Two Kinds of Obedience: The Blessing and the Far Country Text: Genesis 28:1-9
Introduction: The Centrality of the Covenant
We come now to a pivotal moment in the life of Jacob, and consequently, in the life of the covenant people of God. What we are reading is not simply an ancient family drama, full of trickery, flight, and dysfunctional relationships. What we are reading is the divinely orchestrated, often messy, outworking of God's unbreakable covenant promises. God is in the business of building His kingdom, and He does it with crooked sticks. He does it with schemers like Jacob and worldly men like Esau, and He does it in a way that confounds all human wisdom.
The central issue in this passage, as in all of Genesis, is the covenant. Specifically, it is about covenant succession and covenant marriage. Who will carry the blessing of Abraham? And with whom will he join to carry that blessing forward? These are not trivial questions. The world thinks of marriage as a private arrangement for personal happiness. The Bible thinks of marriage as a public, covenantal act with generational consequences. Who you marry matters. It matters for you, for your children, and for the future of the church. Isaac understands this, which is why, after all the dust has settled from the stolen blessing, his primary concern is not Jacob's deception but Jacob's wife.
This passage presents us with a stark contrast between two men, Jacob and Esau, and their two very different approaches to obedience. One man, though a sinner and a supplanter, submits to the covenantal boundaries set by his father and by God. He is sent away in faith to find a wife from within the covenant family. The other man, Esau, sees the external pattern of obedience, mimics it in a fleshly way, and in so doing, only reveals the deeper rebellion of his heart. He tries to please his father with a superficial gesture while remaining fundamentally outside the covenant. This is a perpetual temptation for God's people: to mistake external conformity for true, heartfelt obedience. It is the difference between being in the covenant and merely being near it. It is the difference between Jacob and Esau.
The Text
So Isaac called Jacob and blessed him and commanded him and said to him, “You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan. Arise, go to Paddan-aram, to the house of Bethuel your mother’s father; and from there take to yourself a wife from the daughters of Laban your mother’s brother. May God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may become an assembly of peoples. May He also give you the blessing of Abraham, to you and to your seed with you, that you may possess the land of your sojournings, which God gave to Abraham.” Then Isaac sent Jacob away, and he went to Paddan-aram to Laban, son of Bethuel the Aramean, the brother of Rebekah, the mother of Jacob and Esau.
And Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Paddan-aram to take for himself a wife from there, and that when he blessed him he commanded him, saying, “You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan,” and that Jacob had listened to his father and his mother and had gone to Paddan-aram. So Esau saw that the daughters of Canaan were displeasing in the sight of his father Isaac; and Esau went to Ishmael and took Mahalath, the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham’s son, the sister of Nebaioth, to be his wife, besides the wives that he had.
(Genesis 28:1-9 LSB)
Covenant Confirmed and Commanded (vv. 1-5)
We begin with Isaac's charge to Jacob.
"So Isaac called Jacob and blessed him and commanded him and said to him, 'You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan. Arise, go to Paddan-aram...'" (Genesis 28:1-2)
Notice the first thing Isaac does. He calls Jacob, and he blesses him. This is not the stolen blessing of the previous chapter. This is a willing, clear-eyed confirmation of that blessing. Isaac is now fully aligned with God's revealed will. The prophecy given to Rebekah, that the older would serve the younger, has come to pass, and Isaac submits to it. He doesn't just tolerate Jacob; he blesses him. This is a picture of what must happen in our own hearts when God's sovereign choices cut across our natural preferences. We must submit and bless.
And what is the first command that accompanies this blessing? It is a negative command: "You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan." This is the principle of covenantal separation. Marriage is not a free-for-all. For the people of God, the pool of eligible spouses is defined by faith. To marry a Canaanite was to marry an idolater. It was to join the holy seed with the profane. It was to yoke yourself to a worldview, a religion, and a morality that was in open rebellion against the God of Abraham. This is not about ethnicity; it is about fidelity. The New Testament echoes this command precisely: believers are not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers (2 Cor. 6:14). This is not a suggestion for a happier life; it is a command for covenant faithfulness.
The positive command is to go to Paddan-aram, to the extended family. Why? Because that is where the covenant people are. Abraham came from there, and Isaac's wife came from there. This is a journey back to the roots of the covenant in order to secure its future. It is an act of faith. Jacob is being sent away from the promised land, but he is being sent in order to inherit it.
Isaac then pronounces the blessing in its fullness.
"May God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may become an assembly of peoples. May He also give you the blessing of Abraham, to you and to your seed with you, that you may possess the land of your sojournings..." (Genesis 28:3-4)
This is the Abrahamic blessing, pure and simple. Isaac invokes God as "El Shaddai," God Almighty, the name God used when He established the covenant of circumcision with Abraham (Gen. 17:1). This is the God of power, the God who can bring life from barrenness and build a nation from one man. The blessing has three key components, just as it did for Abraham. First, numerous offspring: "make you fruitful and multiply you." Second, the land: "that you may possess the land." And third, the great redemptive purpose: "that you may become an assembly of peoples," through whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed. Isaac is now functioning as a true patriarch, formally and intentionally passing the covenant promises to the chosen heir. Jacob leaves not just as a fugitive from his brother's wrath, but as the commissioned carrier of God's global purpose.
Worldly Wisdom and the Imitation of Obedience (vv. 6-9)
Now the camera turns to Esau. He is watching all of this, and he is learning all the wrong lessons.
"And Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away... to take for himself a wife from there... and that Jacob had listened to his father and his mother and had gone to Paddan-aram." (Genesis 28:6-7)
Esau is an observer. He is a pragmatist. He sees the cause-and-effect. He sees Jacob get blessed and then he sees Jacob obey the command about his wife. He connects the dots in a purely external, mechanical way. He thinks, "Ah, so that's the formula. Dad doesn't like Canaanite wives. Jacob obeys, Jacob gets the blessing confirmed. I can play this game."
His conclusion is recorded in verse 8: "So Esau saw that the daughters of Canaan were displeasing in the sight of his father Isaac." Notice what is missing. He doesn't see that they are displeasing to God. He doesn't grasp the covenantal principle of holiness. He only sees that they displease his father. His motive is not godliness, but appeasement. He is driven by a desire to get back in his father's good graces, perhaps to wrangle some kind of blessing for himself. This is the essence of worldly religion. It sees the outward forms of piety and mimics them for personal gain, without any change of heart.
So what does he do? He acts on this flawed, superficial understanding.
"...and Esau went to Ishmael and took Mahalath, the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham’s son... to be his wife, besides the wives that he had." (Genesis 28:9)
This is a masterpiece of missing the point. On the surface, it looks like a step in the right direction. He's not marrying another Canaanite. He's marrying a granddaughter of Abraham! He is staying within the broader family. But in reality, this is just another act of rebellion disguised as obedience. Ishmael is the son of the flesh, the one explicitly excluded from the covenant of promise (Gal. 4:22-23). The line of promise runs through Isaac, not Ishmael. By marrying into Ishmael's line, Esau is simply trading one form of covenant-breaking for another. He is doubling down on his rejection of God's chosen line. He is joining himself to the branch of the family that was cut off.
Furthermore, he takes this new wife "besides the wives that he had." He doesn't repent of his sinful marriages to the Hittite women; he just adds another wife to the collection. He thinks he can solve a problem of quality by adding more quantity. This is the logic of the flesh. He is trying to fix a spiritual problem with a carnal solution. He is like a man who, told that his foundation is cracked, decides to fix it by adding a new coat of paint to the shutters. He is dealing with symptoms, not the disease. The disease is a heart that despises the covenant, a heart that Paul calls "profane" (Heb. 12:16).
Two Roads from Beersheba
So we have two sons, both leaving home. Jacob is sent. Esau goes. Jacob is sent by his father, under the blessing of God, on a covenantal mission. He is a sinner, a deceiver, but he is a sinner who has submitted to the structure of the covenant. He is headed toward a long and difficult exile, but it is an exile that will lead him to Bethel, to Peniel, and ultimately, back to the promised land as Israel, the father of the twelve tribes.
Esau, on the other hand, acts of his own accord. He is driven by resentment and a carnal desire to please men. He sees the outward shape of obedience and conforms to it in a way that only compounds his error. He marries into the line of the rejected son, showing that he is, in fact, a true son of the flesh himself. His road does not lead to Bethel, but to Edom, the nation that would be the perpetual enemy of God's people.
This is a permanent spiritual lesson for us. There are always two kinds of obedience on offer. There is the obedience of faith, which, even when flawed and stumbling, submits to the Word of God and trusts His promises. This is Jacob's obedience. And there is the obedience of the flesh, which looks good on the outside but is motivated by self-interest, pragmatism, and a desire to appease men rather than God. This is Esau's obedience.
We see this everywhere in the church. We see people who avoid certain sins not because they hate sin and love God, but because they don't want to face the social consequences. We see people who adopt the language of Christianity, who show up on Sunday, who put a fish on their car, all because they want the benefits of belonging to the club. But their hearts have not been broken. They have not despaired of their own righteousness. They have not fled to Christ alone. Like Esau, they see that certain behaviors are "displeasing" to the community, and so they adjust their behavior. But they have not seen that their sin is displeasing to a holy God.
The call of the gospel is not to be like Esau, who tried to fix his problem by marrying an Ishmaelite. The call of the gospel is to be like Jacob, who, despite his sin, was cast wholly upon the promise of God. He was sent out with nothing but a blessing, and that was enough. Our blessing is Christ. The command to us is the same: Do not be joined to the world. Do not love the things of the world. Flee from idolatry. And in faith, go to the one to whom the Father sends you, the Lord Jesus. He is the true seed of Abraham, and only in Him can you find a place within the covenant of promise.