Genesis 27

It's always been amazing to me that God would abide by the workings of such a misused system. If Esau was truly Isaac's firstborn, then shouldn't he have received the blessing? Why does God allow Isaac to unjustly bless the younger child, to take away what belongs to Esau?

I think it illuminates the conundrum that God finds himself in as well. As God, he "holds all things together." As God, he is the One, "in whom we live and move and have our being." But that means that God holds people in being when they sin. He facilitates the continuing existence of rapists and murderers and does not intervene in any special way in most cases of Worldly injustice, or so it would appear at least in the short term.

So if God holds back and abides by the rules, allows Jacob the trickster to trick his way into the blessing, it's nothing new. It is the pattern of humanity. But God is preparing a lesson that he will teach to the legalistic Jacob, turning his worldview on its head, the same way he shook Abraham's worldview as Abraham was on the verge of proving his devotion through the time-tested method of sacrifice of one's child to the deity. But God does not desire burnt sacrifice. He doesn't even want a contract. He wants a covenant, a family to be formed between God and Man. Jacob's treacherous legalism will eventually form the foil for the jewel of God's faithful love for His beloved and chosen.