ISAAC BLESSING JACOB.

WHEN Isaac had attained the age of a hundred and thirty-seven years, and "his eyes were dim so that he could not see;" feeling from the infirmities which had accumulated upon him, that death could not now be very remote, he was anxious to settle on his eldest son that land of promise which God declared he would confer upon the posterity of Abraham. He therefore sent for Esau in order that he might entail it upon him, accompanied with a prophetic benediction. Rebekah overhearing what passed between Isaac and the heir, who had separated himself from his father's house by a marriage she did not approve, summoned Jacob to her presence, and revealed to him a plot which she had devised to delude her husband and secure the blessing designed for the elder born, to her younger and favourite son. She commanded him to disguise himself in Esau's apparel and appear before his father with a dish of "savoury meat," which she undertook to prepare from two kids of the goats, and receive the paternal benediction, that would at once transfer to him the rights of primogeniture and entail upon his posterity the promised possession, where that miracle of love was to be consummated which has exalted the lapsed posterity of Adam from the deplorable bondage of sin to the blessed liberty of redemption. "And Isaac said unto Jacob, Come near Low, and kiss me, my son. And he came near, and kissed him." The picture represents the inside of a tent, in which Jacob appears kneeling before his blind father, who is in the act of blessing him. Rebekah is anxiously watching the success of her stratagem. A bow and quiver belonging to Esau are hung on one side over the bed, as no longer in use, denoting at once his pursuit and domestic alienation. The distant landscape appears through the opening of the tent.