What Does Genesis 27:13 Mean?

Esau held a grudge against Jacob because of the blessing his father had given him. He said to himself, "The days of mourning for my father are near; then I will kill my brother Jacob." When Rebekah was told what her older son Esau had said, she called for her younger son Jacob and said to him, "Your brother Esau is planning to avenge himself by killing you. Now then, my son, do what I say: Flee at once to my brother Laban in Haran." Esau's resolve to kill Jacob after Isaac's death is the direct consequence of the deception that the chapter has narrated. The plan that was designed to secure Jacob's future destroys the family's present. Rebekah who said "let the curse fall on me" now learns that the curse has fallen on the household: her plan has produced a son who intends to murder and a son who must flee.

The phrase "then I will kill my brother Jacob" is spoken "to himself", not to Esau's father or to Jacob's face but internally, the resolution of a man who has been deprived of what he valued and whose response is murderous. The same impulsiveness that sold the birthright for soup and wept loudly for the blessing now resolves on fratricide. Esau's emotional arc across the chapter, contempt, desire, grief, rage, murderous resolve, is the portrait of a character whose responses are always the immediate expression of the current feeling without the mediation of reflection or values.

The exile that Rebekah's plan produces is the precise opposite of what the plan intended. She designed the deception to secure Jacob's blessing and his future in the household; the deception produces a blessing and an exile. The son whose departure she arranges "for a few days" (verse 44) will not return for twenty years. Rebekah will never see Jacob again after this chapter. The plan that she executed with such precision and such devotion to the covenant's outcome costs her the thing she loved most: the son she sent to secure his future.