Genesis 27:21
And Isaac said unto Jacob, Come near, I pray thee, that I may feel thee, my son, whether thou be my very son Esau or not. And Isaac said unto Jacob, Come near, I pray thee, that I may feel thee, my son, whether thou be my very son Esau or not.
Isaac was old with failing sight and about to give the deathbed blessing to Esau as the firstborn whom he favored, and doubting who stood before him he called him to come near so touch could tell whether he was truly his very son Esau. It was the testing moment of the joint fraud by which Rebekah and Jacob passed Jacob off as Esau to seize the blessing meant for Esau, though God had already promised the birthright to Jacob. They should have trusted God to fulfill His purpose in His own time and way without deceit, for His purposes never justify conniving and He could have provided for Jacob by His own methods. The fraud cost Jacob his honesty and brought guilt before God with ground for Satan to accuse him, and it reaped its harvest in Esau's hatred and death threats, flight for life, twenty years of exiled wrong and fraud, and evils repeated in his sons, proving every deed reacts upon the doer. Jacob afterward repented, confessed the fraud and cast himself on mercy, and he was pardoned and renamed from Jacob to Israel in token of forgiveness and victory, so reconciled to God he no longer feared to meet Esau.
Isaac's Test and Deception
Isaac was aged, his sight grown dim even to blindness, and as he prepared before his death to give the blessing he intended it for Esau as the firstborn out of partiality and preference for him. His failing eyes left him unable to recognize by sight the son who stood before him, so that the bestowal of the firstborn's blessing turned upon discerning which son was present. Doubting the identity of that son, he asked him to come near so that he might feel him by touch and determine whether he was truly his very son Esau or not. The request to come close and be felt was a direct test of identity, born of suspicion that the voice and form before him might not be Esau.
The moment belongs to the joint deception in which Rebekah and Jacob posed Jacob as Esau to obtain by fraud the blessing and birthright blessing intended for Esau. Jacob presented himself as Esau before his father, and by that impersonation secured what Isaac meant to give to the elder son. The birthright so seized by fraud was already his by God's promise, yet it was taken through deceit rather than left for God to bestow.
Harvest, Repentance, and Warning
Rebekah and Jacob should have trusted God to carry out His purpose in His own time and way instead of resorting to deceit to secure the promised blessing, for their effort to obtain it by their own scheming showed lack of faith in His ability to fulfill what He had promised. God could have provided for Jacob by His own methods without any conniving, and His purposes never justify deceit or crooked dealing. The blessing itself could not guarantee prosperity, since God would bless or bring adversity according to the conduct of the recipient, and He could have blessed either son according to conduct. Jacob could have prospered through God by righteous love and reverence even without the privileges usually given to the firstborn.
The fraud cost Jacob his honesty and brought guilt before God with self-condemnation, giving Satan ground to accuse him and claim the right to destroy him. That deception reaped its harvest in his brother's hatred and deadly threats, in flight for his life to escape Esau's anger, and in twenty years of exile as a fugitive in which he was himself wronged and defrauded until forced to find safety in flight. It brought a second harvest as the evils of his own character cropped out in his sons, proving that what a person does is the result of what he is and every deed reacts upon the doer, with lifelong consequences of later danger, anxiety, misgivings and self-reproach because he recognized his own sin had caused it. When after twenty years he left Padan-aram in obedience to God and retraced the fugitive road, the memory of the deception was ever before him with the reproaches of an accusing conscience day and night that made the journey very sad, and as the hills of his native land appeared the past rose vividly before him with the memory of sin joined to the thought of God's favor and promises of help and guidance.
Jacob afterward repented of that fraud, remembered God's mercy, confessed it and cast himself upon mercy, and the sin was pardoned. His name was changed from Jacob to Israel as evidence of forgiveness and victory, the crisis past with doubt, perplexity and remorse replaced by the peace of reconciliation with God, so he no longer feared to meet Esau because God who forgave him could move Esau's heart to accept his humiliation and repentance. God heard his prayer in the night of wrestling and mercifully saved and preserved his life from Esau only because he had previously repented, and had he not repented God could not have heard his prayer. Unconfessed, concealed wrong cuts off faith and confidence to plead for deliverance and leaves the sinner overwhelmed without confidence in the time of trouble, while sins already confessed and forgiven are blotted out by the atoning blood of Christ and no longer brought to mind to remember with despair.
Even such wrongdoing is not without hope, for God will not contend forever nor be always wroth, but sees the ways of the covetous and froward, heals him, leads him, and restores comfort and peace to him that is far off and to him that is near. The act was deceptive reasoning, partiality and hypocrisy that turned a man from his rights in order to grasp what belonged to another. The episode illustrates the same deception practiced by men standing in high places of trust who suppose their councils stand as the voice of God while they turn away from obeying God's Word, grasping all they possibly can irrespective of their own agreements and of the disappointment and wrong done to others, which God will in no case justify or excuse.