H. P. Mansfield Bible notes — checked and arranged in verse-by-verse Expositor style

Source: HPB 01-Gen01-Gen41.PDF, principally Genesis 27 photographed pages 77–79

CHAPTER OVERVIEW

Genesis 27 shows the Divine purpose prevailing through a household damaged by partiality, fear and deception. Isaac intends to bless Esau despite the earlier oracle that the elder would serve the younger (Genesis 25:23); Rebekah and Jacob seek the right outcome by wrong means; Esau seeks a blessing whose birthright he had already despised. Mansfield’s governing heading is therefore apt: God’s purpose prevails in spite of human weakness.

The chapter does not justify Jacob’s falsehoods. The blessing belonged within the line Yahweh had already chosen, but faith should have trusted God to secure that result without fraud. Each member of the family suffers consequences: Isaac is shaken, Esau is rejected, Jacob is driven into exile, and Rebekah loses the son she tried to protect.

ISAAC PREPARES TO BLESS ESAU — GENESIS 27:1–4

Genesis 27:1–2 — dim eyes and a mistaken expectation of death

Isaac is about 117 years old in Mansfield’s chronology and believes death is near, although Genesis 35:28 gives his age at death as 180. He therefore lives another sixty-three years. His dim physical sight becomes an appropriate picture of poor spiritual discernment: Esau had sold the birthright (Genesis 25:31–34) and had married Hittite women who grieved his parents (Genesis 26:34–35), yet Isaac still plans to confer the principal blessing upon him.

Genesis 27:3–4 — hunting, appetite and blessing

Isaac sends Esau to the field with his hunting gear to obtain venison and prepare the savoury meat he loves. The Hebrew behind “take me some venison” is the idiom of hunting/hunted food. Mansfield notes the concentration of “me,” “I,” and “my” in Isaac’s words: bodily appetite and personal preference are governing a decision that concerns the covenant promise.

REBEKAH’S COUNTER-PLOT — GENESIS 27:5–17

Genesis 27:5–10 — a right objective pursued by a wrong method

Rebekah overhears Isaac and forms a plan to secure the blessing for Jacob. Her objective accords with the oracle she received before the twins’ birth (Genesis 25:23), but the method is deceptive. Two kids from the flock are chosen; Mansfield contrasts the flock with Esau’s field-hunting, but the essential moral point is simpler: a promised result does not make deceit an acceptable means of obtaining it (compare Romans 3:8).

Genesis 27:11–13 — Jacob fears the curse

Jacob objects that Esau is hairy while he is smooth and fears being exposed as a deceiver. His first expressed concern is therefore the consequence of discovery rather than the falsehood itself. Rebekah answers, “Upon me be thy curse,” and tells him to obey. Mansfield admires her self-sacrificing determination but explicitly does not commend the deception.

Genesis 27:14–17 — garments, goatskins and an expanding deception

Rebekah prepares the food, dresses Jacob in Esau’s “goodly raiment,” and places goatskins on his hands and neck. Mansfield proposes that the distinctive garments may have had firstborn or priestly significance; the text itself only calls them desirable/good garments, so the priestly identification is retained as exposition rather than certainty. The elaborate disguise illustrates how one deception generates the need for further deception.

JACOB BEFORE ISAAC — GENESIS 27:18–27

Genesis 27:18–20 — falsehood compounded by invoking God

Jacob enters and claims, “I am Esau thy firstborn.” When Isaac asks how the game was obtained so quickly, Jacob answers, “Because Yahweh thy God brought it to me.” This is the gravest point in the deception: the Divine Name is invoked to support a false explanation. Jacob had real grounds for believing that the birthright and blessing belonged to him, but he did not speak those grounds openly in faith.

Genesis 27:21–24 — “the voice is Jacob’s voice”

Isaac remains suspicious and feels Jacob’s hands. His memorable conclusion is: “The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.” Conflicting evidence is before him, yet he accepts what fits the blessing he already wishes to give. When Isaac finally asks directly, “Art thou my very son Esau?” Jacob gives the direct false answer, “I am.”

Genesis 27:25–27 — smell of the garments

Isaac eats, drinks and asks for a kiss. The smell of Esau’s garments reassures him and becomes the opening image of the blessing: “the smell of a field which Yahweh hath blessed.” Mansfield develops the clothing typologically, but the narrative function is first to show the final sensory evidence by which Isaac is persuaded.

THE BLESSING — GENESIS 27:28–29

Genesis 27:28–29 — prosperity, rule and the Abrahamic echo

The blessing gives dew of heaven, fatness of earth, corn and wine; peoples and nations are to serve; Jacob is made lord over his brethren. Its climax — “cursed be every one that curseth thee, and blessed be he that blesseth thee” — deliberately echoes Genesis 12:3. Whatever the defects in the human procedure, the content places Jacob in the Abrahamic covenant line. The ultimate scope of the blessing reaches beyond Jacob’s immediate lifetime.

THE DECEPTION EXPOSED — GENESIS 27:30–33

Genesis 27:30–33 — Isaac trembles and accepts the result

Esau arrives almost immediately. When Isaac realises what has happened he “trembled very exceedingly.” The Hebrew charad carries the sense of trembling or shuddering. Mansfield reasonably reads more than anger here: Isaac recognises that his own intention had been moving against the declared purpose of God. He therefore refuses to revoke the blessing and says of Jacob, “yea, and he shall be blessed.” Hebrews 11:20 later treats Isaac’s blessings of Jacob and Esau as acts of faith.

ESAU’S CRY AND SECONDARY BLESSING — GENESIS 27:34–40

Genesis 27:34–36 — tears without recovery of the birthright

Esau cries with “a great and exceeding bitter cry.” Hebrews 12:16–17 explicitly looks back to this episode. The New Testament does not say that Esau sincerely repented and God refused him; rather, he could not reverse the settled consequence of his earlier profanity. He had sold the birthright voluntarily. His accusation that Jacob “took away my birthright” therefore misstates Genesis 25.

Genesis 27:37–40 — Edom’s material lot

Isaac cannot give Esau Jacob’s supremacy. The difficult Hebrew of verse 39 can be read as dwelling away from, rather than within, the fatness of the earth and dew of heaven; this fits Edom’s later dry territory in Seir. Esau will live by the sword and serve his brother, though a later period of release from the yoke is foretold. 2 Kings 8:20–22 records Edom’s revolt from Judah in the days of Jehoram and is the clearest historical cross-reference to that development.

HATRED, FLIGHT AND FAMILY CONSEQUENCES — GENESIS 27:41–46

Genesis 27:41 — Esau plans murder

Esau’s resentment hardens into a plan to kill Jacob after Isaac’s death. The rivalry which began with parental partiality and deceit has now become lethal. The episode reinforces Mansfield’s emphasis that sinful methods carry consequences even when God’s larger purpose is not defeated.

Genesis 27:42–45 — “a few days” become many years

Rebekah learns of the threat and sends Jacob to her brother Laban at Haran, expecting him to remain only “a few days.” In fact Jacob’s exile lasts about twenty years (compare Genesis 31:38,41). Scripture never records another meeting between Rebekah and Jacob. Mansfield therefore treats the long separation as a painful unintended consequence of her scheme.

Genesis 27:46 — the stated reason for Jacob’s departure

Rebekah tells Isaac that Esau’s Hittite wives make her life wearisome and that she cannot bear Jacob marrying another daughter of Heth. This concern is genuine and provides the public reason for sending Jacob away. Genesis 28 then opens with Isaac consciously blessing Jacob and directing him to take a wife from the family in Padan-aram.

PRINCIPAL THEMES

• God’s declared purpose does not depend on human manipulation.

• A right objective never makes deception a righteous method.

• Partiality within the home contributes directly to the crisis.

• Falsehood multiplies once it is begun, culminating in misuse of the Divine Name.

• Isaac ultimately recognises the irrevocable covenant blessing on Jacob.

• Esau’s tears cannot undo his earlier contempt of the birthright.

• The consequences of sin include hatred, exile and long family separation.

EDITORIAL VERIFICATION AND RECOVERED READINGS

RESIDUAL UNCERTAINTIES

Mansfield’s precise reconstruction of Isaac’s age at this incident depends on the chronology he develops from Jacob’s later life; the resulting figure of about 117 is plausible within that framework but is not directly stated in Genesis 27. The claim that Esau’s “goodly raiment” was specifically priestly firstborn clothing is interpretative. Some detailed Edomite historical applications go beyond the immediate text and have therefore been kept secondary to the explicit later revolt in 2 Kings 8:20–22.