This weekly feature is dedicated to Adventists who are looking for biblical insights into the topics discussed in the Sabbath School lesson quarterly. We post articles which address each lesson as presented in the Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, including biblical commentary on them. We hope you find this material helpful and that you will come to know Jesus and His revelation of Himself in His word in profound biblical ways.
Lesson 9: “Jacob the Supplanter”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- This lesson misses the point that God reiterated His covenant with Abraham to Jacob at Bethel.
- The lesson discusses Jacob’s and Esau’s personality flaws and characteristics in the discussion of who was more pleasing to God, but it does not deal with the fact that God sovereignly chose Jacob over Esau.
- The lesson does not deal with the significance of the ladder to heaven and of Jesus’ using its imagery in John 1:51 when He identified Himself to Nathanael.
Whenever the New Testament refers to “the fathers”, that reference, as all Israel knew, meant Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Sometimes even Joseph is included in that designation—but Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were the patriarchs to whom God articulated His unconditional covenant. Abraham was the first one to receive the covenant from God, as we have frequently discussed—and that covenant is described in Genesis 15.
Abraham’s son Isaac and his second son Jacob also received a restatement of that covenant. God’s promises to Abraham were specific and were first realized through Abraham’s physical descendants, the nation of Israel. The twelve tribes of Israel were named after Jacob’s twelve sons, and from that time onward, Israelites were identified by their tribes. In fact, as we learn in 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles, Israel kept detailed records of all the tribes’ descendants by name.
God didn’t just make a covenant with Abraham and leave the future up to chance; He reiterated His promises to each of the patriarchs, and then, when He finally formed the nation out of the descendants of Jacob’s sons, He kept His promises alive through the oral traditions and the written words of Moses.
This lesson completely ignores God’s faithfulness to keep His covenant alive to the sons He chose to receive the covenant blessings. We have looked at the fact that God chose Isaac, not Ishmael (and not Keturah’s six sons) to be the recipient of the covenant and its promises. Isaac was Abraham’s second son—and this choice of Abraham’s second son instead of his first son to be the recipient of the covenant blessings was God’s deliberate action.
Similarly, Isaac’s wife Rebekah was barren as was Sarah. Isaac prayed for his wife, and she bore twins—but she knew during her pregnancy that the sons were in turmoil between themselves. The lesson doesn’t even deal with her prayer and the Lord’s response to her in Genesis 25:22–26:
The children struggled together within her, and she said, “If it is thus, why is this happening to me?” So she went to inquire of the LORD. And the LORD said to her,
“Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the older shall serve the younger.”
When her days to give birth were completed, behold, there were twins in her womb. The first came out red, all his body like a hairy cloak, so they called his name Esau. Afterward his brother came out with his hand holding Esau’s heel, so his name was called Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when she bore them (Genesis 25:22–26).
God told Rebekah that the younger, second-born son would serve the older one, and that the two would be the progenitors of “two peoples”, two different nations. Again, God sovereignly chose the younger to receive the covenant blessings. The lesson makes much of Jacob deceiving Esau and thus stealing the birthright and the blessing—and indeed, these things are facts. Moreover, they were sinful.
God did not depend upon Jacob’s identity as a deceiver to fulfill His plan, however. Moreover, these bad actors did not get in the way of God’s plans. God’s plans were already in place, and Jacob’s deception was not a surprise to God. He always intended for the second son of Isaac, just like He intended for the second son of Abraham, to receive the blessings of the firstborn and to receive His covenant promises.
In fact, God stated that He loved Israel, but He hated Esau (Mal. 1:3; Rom 9:13). Importantly, this idea of “hate” and “love” is not primarily an emotional connotation but rather expresses God’s sovereign choice to bestow His covenant blessings on one and not on the other.
It’s interesting that God called Israel “my firstborn son” (Ex. 4:22, Jer. 31:9). God made the Mosaic covenant specifically with Israel (and significantly Jacob’s name was changed to Israel; he became the physical father of the nation) and placed His presence in their midst. He revealed Himself to them.
Yet He ultimately fulfilled His discipline to them and dispersed them because of their intractable apostasy, and He ushered His second-born son, the church comprised mostly of believing gentiles, into the benefits of the new covenant ahead of the nation, His firstborn. Nevertheless, His promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob concerning the land and the kingdom have never been rescinded. In fact, Paul tells us that the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable, and Israel is still beloved for the sake of the fathers (Rom. 11:28, 29).
The pattern of God’s choosing the second son to receive His promises is as old as Cain and Abel, and that pattern continues into the reality of the church. God’s ways are counter-intuitive to human structures.
Jacob’s Ladder
The lesson does not make any mention of the connection and significance of Jacob’s ladder reaching to heaven with the angels ascending and descending with Jesus’ reference of this same thing to Nicodemus. Here is the story of Jacob’s dream:
Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran. And he came to a certain place and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! And behold, the LORD stood above it and said, “I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.” And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”
So early in the morning Jacob took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. He called the name of that place Bethel, but the name of the city was Luz at the first. Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then the LORD shall be my God, and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house. And of all that you give me I will give a full tenth to you” (Genesis 28:10–22).
The lesson make a case comparing Jacob’s dream with the tower at Babel, saying that in Jacob’s case, God came down to Jacob, but at Babel people tried to go up to God and be like Him. This connection is an intellectual exercise that doesn’t make contextual sense. The tower of Babel was God’s judgment on disobedient people who refused to fill the earth and instead worked together to do their own will. God dispersed them in order to do two things: ensure that they DID fill the earth, and stope their evil collaborating which, God said, would be limitless if their words were not confounded. This event is not connected at all to Jacob’s dream of the ladder (or stairway) to heaven.
It IS, however, connected to John 1:47–51 when Jesus called Nathanael to be His disciple:
Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Jesus answered him, “Because I said to you, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than these.” And he said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man” (John 1:47–51).
In Jacob’s dream the Lord God gave His covenant promises to Jacob as He revealed Himself standing above that stairway to heaven on which heavenly beings went from heaven to earth and back again. He was revealing Himself to Jacob as his God and as the One who would give Jacob the covenant blessings promised to Abraham and his descendants. He was showing that He would come to Jacob and would do for him what he could not do for himself. He would be with him and would never leave him, and He would give Jacob all that He promised his father and grandfather.
When Jesus came, the incarnate Son of God, He identified Himself to the guileless Nathanael as the One who was the bridge between heaven and earth. He said that his disciple would see “the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and defending on the Son of Man.”
There is one mediator between God and man—the man Christ Jesus (1 Tim. 2:5), and Jesus revealed Himself as that Mediator. He Himself is the bridge between heaven and earth, between God and man. Where Jacob saw the ladder connecting heaven and earth where he was, Jesus used that image and said the angels were ascending and descending “on the Son of Man”. In other words, Jacob’s ladder had always prefigured the One Mediator: Jesus Christ. The fact that Jesus described the image as being connected to Himself, the Son of Man, was perhaps identifying Himself as the Perfect Israel.
Jacob (later changed to Israel) was a deceiver who had to be changed through an encounter with God. Jesus is the fulfillment of all that Israel’s descendants would foreshadow. Jesus Himself is the fulfillment of Jacob’s dream. Jacob was given a dream that promised God would bridge the disconnection between Himself and sinful man through his descendants. God’s promises to Jacob would result in the Seed promised to Abraham.
Jesus, the fulfillment of that promise, the Seed who was to come, is both God and man in Himself. In Him all righteousness resides, and His human death paid for human sin. His physical resurrection broke the curse of death and gives all who believe spiritual life in Him. Jesus revealed His identity as the reality to which Jacob’s dream pointed, the Perfect Israel who was the Perfect Sacrifice bridging the chasm between this dark and sinful world and the presence of God.
Jesus is the ladder between heaven and earth, and as He gave Jacob the covenant promises that were his because he was Abraham’s descendant, He gave him a picture of his Seed who would restore and reconcile all who believe! †
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