God introduced himself to Moses as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. These three names appear together throughout the books of Moses, later in the Old Testament, and nine times in the New Testament. Along with Jacob’s sons, they are the patriarchs who received the Abrahamic covenant. That covenant, more than the other Old Testament covenants, is a covenant of grace.

It is easy to regard major characters in the Bible as either heroes or villains. The patriarchs were neither. They were great men of faith in their own ways, but we see God’s grace most clearly when we look at it against the backdrop of their persistent sin.

The Bible commands worship of God and not worship of heroes. Perhaps for that reason, it does not shy away from showing its very best people at their worst. Only comparatively minor characters such as Caleb or Jonathan make their appearances without having their sins exposed.

This post, then, will look at the sins of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob not to take away the respect due to them but rather to highlight God’s grace to them.

Abraham

Genesis 12 presents Abram, son of Terah (and later called Abraham), living in the important city of Ur. God told him to leave his people and his father’s household. He left Ur with his father and his nephew Lot to another important city called Haran.

When Terah died, Abram left for Canaan and took Lot with him. Surely Lot counts as Abram’s father’s household. Abram should have left him behind. That sin had long-term consequences. Lot eventually had two sons, Moab and Ben-Ammi. Both became ancestors of nations that opposed Abram’s descendants.

The same chapter relates another sin. God promised that Abram’s descendants would inherit the land of Canaan, but when famine struck, Abram feared for his life and decided to go to Egypt. In Egypt, again fearing for his life, Abram introduced his wife Sarai as his sister.

Pharaoh took Sarai into his harem. but God rescued her and returned her to Abram. When they returned to Canaan, they had acquired wealth, including a slave girl named Hagar.

In Genesis 15, God explicitly promised Abram a son, even though Sarai was barren, but in Genesis 16, it appears that Abram only believed in part. Sarai talked him into having a son by Hagar. That son, Ishmael, became ancestor of a nation that opposes Isaac’s descendants to this day. More immediately, the arrangement caused lasting strife in his marriage.

God later changed their names to Abraham and Sarah. In Genesis 20, Abraham again lied that Sarah was his sister. Abimelech took her into his harem. God came to the rescue again, but this sin was more serious than the first time. If Abimelech and Sarah had had sexual union, how would anyone know the paternity of any child she had?

God’s grace in Abraham’s sin

God’s first recorded words to Abram promised to make him into a great nation. Later, he promised to give his descendants the entire land of Canaan. Despite the opposition of the Moabites, Ammonites, and Ishmaelites, God did so.

People often get the idea that, when trouble comes, God must be punishing them for something, perhaps by taking away some gift he had given them earlier. But God’s dealings with Abraham demonstrate that he does not make promises and then take them back in a snit. God kept all his promises to Abraham despite the efforts of nations that, had Abraham been faithful to what God commanded, never would have existed.

Despite his sins, Abraham became the rightly revered founding patriarch of three world religions.

Isaac and Jacob

Isaac repeated one of his father’s sins; he told Abimelech that Rebekah was his sister. This Abimelech may or may not be the same person Abraham lied to. But where Abraham’s sin had serious consequences. Isaac continued to live nearby and prospered, with no harm to his relationship with Abimelech.

The reason we need to consider these two patriarchs together is that they participated in the same sinful acts.

In Genesis 25, Rebekah was finally pregnant with twins who, even in the womb, didn’t get along well. She prayed. God told her that the twins would be fathers of two nations, and the older would serve the younger. Isaac and Rebekah named the boys Esau and Jacob,

Everyone should have known what God told Rebekah. Unfortunately, the parents each favored a different son, which caused strife in the family. Esau was bigger and stronger physically. Jacob was more clever and more responsible.

Esau once came back from an unsuccessful hunting trip while Jacob was cooking some stew. When Esau demanded some of it, Jacob demanded the birthright. Esau agreed. Jacob thus gained by bargaining what God would have eventually given him.

Much later (in Genesis 27), Isaac thought he was dying.  He determined to give Esau the paternal blessing, even though he surely knew that God had already chosen Jacob to inherit the promises first made to Abraham. Rebekah and Jacob cooked up a different sin, literally.

Again, Jacob received by deceit and cleverness what he should have waited for God to give him. He had to flee for his life. He and his Uncle Laban spent twenty years trying to outcheat each other. Rebekah may have died without ever seeing her favorite son again.

God’s grace in the sins of Isaac and Jacob

Sin has consequences. Isaac must have experienced some kind of trouble following his deception of Abimelech, but God figured posterity doesn’t need to know. As I said earlier, God does not respond to sin with an itch to punish it. Here, we see him discretely concealing the consequences of Isaac’s sin.

It is not at all unusual for fathers to give bad advice to their sons. Nor is it unusual for sons to act on it. Abraham told Abimelech that he always passed off Sarah as his sister. He must have gotten away with it well enough that Isaac somehow thought it was a good idea, even though he must have known the two times it backfired. Part of the grace in this incident is that he didn’t give Jacob any incentive to try the same stunt.

God shows similar discretion in withholding any further information about the family life of Isaac, Rebekah, and Esau. We can assume that the pattern of strife continued, but there is no point in trying to guess what it may have been.

Jacob fled to Padan Aram and his uncle with nothing but the clothes on his back. He knew his destiny lay back home in Canaan and that he needed to return. When he returned, he was a wealthy man with, unfortunately, two wives who couldn’t get along. His fears of Esau’s retaliation proved groundless.  He also returned an honest man; he never attempted to cheat anyone again.

Like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob became revered patriarchs, whom God favored over their brothers by grace.

The last generation of patriarchs

For the rest of Jacob’s life, the most serious sins were committed by his sons. Reuben, the firstborn, forfeited his birthright by having sex with one of Jacob’s concubines (Genesis 35:22). Simeon and Levi, the next oldest sons, disgraced Jacob in their treachery against Shechem (Genesis 34). Judah, the fourth-born son of Leah, disgraced himself, but not Jacob, with Tamar (Genesis 38). Therefore, he was worthy to receive the greater blessing.

The younger sons of Leah and the sons of the two concubines do not appear as distinct personalities, but there is no chance any of them could have gotten the blessing Reuben forfeited and Judah eventually got. Neither could Joseph’s younger brother Benjamin.

It is difficult to see that any of Jacob’s sons had any better character than Esau, except for Joseph. Jacob continued his parents’ error by playing favorites. He probably would have favored Joseph, the firstborn of Rachel, the wife he loved, even if he had been as worthless as his brothers.

Joseph proved to be diligent, competent in all he did, and trustworthy. He also seems like an arrogant young man, oblivious to how much his older brothers hated him. When they got the chance, they wanted to kill him. Reuben, possibly hoping to get back into his father’s favor, dissuaded them. Judah persuaded them to sell Joseph into slavery instead (Genesis 37).

So Isaac seems a less godly man than Abraham. Jacob seems a less godly man than Isaac, and most of Jacob’s sons don’t seem godly at all.

God’s grace in the sins of Jacob’s sons

While the older brothers were deceiving Jacob into believing that Joseph had been killed by a wild animal, God was grooming Joseph to provide steady leadership in the face of a long-lasting famine. Joseph himself expressed God’s grace the best: “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Genesis 50:20 NIV).

But the story ends with more grace than that. God chose only one son of Abraham and only one son of Isaac to receive the blessings of Abraham. Despite their low character, God bestowed the blessings of Abraham on all of Jacob’s sons.

Joseph and his brothers became patriarchs themselves, founders of the twelve tribes of Israel. Jacob blessed Joseph as the firstborn who got the double portion, so there is no tribe of Joseph. Instead, his first two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, became patriarchs and founders of tribes.

(So actually, thirteen tribes came from Jacob’s descendants, but the number twelve is so important a symbol that every listing of the twelve tribes of Israel leaves a different one of them out.)

As God promised Abraham, he performed his work of salvation through the sons of Jacob. David, of the tribe of Judah, became the exemplar of divine kingship. Jesus, the son of David, became savior of the entire world.

As the old hymn says, God’s grace is greater than all our sin.