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STORY XXII.

REBEKAH AND JACOB PREPARE TO DECEIVE

ISAAC.

At the time when Esau despised his birthright and sold it to Jacob, their father Isaac was living at Beer-sheba. On account of a distressing famine, he went to Gerar, in the land of the Philistines to obtain food, and at the command of God, continued to reside there.

While at Gerar, God renewed with Isaac the covenant which he had made with Abraham. "Sojourn in this land, and I will be with thee, and will bless thee; for unto thee and unto thy seed I will give all these countries, and will perform the oath which I sware unto Abraham thy father. And I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries, and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed: Because that Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws."

Some time after this, Isaac returned to Beer-sheba, where he continued to dwell; his sons Esau and Jacob still living with him. The former, forty years of age, caused much grief to his parents, by marrying Judith, and also Bashemath, from among the Hittites, an idolatrous and wicked people who lived in their neighbourhood.—It must always be a great affliction to pious parents, when their children in spite of their advice and remonstrance, become connected in marriage with those who do not love and obey God, but take pleasure in sinning against him.

Isaac was now about one hundred and thirty-five years of age, and his two sons seventy-five.

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His eyes were dim, so that he could not see;" which showed that, advancing in years, his bodily infirmities were fast increasing upon him.

He thought it probable his death could not be far distant. He wished before he died, to bestow his peculiar blessings upon Esau, as his first-born, and whom he still regarded with the fondest affection. We have reason to think, too, that he was very unwilling that Jacob should have the birthright;

although he must have known that he was in possession of it, by purchasing it of Esau. He might have thought the whole transaction a very unfair one on the part of Jacob. Still he ought not to have forgotten what God had revealed to his wife Rebekah, before the two sons were born, and which she had doubtless communicated to him,-that the elder of them should serve the younger.

One day, he called Esau. "Behold now," said he, addressing him, "I am old, I know not the day of my death. Now therefore take, I pray thee, thy weapons, thy quiver, and thy bow, and go out to the field, and take me some venison. And make me savory meat, such as I love, and bring it to that I may eat; that my soul may bless

me,

thee before I die."

Esau immediately went out to hunt for the game, and comply with his father's request.

Rebekah heard what her husband said, and instantly conceived the design of preventing him from bestowing his peculiar blessing upon Esau, as his first-born son. She was right in thinking that, after what God had revealed to her, and the contempt which Esau had cast upon his birthright, by

selling it to Jacob for a mess of pottage, their father ought not to act as he was preparing to do. She ought to have expostulated with him, and endeavoured to lead him to do his duty. And this, with prayer to God for his blessing, in all probability, she would have effected.

But she took a very different course, and a very sinful one; as those persons always do, who strive to accomplish their purposes by deception and falsehood. She told Jacob privately all that she had heard, and gave him this injunction; "Go now to the flock, and fetch me from thence two good kids of the goats; and I will make them savory meat for thy father, such as he loveth. And thou shalt bring it to thy father, that he may eat, and that he may bless thee before his death."

Jacob made no objection to what his mother proposed, as wrong in itself; thus showing that he also most sinfully disregarded the obligations they were both under, to deal truly with Isaac in all that they said and did to him. The temptation was a very powerful one, to prevent Esau's receiving the blessing of the first-born from his father, and

of securing it, and Isaac's sanction of the transfer of the birthright to Jacob. It was too great for the mother and her favourite son to resist.

He was startled at the proposal, on account of the apparent impossibility of deceiving his father, and of the danger of detection to which he would be exposed; but not on account of the guilt, in the sight of God, which he would incur by complying with it. His reply was; "Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man. My father peradventure will feel me, and I shall seem to him as a deceiver, and I shall bring a curse upon me, and not a blessing."

Rebekah was not to be dissuaded from her purpose by any such apprehensions. Even should the detection take place, which, however, she thought she had an ingenious mode of preventing, she was prepared to run the risk. With a daring defiance of the displeasure of God, she exclaimed; "Upon me be thy curse, my son; only obey my voice, and go fetch me them."

Jacob did as his mother directed; and she took great pains to prepare the meat, so as to make it resemble venison as much as pos

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