Genesis 27: Esau and Jacob

Welcome to the Daily Bible Chapter. My name is James Leroy Wilson and I invite you to join me as we discover new insights and new perspectives from a very old book.

Genesis 27

Reading from Young's Literal Translation (YLT) and the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).

I must confess that when I first read Neville Goddard's take on Jacob and Esau a few years ago, I've been seeing the metaphors and metaphysics in these Bible stories. Neville says "It makes no sense if you take it literally. It has nothing to do with persons called Rebecca or Esau or Jacob. It is all within you that this drama is unfolding."

Every child that comes from woman is Esau. You may be quite hairless by normal standards, but you are still Esau. He changes his name from Esau to Edom, which means “redness” or “red blood.” This being always comes first into the world, and after him comes one to supplant him and that is Jacob. You do not see Jacob. He is hidden. So it said that he had no hair. He lived in a tent. That tent was Esau.

Jacob is the internal consciousness, and it supplants the "self" that appears in the world. I've known that Jacob means "supplants" because I learned that my name, James, also means supplants (Jacob and James are the same name, spoken differently as different languages came into being).

It's a story as old as Cain and Abel (perhaps older still: the Chapter 1 human and the Chapter 2 Adam, created from spirit). The seeming dualism of the one born into the material world and thinks and acts like a slave to it, and the internal consciousness that is completely free of such worldly concerns.

I think Neville is right; this story (and most of the stories previous in Genesis) make no sense from a moral or ethical perspective. But it makes sense as the struggle in every person: what the "flesh" (including its protective mechanism called the ego) thinks it needs versus what the eternal spirit in each of us knows is best.

"Esau" represents the body in which consciousness, Jacob, may grow. The body was made for the spirit, not the other way around. 

James Leroy Wilson writes Daily Miracles, The Daily Bible Chapter, JL Cells, and The MVP Chase. Thanks for your subscriptions and support!

(Photo credit: TyshkunVictor)