Genesis 48:8–20
The Bible4Jesus.com Podcast
About this episode
We live in an age that is utterly obsessed with fairness. Our entire culture is built on the sandy foundation of egalitarianism, the assumption that everyone deserves the same outcome, that all distinctions based on merit, birth, or giftedness are inherently suspect. We want a world that is predictable, orderly, and runs according to the rules we have established. We want a god who respects the queue, who honors the first-come, first-served principle of our own making. And then we come to a passage like this one. Here, at the deathbed of the patriarch Jacob, we are confronted with a God who is not fair. He is a God who consistently, throughout the entire biblical narrative, overturns the natural order of things to accomplish His purposes. He chooses Isaac, the son of promise, not Ishmael, the son of the flesh.