The circumstances related in this narrative as we have explained them are significant by reason of what they have to teach us with regard to Israel's mission as the chosen people. In the first place, there is implied the idea, which we have frequently pointed out before, that God's purpose with regard to his people is not fully realized by them. This is shown in our lesson by the fact that the patriarchs are represented as acting in a way which would tend to defeat God's purpose regarding them, as, for instance, when Isaac almost gives the blessing to Esau and when Jacob, through the means he chooses to secure the blessing, is compelled to flee from the Promised Land which he was to inherit. This is a very important corrective to that arrogance which faith in divine election is likely to bring with it, for it contradicts the assumption that the Jewish people is infallible. There is, moreover, implied in this story the idea that when Israel does not rightly conceive its mission, it must be taught through the discipline of hardship and suffering, as in the case of Jacob, that election does not mean immunity from punishment but, on the contrary, stricter accountability, as expressed by Amos, "You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will visit upon you all your iniquities". (Amos 3.2.) =Aim.= The child will not be expected to grasp all the implications of this narrative, but neither will they all escape him, and if the story is well told, without any undue idealization of the characters or distortion of the narrative for the sake of reading a moral into it, the story will impress itself on him sufficiently to gain added meaning as he reverts to it in later years. It is a mistake to imagine that a moral which is not formulated is of necessity not learned. For the child's immediate benefit, however, it is well to emphasize the punishment of Jacob's deception in order to inculcate the ideal of truthfulness. But great care must be exercised in order not to make Jacob so unsympathetic that Esau becomes the hero of the story, for this would distort the Biblical moral and give rise to a misunderstanding of it which the pupil is not likely to correct in later life. It must always be made plain that Jacob had a right to want and expect the blessing, but that he should have trusted God to give it to him and should not have tried to get it through deception. =Suggestions to the teacher.= Inasmuch as the moral of this story is dependent on an understanding of the motives on which the characters act, take particular pains to make your dramatic impersonation of the characters as realistic as possible and not to delay the movement of the plot by lengthy moralizing. This story, like the preceding one of the sale of the birthright, lends itself very well to dramatization by the class, and the success of the children in assuming the roles of the different characters will be an excellent test of your success in imparting the story.