Theopedia

Jacob

Overview

Jacob, later renamed Israel, was the grandson of Abraham, son of Isaac and Rebekah, and father of twelve sons whose descendants became the nation of Israel. Paul singles him out as Scripture’s own example of unconditional election: God chose Jacob over his older twin Esau before either was born or had done anything good or bad, “in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls” (Rom. 9:11-13).

Life and Ministry

Jacob’s first recorded act sets the pattern for much of his early life: he bought his brother Esau’s birthright for a meal (Gen. 25:29-34), and later deceived their blind father Isaac to obtain the blessing meant for Esau (Gen. 27:1-29), fleeing to his uncle Laban in Paddan-aram to escape Esau’s anger. There Jacob served Laban for fourteen years to marry Leah and Rachel and continued in a mutually exploitative arrangement with him over wages and flocks before returning to Canaan with his own household and wealth (Gen. 29-31).

On the way home, Jacob wrestled through the night with a man at Peniel who renamed him Israel, “for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed” (Gen. 32:24-28). Calvin identified this figure as the eternal Word himself, appearing in an intermediate form in anticipation of his office as Mediator, not a created angel: Jacob’s own words afterward, “I have seen God face to face,” show that “he was not a created angel, but one in whom the fulness of the Godhead dwelt.”1 Jacob and Esau reconciled the next day (Gen. 33:1-11), and Jacob settled again in Canaan, where his sons’ rivalry, especially their jealousy of Joseph, brought him repeated grief for the rest of his life (Gen. 37; 42-46). He died in Egypt at 147, having blessed each of his sons beforehand (Gen. 47:28; 49); Hebrews commends this as an act of faith, “By faith Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, bowing in worship over the head of his staff” (Heb. 11:21).

Theological Contribution

Paul’s treatment of Jacob’s election in Romans 9 has served the Reformed tradition as one of Scripture’s clearest statements of unconditional election. Loraine Boettner, quoting Warfield, took the passage as decisive: “We are pointed illustratively to the sovereign acceptance of Isaac and rejection of Ishmael, and to the choice of Jacob and not of Esau before their birth and therefore before either had done good or bad… It is safe to say that language cannot be chosen better adapted to teach Predestination at its height.”2 The Canons of Dort cite the same passage as confessional proof that God’s election rests on his own good pleasure rather than any foreseen quality or action in the person chosen: “the elder shall serve the younger; as it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated” (Rom. 9:11-13).3

Historical Significance

Jacob stands at a hinge point in the Old Testament’s pattern of narrowing covenant election, which Bavinck traced from Shem through Abraham, and from Abraham’s sons to Isaac rather than Ishmael, and then to Jacob rather than Esau (Gen. 25:23; Mal. 1:2; Rom. 9:11-12).4 Jacob’s twelve sons became the twelve tribes of Israel, the name God gave Jacob himself at Peniel, so that the patriarch’s own renaming became the nation’s name as well.

Related Doctrines

References

  1. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845-1846), book 1, chap. 13, sec. 10, 119. ↩

  2. Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1932), 63. ↩

  3. Canons of Dort (Dordrecht, 1619), First Head of Doctrine, Art. 10. ↩

  4. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 9, “The Covenant of Grace.” ↩