A Morning Study Collection

01Scripture

• Old Testament: Genesis 27, Isaac blesses Jacob in Esau’s place
• New Testament: 1 John 3, children of God, and love in deed and truth

Why these texts together. This season the plan reads Genesis beside 1 John because both books tell of Cain, and today’s New Testament chapter names him: “We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother” (1 John 3:12). Beale and Carson’s Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament treats this as the one clear, direct use of the Old Testament in John’s letters; its source is Genesis 4, not today’s chapter. But Genesis 27 shares John’s words. “Esau hated Jacob … ‘then I will kill my brother Jacob’” (Gen 27:41) stands beside “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer” (1 John 3:15). The shared word is “brother”; the Greek verbs for hating differ. The link is a shared theme and a shared word. John is not quoting Genesis 27.

Translation notes

• Gen 27:39 “away from the fatness of the earth.” The NKJV has “of the fatness,” the NET “by the richness.” The Hebrew preposition מִן can mean source (“of,” as in Jacob’s blessing in v. 28) or separation (“away from”). The ESV, NIV, CSB, NASB95, NRSVue and NLT read separation.
• Gen 27:41 “hated.” Several versions have “bore a grudge against” or “held a grudge against.” The verb שָׂטַם names a hatred that lasts.
• 1 John 3:9 “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning.” The CSB, LSB and NKJV have “does not sin”; the NIV “will continue to sin.” The debate is how much weight the Greek present tense carries.

Textual note

1 John 3:5 “to take away sins.” Codex Sinaiticus (4th century), Codex Ephraemi (5th century), the Byzantine text and others add “our” sins. The standard critical text prints the shorter reading, with Codex Alexandrinus and Codex Vaticanus. The ESV follows the shorter text.

02Scripture Memory

1 John 1:9, day 4 of 7: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Read it slowly twice, then stay with it a minute before going on.

03From the Classics

Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834–1892), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon 3111, “Warning and Encouragement,” on Genesis 27:38. Preached at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, London, on a Sunday evening in September 1874, and published in 1908.

“And Esau said unto his father, Have you but one blessing, my Father? Bless me, even me, also, O my Father. And Esau lifted up his voice and wept.” Genesis 27:38.

You know the story of Esau and Jacob. … Esau was the elder of the twin sons of Isaac and Rebekah. The birthright was his by right, but he despised it. He was a profane person who did not prize the hereditary privilege which was really his. He actually sold his right to it to his younger brother, Jacob, for a mess of “pottage of lentils.” Time rolled on and Isaac, feeling the infirmities of age creeping upon him, determined to give to Esau the blessing to which, as his elder son, he was entitled. Rebekah wanted the blessing to be given to her younger son and, therefore, resorted to a stratagem in order to make the poor blind father believe that Jacob was Esau—and in that way Jacob gained the blessing by fraud.

The whole story reflects no credit upon any of the persons concerned. It certainly brings no credit to Isaac—he was a true Believer in God, but he was a man of an easy-going, gentle spirit who did not control his household as he ought to have done. … I cannot excuse either Rebekah or Jacob. They were acting very wickedly in trying to get Isaac’s blessing by fraud and falsehood. Neither can I justify Esau, for he was trying to keep what he had sold to his brother and what he had despised and contemptuously called, “this birthright.”

One thing is certain—God’s Providence, notwithstanding their sin, carried out God’s purpose! It was no business of theirs, as it is no business of ours, to try to fulfill God’s decrees. God would have managed the whole affair far better without Rebekah’s meddling—and the foolish mother would not have had to send from home her darling son, nor would he have had to go away as an exile to endure all that he had to endure at the hands of the grasping Laban! Still, God overruled the evil and His design was accomplished, as it always is and always will be.

The study includes the sermon’s opening and the first part of its warning. We corrected two typing errors in the digital edition.

Reflect

1. Spurgeon says the story “reflects no credit upon any of the persons concerned.” What does he charge to Isaac, to Rebekah and Jacob, and to Esau? Which verses of Genesis 27 carry each charge (compare 27:4; 27:6–13; 27:19–24; 27:36 with 25:32–34)?
2. “It was no business of theirs … to try to fulfill God’s decrees.” How do Isaac’s words in 27:33, “Yes, and he shall be blessed,” read beside that sentence and beside the oracle of 25:23?

04Word Study and Languages

Word study: עָקַב (ʿāqab), “overreach, supplant”

In today’s text: once, in Esau’s outcry: “Is he not rightly named Jacob? For he has cheated me these two times” (Gen 27:36). The Hebrew puts the name and the verb side by side, יַעֲקֹב וַיַּעְקְבֵנִי: “Jacob … and he has jacobed me.”

Range of meaning: Brown, Driver and Briggs’s Hebrew and English Lexicon (1906) gives “follow at the heel, fig. assail insidiously, circumvent, overreach,” a verb formed from עָקֵב, “heel.” It lists only three sure places: Hosea 12:3, where Jacob took his brother by the heel; Genesis 27:36; and Jeremiah 9:4, where the name sounds again in “every brother is a deceiver.” The other major Hebrew lexicons in the library agree on “take by the heel, supplant.”

How it lands here: Esau reads his brother’s name as a verdict. The birth story gave the name from the heel (25:26); Esau now gives it from the deed, and counts two deeds: the birthright and the blessing.

Caution: lexicons arranged by root can tempt us to argue from a word’s root picture. Take the meaning from the three passages, where it means getting the better of a brother by deceit. The picture of a heel does not decide it.

Hebrew (learning): Genesis 27:36

וַיֹּ֡אמֶר הֲכִי֩ קָרָ֨א שְׁמ֜וֹ יַעֲקֹ֗ב וַֽיַּעְקְבֵ֙נִי֙ זֶ֣ה פַעֲמַ֔יִם אֶת־בְּכֹרָתִ֣י לָקָ֔ח וְהִנֵּ֥ה עַתָּ֖ה לָקַ֣ח בִּרְכָתִ֑י וַיֹּאמַ֕ר הֲלֹא־אָצַ֥לְתָּ לִּ֖י בְּרָכָֽה׃

Reading it

• A wayyiqtol after a name: וַיַּעְקְבֵנִי draws a consequence inside speech. He was named Jacob, and so he has jacobed me. The ESV’s “For” shows that logic.
• Object suffixes: ־נִי is “me” on a verb; ־ִי is “my” on a noun. Learn the pair.
• A second pun: בְּכֹרָתִי “my birthright” and בִּרְכָתִי “my blessing” use the same three consonants with two of them swapped. So Esau’s two losses sound almost alike.
• Pausal forms: לָקָח and לָקַח are the same word four words apart: a clean example of how the accents lengthen a vowel at a pause.

Greek (test yourself): 1 John 3:17

ὃς δʼ ἂν ἔχῃ τὸν βίον τοῦ κόσμου καὶ θεωρῇ τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ χρείαν ἔχοντα καὶ κλείσῃ τὰ σπλάγχνα αὐτοῦ ἀπʼ αὐτοῦ, πῶς ἡ ἀγάπη τοῦ θεοῦ μένει ἐν αὐτῷ;

1. Translate.
2. Parse: ἔχῃ, θεωρῇ, ἔχοντα, κλείσῃ, μένει.
3. Syntax: (a) What kind of clause is ὃς δʼ ἂν with the subjunctive, and why does the tense change from ἔχῃ and θεωρῇ to κλείσῃ? (b) Is τοῦ θεοῦ in ἡ ἀγάπη τοῦ θεοῦ subjective or objective, and what does each give? (c) How does ἔχοντα relate to τὸν ἀδελφόν?
4. Vocabulary: give the dictionary form and meaning of βίον and σπλάγχνα.

Answers at the end of this page.

05Connections

The New Testament uses the Old: 1 John 3:12 and Genesis 4

John names a person, not a verse, so the link rests on one word, Cain. Beale and Carson’s commentary makes three points, here in our words:

• The Old Testament setting. God rejected Cain’s offering, and Genesis 4:6–7 implies the reason was Cain himself: he was already doing evil.
• What John adds. “Of the evil one” is not in Genesis 4. Some Jewish writings say the same, but John need not depend on them; it is a fair inference from Genesis 3 and 4 read together. The serpent who led Cain’s parents astray now leads Cain.
• How John uses it. Cain is a warning from real history. Hate is where murder starts, as Jesus taught in Matthew 5:21–24.

Cross-references

06Catechism Review

Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), chapter 1, section 3, day 4 of the week

The books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon of the Scripture, and therefore are of no authority in the Church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved, or made use of, than other human writings.

07Prayer

Book of Common Prayer (1662), the Collect for the Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity, this week’s collect. Its petition stands beside 1 John 3:21–22, “whatever we ask we receive from him.”

O God, our refuge and strength, who art the author of all godliness: Be ready, we beseech thee, to hear the devout prayers of thy Church; and grant that those things which we ask faithfully we may obtain effectually, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Intercession

The study then moves through six circles of prayer (family, church, community, country, leaders and missions), each with a focus and a verse to pray, and names the reader’s own people from a private prayer list. Today’s people group to pray for, from the Joshua Project: the Tengger of East Java, Indonesia, about 95,000 people, fewer than 1% of them evangelical Christians.

08Benediction

Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

Hebrews 13:20–21

09For Further Study

• Keep reading: Spurgeon’s sermon goes on, in 24 more sections, to the rest of the warning and then the encouragement he draws from Esau’s cry.
• Related reading in the library: Charles Simeon, Horae Homileticae, on Genesis 27:35, who argues the fraud was unnecessary, since God’s purpose could be “safely left with the execution of his own purposes”; Calvin’s Commentary on Genesis on 27:4, on why Isaac’s blessing still stood; Andrew Murray, The New Life, chapter 10; and A. A. Hodge on the Westminster Confession, chapter 18, on assurance, for 1 John 3:14 and 19–24.
• Questions to ask Claude: the study ends with three ready-made questions that open in Claude, such as how to read the present tenses in 1 John 3:6 and 3:9.

—Answer Key: Greek

1 John 3:17. “But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” (ESV)

Syntax. (a) An indefinite relative clause, ὃς ἄν with the subjunctive, “whoever”; it works like the “if” clause of a general condition, which is why the ESV writes “if anyone.” The two presents picture standing conditions (having goods, seeing the brother); the aorist κλείσῃ names the single act of shutting. (b) Most read a subjective genitive, God’s love for us, because of the parallel with “eternal life” in 3:15, which also comes from God. An objective genitive would give “love for God.” (c) ἔχοντα agrees with τὸν ἀδελφόν and completes the verb of seeing: he sees his brother having need.

Vocabulary. βίος: here, the means of living, one’s goods or property. σπλάγχνον, almost always plural: the inward parts, and so the seat of the feelings, our “heart.” Hence the ESV’s “heart,” and “compassion” or “pity” in other versions.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Hebrew text: Westminster Leningrad Codex. Spurgeon, the Westminster Confession, the Book of Common Prayer (1662) and Brown, Driver and Briggs (1906) are in the public domain.