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In a previous blog we examined the bloody history of Abraham and hinted at its relationship to the Christ.  God Himself began the history of blood by providing animal skins for coverings for Adam and Eve when they first decided they were smarter than God. One of the interesting aspects of Abraham’s bloody history is the how of it all.  Animals were a constant part of life and still are even though we have separated ourselves from their death in our modern economic systems.  The animals that were such a part of the lives of yesteryear were most frequently kept as food sources.  This required the dispatch of the animal at about the time the family or household needed meat.  Milk, and its derivatives, were also commonly harvested from the family’s animals.  More indirect uses were also assigned to the domestic animals, such as wool and skins.  All these harvestings were renewable except for meat, the most basic. To dispatch animals for food purposes was common practice and the various households found themselves needing to take the food quite regularly.  We know that Abraham was the leader of a sizeable group of people, maybe numbered in the thousands at times.  To feed such a sizeable population would require that many animals be harvested every day.  This was simply a [...]

Whatever his reasons were, Isaac raised his two sons differently.  Scripture tells us that Esau, the first-born of the twin sons, was a man whose proclivities led him to love the outdoors.  He was a hunter and a man of the “fields.”  This made him temperamentally like his father, and Isaac seems to have loved that about him.  The other twin, Jacob, was apparently not of similar kind.  Scripture cryptically describes him as a man who hung around among the tents.  It is likely this information was given to enable us to view the contrast between the two of them. Now it turns out that Rebekah had been instructed by the Lord concerning the twins.  It was not a vague prophecy at all.  Without doubt, Jacob was to be ascendant over his older brother.  Rebekah apparently took the word of the Lord seriously.  It is not reasonable that she would have hidden such important matters from her husband Isaac.  There can be but very little doubt that from before the twins were born, Isaac was fully aware of the prophesied distinction between his two sons.  He would have known from before they were born that the second son would be ascendant over the first and that the first-born son would be secondary to his brother in the eyes of [...]