We have here, when the character which God put upon this transaction with Jacob was manifested, Esau's imitation of a conduct thus directed; this we must expect, but in fact it only revives the previous lawlessness from God, and does not remedy but rather increases the evil—the sentence was already passed, and when there had been any opportunity for it, or good of it, it was not God's will, but his own he did, now this imitation was too late.
Jacob departs under the direction of his father; he leaves this well of the oath where the covenant of blessing was established; and here, before he gets into his misery, the Lord in the dream shows the whole economy of the providence, and government of God occupied with this outcast Jacob as its object, and the Lord declares He would be with him, and not leave him till He had done the thing He spoke to him of, and here in the blessing we have him and his seed mixed up for the blessing of the families of the earth, for now we have left the resurrection Church and come to Jacob and Israel—and upon the ground of these blessings, while outcast, he vows to take Jehovah for his God. As Isaac was the type of the resurrection Church having been so received in a figure, so here we have the type of the Jewish outcast state to return humbled but as a Prince with God—we have then the subject opening into wider details, because we must have the history of the Church during the period of Jacob's outcast state.
This chapter is the security of Jacob under the promises, made to the fathers, that he alone, forlorn, was the object of God's special care—the center of the service of the messengers of heaven—down upon earth; and then, in the land given to him, would be God's house to him. The relationship of Jacob's ways, founded on this, was earthly, see verses 20-22.