Jacob Got a Bad Rap – He ‘Stole’ Nothing

July 14 2026: For several months now during my ‘writing week’ between the bi-weekly compiling of the Arrows Summary of Prayer Requests and Activities of the Israel Believers Ministries, God has had me taking a fresh look at the Genesis accounts of the beginning formation of His family on earth.

The reason is that these things have bearing on how, at the end, when God accomplishes the joining of His whole family together as one — as expressed in Ephesians 2:15 as the unity of “one new man” in the faith of His Son — there are things in Genesis we need to reconsider. God is wrapping up the plan for bringing His whole family together on earth as one.

One like Jesus said, “the Father and I are One” in John 10:30. In John 17:20-21 Yeshua tells us that in God’s completed plan we will be brought into the same state of unity: “I am not asking on behalf of them alone (the Jewish believers), but also on behalf of those who will believe in Me (the Christian believers) through their (Jewish believers) message, that all of them may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I am in You. May they also be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.”

Now at the beginning of the end of these things, God is directing us back to “In the beginning” so we might now see the things we missed, misconstrued, or otherwise did not take into proper account of what God is doing at “the end.” Genesis is the seedbed of all God’s plans.

God is wrapping up His thousands-of-years plan to form a FAMILY from within mankind. In this eternal family will be both the family line from the Genesis Patriarchs and Matriarchs and in our day, the Christians who recognize and embrace what God has been creating among us and for us.

God is the judge of all matters and all individuals that have ever lived or ever will live. He makes His choices, and what we think about that is not the issue. Some believe God wrote Israel and the Jews off long ago. The real shocker for them is going to be discovering that “good Christians” today are going to find themselves written off.

If we cannot come to grips with God’s right to choose whom He chooses, sadly we will not make the cut for God’s eternal family. He has made His choice plain in His Word. To remain blind to how He has stated what He is doing will leave many saying, “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name? And in Your name have cast out devils? And in Your name done many wonderful works?”

In the days ahead we will see that those Christians who refuse to accept God’s whole family — including the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob/Israel — are going to be proven to be “workers of iniquity.” It is impossible to be a faithful servant of Jesus and refuse to see God’s people Israel. This is not a dual covenant, but the revelation of Israel’s Messiah to the Jews is already happening.

I must say this over and over: It is not enough to just write an article about how the Patriarch Jacob has gotten a worse reputation than he deserved.

Jacob Got a Bad Rap

Jacob has been called a usurper, supplanter, and a thief. Like all of us, Jacob had character flaws that God intended to clean up over Jacob’s lifetime of experiences. We all learn the hard way about the character flaws we have. What takes place in our lifetimes is so often the living experience God knows we need in order to change. We learn that it is better to develop a higher character than the one that comes naturally to our families. Every family belongs to fallen mankind.

In Jacob’s case, I do believe the reputation he bears has been over-exaggerated, and I would like to show you why I believe this is so. The accusation of deceitfulness comes from Isaac in Genesis 27:35 and, in verse 36, Esau accuses Jacob of being a cheater through trickery. But were those two really in like-mindedness with God? That’s not what I’m seeing in the accounts.

The Name and the Womb

First, the reputation begins with Jacob taking hold of his twin brother Esau’s heel as Esau was emerging from his mother’s birth canal. The midwives had to have witnessed this as a fact which meant that Jacob emerged ‘right on the heels’ of Esau, riding the wave of contractions that brought Esau into the world. Medical experts say this is impossible, “A newborn fetus does not have the grip strength, coordination, or intent to grab and hold onto another baby during delivery.”

The prophet Hosea says of Jacob that “He took his brother by the heel in the womb, and by his strength he had power with God.” (Hosea 12:3) That is the second Scriptural reference that shows God was involved in this complicated birth and birth order. Scripture says several times that the God who formed us in the womb knows us from the womb. Surely this was the case with Jacob and Esau. God’s choice of Jacob was from the womb.

The twins were already struggling with each other in the womb. Rebecca specifically asked God why this was happening. How God responded to Rebecca is the first indication of His preference for the second born son to pass along the family line. It would not be the first-born as tradition called for: “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger.” (Genesis 25:23)

It is important to pay attention to the fact that Rebecca knew what God’s will for the twin boys was, but Isaac apparently did not. Isaac loved his firstborn because Esau was a skillful hunter and “Isaac had a taste for wild game.”

Scholars claim that in those times, mothers were allowed to name their newborns, claiming their identity and establishing the child’s lineage (creating a recognized chain of family connection). It may be that Jacob was named  Ya’aqob which translates to “heel-grabber” or “supplanter” because Rebecca already knew God’s intentions for the second born twin to be the bearer of the family line.

It also ironically appears to be a character flaw that runs in Rebecca’s family as we see in her deception plot for Jacob to receive Esau’s prophetic blessing, and also in her brother’s deceptions, and taking advantage of Jacob later in his life. According to his name, Jacob could have followed in the character flaw of his mother’s family, but I don’t believe it was as deep-seated as we have thought. Instead this branding of Jacob is more of the expectation of his parents in his naming and in the accusations of Esau later in life.

The Hebrew word used in Genesis 25:26 is ?a?az — to grasp, take hold, seize, take possession — of his brother Esau’s heel (?aqe?). The traditional understanding links this to the idea of a supplanter, one who takes insidious advantage. Insidious means a premeditated and secretive process to do someone else harm — a sneaky person seeking to damage another gradually so they would never see the damage coming. That was not what Jacob did to Esau.

For this, Jacob is name-branded as a usurper, a supplanter, a person who would take some insidious advantage of his brother. But what do we do with what God told the mother Rebecca about why “the children inside her struggled with each other”? God must have been involved in the heel-grabbing in the womb, or it would not have been possible.

When God much later renamed Jacob to be called “Israel” — “he struggles with God” or “God prevails” — that appears to be a reference not only to Jacob’s wrestling match with the Angel of the LORD, but also to Jacob’s strength in the womb to take hold of Esau’s heel and be delivered in the same delivery wave that brought Esau into the world.

When Jacob was wrestling the Angel all night, he had already lived a long life that was not littered by him deceiving and taking advantage of others, but instead of others deceiving and taking advantage of him. When he was wrestling with the Angel he was determined to live in God’s blessing, he said, “I will not let you go until you bless me.” That is a man who has wrestled in life with familial character flaws and overcome them too.

Later in Life

When the time of Isaac’s passing was growing near he wanted to give the prophetic blessing to Esau, oblivious to how ill-suited his firstborn son was to carrying on the Abrahamic Covenant. Isaac loved Esau because he was a skillful hunter and “Isaac had a taste for wild game.”

Rebecca loved Jacob and “Jacob was a quiet man who stayed at home.” Rebecca also knew what God was going to do with Jacob. So when Isaac was about to go against God’s desires by bestowing the prophetic blessing on his firstborn, who was in the right according to God? Was it not Rebecca who instructed her son Jacob on how to obtain the prophetic blessing of Isaac? Can we call Jacob a “thief” and say he “stole” the blessing of the firstborn?

Even earlier, Jacob did not “insidiously” plot to “steal” his brother’s birthright. When Esau came in from hunting, weary and exhausted and wanting some of the food Jacob was cooking, Jacob took advantage of the opportunity. But it was Esau who willingly sold his birthright for the immediacy of a meal.

It is not the only shortsighted bad judgment Esau demonstrated in his life. In Genesis 26:34-35, Esau married two Hittite women who “made life bitter for Isaac and Rebecca.” How so? They were godless idolaters. In fact, even the name Hittite means “terror.”

After Jacob posed as Esau before his blind father — carrying out the instructions of his mother — he obtained Esau’s prophetic blessing and Esau vowed to kill Jacob. Then Rebecca told Isaac that she could not bear it if Jacob stayed there and married an idolatrous woman.

Isaac knew it was also in violation of the covenant God made with Abraham with an explicit instruction that Isaac marry within the family. Isaac finally understood this mattered to God concerning Jacob, so he sent Jacob away to Rebecca’s relatives far away. This preserved Jacob’s life and the family line God was preserving to bring the Messiah of the world through. God had already made it clear that Esau was not the chosen son to carry the family bloodline. Isaac had come very close to destroying the lineage that God wanted to preserve.

Rebecca is accused of being “manipulative” in telling Jacob what to do to get his father’s prophetic blessing. When Jacob feared that his father would see through the deception and put a curse on him, his mother answered, “If your father puts a curse on you, I will accept the blame.”

I was reminded of the account of Abigail and Nabal in 1 Samuel 25. Was Abigail “manipulative” and “in rebellion to her husband’s headship” when she sent food rations to David and his men that her foolish husband had refused to provide? I don’t think so. There is a wisdom in such actions that puts God’s desire above even a husband’s desire — and that is what Rebecca did in instructing Jacob on how to obtain the blessing from his father.

The Only Real Fault

The only fault I can find in Jacob’s character in his relationship with his brother is taking hold of the opportunity of his brother’s weakness in giving up his birthright for a bowl of stew. Jacob didn’t plan the moment, but he did take something of great value from his brother.

In the end, Jacob sent gifts to Esau to make up for all that his brother had lost in losing the firstborn inheritance. The one who was blessed of God gave to the one he had struggled with even from the months of formation in the womb.

After a lifetime of experiences — where Jacob also chose a wife based on his own appetites rather than what God may have had in mind — Jacob had learned from his sneaky father-in-law what it means to be on the receiving end of not dealing transparently with someone.

 Laban cheated Jacob in many ways: from which daughter he would give Jacob to marry, to how many years he would have to labor to also get the daughter he wanted to marry, and then in the matter of giving Jacob wages of all the sheep that were not pure white, but speckled or black.

I believe that God let Jacob experience the cheating nature of Rebecca’s brother Laban to teach Jacob not to deceive and cheat people. Often when we see how cheating pays off — like in his mother’s instruction to get his father to bless Jacob by deceiving him into thinking he is speaking to Esau — we are more tempted to walk in that character flaw ourselves. But God sent Jacob straight into the antidote so Jacob would avoid carrying on the pattern of cheating others. It looks like a family habitual sin, and Jacob got such a strong taste of it that he learned the wisdom of rejecting trickery and depending upon God to bless him.

Even in earning the wages of livestock from his cheating father-in-law, Jacob walked in integrity, and God blessed him against all the odds Laban could stack against him. The family character flaw of cheating others to gain advantage was not being carried forward by Jacob when he made his way back to his own birthplace in Canaan.

There are not many incidents in Jacob’s life where he is commonly thought to be cheating or deceitful where there is not also clear evidence that God’s will for Jacob’s life was being accomplished in the event.

 I want to point this out because in the days in which we live, “Esau” is still accusing “Jacob” of being deceitful, of cheating, of deviously usurping and supplanting what “Esau” calls his rightful inheritance, namely the Promised Land of Israel.

In my view, those are false accusations made against the Jews historically — and currently the accusations made against Israel, Zion, and the Jews — when in fact God is blessing and restoring Israel to the place He has given her for an eternal inheritance… just as He gave it to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the beginning.

In the end of Jacob and Esau’s story, the brothers are reconciled. This is always the desired outcome from God’s perspective even today for “whosoever will”.