What Does Genesis 27:14 Mean?

Rebekah said to Isaac, "I'm disgusted with living because of these Hittite women. If Jacob takes a wife from among the women of this land, from Hittite women like these, my life will not be worth living." So Isaac called for Jacob and blessed him. Then he commanded him: "Do not marry a Canaanite woman. Go at once to Paddan Aram, to the house of your mother's father Bethuel. Take a wife from there, from among the daughters of Laban, your mother's brother." Rebekah's appeal to Isaac about Jacob's departure uses the legitimate grievance of Esau's Hittite wives to frame a necessity: Jacob must go to Paddan Aram to find a wife. The appeal is honest in its stated reason, Esau's Hittite wives were indeed a grief, while concealing the operative reason: Jacob must leave immediately or Esau will kill him.

Isaac's response is to bless Jacob formally and send him to Paddan Aram with the Abrahamic blessing explicitly invoked: "may God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and increase your numbers until you become a community of peoples. May he give you and your descendants the blessing given to Abraham, so that you may take possession of the land where you now reside as a foreigner, the land God gave to Abraham." The father who intended to bless Esau now formally blesses Jacob by name, explicitly transmitting the Abrahamic covenant to the son who already received it by deception. The official transmission follows the unofficial one.

The formal blessing sent with Jacob to Paddan Aram is the covenant heir's departure into the wilderness with the promise. Jacob leaves the land of the promise carrying the promise but without the land. The same pattern governs every generation of the covenant's movement: Abraham left Ur with the promise but not yet the land; Jacob leaves Canaan with the promise but without security in it. Each exile carries the covenant into the wilderness with only the promise, and each return demonstrates the promise's survival through the most adverse of circumstances.