Originally published on the Doxa blog.
Before Jacob and Esau drew a breath, the LORD had already told their mother who they would be.
Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah (Genesis 25:20). He was sixty when the twins were born (Genesis 25:26). Twenty years sit between those two verses, and for all of them the son of the promise had no son.
Why did Isaac pray for Rebekah?
Isaac prayed because Rebekah could not have children, and every promise God had made to Abraham ran through Isaac's children. God had told Abraham, "through Isaac your offspring will be reckoned" (Genesis 21:12). A barren wife put that sentence in question year after year.
So Isaac took it back to the One who said it. "Isaac prayed to the LORD on behalf of his wife, because she was barren. And the LORD heard his prayer, and his wife Rebekah conceived" (Genesis 25:21). Genesis gives the twenty years one verse. The LORD heard, and the waiting ended.
The answer brought a new trouble with it.
Why did Rebekah inquire of the LORD?
Rebekah inquired of the LORD because her twins were fighting inside her and she wanted to know what it meant. "The children inside her struggled with each other, and she said, 'Why is this happening to me?' So Rebekah went to inquire of the LORD" (Genesis 25:22).
She asked, and God spoke. "Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger" (Genesis 25:23). Rebekah carried that sentence for the rest of her pregnancy. The struggle inside her had not changed, and now she knew whose hand was over it.
Then her time came, "there were indeed twins in her womb" (Genesis 25:24), and the first piece of what God said stood in front of her. Esau came out red and hairy. "After this, his brother came out grasping Esau's heel; so he was named Jacob" (Genesis 25:26).
What does the older will serve the younger mean?
It means God chose the younger twin, Jacob, to carry His promise ahead of the firstborn, and He said so before either boy had done a single thing. In that world the firstborn took the double portion and the father's place. God reversed the order out loud, in the womb.
Paul quotes this verse to the church in Rome to show that God's call rests on God alone: "before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad, in order that God's plan of election might stand" (Romans 9:11), the word came "by Him who calls" (Romans 9:12). The line God named that day runs on: "Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah" (Matthew 1:2), and down to Jesus. Everyone who belongs to Him stands where Jacob stood, called before they had anything to offer. "Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise" (Galatians 4:28).
Knowing God starts here, with a God who speaks first. Jacob would spend years learning who had called him.
Hold what He said while the struggle goes on
Rebekah had a sentence from God and a body that still ached from the fight inside it. Both were true at once for months. Maybe God has said something to you, and what you can see today still looks like struggle. Write down what He said in the Doxa app, with the date and the words as you heard them, so you can read it back while you wait and again on the day it comes to pass. We are the people who remember what God has spoken, and He keeps every part of it.
What has God told you that you are carrying through a hard season right now?
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Also please feel free to read the Doxa Deeper Dive below where we delve into the original language and historical context.
The Doxa Deeper Dive
Why Jacob's Name Was a Warning Israel Had to Hear
Originally published on the Doxa blog.
The name Jacob is a picture of a hand on a heel, and the Hebrew Bible never lets the reader forget it.
Why is Jacob's name connected to the heel?
Jacob's name is built on the Hebrew word for heel, so it says, in effect, he grabs the heel. Jacob is Yaaqov (H3290), and the heel his hand closed on in Genesis 25:26 is aqev (H6119). The English "grasping Esau's heel; so he was named Jacob" (Genesis 25:26) keeps the event and loses the pun the Hebrew hearer could not miss.
Follow the word back. The first heel in the Bible is in Eden, where God tells the serpent about the woman's offspring: "He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel" (Genesis 3:15). From then on Genesis follows that promised offspring line by line, and the heel is where the enemy strikes. In Genesis 25 the line runs through one womb where two boys crush each other, and the son God names comes out with his hand on a heel. It ends with Jesus, the offspring whose heel was struck on the cross, and Paul promises the church, "The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet" (Romans 16:20).
The verb from the same root, aqav (H6117), means to come up from behind and overreach. Esau uses it when he loses the blessing: "Is he not rightly named Jacob? For he has cheated me twice" (Genesis 27:36). Cheated me is yaaqveni, he has Jacobed me. Jeremiah turns it on the whole nation centuries later. The BSB reads "every brother deals craftily" (Jeremiah 9:4), and the Hebrew is kol ach aqov yaaqov: every brother is a heel-grabber, every brother is a Jacob.
So the name the nation carried was a warning as well as a name. God changed it in Genesis 32: "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel" (Genesis 32:28). The heel-grabber's family became the people God named, and that renaming began with a question his mother asked before he was born.
What does it mean that Rebekah inquired of the LORD?
It means she went to God for an answer about her own situation, and Genesis 25:22 is the first place the Bible uses that phrase for a person seeking the LORD.
It began with a plea already answered. Isaac "prayed to the LORD on behalf of his wife," and "the LORD heard his prayer" (Genesis 25:21). Both verbs are athar (H6279), to plead. Isaac pleaded, and the LORD let Himself be pleaded with.
The answer brought a pregnancy that hurt. "The children inside her struggled" (Genesis 25:22) uses ratsats (H7533), to crush. When the Ammonites "harassed and oppressed the Israelites" (Judges 10:8), oppressed is ratsats. Rebekah felt two boys crushing each other inside her, and her question, "Why is this happening to me?" (Genesis 25:22), is the question of a woman who had waited twenty years for this child.
So she went to ask. The verb is darash (H1875), to seek, to ask after. Later it is the word for coming to God through His prophet, as when a king of Israel says of Micaiah, "There is still one man through whom we can inquire of the LORD" (1 Kings 22:8). Rebekah asked the LORD, and He answered her in poetry.
Why would the older serve the younger?
Because God chose it, and He said so in words that cut straight across the law Israel lived by. The oracle reads literally the great one will serve the little one: rav (H7227) and tsair (H6810). The firstborn's rights were written into Israel's own law: a father must honour the firstborn "by giving him a double portion of all that he has" (Deuteronomy 21:17). Israel heard that law read out, and heard God say before birth that the second twin would carry the promise.
Genesis does this again and again, down to Jacob crossing his hands to put his right hand "on the head of Ephraim, the younger" (Genesis 48:14).
That same law explains the hardest line about these twins. Malachi hears God say, "Yet Jacob I have loved" (Malachi 1:2), and then, "but Esau I have hated" (Malachi 1:3). The verbs are ahav (H157) and sane (H8130), and Israel's inheritance law uses exactly that pair. A man with two wives, "one beloved and the other unloved" (Deuteronomy 21:15), has unloved written senuah, from sane. Leah is the same: "When the LORD saw that Leah was unloved, He opened her womb" (Genesis 29:31). In the language of a family's inheritance, loved and hated name which son receives the portion. Malachi answers a people asking, "How have You loved us?" (Malachi 1:2), by pointing back to a choice God made in a womb.
How did Israel first hear the story of Jacob and Esau?
Israel heard it as the story of their own name and of the nation across their southern border.
The Hebrew names the place in the birth. Esau came out red, admoni (H132), the sound of Edom (H123). He was covered with hair, sear (H8181), the sound of Seir (H8165), the mountain where "Esau (that is, Edom) settled" (Genesis 36:8). An Israelite hearing verse 25 heard the hills of Seir across the Arabah.
Moses sent word to the king of Edom, "This is what your brother Israel says" (Numbers 20:14), and Edom refused them passage. The law still told Israel, "Do not despise an Edomite, for he is your brother" (Deuteronomy 23:7). Generations later, under David, "all the Edomites were subject to David" (2 Samuel 8:14), and the oracle given to Rebekah stood in the history books.
The prophets read the birth back to them. Hosea preached it to a nation drifting from God: "In the womb he grasped his brother's heel, and in his vigor he wrestled with God. Yes, he struggled with the angel and prevailed; he wept and sought His favor; he found Him at Bethel and spoke with Him there" (Hosea 12:3–4). Hosea told Israel the heel-grabber's story so they would remember how their father came to know God, by seeking Him and being spoken to.
What does Jacob's birth show about knowing God?
It shows that God speaks first, and that knowing Him is a lifetime of coming to hear what He has already said. God answered Isaac's plea, answered Rebekah's question, and named Jacob's future before he was born. Jacob grabbed at a heel for years before he met the LORD at Bethel and heard, "I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac" (Genesis 28:13). The word in the womb came first, and the knowing caught up with it.
We are the people who read back what God has said, the way Israel heard Hosea read their father's story to them. Write down what God has said to you in the Doxa app with the date, so you can read back how He spoke before you understood, and watch Him keep it.
Keep exploring. If this raised a question, or brought back something God has said to you, take it further. Ask Doxa. It answers from Scripture, real stories, and your own journey, free in your browser. No signup to start.
Questions and comments are welcome below.
Download Doxa, the app for recording, weighing and remembering prophetic encouragement.