And Isaac entreated Jehovah for his wife, because she was barren; and Jehovah was entreated of him, and Rebecca his wife conceived.
Isaac married Rebekah at forty, and then the promised line stalled: his wife could not have children. Why did God let twenty years pass before He answered, and what did the waiting do in Isaac?
The promise was sure, yet no child came. One writer sees God's hand in the delay itself, and prayer as its fruit.
It is of God that faith should be tried. The promise is sure, but the believer has to wait for it. Ishmael can boast of his twelve sons, with names soon known by their villages and their camps. Isaac mourned for a beloved mother, and had no wife provided for him until he was forty years old. Even then he remains childless some twenty years… It was grace. But grace showed the channel through which the blessing was to flow. This drew out his prayers, while patience had its perfect work. Isaac therefore entreated Jehovah, and Jehovah was entreated of Isaac. The trial of his faith was far from being so searching as Abraham's. It was suited to each in divine wisdom. Strong faith shone in the father, gracious dependence in the son, to the praise of God in the blessing of both.
Kelly's older wording, "Jehovah was entreated of Isaac," is what the ESV gives as "the LORD granted his prayer."
Isaac was the promised seed, yet his home stayed empty. Another writer traces that emptiness to a lesson God meant him to learn.
So true and faithful are the dealings of our God with His people. Isaac, the promised seed, has no heir. He has none until he is cast on God and taught to look to Him instead of to nature. He must learn that God's blessings, whatever they are, will not yield the results he wants apart from Him. But once he learns this lesson, God can carry out the purpose He settled beforehand, and so He gave children to Isaac.
Another comment puts it in one line, looking back to Sarah, Isaac's own mother.
First, we learn here that Rebekah is as barren as Sarah, apart from the power of God. No principle of truth, no inherent power of grace, is enough for us apart from the direct working of God Himself.
One writer compares this couple with Isaac's own parents, who had faced the same problem years before.
Isaac was forty years old when he received Rebecca as his wife. For twenty years they were childless. But under this trial they behaved even better than Abraham and Sarah had done. Abraham and Sarah had no child, and Sarah gave her servant to her husband. Isaac and Rebecca had no child; but they entreated the Lord, and waited for His mercy. This was a difference. For a moment the last are first, and the first are last. We find such moral variety among the people of God to this day.
The verse says the LORD answered him. One writer finds God's delight in that answer.
The barren condition of Rebekah led Isaac to exercise faith and to cast himself upon the Lord for help. And He answered him. God delights to take up what is weak and barren and show His power in answer to prayer.
Another writer sets this answer against what idols can do.
In some countries people pray to idols for a son, but idols cannot answer — the true God can.
Some writers read Isaac's life as a picture of Christ. His prayer for his wife has a place in that picture.
Isaac intercedes for his wife (the church). These are all typical features of more or less interest, but the great course of his life is bound to be unheroic and obscure.
- Barren. Rebekah could no more bear a child than Sarah could — the line of promise had no strength of its own to continue.
- Withheld. God held the heir back until Isaac learned to look to Him, not to nature. His blessings yield nothing apart from Him.
- Waiting. Twenty childless years tried Isaac's faith. The promise was sure, but he had to wait, and patience did its full work.
- Prayer. His parents took a shortcut; Isaac did not. Grace showed him the channel of blessing, and that drew out his prayers.
- Answered. God delights to take up what is weak and barren and show His power in reply — idols cannot answer, the true God can.
And the children struggled together within her; and she said, If [it be] so, why am I thus? And she went to inquire of Jehovah.
Rebekah waited twenty years to conceive, and then felt a struggle inside her that she could not explain. Her question sent her to the LORD, and His answer reaches far beyond her own household.
Isaac and Rebekah faced the same childlessness as Abraham and Sarah. They handled it differently. One writer sets the two couples side by side:
Isaac was forty years old when he received Rebekah as his wife. For twenty years they were childless — but under this trial they behaved better than Abraham and Sarah had done. Abraham and Sarah had no child, and Sarah gave her servant to her husband. Isaac and Rebekah had no child; but they asked the Lord, and waited for His mercy.
Kelly explains why the wait was there at all:
It is God's way to test faith. The promise is sure, but the believer has to wait for it... It was grace. But grace revealed the channel through which the blessing would flow. That drew out his prayers, while patience did its perfect work.
One writer sees in the fight inside her the clash of two natures — a clash felt long before it can be understood:
But Rebekah conceives, and then she feels a struggle within her. It is once more that inner struggle of contrary natures, felt all through our course here. It begins before it becomes an outward, visible thing, and God must teach us its true meaning.
Mackintosh links this first struggle to what Jacob's whole life displays:
In the person of Jacob we have a most striking display of the power of divine grace. The reason is that we also have in him a striking display of the power of human nature... Before his birth, we read, "the children struggled together within her." At his birth, we read of "his hand holding Esau's heel."
Kelly notes the name of God in this verse — Jehovah, the covenant name, which the ESV renders LORD — and what her one move says about her faith:
There were to be twins. And the children gave an early sign to their mother, as we are told, for her trial, so that she too went to inquire of Jehovah. Who can miss how fitting the name of covenant relationship is here?... There is no ground to imagine that she consulted Melchizedek or journeyed to Moriah. Without either she knew where to find Jehovah and how to inquire of Him. Her faith might be weak, but it was real, and without superstitious dependence on any man or place.
Husband and wife each did the same thing in their own trouble, and that pattern is held up for imitation:
It is good to see both Isaac's entreating the Lord and Rebekah's inquiring of the Lord when problems arose.
Her question drew out a principle that runs through the whole Bible:
Rebekah also had learned to turn to the Lord for an answer to her question. In the reply that the Lord gave her we find another great principle stated. It marks God's purpose and runs all through Scripture. It is that of election... God declares His choice before the children were born, or had had any chance of doing either good or evil, as is so plainly stated in Romans 9:10-12.
Gaebelein guards against pushing this too far:
That this does not refer to any unconditional and eternal condemnation is clear. Notice that the words "Esau have I hated" do not appear in Genesis, but in the last book of the Old Testament. Then the character and defiance of Edom had become fully established. In Genesis the Lord speaks only of having chosen Jacob.
Some Jewish teachers once used this struggle to prove something the verse never says:
Rabbinical teaching carried the matter further. It held that a person could sin while still in the womb. That idea, it is said, rested on Genesis 25:22, where we read that the two children struggled together in Rebekah's womb. God does not send every bodily affliction as chastisement, though at times that may be the reason for it.
- Waited. Twenty childless years drew out prayer, not scheming. Isaac and Rebekah asked the Lord and waited for His mercy.
- Struggled. The struggle inside her pictures the clash of two natures. She felt it long before God taught her what it meant.
- Inquired. Rebekah needed no holy place and no holy man. Weak faith that knows where to take a question is still real faith.
- Answered. Her question drew out God's choice. He declared it before either child had done good or evil — the principle Romans 9 later builds on.
- Guarded. The verse says the children struggled. It does not say they sinned in the womb. Not every affliction is punishment.
And Jehovah said to her, Two nations are in thy womb, And two peoples shall be separated from thy bowels; And one people shall be stronger than the other people, And the elder shall serve the younger.
Rebekah's pregnancy was painful, so she asked God what was happening inside her. His answer named two nations, two peoples already dividing, and a reversal of the usual order of birth. It became a key text for one of the Bible's most debated subjects: God's freedom to choose.
Notice first how the answer came. Rebekah did not go to a holy man or a holy place.
The children gave their mother an early sign, as we are told, for her trial, so that she too went to inquire of the Lord... There is no ground to imagine that she consulted Melchizedek or travelled to Moriah. Without either, she knew where to find the Lord and how to inquire of Him. Her faith might be weak, but it was real, and free from any superstitious dependence on a man or a place.
The two boys shared one father, one mother, and one birth. That makes the announcement about them unusually pointed.
God's predestination of their history on earth is clear here. It is all the more striking because the unborn babies had the same mother as well as the same father — twins, in fact... So God's sovereignty was shown to be as free as it is certain to faith. The Jews based their exclusive claim on natural descent, and that claim is disproved... Here flesh is shut out most plainly, and the title rests on the Lord's sovereign pleasure.
Commentators press the timing. A choice made after birth could always be explained away.
The choice of Jacob rather than Esau, even before their birth, asserts the great principle of God's sovereignty... Nothing shows this more fully than the choice of the younger son before either was born. When the younger son is chosen after birth — like Joseph or David — people can say that his actions or natural character earned him the preference, or that the actions and character of the others ruled out their claims. The important principle is that none of them have any claim at all.
Many readers merge this verse with the later line, "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated." Commentators insist the two must be kept apart.
God did not say "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated" before the children were born. He said it hundreds of years later, when the real character and practical ways of each had been fully shown. Before the children were born He said only that "the older shall serve the younger." It is more than a sad mistake to represent God as hating a man before he was born.
The choice announced in the womb did not stay untested.
God's election of Jacob, and the passing over of Esau that followed, brought out something else. The wisdom and rightness of God's choice always shows in the later history. His election always justifies itself in its results.
Esau himself supplied the evidence.
He deliberately sold his birthright for a bowl of stew, and so justified God in His selection.
God's word named nations, not only babies. Their story did not run in a straight line.
By the time of the Gospels the Jews were not only under the rule of Rome; a son of Esau ruled over them in the land. This order was not according to the purpose of God announced from the beginning — that, of Jacob and his brother, the older shall serve the younger. But the chosen people were unfaithful, so God's order was reversed for a time. Esau was on top, though he was an enemy of God and His truth.
Some writers read the two sons as a picture of something every believer knows first-hand.
In these two sons we have a representation of the two seeds, with the contrast between the flesh and the Spirit... The believer finds a strange contradiction in his own heart — a conflict of two natures. Here it is given to us in type, with the promise, thank God, that the flesh will be brought into subjection to the spirit, and that the spirit will triumph in the end.
Jacob's scheming did not cancel the promise, but it cost him.
"The older shall serve the younger" was God's word in favour of Jacob before the children were born. But Jacob did not wait in the patience of faith until the Lord in His own time and way made His promise good. So the promise becomes loaded with reservations, difficulties, and burdens. It will certainly be made good in the end; but because of Jacob's way, his unbelief and scheming, the older will give the younger much trouble.
- Ask. Rebekah's distress drove her straight to God. Her faith was weak but real, and it got an answer no man or place could give.
- Chosen. The twins were unborn and untested, so the choice was God's alone. No one has a claim on Him.
- Not hated. Before their birth God said only that the older would serve the younger. The word about hatred came centuries later, once Esau's character had come out in full.
- Proved. God's choice proves itself in the history that follows. Esau sold his birthright and so justified it.
- Enacted. The promise was certain, but Jacob schemed instead of waiting, and that loaded it with trouble. God secures His purpose; the flesh still has to be brought into subjection.