Holly Bible - KJV with Concise Commentaries by Z Selam - HTML preview
Download the book in PDF, ePub, Kindle for a complete version.
father it upon God, and to use his name in the cheat (Ge 27:20): The Lord thy God brought it to me. Is this Jacob? Is this Israel indeed, without guile? It is certainly written, not for our imitation, but for our admonition. Let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. Good men have sometimes failed in the exercise of those graces for which they have been most eminent.
20 And Isaac said unto his son, how is it that thou hast found it so quickly,
my son? And he said, because the Lord thy God brought it to me.
21 And Isaac said unto Jacob, Come near, I pray thee, that I may feel
thee, my son, whether thou be my very son Esau or not.
22 And Jacob went near unto Isaac his father; and he felt him, and said,
The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.
Isaac was at first dissatisfied, and would have discovered the fraud if he could have trusted his own ears; for the voice was Jacob's voice, Ge 27:22. Providence has ordered a strange variety of voices as well as faces, which is also of use to prevent our being imposed upon; and the voice is a thing not easily disguised nor counterfeited. This may be alluded to illustrate the character of a hypocrite. His voice is Jacob's voice, but his hands are Esau's. He speaks the language of a saint, but does the works of a sinner; but the judgment will be, as here, by the hands.
23 And he discerned him not, because his hands were hairy, as his
brother Esau’s hands: so he blessed him.
At length he yielded to the power of the cheat, because the hands were hairy (Ge 27:23), not considering how easy it was to counterfeit that circumstance; and now Jacob carries it on dexterously, sets his venison before his father, and waits at table very officiously, till dinner is done, and the blessing comes to be pronounced in the close of this solemn feast. That which in some small degree extenuates the crime of Rebekah and Jacob is that the fraud was intended, not so much to hasten the fulfilling, as to prevent the thwarting, of the oracle of God: the blessing was just going to be put upon the wrong head, and they thought it was time to bestir themselves. Now let us see how Isaac gave Jacob his blessing, Ge 27:26-29.