Tricks, Lies and God’s Blessings
Again, my mind goes crazy from reading these stories in the Old Testament. I kinda laugh out loud a lot. Jacob in Genesis is just a riot to read about. His mother loved him more than his older twin, Esau, and devised a plan with Jacob at his father’s death bed to dress up and pretend that Jacob was Esau in order to steal the older brother’s blessings and inheritance. Well it worked and Jacob was the one blessed by Isaac. God confirms Jacob’s blessings to become a great nation later on. I have to wonder whether Esau would have had the blessings of God if Isaac had blessed him as he was suppose to?
Later, after Jacob was married to both Leah and Rachel (see previous post for that sort of crazy sex life), Jacob negotiated with his father-in-law to keep all the spotted and non-perfect sheep. Laban agreed to the deal and then Jacob devised this plan to have the strong sheep mate in front of this peeled branch of poplar, which caused the sheep to develop spots and streaks on them. Jacob kept all the strong sheep and Laban had all the weak ones!
Stories like this are all in Genesis. Like Abraham lying about Sarah being his sister instead of his wife (and not on only one occasion) to the kings because he was afraid they would kill him. In return, God warns these kings in dreams and the kings get scared and give Abraham lots of loot for the misunderstanding?!
I understand that we can’t just sit back and let God baby us and the saying goes that “God blesses those who help themselves,” meaning that God blesses hard work, but this sounds a little odd that God would bless these guys who deliberately lie, cheat and trick to get ahead. I wonder if God just saw these occasions as having to come in and clean up the mess of his dumbfounded family? If so, I wonder how many times God has done that for me.
“Tricks, Lies and God’s Blessings”