Holly Bible - KJV with Concise Commentaries by Z Selam - HTML preview
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blessed him he gave him a charge, saying, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan;
This passage concerning Esau comes in in the midst of Jacob's story, either, 1. To show the influence of a good example. Esau, though the greater man, now begins to think Jacob the better man, and disdains not to take him for his pattern in this particular instance of marrying with a daughter of Abraham. The elder children should give to the younger an example of tractableness and obedience; it is bad if they do not: but it is some alleviation if they take the example of it from them, as Esau here did from Jacob. Or, 2. To show the folly of an after-wit. Esau did well, but he did it when it was too late, He saw that the daughters of Canaan pleased not his father, and he might have seen that long ago if he had consulted his father's judgment as much as he did his palate. And how did he now mend the matter? Why, truly, so as to make bad worse.
(1.) He married a daughter of Ishmael, the son of the bond-woman, who was cast out, and was not to inherit with Isaac and his seed, thus joining with a family which God had rejected, and seeking to strengthen his own pretensions by the aid of another pretender.
(2.) He took a third wife, while, for aught that appears, his other two were neither dead nor divorced.
(3.) He did it only to please his father, not to please God. Now that Jacob was sent into a far country Esau would be all in all at home, and he hoped so to humour his father as to prevail with him to make a new will, and entail the promise upon him, revoking the settlement lately made upon Jacob. And thus,
[1.] He was wise when it was too late, like Israel that would venture when the decree had gone forth against them (Nu 14:40), and the foolish virgins, Mt 25:11.
[2.] He rested in a partial reformation, and thought, by pleasing his parents in one thing, to atone for all his other