Rebekah Esau

 

25. Rebekah

Isaac’s wife, Abraham’s great niece, Laban’s sister, and aunt (and mother-in-law) to Rachel and Leah. Abraham sent a servant to his homeland to find a bride for Isaac in order to keep his son from marrying a Canaanite, but also to keep him from venturing back to where God had sent them out (Genesis 24).

By faith, Rebekah agreed to come with the servant and became Isaac’s wife, bearing him twin sons, Jacob and Esau (25:19-26). Rebekah schemed with Jacob to deceive Isaac and procure the blessing for the firstborn (27:5-17). While the ethics of the deception can be debated, it was Rebekah and not Isaac who honored God’s prophecy that the older would serve the younger (25:23). 

26. Esau

The elder of the twin sons of Isaac and Rebekah, and the grandson of Abraham. His name means “hairy,” and he is also known in the Bible as Edom (“red” - Genesis 25:30). Before the twins’ birth, it was prophesied that Esau’s position as firstborn would be taken over by his brother, Jacob, and that’s exactly what happened.

Like Cain, Ham, and Ishmael before him, Esau was the foolish brother, the brother not chosen to continue the line of promise. He sold his birthright to Jacob for the sake of instant gratification (25:27-34) and went against the family’s commitment against marriage to Canaanite women (24:2-4, 26:34-35, 28:6-9). 

Esau later reconciled with Jacob in Genesis 33:1-17, but his descendants, the Edomites, would be a thorn in Israel’s flesh throughout much of the Old Testament and would receive a prophetic vision of judgment in the book of Obadiah. By the time of the New Testament, Greek influence would morph “Edom” into “Idumea.” The family of Herod's who ruled Palestine in Jesus’ day were Idumeans, descendants of Esau.