And there is much like this in Christian experience. See the disciples on the sea of Galilee, in Mark iv. The Lord had said to them, "Let us go unto the other side." This was a pledge to them that they were sure to reach the other side. They need not fear. They may, if they please, lay them down to sleep with their Master. But no--they fear, and consult with flesh and blood. And therefore they reach the other side with tremblings and amazement and shame. Their fears loaded their spirit with these burdens, which, had they left the _fulfilling_ of the word to Him who had _given_ the word, would have been saved them. And so, the unbelief of Jacob in Gen. xxvii., his putting the promise of God into his mother’s hand, has loaded the history of his house with those perplexities and contradictions and changes, which, as we have mentioned, were all strangers to the promise, as the simple gift of grace, at the beginning, had purposed it and made it. Many like experiences the disciples had, through their unbelief, as they companied with the Lord Jesus all the time He went in and out among them--and many such are known to us His saints at this day. Our spirits gather amazement and shame, when we might have known only the calm and bright enjoyments of faith, looking, if it were so, at a sleeping Jesus, and knowing His sufficiency for all promises, though winds and waves oppose. Thus was it with Jacob, according to the part he acted in this sad family scene. Esau was not the _guilty_ one here. He was rather the _injured_ party; and therefore, in the hand of Him by whom "actions are weighed," Esau is the only one who is a gainer. All the rest have to learn what the way of their own hearts shall end in. Isaac, Rebecca, and Jacob alike prove this. It is Esau, so far the injured one, who gains, as we have seen, anything by it all. By his sword he lives, and, in time and for a time, breaks the yoke of his younger brother off his neck.¹⁸ ¹⁸ Jeroboam in his day took his own way to reach the promise of God touching the kingdom of the ten tribes, by the prophet Ahijah--and he delayed his own mercy; just as Jacob does in this chapter. Nay, further. Jeroboam has to be an exile in Egypt till the death of Solomon, because of this; as Jacob has for twenty years to be an exile in Padan, for the same evil. See 1 Kings xi. After all this, just at the end of his ways, though not of his days, at the desire of the suspicious and terrified Rebecca, Isaac sends away Jacob. And this action is done with an expression of sorrow and shame and disappointment, the bitter fruit which their own way had prepared for them. All would have been different indeed, had the spirit and obedience of faith kept them in the way of the Lord. xxvii. 42; xxviii. 5.