The replacement of an older son by a younger one is a recurring biblical theme.
The older son is a type of Adam who squanders his inheritance. The younger one is a type of Christ, a redeemer.
This principle is illustrated by the stories of Cain, Abel, and Seth, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, and David and his brothers, among others.
Contents
Seth replaces Cain
In Genesis 4, we read the story of Adam’s two sons, Cain and Abel. The younger Abel was a keeper of sheep, and the older Cain was a worker of the land. The two roles here, a shepherd and a husbandman – priest and king, are the same as God gave to Adam initially.
Cain gives in to sin that is crouching at his door and eventually ends up killing his younger brother. Two bloodlines, the offsprings of Eve – the godly ones, and the offsprings of the Serpent – the ungodly ones, emerge from this as per God’s promise in Genesis 3:15.
Cain’s line ends up building cities in the East, and they gradually go deeper into sinning, leading to reasons why God flooded the earth.
Adam and Eve have another son, Seth, whose line will establish the godly line from which the Messiah will come to crush the head of the Serpent. When Seth has his son Enosh, the people start “to call upon the name of the Lord,” which very often in the Bible refers to ritual (sacrificial) worship of Yahweh.
Genesis 4:25-26
Adam knew his wife again. She gave birth to a son, and named him Seth, saying, “for God has given me another child instead of Abel, for Cain killed him.” A son was also born to Seth, and he named him Enosh. At that time men began to call on Yahweh’s name.
Shem replaces Japheth
Shem, Ham, and Japheth are the three sons of Noah from whom all the people of the world descend. Usually, Shem is listed in the Bible before his brothers, perhaps indicating that he is the oldest of them. It’s actually Japheth who is the oldest; Shem is the middle child, and Ham is the youngest.
You need to do some detective work to establish the proper birth order of Noah’s sons. For example, different Genesis 10:21 translations give different accounts of who is the oldest, Shem or Japheth. See this source for the proper birth order of the brothers.
From the three sons, Ham’s line is the ungodly one, as we see in Genesis 9 when Noah is found uncovered in his tent. Ham sees “the nakedness of his father” but doesn’t cover him and only tells his two brothers about it. Shem and Japheth cover their father.
When Noah realizes what has happened, he curses Canaan, Ham’s son. Curiously, Genesis 9 mentions twice that “Ham is the father of Canaan,” and it’s Canaan who Noah cursed and not Ham. Ham gets indirectly cursed because his line is cursed and set as servants to his brothers.
The passages suggest that there is more to the story than Ham being the only bad guy.
Nevertheless, when Noah proclaims his curses and blessings to his sons after the incident, he establishes Shem over Japheth, who is to “dwell in the tents of Shem.”
Canaan and his descendants will be servants for both Shem and Japheth. They are the infamous Canaanites who occupied the Promised Land when Joshua led the Israelites to conquer it.
Genesis 9:24-27
Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his youngest son had done to him. He said,
“Canaan is cursed.
He will be a servant of servants to his brothers.”He said,
“Blessed be Yahweh, the God of Shem.
Let Canaan be his servant.
May God enlarge Japheth.
Let him dwell in the tents of Shem.
Let Canaan be his servant.”
Isaac replaces Ishmael
The story of Abraham is prominent in Genesis, not least because of his son, Isaac, whose birth and sacrifice foreshadow significant events in Jesus’ life.
God calls Abraham from Ur, Babylonia, and promises him a child at an older age. His wife, Sarah, is also past child-bearing age at the time of the promise. So Isaac’s miraculous birth foreshadows the miraculous birth of Jesus.
Years pass since God’s promise, and Sarah can’t wait for it to be fulfilled. She devises a plan to give Abraham a child through their female Egyptian servant, Hagar, who gives birth to Abraham’s son, Ishmael.
After the birth of Ishmael, God repeats his promise to Abraham, and eventually, Isaac is born. Since, as the apostle Paul puts it in Galatians 4, Ishmael was the son of the flesh and Isaac the son of the promise, God established His covenant with the younger Isaac.
The story of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, and her son, Ishmael, is an example of symbolism in the Bible. According to Apostle Paul (Galatians 4), Hagar and Ishmael represent the Old Covenant of slavery, and Sarah and her son, Isaac, represent the New Covenant and freedom in Christ.
Genesis 17:19-21
God said, “No, but Sarah, your wife, will bear you a son. You shall call his name Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him. As for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly. He will become the father of twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation. But I will establish my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you at this set time next year.”
Jacob replaces Esau
Jacob is Esau’s younger twin brother in the Bible. They are the sons of Isaac and grandsons of Abraham.
Like many leaders of God’s people in the Old Testament, Jacob is a shepherd, while Esau becomes a hunter. Isaac is fond of Esau and selects him as the eldest to have his blessing and continue the Messianic line.
Rebekah, the mother of the twins, loves Jacob and remembers what God said to her when she was expecting the twins.
Genesis 25:23
“Two nations are in your womb,
and two peoples from within you shall be divided;
the one shall be stronger than the other,
the older shall serve the younger.”
Jacob is a cunning man in the early stages of his life, and he buys Esau’s birthright with a meal from his brother. Later, with the help of Rebekah, he deceives Isaac to bless him instead of Esau. (Genesis 27:21-29)
Joseph replaces his older brothers
Joseph was the second youngest of twelve brothers born to Jacob. His father loved him much, which stirred jealousy among the older brothers.
Joseph’s dreams didn’t help to lessen the brothers’ envy. In these dreams, Joseph is set in a position where his brothers, father, and mother would be honoring him as their leader.
Genesis 37:9
He dreamed yet another dream, and told it to his brothers, and said, “Behold, I have dreamed yet another dream: and behold, the sun and the moon and eleven stars bowed down to me.”
Read more about stars in the Bible.
The envious brothers end up selling Joseph into slavery in Egypt, where he rises to become the second in command for the whole empire. A famine in the Promised Land drives the brothers to Egypt, where Joseph is set as their superior.
In the last days of his life, Jacob blesses all of his sons. In his blessing to Joseph, he grants that Joseph is crowned and set apart from his brothers.
Genesis 49:26
The blessings of your father have prevailed above the blessings of your ancestors,
above the boundaries of the ancient hills.
They will be on the head of Joseph,
on the crown of the head of him who is separated from his brothers.
Ephraim replaces Manasseh
In his last days, Jacob blessed his twelve sons and Joseph’s two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh. In the verses below, you see how Jacob still has some tricks in the bag when he sets the younger Ephraim before the firstborn Manasseh.
Genesis 48:13-14 and 17-20
13 Joseph took them both, Ephraim in his right hand toward Israel’s left hand, and Manasseh in his left hand toward Israel’s right hand, and brought them near to him. 14 Israel stretched out his right hand, and laid it on Ephraim’s head, who was the younger, and his left hand on Manasseh’s head, guiding his hands knowingly, for Manasseh was the firstborn.
17 When Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand on the head of Ephraim, it displeased him. He held up his father’s hand, to remove it from Ephraim’s head to Manasseh’s head. 18 Joseph said to his father, “Not so, my father, for this is the firstborn. Put your right hand on his head.”
19 His father refused, and said, “I know, my son, I know. He also will become a people, and he also will be great. However, his younger brother will be greater than he, and his offspring will become a multitude of nations.” 20 He blessed them that day, saying, “Israel will bless in you, saying, ‘God make you as Ephraim and as Manasseh’” He set Ephraim before Manasseh.
Eleazar and Ithamar replace Nabad and Abihu
Nabad and Abihu were the oldest and second-oldest sons of Aaron, the brother of Moses, and the first high priest of Israel.
In Leviticus 10, Nabad and Abihu offer “strange fire before Yahweh” in the Tabernacle, which leads to their being devoured by a fire coming from before Yahweh.
The two oldest sons are replaced by younger brothers, Eleazar and Ithamar.
David replaces his brothers
King David was the youngest of eight brothers. Psalm 69 and 1 Samuel below reveal that he wasn’t particularly well-liked among his older brothers or even his father.
David was falsely accused of being a thief and had to pay for lost items because of these accusations.
Psalm 69:4
Those who hate me without reason
outnumber the hairs of my head;
many are my enemies without cause,
those who seek to destroy me.
I am forced to restore
what I did not steal.
His brothers saw him as a stranger and an outsider, as if David did not belong to the family.
Psalm 69:9
“I have become a stranger to my brothers,
an alien to my mother’s children.”
When David prayed and worshipped God, he was mocked and spoken ill of, and drunken men at the city gates made mocking songs about him.
Psalm 69:10-12
When I weep and fast,
I must endure scorn;
when I put on sackcloth,
people make sport of me.
Those who sit at the gate mock me,
and I am the song of the drunkards.
The harassment extended to the food given to David, and just as Jesus was given sour wine on the cross, David was given sour wine to drink in his thirst.
Psalm 69:22
“They also gave me poison for my food.
In my thirst, they gave me vinegar to drink.”
The books of the prophet Samuel also reflect the family’s belittling and indifference towards David.
According to 1 Samuel 17:34–36, David was sent to shepherd sheep in dangerous areas with lions and bears in the wilderness.
In 1 Samuel 17:26–31, when David comes to fight Goliath, his oldest brother gets seriously angry with him and says, “I know how conceited you are and how wicked your heart is; you came down only to watch the battle.”
In 1 Samuel 16:10-12, when Samuel comes to anoint Israel’s next king from among Jesse’s sons, his father doesn’t include David among his sons. While all the other seven sons were with Samuel, David was left in the field to tend the animals. David was not considered worthy to be among Jesse’s sons when the famous prophet had called Jesse and his sons together.
But what Jesse and David’s older brothers failed to see, God saw and told Samuel to anoint David, “for this is he.”
1 Samuel 16:10-12
And Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel. And Samuel said to Jesse, “The Lord has not chosen these.” Then Samuel said to Jesse, “Are all your sons here?” And he said, “There remains yet the youngest, but behold, he is keeping the sheep.” And Samuel said to Jesse, “Send and get him, for we will not sit down till he comes here.” And he sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy and had beautiful eyes and was handsome. And the Lord said, “Arise, anoint him, for this is he.”
Jesus replaces Adam
Adam, who is a foreshadowing of Jesus, was set to be a king-priest and spread God’s will to the world. However, he reached out to the forbidden fruit before his time had come and was expelled from the Garden of Eden due to his grave sin.
The older brothers in the above passages are types of Adam who squandered his inheritance. The younger are types of Jesus who, through obedience, became perfect, redeemed humanity, and became the King of kings.
Paul writes in 1 Corinthians that “the first man, Adam, became a living soul,” but “the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.” He continues, “The first man is of the earth, made of dust. The second man is the Lord from heaven.”
1 Corinthians 15:45-48
So also it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living soul.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However that which is spiritual isn’t first, but that which is natural, then that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, made of dust. The second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the one made of dust, such are those who are also made of dust; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.
Romans 5:14
Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those whose sins weren’t like Adam’s disobedience, who is a foreshadowing of him who was to come.