By Faith Jacob

This is the tenth post in a series from Hebrews 11. You’ll find all the posts done so far in this series listed here.

Next up in our Hebrews 11 list of the Old Testament faithful is Jacob. Here’s what we read:

By faith Jacob, as he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph and worshiped as he leaned on his staff. (Hebrews 11:21 NET)

You’ll find the story of Jacob’s blessing of Joseph’s sons in Genesis 48. If you read through the chapter you’ll see a couple of odd things. First of all, Jacob blessed Joseph’s sons, who were really his grandsons, as if they were his own sons.

Now, as for your two sons, who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you in Egypt, they will be mine. Ephraim and Manasseh will be mine just as Reuben and Simeon are. Any children that you father after them will be yours; they will be listed under the names of their brothers in their inheritance. (Genesis 48:5,6 NET)

And then he purposefully gives the youngest son the firstborn blessing, crossing his hands as he put them on their heads, so that Ephriam, the youngest, has Jacob’s right hand, and Manasseh, the oldest, his left. When Joseph tries to correct things, Jacob insists on doing things this way because he knows that the “younger brother will be even greater and his descendants will become a multitude of nations (Genesis 48: 19).”

This blessing by Jacob, with it’s unexpected features, shows Jacob’s acknowledgment that God fulfills his promises and works his purposes in his own way, and not necessarily according to what people think it ought to be done. And like Abraham and Isaac before him, here at the end of his life Jacob remains confident in the future fulfillment of the promises of God to him.

The writer gives us one more example of Jacob’s faith. At the end of his life, he “worshiped as he leaned on his staff.” If you go back to Genesis looking for the account of this act of worship, you might have trouble finding it. It’s there, right at the end of Genesis 47, but your translation probably says something like this: “…Israel bowed down at the head of his bed.” The quote found here in Hebrews follows the text of the Septuagint, which at this point is different than the Masoretic Hebrew text we use for our Old Testament. Remember that ancient Hebrew was written with no vowels, and those who translated it into the Greek of the Septuagint supplied a set of vowels to come up with the Hebrew word for “staff”, while the text our Old Testament is based on uses a different set of vowels to make the same set of letters read “bed”.  Either way, the point is the same: Jacob worshiped God at the end of his life, right after he asked Joseph to make sure that his body was buried back in Canaan with his fathers. And that act of worship was evidence of Jacob’s faith.

By Faith Isaac

This is the ninth post in a series from Hebrews 11. You’ll find all the posts on this series listed here.

Next on the list of faithful ancients in Hebrews 11 is Isaac.

By faith also Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning the future. (Hebrews 11:20 NET)

When Isaac was an old man, he blessed his two sons, Jacob and Esau. You’ll find Isaac’s blessing of Jacob in Genesis 27:27-29 and his blessing of Esau in Genesis 27:39-40. Both blessings contain predictions of things that God would do long after Isaac’s death. Isaac would not see these future events, but in faith, he understood  the certainty of them.

That Isaac was fooled into blessing Jacob when he thought he was blessing Esau is not important to the point the author is making about Isaac’s faith. What is important is that Isaac spoke in faith concerning a future he could not see.

By Faith Abraham, Again

This is the eighth post in a series from Hebrews 11. You’ll find all the posts done so far in this series here.

After the summary statement in verses 13-16 of this chapter, the author of Hebrews returns to his examination of Abraham’s faith. He’s already explained that it was by faith that Abraham obeyed God and left his homeland, and it was by faith that Abraham conceived his son Isaac. Now the author tells us that it was by faith that Abraham offered up Isaac.

By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac. He had received the promises, yet he was ready to offer up his only son. God had told him, “Through Isaac descendants will carry on your name,” and he reasoned that God could even raise him from the dead, and in a sense he received him back from there. (Hebrews 11:17-19 NET)

You know the story, right? God speaks to Abraham:

Take your son—your only son, whom you love, Isaac—and go to the land of Moriah! Offer him up there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I will indicate to you. (Genesis 22:22)

This was, of course, a test of Abraham’s love for God: Did he love God enough to give up his son? This text in Hebrews, however, points us to something else that was tested—Abraham’s willingness to keep on believing and obeying God  when faced with what appeared to be contradictory revelations from him. God had told Abraham that Isaac’s descendants would carry on Abraham’s name, and Abraham had already received partial fulfillment of that promise in the birth of Isaac. Now God was telling Abraham to offer his son as a burnt offering, an act that would seem to ensure that Isaac would have no descendents at all. At the very least, it would have been confusing.

How did Abraham square God’s command with his promise? He denied neither, but trusted instead in God’s ability to raise the dead. God, Abraham concluded, would be able to fulfill this promise even if Isaac died, because God had the power to raise him to life again. So Abraham determined to obey God’s command.

He was already in the process of offering up Isaac when God intervened in a way he had not anticipated.

But the Lord’s angel called to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!” “Here I am!” he answered. “Do not harm the boy!” the angel said. “Do not do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God because you did not withhold your son, your only son, from me.” (Genesis 22: 11,12 NET)

God provided a ram for Abraham to sacrifice in place of his son Isaac, giving Abraham and all the rest of us a picture of the provision God would make for us by the sacrifice of his own Son.

The phrase “only Son” used to describe Isaac should be understood to mean “unique son,” since Abraham had other sons besides Isaac (Genesis 25:1-2). None of them, however, were conceived in the unlikely way that Isaac was, and only Isaac received the covenant promises.

And even though God stopped Abraham from following through on his plan to offer Isaac, in a sense, says our text, Abraham did receive Isaac back from the dead. In his mind, Abraham had already given Isaac up for dead, expecting him back only through a miraculous work of God. The way God chose to intervene was different than what Abraham expected, but, in keeping with his trustworthy nature, God did act so that his promise to Abraham would be fulfilled.