Benjamin and Lauren Turner
  • Homebuilders
  • Our Blog
  • Photo Archive
    • Current Photos
  • Our Story
    • New Testament Commandments
    • Wedding Vows
    • Wedding Photo Gallery

How Prophecies Happen

9/8/2012

 
A long time ago in a galaxy not so very far away (in our own, as a matter of fact), there lived a man and a woman.  As with many other stories, this man and woman had everything they could want except a child.  This was a serious thing, because the man carried a very special blessing that was intended to be passed on to his son just as it had been passed down to him.  As they grew older and older, the man and woman grew very concerned that they would never have a child to inherit the special blessing.  The man finally prayed earnestly that his wife could have a child...and to their surprise and joy, soon they realized their prayer had been answered and God had granted them a child.

Except that when the child grew big enough for the woman to be able to feel movement, she was dismayed that she seemed to have a wrestling match going on inside her.  After days of being unable to sleep and having her ribs hurt from little feet drumming on them, she finally said in exasperation, "I can't endure this!  Lord, what is happening inside me?"

And then a very special thing happened.  God himself spoke to her, right to her just like a friend would.  He said, "You are carrying two different nations inside you, two sons who will both become very strong peoples.  But the younger is going to become much stronger than the older and the older will serve the younger."

Of course, she was both excited and worried, because in those days, having twins who survived was very rare.  Not only was she going to have two babies - after so long without children - but God had specifically said that the youngest son was to be the inheritor of the special blessing her husband was expecting to pass down to his oldest son.  To their people, the oldest son was the most special child of all children, the one who was just naturally the favorite and who was given the inheritance as a matter of course.  Younger sons had to work harder and weren't given all the special attention oldest sons got.

She went to her husband and told him what God had said and her husband marveled that they would be having two sons.  But he didn't say much about God's prophecy regarding older and younger sons.  It didn't mean much to him yet; and two sons were a miracle enough - plenty of time for them to grow and receive his blessing.

After a time longer, it was time for the two babies to be born; and sure enough, the woman had two strong, healthy baby boys.  Everyone laughed at the story of their birth, because the older son came out red and feisty and with a lot of dark hair...but the quieter younger son came right after him with his little hand clutched around his brother's heel.  Twins aren't usually born that way - there's usually at least a little space between one birth and another.  But this younger son sure didn't want his brother leaving their secure little home inside their mother without him.

When the proud father watched his two little boys begin to grow and change, he began to think about what his wife had told him before their birth and what God's prophecy meant.  His feisty, strong, wonderful oldest son was not the inheritor of the special blessing.  But of the two boys, the father admired the older son right from the start.  The father was a quiet man himself, but he couldn't help but laugh and be proud of his older son's energy and precociousness as the boy grew.  How could this son not be the Inheritor?

His wife, on the other hand, had a much easier time with the younger son - who did not like to practice shooting arrows at prize goats and who did not regularly sneak out to do things she told him not to - and she grew much closer to her younger son than the older.  And she did not forget that this was the child of the promise, the special one who would inherit the blessing.  No matter how much her husband favored their oldest son and treated him with the honor of his birthright in spite of his shenanigans, she looked at her younger son and said, "This is the one God said would be stronger."

The boys eventually became men.  The older was one of those manly men who spent all his time out hunting and drinking with the guys and chasing the girls without a care in the world; the younger was quieter, reading and tending to things around the house and even turning into a pretty decent cook.  His older brother was a bit scornful of this, but he just shrugged his shoulders at his wimpy twin and kept decorating with more antelope horns from his latest hunt.  As for the younger son, he admired his brother's skillfulness, but the thing he really wanted was to inherit from his father as if he were the older son.  He wanted to take on his father's responsibilities and manage the household - which was quite large and wealthy by this time - and raise strong healthy sheep and run the family business.  It was not a very likely dream, though.  He was the younger son and younger sons don't inherit.  The shame of it was, the older son really didn't care to learn the family business.  He found it boring.  He would much rather be out shooting deer.

But in the meantime, the father was growing more and more uneasy.  He loved his younger son, of course; and actually, he and his wife worried quite a bit about the older son's careless attitude and the way he didn't seem to care much about being a wise administrator (not to mention his taste in girls)...but he was determined that his older son should not be disgraced by having the Inheritance go to the younger son.  It just wasn't right.  It wasn't DONE.  If he should pass the Inheritance down to his younger son, it would be like he was telling the whole world that his oldest son had displeased him and he was so irresponsible he wasn't worth the position he was born to.  It would be a terrible disgrace and the father could not see how he could hurt his son that way.  Perhaps his wife had made a mistake.  Maybe she hadn't understood what God was saying all those years ago.

The wife was worried, too.  She saw how foolishly her older son was behaving - when he ran off and got married to an air-headed local girl without even a proper wedding, she was ready to disinherit him herself - and she knew she had not made a mistake in what God had said.  He had spoken so clearly.  The younger son was the one who needed to be blessed with the Inheritance.  It became a bit of a sore point between the man and the woman, because the man stubbornly stuck to his determination to give their oldest son the Inheritance and the woman believed it would be a disaster to try to ignore God's instructions.

Finally, the day came when the husband realized it was time to pass on the Inheritance.  He was very old by then and his eyesight had failed so badly he had to have his studious younger son do all the accounting for the family business.  He wasn't able to run the household as he should anymore, which meant he had to make his final decision.

And he stuck to his decision: his older son would get the Inheritance.

His conscience pricked him a little.  He knew it was not wise to ignore a prophecy God had given his wife.  But he just could not see depriving his older son of his rights.

So he called his oldest son in and told him to go bring him a very special dish: freshly-caught venison prepared in a stew.  This meant the oldest son actually had to go out and shoot the deer, which was going to take a while: but it was custom back in those days for there to be a task for the son to complete before he was considered worthy of the Inheritance. 

The woman sat beside her husband as he sent their son off in search of venison and knew the time of reckoning had come. But she did not try to argue with her husband that day.  She had said all she was going to say.  So she got up and left quietly and went to find her younger son.  She made the special stew with goat instead of venison and she tied the skins neatly to her son's arms so that her blind husband would not realized that his much-hairier older son was not the one serving him the special meal.  And while she did it, she prayed that God would forgive her for tricking her husband and that her husband would forgive her too.

The trick worked.  The old man ate the stew, was only a little suspicious that the bearer of the stew wasn't his older son, and finally took a deep breath and prepared to give away the inheritance.  It was a legally binding thing, this special moment, this special blessing.  And finally, finally, he was going to give it to his beloved older son.

And he didn't just give a blessing to pass on the Inheritance.  He gave the most binding, complete one he could come up with - and he'd been thinking about it a long time - with not a single loophole in it.  He didn't just pass on the Inheritance, but he deliberately gave his son his brother as his slave and said every single bit of the Inheritance would be his, nothing held back, nothing left over.  He didn't leave anything at all for his younger son.  He knew when he was saying it that he was being defiant and even unnecessarily harsh to his faithful and quiet younger son...but he was very determined.  There was one prophecy that was not going to come true, he promised himself.

Then it was all done and his son took the dishes and left, the proud bearer of the Inheritance.  The man settled back tiredly and closed his blind eyes, ready for a nap.  Part of him was very satisfied.  He had provided for his oldest son.  He hadn't disgraced him.  Another part was suddenly uneasy, though.  Had it really been necessary to be so very thorough?  He could've passed on the Inheritance without making one brother the slave of the other.  That had perhaps been a little unwise,  he thought.

Then the door opened again and he smelled a familiar smell, heard a familiar voice.  "Father, I'm here with the venison you asked me for!" his oldest son said in his rough, boistrous way.  "Sit up and eat it so you can give me your blessing!"

The old man began to shake.  He knew immediately what had happened.   He had been tricked.  The prophecy had come true.  He had irrevocably and completely given away the Inheritance...to his younger son.  Just as God had said so many years ago.  He had made his beloved older son a slave to the younger and he had left nothing at all behind.  In his defiance, he had cheated his older son of even the small portion that usually belonged to younger sons.  It was all his fault, because he had been so determined to do things the way he wanted to instead of what God had planned.

This is a true story.  The man's name was Isaac and his two sons were Esau and Jacob.  And in the end, Isaac's refusal to accept that Esau would not be the son who inherited God's promise to be the Chosen Nation caused Esau's line to actually die out.  Today, there are recognized descendants of Jacob, the Younger Son, in every nation on Earth.  God himself states his name as "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."  Our Messiah was born from that family.  But Esau the Older Son literally ended up with nothing.  If there are Edomites left in this world, they are few and scattered and no longer identified by their father's name.  Isaac was very thorough in that blessing in his attempt to circumvent God's plan; so thorough that there really was nothing left to give his favorite older son after the trick was discovered.

I'm not completely sure what the ultimate lesson is here for us.  But I do know that it had never occurred to me before how defiant Isaac really was in that blessing.  He had to have known of the prophecy.  Rebekah his wife must've told him.  But he was blinded by his love for his son and the fact that he thought he knew better than God who should inherit the promise. That's certainly something that's easy to do, thinking that whatever God's doing here must be a mistake.

God doesn't make mistakes.  No matter how hard it is for us to figure out what he's doing, trying to correct him or make his plans bend to ours will always end up far more disastrous than anything we could've imagined.

And as kind of a funny footnote: I've always found it interesting that the "Man's Man" Esau had only five children while his quiet, bookish, homebody brother Jacob...had thirteen.  Don't overlook the quiet men!
Bonnie
9/9/2012 10:13:38 pm

Wow, I like your retelling of the story, Lauren! Lots of little perspectives I'd never thought through - you can see more clearly why people may have acted the way they did. Are you one of those who finds it easy to put yourself in the shoes of Bible characters and see into what was going on around them? It doesn't seem to come easily to me.

I WAS waiting for the punch line that you are expecting twins, however.

Oh, and I've never understood why the fact that Jacob was tricking his father didn't nullify the blessing (legally, in ceremony)... after all, Isaac WAS blessing Esau in word and intent. That part doesn't make sense to me.

Katy
9/10/2012 12:59:17 am

I completely thought you were having twins.. I skipped to the end to read it, and then went back and read the rest. ;)

I've always wondered what Isaac was thinking when he gave Esau the blessing, after God had said that Jacob would be a stronger nation, and Esau would serve him!

Lauren
9/10/2012 03:34:02 am

Oops...sorry girls, didn't mean to, er, misannounce anything. There's an extremely high probability (don't like to say certainty, but it's pretty certain) that we only have one little peanut in there. The ultrasound we had back at 10 weeks was pretty unobstructed, so even though there could be another hiding really well...there's still probably only one. I'm pretty small for twins, too.

Glad you enjoyed the story!

This whole thing came to mind because I started wondering why Isaac was so quick to capitulate and not recant his blessing when he realized he'd blessed the wrong twin; and also why he didn't seem to bear Rebekah and Jacob any ill-will at all for tricking him. The more I think about it, the more I think that moment when he realized he'd blessed the wrong twin (the moment when he began shaking and said, "Then who was here with the venison?") was also the moment when he realized that God meant what he'd said before the twins were born and even if he tried to bless Esau, God would outmaneuver him again. It was the moment Isaac surrendered.

I don't always manage to put myself in Bible peoples' shoes, but I do try to because it's only when they become real people that are like real people I know now that I feel like I finally start getting some sense of how I could make the same mistakes and how to avoid them. There are a couple easy ones here: I wonder if Isaac really did laugh at Esau's activities as a kid rather than correct him and that's why he ended up such a wild man (with a terrible temper). I think as parents a lot of us tend to laugh at dumb things our kids do rather than seeing them for the dangerous spirit they're betraying. And I think it's also common for God to require things of us that just aren't DONE in our time and place, like disgracing the older son to bless the younger (or taking our kids out of school...you know what I mean). Just because it doesn't mean much to us for Isaac to've blessed one son or the other doesn't mean it wouldn't have had a whole lot of more severe consequences back in the day.

Anyhow, that's why I started writing about why Isaac still persisted in trying to bless Esau even when God prophesied it was Jacob who was supposed to get the blessing, and why it was that Isaac wouldn't take the blessing back once he gave it.

Janice
9/11/2012 12:07:44 pm

Most prophecies in Scriptures are actually warnings given so that people have the time to turn and repent. As a parent, (those of us who are) which child are we willing to turn over to satan? Our oldest? I don't think so. :) (I hope that parents would fight equally hard for all of them.) What has always puzzled me about this story (and about many prophecies) is that knowing the potiential outcome how come there isn't more evidence of their parents fighting for their souls or pleading to God for their future. Instead, it has always seemed to me that Isaac and Rebekah allowed the twins to divided them and their unity of spirit.

Lauren
9/12/2012 09:41:33 pm

Yes, it's always puzzled me that Isaac and Rebekah did not take more care with their sons. Isaac just tried to bless Esau anyway without doing anything up to that point to raise children who would NOT be "peoples divided".

I wonder how things would be different had Isaac and Rebekah taken that prophecy to heart rather than have it sitting around like a stone in the backs of their minds all those years.

Lauren
9/12/2012 09:46:19 pm

That is a really good point: I looked at as the prophecy was something God planned, but what if it was something God saw coming and was sorrowful about and wanted to have changed...then it wasn't just "what he had planned" but what he knew would have to happen because of how Isaac and Rebekah would go about being parents.

Emily25069
9/13/2012 10:08:55 pm

"Most prophecies in Scriptures are actually warnings given so that people have the time to turn and repent."

I am curious about this way of thinking.

It would seem to me that God is completely sovereign and there are things we just can't change because they end up working out the way God planned it anyways.

Take Joseph's brothers for instance.. The brothers "meant it for evil", but God "meant it for good". I think it was all in His plan. Perhaps they weren't puppets so to speak, but I think God knew exactly what would happen in this situation and therefore "planned" it that way-the outcome of it all that is..., and I tend to think the same with this story.

A lot of prophecies are warnings, but when that is so, it seems to me that the prophecy is written as a warning, but here, it seems very matter of fact. "This is what will happen."

Interesting conversation!

Lauren
9/14/2012 03:02:15 am

I suppose a good "food for thought" story on this would be that of Jonah and Ninevah. God was not kidding in his prophecy about what would happen to the city and he said destruction was imminent, but when the people sincerely repentant, he spared them. He was very definite about his plans for the city, though.

It seems like there may be a few reasons why God would give us a glimpse into the future. One reason is to show that he is Sovreign and there is no one but he himself who can reveal the future. Another reason is so that it will bring him glory by letting us recognize that he does what he says he is going to do. But there is another reason and that would be repentance. So many of the prophets wrote God's words to his people saying, "This is what is going to happen because you are not obeying me". Why would God so specifically bring up obedience if he didn't want some response? When you tell one of your kids you're going to punish him if he doesn't stop some behavior, I bet you don't expect the kid to just shrug and say, "Well, Mom said she's going to punish me. That's a bummer." *grin*

And I guess...as a parent, if God gave me a prophecy about my children that included the oldest being stripped of his rights as the oldest and my children being divided from each other, I would beg and train and do whatever I could to keep such terrible things from happening. Certainly what God plans is going to come true; but it seems sometimes there are flexible details along the way and that would be my hope and comfort regarding my own children.

Emily
9/15/2012 02:26:44 pm

Good points, and I get what you are saying.

I am still not entirely sure I agree with your conclusion. I am thinking now of the apostles who were told that they would deny Christ and they all (I believe) really and truly thought that they would not.

In the story of Ninevah, God was sending Jonah to tell them to repent, right? It has actually been quite a while since I read that story so I am really asking.

So far, aside from sending Christ and the gospel, and teaching me to obey His Word and raising my children that way, God hasn't given me a particular prophecy reguarding my children-nothing like telling me that I would have twins that would fight and be against each other even from within the womb or anything like that..:). So I think these are special situations and I don't know that the things could have been undone..

Lauren
9/16/2012 04:16:48 am

Actually, Jonah didn't say anything about repenting. God told him simply to walk through Ninevah and cry out that God was going to destroy the city in 40 days.

This is what happened:
________________________________________________________
The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh, “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.”

When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it. - Jonah 3:6-10
________________________________________________________

God was not commanding the people to repent at all in his message. But what was he saying by telling the people of Ninevah that he was going to destroy them? Apparently, it wasn't just to announce to the people that he was going to wipe them out. He was pleased by their reaction to his prophecy.

So prophecy does not seem to mean all the details are set in stone.

What would've happened if the apostles had treated Jesus' prophecy as a warning rather than a case of "We would never do such a thing!"?

Emily25069
10/5/2012 09:43:13 am

Thanks! I actually did go read Jonah right after I wrote that. Turns out the veggie tales version was stuck in my head-not a suitable replacement for scripture. :(

And I do think its a curious story. Did God not know that they would repent? That's a pretty inconceivable thing to me.. then again, there are passages of scripture where "God remembers" such and such a thing, or where people plead with God to get God to move in a certain direction and God changes His mind-so I suppose it isn't conceivable. Just maybe very difficult for me to understand.

What if they had taken it as a warning? I am pretty sure either way, they were watching themselves, but then just got really really scared and sinned by denying Him. At least, that is how I have always read that passage.


Comments are closed.
    Picture

    For blog updates by email enter your address here:

    Author: Lauren

    Wife of Benjamin and mother to two wonderful little girls who are getting bigger every day.  Enjoys writing down thoughts and discussions we are having within the family and sharing them with whoever is interested in reading.

    Comment

    Please don't be shy!  If you're reading the blog updates, we'd like to hear what you think.  Click on the "comments" link to send us a note.

    Archives

    August 2018
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011

    Categories

    All
    Abigail
    Addition
    Baby
    Current News
    Events
    Garden
    Grandma Lila
    Holidays
    Marriage
    Susannah
    Thoughts
    Wedding Preparations

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Homebuilders
  • Our Blog
  • Photo Archive
    • Current Photos
  • Our Story
    • New Testament Commandments
    • Wedding Vows
    • Wedding Photo Gallery