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Bible Dictionaries
Jacob (2)
Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament
or (Ἰακώβ)
Jacob, the younger son of Isaac, was the father of the twelve patriarchs who were the heads of the tribes of Israel.
The story of the ante-natal struggle of Esau and Jacob (to which allusion is made in Hosea 12:3), and of the oracle spoken to their mother (Romans 9:11 || Genesis 25:23), is a folk-tale which vividly reflects the rivalries of Israel and Edom. The Hebrews boasted of their superiority to the powerful kindred race which dwelt on their southern border. To be more than a match for those hereditary foes, gaining the advantage over them either by force of arms or by nimbleness of wit, was a point of national honour. By hook or by crook the Israelites rarely failed to come off victorious over the Edomites. And the popular mind liked to think that the characteristics and fortunes of the two rival nations were mysteriously foreshadowed before the birth of their far-off ancestors. From the beginning God chose the younger son for Himself, and decreed that the elder should be servant to the younger. In the words of a prophet who on this matter expresses the general belief, God loved Jacob, but hated Esau (Malachi 1:2-3). St. Paul uses this Divine preference to illustrate that principle of election which he sees operating all through the history of Israel, and of which he finds startling contemporary evidence in the nation’s apostasy from the Messiah, and God’s choice of the Gentiles. That the elder brother (and nation) should serve the younger, that the natural heir should be foredoomed to lose the birthright and the blessing, that (apart from good or evil) the one should appear to be accepted and the other rejected-all this was evidence of an inscrutable selectiveness, by which God works out His universal purpose (ἡ κατʼ ἐκλογὴν τοῦ θεοῦ πρόθεσις [see Esau]). The election of grace (ἐκλογὴ χάριτος) is the central idea in St. Paul’s philosophy of history. It is an attempt to give a rationale of the fact that ‘Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here’ (Carlyle, On Heroes and Hero-Worship, Lect. i.).
In a speech before the Sanhedrin, Stephen made allusion to the story of Jacob’s sending his sons down to Egypt, of Joseph’s sending for his father, and of Jacob s descent into Egypt and death there (Acts 7:8; Acts 7:12; Acts 7:14). As an evidence of Jacob’s faith, the writer of Hebrews selects a death-bed scene (Acts 11:21). ‘He blessed the two sons of Joseph,’ giving them one of the finest benedictions ever uttered by human lips, invoking the God of history, providence, and grace to be their Shepherd-God (Genesis 48:15-16). Then ‘he worshipped leaning upon the top of his staff.’ In the original (Genesis 47:31) this act precedes the blessing, and while the Septuagint reads ‘upon the top of his staff,’ other versions, including the English, have ‘on the bed.’ The difference of reading is due to Heb. punctuation (הַמִּטָה ‘the staff,’ הַמִּטָה ‘the bed’), and does not greatly alter the sense. Jacob, who is here the ideal Israelite, gives conscious or unconscious proof of his faith by taking leave of life with a high dignity and solemnity. Meekly submitting himself to the will of God, he teaches all his posterity to worship the ‘God of Jacob’ with their latest breath.
Stephen refers (Acts 7:46) to David’s desire ‘to find a habitation for the God of Jacob.’ Here, too, Jacob is not an individual but a nation. The usage was common in every epoch of Hebrew literature: in the earliest period-‘Come, curse me Jacob’ … ‘Who can count the dust of Jacob?’ (Numbers 23:7; Numbers 23:10); in the Exile-‘Fear not, thou worm Jacob’ (Isaiah 41:14); and in the Maccabaean age, when Judas ‘made Jacob glad with his acts’ (1 Maccabees 3:7); after which it was naturally taken over into the NT. Jacob’s other name ‘Israel’ had the same two senses, personal and national, a circumstance which gives piquancy to the Pauline dictum (Romans 9:6): ‘Not all who are of Israel (i.e. born of the patriarch) are Israel’ (i.e. the chosen people of God). Many of them are only ὁ Ἰσραὴλ κατὰ σάρκα, Israelites by birth, whereas in a higher sense all Christians are ὁ Ἰσραὴλ τοῦ θεοῦ (Galatians 6:16). Naturally the name ‘Jacob’ never acquired this new meaning: Israel was the ideal people of God, whether Jewish or Gentile, Jacob the actual Jewish nation composed of very imperfect human beings. The two words are appropriately combined in St. Paul’s prevision of a far-off Divine event which must be the goal of history: ‘All Israel shall be saved, for … a Deliverer … shall turn away iniquity from Jacob’ (Romans 11:26).
James Strahan.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Jacob (2)'. Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdn/j/jacob-2.html. 1906-1918.
