If God has shown me one thing, especially about the Old Testament, it’s that you ALWAYS want to look closely when a
blessing or a curse is pronounced. Now, coming back to Genesis 28:3, we see what happens to be... Or, rather what appears to be the same blessing that God
gave to Abraham, and then Abraham gave to Isaac, now being transferred by Isaac to Jacob;
but there is an important difference. Where most bibles say that Isaac said to Jacob
something like “that you may become a company of people....or.....company of nations”
the Hebrew for “company of people or company of nations” is “kahal ammim”. This is entirely different than what God promised
to Abraham, AND what was promised to Isaac; that
is, that they would produce “goy”......a mixture
of nations. Because “kahal ammim” in its most literal
translation is used in Hebrew as the OPPOSITE of what
God told Abraham. Literally, “kahal ammim” means a “holy
convocation (or holy assembly) of fellow countrymen”. Put in other words, it means an assembly of
people, for holy purposes, consisting of people from the same tribe or groups of tribes. That is, Jacob, who would soon be renamed “Israel”,
will be the first in the line of covenant promise who would produce as his offspring ONLY Hebrews. He will produce ONLY nations of Hebrew people.....ONLY
the people who would become called, by the time of Moses,
“His (God’s) precious treasure”. Let me summarize that again: Abraham produced
both Hebrew and non-Hebrew offspring (just as God promised him in Gen 12:2), with Isaac
being the Hebrew. Abraham’s son Isaac also
produced Hebrew and non-Hebrew people, with Jacob being the Hebrew. But, Jacob produced
ONLY Hebrews.....all the tribes of Israel....which is exactly what the blessing of “kahal ammim”,
a holy convocation of fellow countrymen, is telling
us. Well, moving on, beginning in V6, we are told
that Esau observed that Isaac sent Jacob to Mesopotamia to get a wife, because his father
detested Canaanite women. Poor Esau; he’s
already taken 2 Canaanite wives, which had greatly displeased his father, and now in
a misguided, almost comical attempt to make amends, he goes to his father’s brother’s family, Esau’s uncle
Ishmael, the son Abraham had sent away, and Esau takes an Ishmaelite woman as his 3rd
wife. What a knucklehead. But, as matter-of-fact as this event is told,
its future effect is beyond calculation. Because here an alliance through intermarriage
is formed, that bonds the two dispossessed firstborns, rejected by Yahoveh as possible
heirs to the covenant line of promise, Ishmael and
Esau, into what will rather quickly turn into a permanent anti-Israel group of nations. It is the alliance and gene pool mixing of
Ishmael and Esau who form the vast bulk of Islam in
the world today, and the entire bulk of Arabs. This report of such few words in verse 9,
radically altered the course of history, and set in
motion the circumstances that will bring about the anti-
Christ and the end of history as we know it.
