3 Promises/Blessings

In class, we recently learned about 3 similar but separate blessings, or promises, that Yitzchak gives to his sons.

• The first promise is given to Yaakov when he is dressed as and his father thinks he is Esav. The blessing is that he will have the dew of the sky and the fat of the land (agriculturally fruitful), he will be stronger than his brother who will bow down to him, nations will serve and bow down to him, the people that cursed him would be cursed and those that blessed him would be blessed.
• The second promise is given to Esav after Yitzchak realizes that Yaakov tricked him and took Esav's bracha (even though one could argue that it was really Rivka acting through him). Yitzchak promises agricultural success to Esav the way he meant to in the beginning. He also says that although Esav would be ruled by his brother, there would be times where he would break free.
• The third promise is given to Yaakov like the first, but this time he is being truthful about his identity. Yitzchak says that HaShem should: make Yaakov fruitful, bless him, give him Birkat Avraham, and give him the Zerah and Aretz promise.

We can see from the way the blessings were given that either it was Yitzchak's plan from the beginning to give the whole bracha to Yaakov, or he had to change his plan halfway through when he found out he had blessed Yaakov when he had thought he was blessing Esav. Personally, I think that he had meant to split it all along. We said in class that Yitzchak didn't even mention Bircat Avraham in the first blessing, implying that he was in fact saving it for Yaakov. We also know that Yitzchak didn't mention all the spiritual things when he thought he was blessing Esav. He focused more on the outdoorsy, political type stuff. We said in class that we can see that Yitzchak didn't even mention HaShem being the one to do the blessing when he was (or thought he was) talking to Esav. It's only when he knows he is blessing Yaakov that he says that HaShem should bless him.

I think that, like we said in class, Yitzchak was planning to split the bracha and the nivchar leadership, but when he realized (charada gedolah=lightbulb moment) that Yaakov had manipulated what was going on, Yitzchak realized that maybe Yaakov would be able to handle the other part of the bracha too and gave it all to him.