Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #2 in Genesis 36, and we will read Genesis 36:1-4:

Now these are the generations of Esau, who is Edom. Esau took his wives of the daughters of Canaan; Adah the daughter of Elon the Hittite, and Aholibamah the daughter of Anah the daughter of Zibeon the Hivite; And Bashemath Ishmael's daughter, sister of Nebajoth. And Adah bare to Esau Eliphaz; and Bashemath bare Reuel; And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these are the sons of Esau, which were born unto him in the land of Canaan.

We will stop reading there.  Last time we were looking at the account where Esau married women of the land of Canaan.  That is what it tells us in Genesis 36:2:

Esau took his wives of the daughters of Canaan;

Then we were told of the women he married and the children they bore him.  His marriage history can be traced back to 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.

We discussed how troubling it must have been because there is a biblical principle that God established in the time before the flood.  Thousands of years earlier it was known, and it would have been handed down through the godly line of believers to marry in the line of true believers.  Even with Isaac himself, he came to marry Rebekah because his father Abraham did things the right way, and so did Isaac. 

But the Bible shows us that if a man gets it in his mind that he wants to do something, he will certainly do it even if it displeases his parents.  And Isaac could have done this.  He could have looked around and seen an attractive woman of the daughters of the land, and he could have come to his father and said, “I want to marry this woman.”  But we do not read anything like that.  When Sarah his mother died in 2030 B. C., Isaac was 37 years old.  He was a full grown man, and it would not be until he was 40 that the servant came back with Rebekah.  That whole journey of traveling until the time he came back with Rebekah was three years after his mother had died, and he was now a 40-year-old man, but he waited on the Lord.  And the Lord worked it out according to His program, and He provided a wife for Isaac to comfort him in his grief for his mother.

And that is how God’s people operated.  They were obliged and duty-bound to conduct themselves in this way in the matter of matrimony and finding a mate.  God will provide like He does in everything. 

But Esau did not follow the counsel of his parents or the counsel of God, and he went and took his wives of the land of Canaan, the daughters of Hittite men.  When we look at the context of Genesis 26, we have to keep in mind what we learned in the previous chapter.  We read in Genesis 25:29-30:

And Jacob sod pottage: and Esau came from the field, and he was faint: And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint: therefore was his name called Edom.

And Edom is this word that identifies with “Adam.”  It is the same word, apart from the vowel pointing.  It identifies Esau with “Adam,” or “man.”  And the only problem with that is that although man was created in the image of God, he fell by transgressing against the Law of God.  Esau’s transgressions show us that he is a reflection and spiritual type and figure of fallen man.  As fallen man rebels against God, Esau had this fallen nature.  He was not a faithful man.  He was an unfaithful man.  He did not want to keep the commandments, and he would break them.

So in this account in Genesis 25, Esau was faint, and he desired some of that red pottage that Jacob was cooking, and it says in Genesis 25:31:

And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright.

The birthright had to do with the fact that Esau was the firstborn.  He was the first to come forth out of the womb, and Jacob had ahold of his heel, but Jacob came out second.  You know, it must have been troubling to Jacob…and maybe to any twin, especially at that time…because the right of the firstborn was a huge benefit and blessing.  But he realized that he was not the firstborn, and it might be understandable if his brother had been born two years earlier.  However, his brother was born only a minute or two earlier,  And Jacob wanted that right of the firstborn which he was so close to attaining in birth itself.  But it was not to be, and Jacob would get it another way.

Then it says in Genesis 25:32-34:

And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me? And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright.

That is exactly what he did.  He despised his birthright.  He belittled it.  We can almost imagine that from Esau’s point of view, it was a joke.  Esau “wants what he wants,” and he is very, very hungry, and the soup looked so good.  “I want satisfaction now.  I want that lentil soup.  And this thing of the birthright ties in with the blessings of God, and who knows if there is even a God.  So what good will it do me?  I will make this deal.”  Of course God is all-seeing and all-knowing, and He knew the birthright was despised.

And the next thing we know, this same young man is 40 years old, and there is that same pattern of behaviour as he took to wife both Judith and Bashemath.  You know, you do not just grab two women by the hand and say, “Come, be my wife.”  It takes time.  It starts with looking with your eye, and then being interested, but keeping in mind that God has given Laws to protect and safeguard His people, so they are not harmed by the misery and sorrow that sin brings into the lives of those who transgress the Law of God.  The Law is a safeguard to protect the people of God.  God gave the Law that they were not to marry the daughters of the land, and that should have meant, “Do not even get started in that direction.  Do not get involved with that temptation.  Do not look at them, and see their beauty, and then get to know them.”  But Esau disregarded all this. 

Again, this would have been part of his parents’ instruction: “The Lord will provide a mate for you, just as he provided a mate for me.”  Isaac could have said, “Look at me.  I did not get married until I was 40, and yet it was done the proper way, and the Lord has blessed us.  He has blessed us with you and your brother, and He has blessed us with an abundance of wealth and riches.  He has blessed us in many ways, especially spiritually.”  Isaac would have told him of his own birth to his own parents, and that would be the Gospel, would it not?  Abraham would have his only begotten son through Sarah.  And remember the account of Abraham sacrificing Isaac, and he was ready to plunge the knife into him, and he counted that God would raise him from the dead.  There was the Gospel, and the Gospel was preached unto them, as well as unto us, as we are told in Hebrews.  They heard the Gospel.  And Esau heard the Gospel, and he despised it.  The despising of his birthright was just an indicator of a deeper problem in his heart – there was no regeneration, or spiritual life.  So the Law of God was as meaningless as the birthright to him.  “What is the harm in looking at some of these young ladies in the land?”  That is where it started, and the next thing is that he got to know them, and he was attracted to them.  This could have happened over weeks or months, and he wanted to get up the courage to go to his parents and tell them that he wanted to marry them.  And eventually it happened.  He set himself up for this sin, and it was a major thing in his life.  A major downfall was happening, and at the age of 40, “ he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite.”

We know he represents sinful mankind, those that are not saved.  And we know he is being tested.  The number “40” points to testing, and for the first 40 years of his life, he at least did not commit this sin.  But when he was 40, he broke the Law of God concerning going in unto the daughters of men and being unequally yoked.

We can know the year.  It was the year 1967 B. C.  God has given us the whole biblical calendar of history.  Isaac was born in 2067 B. C.   He was married at age 40 in 2027 B. C., and Isaac and Rebekah had twin sons when he was 60 years old in 2007 B. C.  That is when Jacob and Esau were born.  Then 40 years later it would have been 1967 B. C.  These are very exact dates that we can know from the Bible.  Again, it is unusual that God would give us the ages of the unsaved.  He did give us the age of Ishmael when he died at age 137.  But again, it was a little out of the ordinary.

It was not as unusual as giving us the death age of Sarah, who died at 127 years of age.  That was the only recorded death age of a woman in the Bible, and that really stands out.  But it is not that God does not give any death age, or age, of those that are ungodly, but it is rare.  It is much more common for Him to give us the age of Moses, Joseph, or the age of other saints.  It is true that in regard to the kings of Israel and Judah that God gave their ages when they began to reign, and how long they reigned, so that we can determine how old they were, in many cases.

But again, the Lord is emphasizing that Esau was 40 at this time, and, obviously, Jacob would also have been 40 years of age.  Genesis 26 is the chapter in which we are told that Esau was 40, and it is between chapter 25 when he despised his birthright, and chapter 27 where Isaac would give the blessing.  In all likelihood, Isaac was 120 at that point, and Jacob and Esau were 60, so it is probably 20 years beyond what we read in chapter 26.  But it is interesting that God put this information in the middle of “despising the birthright,” and the “losing of the blessing,” in chapter 27.  And also in chapter 27, after Esau lost the blessing, he hated Jacob and determined to kill him, so Rebekah went to Isaac and pleaded with him to send Jacob away to find a wife.  We read in Genesis 27:43-46:

Now therefore, my son, obey my voice; and arise, flee thou to Laban my brother to Haran;  And tarry with him a few days, until thy brother’s fury turn away; Until thy brother’s anger turn away from thee, and he forget that which thou hast done to him: then I will send, and fetch thee from thence: why should I be deprived also of you both in one day? And Rebekah said to Isaac, I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth: if Jacob take a wife of the daughters of Heth, such as these which are of the daughters of the land, what good shall my life do me?

They had already experienced the grief of mind with Esau, and it would have been confounded terribly if Jacob had also married one of the daughters of the land of the daughters of Heth.  By the way, when we look up the word “Hittite” in the concordance, it is Strong’s 2850, and it would be pronounced, “khit-tee'.”  It comes from another word, Strong’s #2845, which is the word that is translated as “Heth,” or “khayth” in the original Hebrew.  They are very closely related.  So Esau had married daughters of Hittites, the children of Heth.  And his mother was afraid that would also happen to Jacob.

Lord willing, when we get together in our next Bible study, we will look at a timeline that stretches from 1967 B. C. when Esau was 40 to the year 2033 A. D.  This information is not to be concealed, so there is no point trying to hide it.  How many years are between those dates?  From 1967 B. C. to 2033 A. D. is 4,000 calendar years (due to the fact that there is no year “0.”)  And keep in mind that in 1967 B. C. Esau was 40, and when we go from there to the date 2033, which much biblical evidence points to as the year of the end of the world, it 4,000 years.  And “40” is part of the number “4,000.”  It is the number “4,” plus multiples of 10.  So there it is definitely related.  What could God have in view with that?  This is something we will look at, Lord willing, when we get together in our next EBible Fellowship Bible study.