Genesis 25:33

Jacob said, Swear, &c.— Jacob's conduct, however pious in other instances, is not to be justified in this particular; for he ought not to have taken advantage of his brother's necessity; and if he saw him profanely offering to sell the privileges of his birth-right, it was his duty to have dissuaded him from it: and therefore, it is remarkable, that although God had determined to confine his grand spiritual covenant to the Israelites, and to prefer them in many things to the Edomites; yet Jacob himself enjoyed no personal advantage, as to temporal things, above Esau. Let it be observed, that though the sacred historian relates this account, he does not commend Jacob, or propose it at all for imitation.

REFLECTIONS.—As in the womb Jacob caught his brother by the heel, and got thereby the name of Jacob, we here see how well he deserved it in his dealing with Esau. Jacob knew the value of the birth-right; and the promise which Rebekah must before in love have told him, might embolden him to attempt obtaining it. Now therefore, when occasion offers, he seizes it. Observe,

1. The critical time. When Esau returned hungry from hunting, and, seeing Jacob with a delightful red mess of pottage, begs to have it; then he proposes the bargain; if he would sell his birth-right, the mess should be his own. Note; It was bad in Jacob to take advantage of his brother's necessity. Though it might not be pride that made him covet the birth-right, but regard for the spiritual blessings, yet we may not seek even good things by wrong means.

2. Esau's consent to the bargain. Hunger pleaded; and though in no danger of death, the strength of his appetite suggested so weak an excuse. The birth-right is trivial in his eyes; and there is little or no doubt but he thought that he was safe in Isaac's regard, and therefore should lose nothing by the pretended sale. Thus profaneness is his character. Note; (1.) Gratifying sensual appetites is the ruin of men's souls. (2.) The pleasures of sense for a moment will ill repay the loss of God's blessing and favour.

3. Esau's carelessness afterward. As if nothing had happened, he went his way, and never troubled himself about the matter. Note; To be negligent about spiritual blessings is the sure way to be deprived of them.

Reflections on the death of Abraham.

One perceives nothing at first here which can either strike the eyes or shock our reason. Abraham dies: what can be more common? He dies at the age of one hundred and seventy-five years. There is more cause to be surprized at his having attained to such an age, than that he did not go beyond it. His children bury him. This is the duty of a pious family; a duty which is numbered even among heathen virtues. They chose for his sepulchre that cave of Machpelah, of which we have made mention before, and which he bought of the Hittites. It was the only place which belonged to him in all the land of Canaan, and the most proper to receive his precious remains.
Nevertheless this event (in which, at first sight, there appears nothing extraordinary) opens either a source of difficulties which seem to run counter to the greatest truths of religion, or a fruitful source of evidences for establishing the same, according to the different views in which we consider it.
This Abraham, whom we see expiring, and his body going to be interred, was the favourite of Heaven, to whom God himself was pleased to say, I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward, ch. Genesis 15:1. Who would have thought that the land of Canaan (though flowing with milk and honey) should exhaust the whole meaning of the promise made to Abraham by the mouth of God himself?

I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward. It is GOD that says this: it is GOD who says it to the most faithful of men: and yet we find nothing in all the temporal blessings showered upon Abraham, comparable either with the greatness of that God who made the promise, or with the faithfulness of that servant to whom the promise was made.

The God who made the promise was the God of nature; he that made the world, and whose voice alone can produce a thousand new worlds, and cause them to appear with splendour. What! shall a few oxen, a few sheep, a few acres of land, a few years of life, exhaust the liberality of a God so mighty and so bountiful?
The servant to whom the promise is made, is a man, and therefore a sinner; and consequently in no condition to pretend to a reward, strictly so called, for his pains and labour: but, on the other hand, he is the father of believers; he is the pattern of faith and obedience to all ages. For God, he forsook his estate, his country, his family; for God, he believed that which was above belief, and hoped against hope; for God, he sacrificed his only son Isaac; he surmounted that invincible tenderness of parents for their children; he prepared the funeral pile, he drew the knife, he lifted up his arm, and was going to pierce the breast of that innocent victim, if the God who pronounced the decree had not himself revoked it. Who can think, after all this, that the land of Canaan (though flowing with milk and honey) was the blessing wherewith a God, so mighty and so bountiful, did crown the life of a servant so faithful and so obedient?

Nay more; that promise made by God to Abraham, to give him the possession of the land of Canaan, if taken in a literal sense, was not even fulfilled. 'Tis true, Abraham had great riches; but his life was crossed with thousands of afflictions; the division of his kindred, domestic quarrels, and continual fatigues in his travels. Let a man search the life of that patriarch for a period in which the promise made to him was accomplished, he will find none; he will find, indeed, that Abraham was a stranger, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise; testifying even hereby that they waited for a better country than that of which the possession had been expressly promised them. But we shall see, that, of all that country, he did not possess but a few inches of ground for a sepulchre, and that too he bought for a sum of money.

A sepulchre, bought by Abraham for a sum of money. One cannot too much observe this circumstance of the Sacred History: those great promises made to Abraham; those conquests which he himself was to make; that possession which seemed to be secured to him; that country of which he was to be the sovereign; all this ended in a little parcel of land, to make a burying-place. Is it thus, O my God, that thou fulfillest thy promises!—Or rather, who cannot deduce, even from all these difficulties, convincing proofs of the immortality of Abraham's soul, and for the resurrection of his body? I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. This promise cannot be fulfilled in the grave, among worms, infection, and rottenness; it must therefore be Abraham immortal in his soul, and Abraham raised again, who must verify the accomplishment: God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

It is true, this way of reasoning seems liable at least to one objection of another kind, and only to prove at most the immortality of Abraham's soul, but not the resurrection of his body. The body is, by its nature, incapable of happiness—the seat of that is in the soul alone. God will have been sufficiently freed from his promise, by bestowing upon Abraham all that happiness whereof his soul is susceptible, without being obliged to raise the body of that patriarch from the dust; since that did not contribute, even here below, to the happiness of Abraham, but by a particular dispensation of Providence.

This objection is not to be despised: it tends to make us know the true greatness of man, and to convince us that what is the most noble and most sublime in us is not this material flesh, which is an ingredient in our being, but the soul, which exalts us to the nature of pure spirits, not clothed with mortal bodies.
Men are not pure spirits. A pure spirit is capable of perfect happiness without the concurrence of matters forasmuch as it has no natural connection therewith. But man is not such a pure spirit. God, in composing him of these two substances, has even thereby decreed, that the one cannot be perfectly happy without the other. Accordingly, it is to be presumed, that whatever happiness we enjoy in the interval between our death and resurrection, though that same happiness may infinitely exceed all that we could have upon earth, yet we shall not be completely happy till after the re-union of the soul and the body. It is upon this account that so many passages of the Scripture refer the perfection of our happiness to that period.
Wherefore the promise, by which Abraham was assured of perfect happiness, does equally require that his soul should be capable of immortality, and his body of resurrection; of which high blessings if we wish to partake with him, and to have a place in his bosom, in the paradise of God, we must diligently walk in the steps of his faith, and cheerfully resign all things, however dear, at the call of that God who is able to reward all those who diligently seek him. See Saurin's Dissertat.