Powerpoint Pictures: Series of pictures, some real others photoshopped.

Look at the following pictures.  Can you tell me whether they are real or fake?

All these pictures are trying to trick you, and in the next part of the Bible story we see some tricking going on.  Isaac was now an old man.  He was blind and would soon die.  But before he died, he wanted to bless his son Esau.  So he told Esau to go hunting and prepare a tasty meal, his favourite, for him to eat.

Esau ran off excitedly.  Little did he know that his mother Rebekah was listening in.   God has previously told Rebekah that her older son Esau would serve her younger son Jacob, but if Esau was to get the blessing now it didn’t look like that would happen.

She did not trust God to keep His promise.

So she came up with a plan.  She prepared a special meal for Isaac and told Jacob to give it to him and pretend to be Esau.  But there was a problem.  Esau was really hairy and Jacob was not!  Rebekah told Jacob to put goatskin around his arms and neck and to wear some of Esau’s clothes.  Jacob now felt like Esau and he also smelt like him too.

Jacob then went to see his dad, Isaac.  Isaac was suspicious when Jacob said that he was Esau.  But after catching a smell of Esau’s clothes and feeling the goatskin of Jacob’s arms and neck, he was fooled.

The trick worked and Isaac blessed Jacob thinking he was blessing Esau.  And what a wonderful blessing it was.

“May God give you of heaven’s dew and of earth’s richness— an abundance of grain and new wine.  May nations serve you and peoples bow down to you.  Be lord over your brothers, and may the sons of your mother bow down to you.  May those who curse you be cursed and those who bless you be blessed.” (Genesis 27:28-29)

In spite of all the lying and cheating God had kept His promise.  The older son would serve the younger.  Jacob would be the head of the family.

But the story is not over yet!  When Esau returned home and went to Isaac with the meal he had prepared and discovered he had been cheated out of his father’s blessing, he was very upset.  He was also angry and wanted to kill Jacob.

Maybe this promise wouldn’t be kept after all.  Would Esau get his hands on Jacob?