Blogging Through the Book of Mormon

29:1-11 - At some point on his 550-mile journey from his father Isaac’s house in Beersheba to his uncle Laban’s house in Haran, Jacob has a spectacular vision in which he makes covenants with God and begins his own spiritual transformation. Some time after this vision he “came into the land of the people of the east,” and sees a well. This must have been significant because he doesn’t have a car with air conditioning or a gas station to stop at for something cold to drink. Water was not only as necessary back then as it is today but it was much harder to come by. Jacob pulls up to this well which has a giant stone on the top of it, and three “flocks” of sheep are “lying by (the well)” with their shepherds. Jacob talked to the guys asking where they were from and they answer Haran, he asks if they know “Laban the son of Nahor,” and they answer that not only do they in fact know his but “his daughter is coming with her sheep for water now.” If we remember, the gathering of water and g...

28:11-15 - It doesn’t say explicitly how long Jacob was traveling to Haran when he laid down “upon a certain place” and made stones for his pillows to sleep for the night. Jacob has received great blessings from his father Isaac before he left and maybe he was thinking about them in depth as he made the 550 mile trek from Beersheba to Haran. As he was sleeping “he dreamed” of a ladder that went from earth to heaven and had angels ascending and descending on it. Standing above it was the Lord Himself “and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac,” and he promises Jacob several things: eventual inheritance of the land that he was sleeping on, numerous descendants “as the dust of the earth… and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” I don’t know if it’s because I’ve never really felt at home anywhere or that I don’t care about the number of my children, but that they are all happy and cared for, but those promises to me don’t s...

28:1-7 - Jacob and Rebekah have tricked Isaac into giving the birthright blessing to Jacob instead od Esau, Esau is understandably furious and is planning on killing Jacob, so Rebekah convinces Isaac that Jacob has to leave where they live in Beersheba and go back to her homeland to find a wife among her family. Seems a little bit over-complicated, but that’s how they worked it out. Maybe if Rebekah had gone to Isaac and said “Esau is going to kill Jacob after you die so we should send Jacob away,” Isaac might have sided with Esau saying that Jacob deserved it for deceiving him, or he might have just not believed that his favorite son, Esau, would have been capable of killing his brother. Either way, Rebekah had to approach sending Jacob away by framing it as something else to Isaac. An interesting commentary on spousal interactions. Isaac agrees to Rebekah’s plan and sends Jacob “to the house of Bethuel thy mother’s father,” to “take thee a wife from thence of the daughters of Laban ...

27:37 - At this point, I just feel really bad for Esau and wonder how much of this situation is just a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you tell a person from birth that the role and responsibility that is supposed to be given to them was being taken away and given to their brother instead because they were unworthy of it, at what point do they just say, “well I’m already being punished for being unworthy, I may as well just do whatever I want.” I was raised very much like that. I was very much punished for everything I did, right or wrong, who I was, good or bad, and stuff that had nothing to do with me. I was just punished, punished, punished all the time. At that point, when everything is wrong, then nothing is. If Esau was stripped of his place at the head of the family because God “knew” he was going to do something wrong, then why try to do anything right? What’s the point, you’re already suffering the consequences. It’s like when someone accuses their significant other of cheating a...

27:28-29 - the actual blessing that Isaac gives Jacob can seem kind of vague, I’m sure that there is a deeper meaning to it like that some words indicate something else, but I don’t know about that right now. Isaac blessing Jacob, thinking it was Esau, with temporal blessings such as “dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine.” He’s also blessing with leadership so that “let people serve thee, and nations bow down to thee: be lord over thy brethren, and let thy mother’s sons bow down to thee.” There are a couple of interesting points in this part here, the first being “thy mother’s sons.” Isaac and Rebekah only had the two boys, and I wonder if the phrase “thy mother’s sons” is referring to Esau’s mother’s favorite son, Jacob. Otherwise, why wouldn’t Isaac just say “your brother,” or maybe he means something altogether different from that, but that specific phrasing is just a little too specific for me to think that it wasn’t an intended dig at Rebekah an...

27:6-13 - I’m still not super clear on the difference between birthright and blessing, I think it’s that the birthright is just who’s considered to be the oldest to inherit the biggest portion of the estate, and then the blessing is dad telling everyone what they are going to get, with the holder of the birthright receiving the largest share and the most responsibility. There’s also the component in the case of Isaac in that the birthright also includes the right to carry the priesthood in that lineage. It’s been clear to Rebekah and therefore probably Isaac that the will of God was for Jacob to be the bearer of the birthright by personal revelation, and that has probably been the knowledge that the boys had been raised with. Plus when we factor in the whole “trading” of the birthright for lentils, the issue becomes very complicated very quickly especially if we consider the mixed feelings that the boys and their parents probably had about the whole thing. I don’t know if it’s because ...