The injustice of substitution

This week's verses are Genesis 27:6-35:

Rebekah said to her son Jacob, “Look, I overheard your father tell your brother Esau, ‘Bring me some wild game and prepare for me some tasty food. Then I will eat it and bless you in the presence of the Lord before I die.’ Now then, my son, do exactly what I tell you! Go to the flock and get me two of the best young goats. I’ll prepare them in a tasty way for your father, just the way he loves them. Then you will take it to your father. Thus he will eat it and bless you before he dies.”

“But Esau my brother is a hairy man,” Jacob protested to his mother Rebekah, “and I have smooth skin! My father may touch me! Then he’ll think I’m mocking him and I’ll bring a curse on myself instead of a blessing.” So his mother told him, “Any curse against you will fall on me, my son! Just obey me! Go and get them for me!”

So he went and got the goats and brought them to his mother. She prepared some tasty food, just the way his father loved it. Then Rebekah took her older son Esau’s best clothes, which she had with her in the house, and put them on her younger son Jacob. She put the skins of the young goats on his hands and the smooth part of his neck. Then she handed the tasty food and the bread she had made to her son Jacob.

He went to his father and said, “My father!” Isaac replied, “Here I am. Which are you, my son?” Jacob said to his father, “I am Esau, your firstborn. I’ve done as you told me. Now sit up and eat some of my wild game so that you can bless me.” But Isaac asked his son, “How in the world did you find it so quickly, my son?” “Because the Lord your God brought it to me,” he replied. Then Isaac said to Jacob, “Come closer so I can touch you, my son, and know for certain if you really are my son Esau.” So Jacob went over to his father Isaac, who felt him and said, “The voice is Jacob’s, but the hands are Esau’s.” He did not recognize him because his hands were hairy, like his brother Esau’s hands. So Isaac blessed Jacob. Then he asked, “Are you really my son Esau?” “I am,” Jacob replied. Isaac said, “Bring some of the wild game for me to eat, my son. Then I will bless you.” So Jacob brought it to him, and he ate it. He also brought him wine, and Isaac drank. Then his father Isaac said to him, “Come here and kiss me, my son.” So Jacob went over and kissed him. When Isaac caught the scent of his clothing, he blessed him, saying,

“Yes, my son smells
like the scent of an open field
which the Lord has blessed.
May God give you
the dew of the sky
and the richness of the earth,
and plenty of grain and new wine.
May peoples serve you
and nations bow down to you.
You will be lord over your brothers,
and the sons of your mother will bow down to you.
May those who curse you be cursed,
and those who bless you be blessed.”

Isaac had just finished blessing Jacob, and Jacob had scarcely left his father’s presence, when his brother Esau returned from the hunt. He also prepared some tasty food and brought it to his father. Esau said to him, “My father, get up and eat some of your son’s wild game. Then you can bless me.” His father Isaac asked, “Who are you?” “I am your firstborn son,” he replied, “Esau!” Isaac began to shake violently and asked, “Then who else hunted game and brought it to me? I ate all of it just before you arrived, and I blessed him. He will indeed be blessed!”

When Esau heard his father’s words, he wailed loudly and bitterly. He said to his father, “Bless me too, my father!” But Isaac replied, “Your brother came in here deceitfully and took away your blessing.”  

 

We often read verses like these in the Bible from the perspective of the "main character," who in this case is Jacob. But read them again from the perspective of Esau or Isaac, and they're heartbreaking! Rebekah and Jacob are like movie villains! What kind of scoundrel is willing to cheat their own husband or father or brother?

Poor Isaac feels so betrayed by his own son that he begins to shake violently. Have you ever been that emotionally affected by something someone did to you? And Esau wails loudly and bitterly. Isaac has waited his whole life to leave something to his favorite son and now he has nothing. His life's savings has been embezzled out from under him at an age where he'll never be able to make it back. And Esau's whole future is destroyed, his inheritance eaten up by his backstabbing brother.

This isn't some childhood prank. People end up in prison for years for setting up scams like that now. If we didn't know that we were supposed to root for Jacob, we'd probably be hoping for the story to play out like a crime movie or an action drama, where justice or violent revenge is played out at the end. But none of that happens. 

Jacob walks away with his father's life savings, his brother is left destitute, and his mother acts as his accomplice to help him escape. There is no justice in their world.

In this story, God is getting us used to the idea of substitution. Many generations later, his son Jesus would substituted for us on the cross. Instead of goatskin he's clothed in our sin. Instead of profiting from the switch, he loses everything to make sure we have his inheritance. It's completely backwards!

In no way is justice served in either of these substitutions. Jacob deserves death but he is blessed to be able to carry on the family line that makes the way for Jesus to go to the cross for us. And we deserve eternal damnation for our failures and shortcomings, but instead we'll be blessed eternally with life in abundance despite our sin.

It's hard to read the story of Jacob without feeling for poor Isaac and Esau. It should be just as hard to read the gospel without feeling the same sense of injustice for what Jesus had to endure. We want a world where things are just and fair, and we fight viciously sometimes to try to build that world ourselves. But thank God we don't always live in that world, or we would bear the full punishment for our sins!

Israel's line began in selfish treachery, but it was redeemed and made complete by Jesus' act of selfless abandonment of justice. Neither Jacob, nor Esau, nor Isaac got what they deserved. But neither did we nor Jesus. When pushing for justice, as we should, we should not push harder than we do for the grace that redeems injustice. Much as we want justice, there is no substitute for grace!