The Covenant Keeper's Complaint Text: Genesis 27:46
Introduction: A Godly Vexation
We come now to the end of a chapter filled with deceit, manipulation, and high family drama. It is a sordid business. Jacob has stolen the blessing through elaborate trickery, Esau is breathing out murderous threats, and the entire household of the patriarch Isaac is in disarray. It is a mess. And it is a mess that God, in His inscrutable wisdom, is using to advance His sovereign purposes. This is a constant theme in Scripture. God draws straight lines with crooked sticks. He is not the author of sin, but He is most certainly the author of the story in which the sin occurs, and He writes the story in such a way that the sin itself is made to serve His ultimate, holy ends.
In the middle of this domestic turmoil, we find Rebekah, the chief architect of the deception, speaking to her husband Isaac. On the surface, her words appear to be a simple complaint, a mother's exasperation with her pagan daughters-in-law. But underneath, we see a masterful stroke of maternal maneuvering, and more importantly, a genuine and legitimate concern for the purity of the covenant line. Rebekah's motives are, as they have been throughout this episode, a tangled mess. She is operating out of fear, cunning, and a measure of genuine faith. She knows the prophecy given to her before the twins were ever born, that the elder would serve the younger. She is committed to seeing God's will done, but she is not content to trust God's timing or God's methods. She feels she must help God along with her own carnal wisdom.
And yet, the concern she voices here is not a carnal one. It is a deeply spiritual, covenantal concern. The problem of the daughters of Heth is not a matter of cultural incompatibility or personality clashes. It is a matter of spiritual treason. It is a question of whether the seed of the woman will be preserved as a holy line, distinct from the world, or whether it will be diluted and polluted by the paganism of Canaan. Rebekah's vexation is a godly vexation, even if her methods for dealing with it are ungodly. She is tired of the Hittites, not because they are annoying, but because they represent a mortal threat to the promise of God.
This single verse, then, serves as the pivot upon which the next stage of redemptive history turns. It is the reason Jacob is sent away to Paddan-aram. It is the catalyst that leads him to Laban, to Leah and Rachel, and to the begetting of the twelve tribes of Israel. A mother's complaint, born of mixed motives, becomes the instrument of God's providence to protect and perpetuate the line of the Messiah.
The Text
Then Rebekah said to Isaac, “I am tired of living because of the daughters of Heth; if Jacob takes a wife from the daughters of Heth, like these, from the daughters of the land, what good will my life be to me?”
(Genesis 27:46 LSB)
A Life Made Weary (v. 46a)
We begin with the first part of Rebekah's statement:
"Then Rebekah said to Isaac, 'I am tired of living because of the daughters of Heth...'" (Genesis 27:46a)
The Hebrew here indicates a deep weariness, a loathing of her existence. This is not a passing frustration. This is a soul-deep exhaustion. And what is the source of this profound vexation? The daughters of Heth. These are the Hittite women whom Esau had taken as wives. We are told about this back in chapter 26: "When Esau was forty years old he married Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite; and they were a source of grief to Isaac and Rebekah" (Gen. 26:34-35).
What was the problem with these women? The problem was not their ethnicity in itself. The problem was their religion, their worldview, their entire way of life. They were Canaanites. They were pagans. They were part of a culture that God had already marked for judgment. For Esau to marry them was an act of profound spiritual rebellion. It was a demonstration of his contempt for the birthright he had so casually sold for a bowl of stew. The birthright was not just about property; it was about being the head of the covenant family, the carrier of the Messianic promise. By marrying outside the covenant, Esau showed he cared nothing for it. He yoked himself, and by extension the household of promise, to idolaters.
Rebekah's grief is therefore righteous. She sees the corrosive effect of this pagan influence in her own camp. These women brought their gods, their morals, and their worldview into the tent of Isaac. This is the grief of a godly mother who sees her son throwing away his inheritance for the fleeting pleasures of a forbidden union. It is a constant, grating, spiritual friction. Every day is a battle for the soul of her family. She is "tired of living" because she is living in a state of perpetual, low-grade spiritual warfare under her own roof. This is what unequally yoked marriages do. They bring the world into the church, the darkness into the light, and they create a constant source of grief for those who love the Lord.
A Fear for the Future (v. 46b)
Rebekah then pivots from her present misery to her future fears, and in so doing, she skillfully manipulates Isaac to achieve her hidden objective, which is to get Jacob safely away from the murderous Esau.
"...if Jacob takes a wife from the daughters of Heth, like these, from the daughters of the land, what good will my life be to me?" (Genesis 27:46b LSB)
This is a masterful piece of rhetoric. She does not mention Esau's threat. She knows Isaac has a soft spot for Esau, and to reveal the depth of the rift might not produce the result she wants. Instead, she frames the entire issue in covenantal terms, terms that Isaac, as the patriarch, cannot ignore. She presents a hypothetical: what if Jacob does what Esau has done? What if the chosen son, the son of the promise, also pollutes the holy line by marrying a Canaanite?
Her conclusion is stark: "what good will my life be to me?" If the covenant line is corrupted through Jacob, then her entire life's purpose is rendered meaningless. Why did she endure the barrenness? Why did she seek the Lord? Why did she suffer the struggle in her womb? Why did she go through all this scheming and deceit? All of it was for the sake of the promise God made to her, the promise that the true heir would come through Jacob. If Jacob now turns aside and follows Esau into apostasy, then all is lost. Her life will have been a waste.
Now, we must see the layers here. Is she being sincere? Yes, on one level. Her concern for a covenantally pure marriage for Jacob is entirely legitimate and godly. This is the same concern that drove Abraham to send his servant to find a wife for Isaac from among his own kindred (Genesis 24). It is the central principle of covenant succession. The people of God are to be a separate people. They are not to intermarry with the pagan nations, for as Scripture repeatedly warns, "they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods" (Deut. 7:4).
But is she also being manipulative? Absolutely. Her primary, immediate motive is to save Jacob's neck. She is using a legitimate spiritual argument to achieve a pragmatic, and somewhat deceptive, end. She is clothing her fear in the language of faith. This is what we so often do. We take our own plans, our own fears, our own desires, and we baptize them with spiritual language to make them more palatable to others, and to ourselves. Rebekah is a complicated woman. She has faith, but it is a faith that is shot through with fear and a desire for control.
Providential Checkmate
What is the result of this statement? It works perfectly. Isaac is roused from his grief and passivity. The next verse tells us, "So Isaac called Jacob and blessed him and charged him, and said to him, 'You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan'" (Gen. 28:1). Rebekah's words hit their mark. She presented Isaac with a spiritual crisis that he, as the patriarch, was obligated to address. He could not argue with her logic. The threat she described was real and catastrophic.
And so, by means of a mother's weariness, a legitimate spiritual horror, and a dose of shrewd manipulation, God's plan moves forward. Jacob is sent away, not as a fugitive fleeing his brother's wrath (though he is that), but as an obedient son on a covenantal mission to find a wife from the proper lineage. God uses Rebekah's complaint to accomplish multiple things at once. He protects Jacob from Esau. He preserves the purity of the covenant line. And He begins the process of discipline and exile that will shape Jacob into the man who can wrestle with God and prevail.
This is how our God works. He is the grandmaster of this cosmic chess game. He sees all the moves in advance. He allows his flawed, sinful, and fearful people to make their moves, to engage in their schemes and their deceptions. And then He takes those very moves and incorporates them into His own perfect, winning strategy. Rebekah thought she was playing her own game, but she was merely moving a piece on God's board. Her complaint was a checkmate, not because of her own brilliance, but because the King on the other side of the board intended for the game to go that way all along.
Conclusion: The Grief That Guards the Gospel
What are we to take from this brief, emotionally charged verse? We learn that a holy vexation with the world is a godly thing. Rebekah was tired of the daughters of Heth. We too should be tired of the world's encroachments upon the church. We should feel a holy grief when we see the people of God compromising with the spirit of the age, adopting its morals, and marrying its sons and daughters. Apathy in the face of worldliness is not a sign of spiritual maturity; it is a sign of spiritual death. We should be grieved, as she was, when the line between the church and the world becomes blurry.
We also learn that God's prohibition against being unequally yoked with unbelievers is not a matter of cultural snobbery. It is a matter of spiritual survival. It is about guarding the gospel line. The command in the New Testament is just as stark: "Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?" (2 Cor. 6:14). To disregard this is to do what Esau did. It is to despise the birthright. It is to introduce a source of grief into the household of faith.
And finally, we are reminded that God is sovereign over our mixed motives and our fumbling attempts to serve Him. Rebekah was right to be concerned, but she was wrong to deceive. Yet God used her right concern and her wrong methods to achieve His perfect will. This should not make us cavalier about our sin. Our sin is always our responsibility, and it always has consequences, as Rebekah and Jacob would soon learn. But it should give us profound comfort and confidence in the God who is so wise and so powerful that He can take even our faithless fears and weave them into the tapestry of His glorious redemption.