Moses was and is to Israel what Jesus Christ is to Christians and Muhammad is to Muslims. He too was shaped or made by God to keep God’s promises to Abraham and his offspring alive. In a sense, he was the architect and engineer to bring about God’s blueprint of a theocracy, none like the world had ever known. Under Moses, the personal God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob became exclusively the God of the Hebrews. Before Abraham’s seed could be delivered, it had to learn what it meant to be in bondage. In Israel’s early beginning, it needed protection by a stronger people. Joseph appeared to share this idea. “But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance” (Gen. 45:7). And for the first time “The I Am” (Elohim) comes down to be the deliverer (Ex. 3:8). Here and after, "The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend," (Ex. 33: 11).

Joseph represented a turning point in the making of the nation of Israel. It was his honesty that put him at odds with his brothers and into the second position to Pharaoh in Egypt. He did what was right and came out on top. His brother’s evil intention, Joseph interpreted as an act of God to save Israel. Joseph revealed himself to his brothers and said, “I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold to Egypt. And now, do not be afraid or be angry for selling me, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years now there has been a famine in the land, and for the next five years there will be no plowing or reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.”

Jacob had one more hurdle to overcome and that was himself. He had to appease his brother Esau, whom he had cheated out of his birthright and blessings - the two most important things in life. And as before, Jacob still relied on trickery. God had already promised to stand by him and even send some angels to watch over him. For the past twenty years, these angels were climbing the ladder up and down; yet, Jacob had not fully learned to trust the Lord. Now that he was facing his day of reckoning, he had to learn that he himself would have to face his guilt. Fear came to Jacob as never before and he prayed as never before to the God of Abraham and Isaac to bail him out of the dead end he ended up in. He reminded God to keep his Promises while he broke every one of his. Now, he was designing ways to bribe his way into his brother Esau’s favor.

Jacob was running from his brother Esau for having cheated him out of his birthright and stealing his blessing. He came to a place called Luz where he bedded down for the night with a rock for a pillow. In his dream, he saw a stairway between heaven and earth with angels going up and down. On top stood Jehovah and said: “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

Esau (hairy) or Edom (reddish) had the misfortune of not being a favored of his mother at a time when women and not men willed their power. He has been given a bad wrap. The harshest pronouncement on Essau is recorded in Malachi 1:2-5 and in the Epistle to the Hebrews 12:16-17. “I have loved you,” says the Lord. “But you ask, ‘How have you loved us?’ “Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” the Lord says. “Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his mountains into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals.” Paul still held on to Malachi’s assessment of Esau (Ro. 9:13). The writer to the Hebrews stretched the truth quite a bit when he regarded trickery as an act of faith and depicted Esau as “sexually immoral and godless when for a single meal sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son. Afterward, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected. He could bring about no change of mind, though he sought the blessing with tears.”

The heir concept has influenced the entire world. Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles regarded it as part of the spiritual election that included heirs by adoption. It has led to the misunderstanding that man had no choice in claiming the inheritance. It was simply handed to them. Yes, Isaac did step into his father’s footprints and managed with the powerful influence of his wife Rebekah. "It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned." In other words, it is not the natural children who are God's children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring’" (Ro. 9:7-8). Paul’s deduction did not alter cause and effect. Jacob’s descendants would harvest what their father Jacob sowed. Regarding Isaac, the father of Jacob, he maintained his father Abraham’s status quo. The events that followed were set in motion by his wife Rebekah and her sons Jacob and Essau.

The Bible is a Judeo-Christian Book and we should not be surprised when it is a bit negative about the election regarding the Promises of God to what Jesus called “the other sheep not of this sheepfold” (Jn. 10:16). He also made this comment, “I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Mt. 8:1-12). These predestined Promises are troubling for the presumed elected. God’s choice or election does not depend on guidelines set by man but His own. Sara and Abraham could keep Ishmael off the Land but not out of heaven. It was Jehovah or the Lord that determined that Ishmael would play a vital role in the managing of the world. The offspring of Ishmael would be just as much apart of cause and effect, as all the other children of men.

Elohim said to Abram, “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you” (Gen. 17:3-7).

It was after the Mandates of the Promises were made clear and specific that God proceeded to confirm His covenant with Noah and his sons. And again, the sacredness of life was reasserted in the following words of the Lord: "I now establish my covenant with you and your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you.... Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood, never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth. "This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth" (Gen. 9:8-17). Please note that is was Noah and not God that cursed Canaan and cut him off from the blessings. Under the Covenant with Noah, saint and sinner prospered.

"The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain" (Gen. 6 6). Grief and pain were caused by the blatant violations of God's Mandates. Genesis 6 hints at a number of deliberate distortions by man. The creature that bore the image of his Creator and of whom God said, "It is good" had grieved and brought pain to his Maker. In fact, the Creator had given up on man and wanted him destroyed. We read, "My Spirit will not contend with man forever" (Gen. 6:3).