Genesis 27, a visual study: Isaac is old and his eyes are dim and he tells Esau to hunt game and bring savory food so he may bless him before he dies; Rebekah hears and tells Jacob to bring two young goats so she can make savory food and he can take it to his father and receive the blessing instead; Jacob fears Isaac will feel him and know he is smooth while Esau is hairy but Rebekah puts goatskins on his hands and neck and dresses him in Esau's garments; Jacob goes to Isaac who is suspicious about how quickly the game was found and says the voice is Jacob's voice but the hands are the hands of Esau and blesses him; Esau comes in from the field with his savory food and Isaac trembles greatly and says I have blessed him yes and he shall be blessed; Esau cries with an exceedingly great and bitter cry begging his father to bless him also; Esau hates Jacob and plans to kill him after their father dies; Rebekah tells Jacob to flee to her brother Laban in Haran, from The Lampstand Project.
Yes, and he shall be blessed.
Isaac wants to bless Esau. Rebekah engineers a deception. Jacob lies to his father three times and receives the blessing. Esau comes in from the field and Isaac trembles with a very great trembling -- he knows what happened. And he says: I have blessed him. Yes, and he shall be blessed. Not consent. Not endorsement. Recognition: the blessing is irrevocable. Everyone is wrong in this chapter. The promise still moves forward. That is the most uncomfortable and most essential thing about grace.
"I have blessed him -- yes, and he shall be blessed."Genesis 27:33 ESV
Genesis 27 does not celebrate Jacob's deception. It does not endorse Rebekah's manipulation or explain away Isaac's attempt to overrule the divine oracle. It shows all of these things with unflinching clarity and lets them stand as what they are: human beings at their most self-serving, maneuvering for the blessing they want, often through means that are beneath them. And through all of it the word spoken before these twins were born -- the older shall serve the younger -- arrives exactly where it was always going. The chapter invites us to read it with discomfort, which is the appropriate response, and to hear in Isaac's trembling recognition the most theologically honest sentence in his story: yes, and he shall be blessed.
The scheme, the near-detection, and the irrevocable word.
From the left: the overheard plan, the goatskins, Jacob going in. At center, the tense exchange -- "the voice is Jacob's, but the hands are Esau's" -- the near-detection that doesn't quite catch. Then the gold box: the irrevocable word, Isaac trembling, yes and he shall be blessed. On the right, Esau's return and his bitter cry. Below: the two blessings -- Jacob's full, Esau's lesser -- and the broken family.
Tap any numbered marker to read its part
Isaac summons Esau.
Isaac is old and his eyes are dim so that he cannot see. He calls Esau his older son and says: I am old; I do not know the day of my death. Take your weapons -- your quiver and your bow -- and go out to the field and hunt game for me, and prepare for me savory food such as I love, and bring it to me so that I may eat, and that my soul may bless you before I die. Rebekah is listening while Isaac speaks to Esau his son.
The request is careful and deliberate. Isaac knows the oracle: the older shall serve the younger. He is, with full consciousness, trying to route around it. He wants to bless Esau before he dies, while Esau is there and ready, before the arrangement can be reversed. The dim eyes are poignant: Isaac has always lived more by touch and taste than by vision, and the chapter will turn on exactly that -- what he can and cannot feel. Rebekah hears everything. The scheme forms in the moment of overhearing.
"Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding."
Let your curse be on me.
Rebekah tells Jacob what she overheard and commands him: go to the flock and bring me two young goats, and I will prepare savory food for your father. You will bring it to him and receive the blessing before he dies. Jacob protests: Esau is a hairy man and I am a smooth man. If my father feels me, I will seem to be mocking him, and bring a curse on myself rather than a blessing. Rebekah says: "Let your curse be on me, my son. Only obey my voice."
"Let your curse be on me" is the most chilling line Rebekah speaks. She is taking the moral weight of the deception onto herself, offering to absorb the consequences. There is love in it -- she is protecting Jacob -- and there is a terrible shortsightedness. She will not see Jacob again after this chapter. The deception she engineers to secure the blessing will cost her her son. The scheme she sets in motion to help Jacob will also make him a fugitive. She does not know this yet. She wraps his hands in goatskins and sends him in.
"For the wisdom of this world is folly with God."
The voice is Jacob's voice.
Jacob goes to his father. Isaac says: who are you, my son? Jacob says: I am Esau your firstborn. Isaac is suspicious immediately: how did you find game so quickly? Jacob says: because the LORD your God granted me success. Isaac: come near that I may feel you, my son. He feels Jacob's hands -- the goatskins. "The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau." He did not recognize him because his hands were hairy like Esau's hands. He asks again: are you really my son Esau? Jacob says: I am.
The passage teeters on the edge for three verses. Isaac is almost certain. His perception is split exactly at the line between the genuine (the voice) and the disguised (the hands). He asks three times; Jacob lies three times. The smell of Esau's garments finally tips Isaac past his doubt, and he blesses Jacob. The blessing is the full Abrahamic blessing: dew of heaven, fatness of the earth, grain and wine, peoples serving him, nations bowing, cursed be those who curse him, blessed be those who bless him. It is everything.
"Man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart."
Yes, and he shall be blessed.
Jacob has barely left when Esau comes in from the field. He makes savory food and brings it to his father: let my father eat and bless me. Isaac trembles with a very great trembling: who are you? Esau says: I am your son, your firstborn, Esau. And Isaac says: who was it then that hunted game and brought it to me, and I ate it all before you came, and I have blessed him? -- "yes, and he shall be blessed." When Esau hears his father's words, he cries with an exceedingly great and bitter cry: bless me, even me also, O my father!
"Yes, and he shall be blessed." It is not a consent or an endorsement; it is a recognition. Isaac understands what happened. He is trembling because he recognizes that the blessing went where it was always going to go -- through deception, through a son who lied to his face -- and it cannot be called back. He blesses Esau with what remains, which is less, and tells him: you will serve your brother, but one day you will break his yoke. Esau hates Jacob and plans to kill him when their father dies. The family is broken. The blessing is irrevocable.
"For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable."
Flee to my brother Laban.
Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing his father had given him. He said to himself: the days of mourning for my father are approaching; then I will kill my brother Jacob. When Rebekah is told of Esau's intentions, she sends for Jacob: flee at once to Laban my brother in Haran, and stay with him a while, until your brother's fury turns away. Why should I be bereft of you both in one day? She then tells Isaac that she cannot bear to see Jacob take a Hittite wife as Esau did, and Isaac sends Jacob away to find a wife among Rebekah's kindred.
Jacob leaves. He will not come home for twenty years. Rebekah, who said "let your curse be on me," will bear the full weight of it: the son she loved and protected is gone, and she will not see him again before she dies. The chapter that began with an aging father hoping to bless his favorite ends with a family shattered -- Isaac deceived, Esau murderous with grief, Jacob a fugitive, Rebekah bereft. The blessing that was always going to Jacob has arrived. And everything it cost is still being paid.
"For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears."
This sentence is spoken by a man who is trembling. The Hebrew says he trembled with a very great trembling -- the only time that construction appears in Genesis, reserved for this single moment of horrified recognition. Isaac has just understood that his son Jacob came to him in disguise, lied to him three times, and received the blessing Isaac intended for Esau. He knows all of this. And then he says: I have blessed him -- yes, and he shall be blessed. There is no reconsideration. There is no calling Jacob back to cancel what was given. Because the blessing was not Isaac's to give in the first place; it was God's to direct. Isaac had intended to route around the divine oracle from chapter 25 -- the older shall serve the younger -- by blessing Esau first, before anything could stop him. He failed. Through deception, through the crooked choices of Rebekah and Jacob, through the most morally compromised transaction in the patriarchal narrative, the blessing went where God said it would go. "Yes, and he shall be blessed" is Isaac's trembling acknowledgment of a sovereign grace that will not be redirected even by a patriarch's preference, even by deception, even by the worst of everyone's behavior. The blessing is irrevocable not because Jacob deserved it but because God spoke it before they were born. Paul will cite this chapter's background in Romans 9: "not because of works but because of him who calls." That is the only explanation for why the blessing stands. It was never about Jacob's worthiness. It was about the word of the God who does not revoke his calling.
The blessing that outlasts us all.
Genesis 27 is the most morally uncomfortable chapter in the Abraham-Isaac-Jacob cycle. Everyone is wrong: Isaac trying to outmaneuver the divine oracle, Rebekah engineering a deception, Jacob executing it, Esau reaping what the chapter 25 trade began to sow. And through all of it -- through every crooked choice, every lie, every act of manipulation -- the blessing moves exactly where the God of chapter 25 said it would move.
That is not comfort for Jacob's deception, which will cost him twenty years of exile and a lifetime of consequences. It is not comfort for Rebekah, who never sees her beloved son again. It is not comfort for Esau, whose tears are real and whose grief is real. But it is the truth that the chapter insists on: the blessing of God is not finally dependent on the worthiness of the one who receives it. "I have blessed him -- yes, and he shall be blessed." The trembling patriarch recognized, in the worst moment of his fatherhood, that what God has said will stand. The gifts and calling of God are irrevocable. Not because of Jacob. In spite of Jacob. Because of the God who spoke before Jacob existed.
"I have blessed him -- yes, and he shall be blessed."Genesis 27:33 ESV
All scripture quoted from the English Standard Version. A study from The Lampstand Project.