05.033. Chapter 28
Isaac blessed Jacob and sent him to Paddan- Aram, a district of Mesopotamia, so that he would find a wife among his mother’s people rather than among the Canaanites (Genesis 28:1-5). This inspired Esau to try to regain his father’s blessing by marrying a daughter of Ishmael (Genesis 28:8-9). It was a case of doing evil (multiplying wives) that good might come. At Bethel, Jacob had a wonderful dream in which he saw a ladder or staircase extending from earth to heaven. This suggested “the fact of a real, uninterrupted, and close communion between heaven and earth, and in particular between God in His glory and man in his solitude.”17 In His encounter with Nathanael, the Lord Jesus made an apparent reference to this incident and connected it with His second advent and millennial glory (John 1:51). At this time when Jacob’s heart was probably filled with regret for the past, loneliness in the present, and uncertainty about the future, God graciously made a covenant with him as He had with Abraham and Isaac (Genesis 28:13-15). Notice the promise of companionship: “I am with thee”; safety: “I will keep thee all places whither thou goest”; guidance: “I will bring thee again into this land”; and personal guarantee: “I will not leave thee until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.” Conscious that he had met God there, Jacob changed the name of the place from Luz (“separation”) to Bethel (“house of God”) (Genesis 28:19). “Prior to Bethel, where Jacob was ‘surprised by joy’ and ‘transfixed by awe,’ he had had no personal contact with God. Everything had come to him second-hand.”18
Genesis 28:20-22 seem to present Jacob as one who was bargaining with God. He was actually bargaining for less than God had promised (Genesis 28:14). His faith was not strong enough to take God at His word, so he had to make his tithe conditional on God’s performance of His part of the agreement. Another interpretation, however, is that the “if is simply an inherent part of all Hebrew oaths and that Jacob was binding himself to give a tenth unconditionally (see Numbers 21:2; Judges 11:30-31; 1 Samuel 1:11 for similar Hebrew oaths).