have become two companies (Genesis 32:10)
The genuine reconciliation that follows between brothers is a first in Scripture and the answer to Jacob’s prayer for protection.
Jacob’s punishments aren’t over though. His sons Simeon and Levi put the whole family in great danger by deceiving the men of Shechem into circumcision and then murdering them in retaliation for Shechem’s rape of Jacob’s daughter Dinah. One senses Jacob’s flair for deception flourishing in uncontrolled fashion into the next generation.
His favoritism is heavily punished when he loses his son Joseph for many years to the murderous actions of his other, offended sons. That he is deceived by his elder sons dipping Joseph’s coat in the blood of a beast illustrates that this is yet another punishment for Jacob’s use of animal skins to deceive his own father.
His favorite wife Rachel also dies relatively young. The positioning of her death from childbirth in the same chapter as Jacob’s command to put away the foreign gods, together with the earlier mention of Rachel stealing her father’s household gods and then pretending to be menstruating so as not to get caught, makes it seem as though her death is a punishment for her idolatry.
With Joseph gone, Jacob is left with his less loved wife and concubines, and a hornet’s nest of unstable sons including the earlier examples and then Judah. Judah’s eldest sons are so wicked that God kills them, and then Judah himself sleeps with his own daughter-in-law.
This is probably why Jacob tells Pharaoh in Genesis 47:9:
Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life.
Then comes a dreadful famine, which deprives Jacob of his sons amidst journeys to Egypt and then incarceration by Joseph.
Still, the patriarchs’ story comes full circle in Genesis 46, when Jacob takes his family to Egypt, this time on God’s command (unlike Abraham in Chapter 12). Jacob offers a sacrifice to God in spite of the ongoing famine. This is the final time God appears directly to Israel until the time of Moses 430 years later. By now, his sons have mostly repented of their sinful ways, most especially Judah.
As with Abraham and the Hittites, Jacob blesses Pharaoh, and he and Joseph go out of their way to maintain peace with the Egyptians. This is in tune with how Jacob endeavored to keep the peace with the men of Shechem even after Shechem raped his daughter.
Jacob’s final words to his sons in Genesis 49 are prophetic and impartial. The eldest three sons are cursed: Reuben for his sexual aggression, Simeon and Levi for their wrath on Shechem. Judah, the model of repentance, is given the royal line of descendants that produces King David and Christ himself.
Finally, Jacob commands his sons to bury him in the cave in the field at Mach-pe’lah, which Abraham purchased from Ephron. Jacob reveals that there he buried Leah. After all is said and done, it is Leah and not Rachel who is given pride of place in the family tomb that also holds Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Rebekah. I think we are meant to gather that Jacob solidified his marriage with Leah later in life and repented of his initial neglect of his first wife.
What are we to make of all of this?
Jacob’s example is harder to learn from than Abraham’s or Isaac’s. Jacob’s story is a story of faith like Abraham’s, but also a cautionary tale of how God’s justice and providence can draw good from evil. This is borne out in Jacob’s own life, where deception leads to exile and betrayal, followed by reconciliation and a new homeland, followed by more deception and violence, followed ultimately by peace. It is also borne out in Israel’s later history of dwelling in plenty in Egypt followed by (largely self-imposed) slavery, followed by a journey to freedom and the Mosaic covenant, followed by more sin and violence. It is a story of the real opportunity each generation has to learn hard lessons about what is right, the consequences of sin, and the hard-won fruits of repentance.
If an ambitious deceiver like Jacob can receive divine visions and become the father of a holy nation after being chastened by God’s justice, then there is hope for us as well, no matter how many times we find ourselves in the confessional wrestling with God as we confront our habitual sins.
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