Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #26 of Genesis, chapter 26, and we are reading the last two verses in the chapter, in Genesis 26:34-35:

And Esau was forty years old when he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite: Which were a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah.

Again, we were talking about this in our last study, and we saw how Esau’s taking of the daughters of Beeri and Elon the Hittites were a grief of mind to Isaac and Rebekah because they had raised Esau just as they had raised Jacob.  They had two sons who were twins, and it was predetermined, as God had predestinated Jacob (to salvation) before the world was, and God had determined to love Jacob and to hate Esau, and, yet, in their role as parents, they were held responsible, and they knew it.  And they raised both of their sons before God under the hearing of the Word of God. 

So they taught them the truth they knew that had been handed down to them: that God was God; that He was gracious and kind and a forgiving God; and that there was atonement for sin, and that God Himself would provide a Lamb.  Remember that?   There was the whole tableau of Abraham in that historical illustration, where he was told to take his only son Isaac and go up to a mount in Moriah and offer him there for a sacrifice.  There is the Gospel.  God gave His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, for the sins of the world.  So they had the Gospel.  They knew some of the central doctrines of the teachings of the Bible that we know today, and they taught them to their sons, as we read in Hebrews that Isaac blessed both Jacob and Esau “concerning things to come.”  So he was telling them, “Look, like if short, and one day you are going to die, and there is a judgment, but there is also the promise of God of everlasting life and the inheritance of the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession.  And they must have known it was in the world to come:  “That is where we will dwell for evermore.  We are strangers and pilgrims on this earth at this time, and we dwell in tents.  That is true, but soon will come to pass what God has said, and we will have an eternal dwelling place.  We will have an eternal home.”  They delivered this information to their sons. 

They prayed for their sons and, like all parents, they had to leave the spiritual condition of their sons to God, because only God can change a person.  Only God can make someone a new heart and give them a new spirit and cause him to walk in His statutes and commandments.  Only God can do that, so parents share the truth of the Word and pray, and then they wait and see.  What kind of fruit will come forth?  They keep a close eye on their children, waiting and hoping that they will show evidence that they are saved, and that God has delivered them and translated them from darkness to light, just as He had saved Isaac and, apparently, Rebekah.

But when children do things contrary to the Law of God and the wishes of their parents…and God even says that children  are to honor their parents.  It is one of the Ten Commandments, and when the child dishonors the parents and does things contrary to the commandments of God, it is a grief of mind.  It is a sorrowful thing, and many God-fearing parents down through the centuries have shed tremendous amounts of tears over the spiritual condition of their children.  They love their children, desiring the best for them, so they weep and pray when they see their children going away from God because they know that it is “the way of the world.”  It is the broad way that leads to destruction.  Maybe the child has success in the world, and the child comes back to his parents and says to his mother and father, “Are you not pleased and happy for me?”  Yes – on that level there may be a certain degree of gladness.  “Yes, we are happy for you son.”  But, yet, on a deeper level where the desperate desire resides, they say, “O, Father God in heaven, could it be you might have mercy on my son?”  That would have been their prayer within the day of salvation.  Now, of course, parents pray, “O, that you might have had mercy on my son or daughter, and having had mercy, have mercy.  Having saved them before the door shut, may you draw them now and may evidence come forth of that work you have already performed?”

But this is the grief of parents who love the children that God has blessed them with.  Their hearts ache.  You know, unless you have had children and raised them and prayed for them and strongly desired the best for them, you really cannot know the feeling of David when Absalom rebelled against him, betrayed him, and sought to take the kingdom from him.  He would have killed David and his men.  But Absalom was killed in battle, contrary to David’s directions in commanding his general not to do so, but wicked Joab slew Absalom.  And you can hear that heart’s desire coming to the surface when David cried out, “O, Absalom!”  Let me read it, so I quote it right.  It says in 2Samuel 18:33:

And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept: and as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!

You can almost feel the pain and the depths of sorrow that was in David’s heart because his son had died.  And it was not just because his son had died, but because his son had died in a rebellious way.  All the evidence pointed to the fact that Absalom was an unsaved man, and God had not had mercy upon him.  God did not cover his sins and make him a new heart.  Absalom was “dead,” indeed, as he was dead for evermore.  He would not live again, and that was the grief that an elect parent feels. 

And I am sure there are still some good parents on that level in the world, where they have genuine care and concern and feelings of love for their children, and they desire the best for them on an earthly level.  And, yet, they know nothing about that deeper level, the eternal level of the soul.

The Lord understands, and He is the only one that can comfort the parents, a mother or father that is one of His elect, when the children are giving every indication that they are unsaved people under the wrath of God.  And that is what Esau was doing here in marrying these heathen women.  He was giving a clear indication that he was not saved.  So Rebekah, especially, would have put this together with what God had said to her when the twins were struggling in her womb: “The elder shall serve the younger.”  Additionally, there was the fact that Esau had already sold his birthright.  The evidence in his life was pointing in the direction of (spiritual) death for the ungodly.  He was following the way of the world, as so many others do, and this was the cause of grief.

We can understand that, but the curious thing is that God tells us his age.  “Esau was forty years old when he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite,” and so forth.  God does not tell us Esau’s age when he sold his birthright.  God does not tell us Esau’s age in the next chapter when the blessing would be given, and when Jacob supplanted him and received the blessing in his place.  We are able to derive Jacob’s and Esau’s age, but God does not directly tell us, as He does here.  And as far as I can see, God does not tell us the age of Esau when he died or at any other point in his life, but only in this verse.  We are told Esau was 40.  Yes – we can also conclude that Jacob was 40 because they were twins.  Additionally, we know the year that this is taking place because, according to the Biblical calendar of history, we know that Isaac was born in 2067 B. C. when Abraham was 100, and Jacob and Esau were born to Rebekah and Isaac when Isaac was 60, in 2007 B. C.  On the Old Testament side of the calendar, we count down, so from 2007, we minus 40, and we come to the year 1967 B. C.  That is the year that Esau was 40.  That is the year that he married these two women.

The number “40” in the Bible is the number of “testing,” and we can see that, repeatedly.  It is a very consistent spiritual meaning that God assigned to the number “40,” whether it be the 40-year wilderness sojourn of Israel, which is called the “day of temptation” or testing; or whether it be the 40-day period that Jesus was tested of the Devil; or whether it was Moses going up to the mount for 40 days to receive the Ten Commandments.  And who was being tested?  All of Israel that stayed back while Moses was up on the mount failed the test when they engaged in idolatry when they made Aaron make them the golden calf or idol.  Moses came down at the end of 40 days. 

So the number “40” actually has a dual spiritual meaning.  We do not think of this too often because its main significance is testing, but it also has “judgment” in view.  And that was a judgment upon Israel, was it not?  They searched the land of Canaan for 40 days, and they were being tested.  The spies came back with good fruit, but with an “evil report,” and because of the evil report, they failed the test, and God sentenced them to the judgment that for each day they searched the land, they would wander in the wilderness one year.  “You searched the land 40 days, and 40 years you will wander.”  It says in Hebrews 3:7-11:

Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice, Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.)

Here, the 40-year wilderness sojourn would end in tragedy for all the ungodly.  They would not enter into the Promised Land, but their carcases would fall in the wilderness.  It was a 40-year period of wrath, the judgment of God. 

So we can gather that after 40 years of living in a godly household in the line of true believers, God allowed Esau (whom He had not chosen unto salvation) to fail the test.   By God withdrawing His hand of restraint from Esau, Esau would do what came naturally to his deceitful heart, and Esau went astray and married heathen women, an indicator of idolatry and someone who has failed the test.  He was not conducting himself as an obedient child of God.  He had failed, so it is a judgment as well (as a test).

We can see that, but who is Esau representing?  When we look at Esau, we can see a man who represents the corporate church because he was in that godly line and he had identification with God because of his birth and his relationship to Jacob his brother.  But, also, when we look at Esau, we can see someone who is a picture of all mankind or unsaved people.  The reason we can see that is because he was given the name “Edom.”  And “Edom” is Strong’s #123 in the Hebrew Concordance, which has identical consonants to the name “Adam.”  The name “Adam” is Strong’s #121, and the Hebrew word for “man” is Strong’s #120.  In all three words – Edom, Adam and man – there are the same Hebrew consonants.  God wrote the Bible using Hebrew consonants.  The “vowels” are said to be “vowel pointing” because they are underlying marks that were added to the text later.  They were not part of the original Hebrew documents.  Therefore, when words have identical consonants, they are very similar and, practically synonymous.  So in calling “Esau” by the name of “Edom,” God is linking him to Adam and to man.  It is as though God is giving 40 years or 4,000 years, as the number “40” is the number of “testing,” but we can break it down further to “4 x 10.”  The number “4” points to “universality” or the “furthest extent” of whatever is in view, and the number “10” points to “completeness.”  If we look at it that way, Esau’s age of 40 is pointing to the furthest extent of God’s testing of man, to the point of its completeness.  That is interesting because when we look at this year 1967 B. C., it leads us to the cross.  From 1967 B. C. to the cross in 33 A. D. would be 2,000 calendar years, and that 2,000 years would have another significance: the completeness of the caretakers of the Word of God, as Jacob was also 40 years old in the year 1967 B. C.

But more than that, if we go from 1967 B. C. to 2033 A. D., it is exactly 4,000 calendar years.  That is very significant because 4,000 years continues with the same meaning of the number as “40.”  Again, the number “40” represents “testing” and “judgment.”  And in the number “4,000,” we have “40 x 10 x 10.”  So we have the absolute completeness of the testing and the judgment that is in view.  In this case, it would regard all unsaved mankind.  Actually, since Jacob was also 40, we can include him as well, and God’s people will pass the test because God will cause us to endure to the end, so we could look at this as all human beings, saved and unsaved, who will come to the absolute end of all testing.  According to the Biblical evidence that we see at this point, it appears to be the year 2033 A. D., which would match the pattern of Christ’s first coming from 7 B. C. to 33 A. D. with the pattern from 1994 through 2033, which as far as we understand will be the completion of the final judgment of God upon all mankind.  All the elect have also been making an appearance before His judgment throne, and all the unsaved are being judged by God, and then the sentence or final verdict will be that unsaved mankind will be destroyed for evermore.  They will be eternally dead, and they will be destroyed with this cursed creation of this world and universe.  But the elect will be lifted up to the new heaven and new earth, to live and dwell with God into eternity future. 

So it is very significant that God gives us Esau’s age.  And we are able to pinpoint the year, and that year fits precisely into a timeline we have been learning about that goes to 2033 A. D.  In a way, you could not get it to fit any better with this man who has the name “Edom” that identifies with mankind, and he is 40 years old.  Then if you multiply that “40” by multiples of ten, you come to a year that the Bible is presenting evidence for as the year of the end of the world.