<p>12:17 <em>For you know that afterward, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected; for he found no conditions for a change of mind, though he sought it diligently with tears</em>- Esau before Isaac, pleading with him to change his irrevocable rejection, is picked up here as a type of the rejected at the day of judgment. The implication is that Jacob at this time symbolized the saints; yet he was no saint at that time. If Esau's rejection by Isaac is indeed a picture of the rejection of the goats at the final judgment, Isaac there becomes a hazy prefigurement of our future judge. And yet the record presents a scene of both father and rejected son as shaken and helpless together, both dearly wishing it could be different (Gen. 27:33). The sadness of Isaac becomes a figure of the pathos and sadness of God in rejecting the wicked. Note how the LXX of Gen. 27:38 adds the detail: &quot;And Isaac said nothing; and Esau wept&quot;. We are left to imagine the thoughts of Isaac's silence. Truly our God takes no pleasure at all in the death of the wicked (Ez. 33:11).</p><p>Esau's great and bitter cry for blessing is quoted here as typical of the attitude of all the rejected. He had earlier shrugged at the implications of selling his birthright, but now his self-rejection was being worked out in practice. The rejected argue back &quot;When did we see you...?&quot;. Surely they wouldn't have bothered doing so, unless they were upset at their rejection, and desiring to see the verdict altered. Israel's passing through the Red Sea is a definite type of baptism, and their largely unsuccessful wilderness journey therefore becomes a pattern of failed Christian lives. Yet when they were told that they were unworthy to enter the land, obvious as it must have been to them, they repented and were willing to make any sacrifice to enter it (Num. 14:40-48). When they disobeyed God's word and fled to Egypt from the Babylonians, they then so wanted to return to their land cp. the Kingdom- but it was all too late (Jer. 44:14). Cain is another type of the rejected- instead of going as far away from Divine things as possible after his condemnation, he went to live on the east of Eden- where the cherubim were, guarding the barred entry to God's paradise (Gen. 4:16). The Hebrews were warned not to follow Esau's sinful example (Gen. 27:34), otherwise at the judgment they would experience what he did. In view of this, the weeping of the rejected at judgment may be as a result of desperate pleading with the Lord to change his mind. Earlier in Hebrews the point is made that &quot;he that despised Moses' law died without mercy&quot;. The phrase &quot;without mercy&quot; is surely included to point out that the condemned would have earnestly pleaded for mercy, after the pattern of Cain, the foolish virgins pleading for entry... The next verse continues: &quot;Of how much sorer punishment... shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the son of God?&quot; (Heb. 10:28,29), indicating that the sad picture of those condemned under the old Covenant, pleading for mercy, will be repeated at the judgment of those under the new Covenant.</p><p>And yet the impossibility of retracting the decision may not only refer to the finality of judgment day. The passage reads more comfortably as if Paul means that if they returned to the temple cult, there would be no way of coming back to Christ. And yet surely any sinner can always repent? Perhaps Paul is reasoning as in :12 (see note there) as if the Lord's return is around the corner. The temple cult was about to be destroyed as the Lord had predicted in the Olivet prophecy, and if now at the last moment the Hebrew Christians returned to it, then they were going to be destroyed in its destruction.</p>