This chapter describes Jacob's and Rebekah's deception of blind Isaac, so that he gave his special blessing to Jacob rather than Esau, and the deception worked.
What interests me here is the footnote in my Catholic bible, The New American Bible. Here it is: "27, 1-45: What Jacob did in deceiving his father and thereby cheating Esau out of Isaac's deathbed blessing is condemned not only as blameworthy not only by Hosea (12, 4) and Jeremiah (9,3), but also, indirectly, by the Yahwist narrator of the present story, who makes the reader sympathize with Esau as the innocent victim of a cruel plot, and shows that Jacob and his mother, the instigator of the plot, paid for it with a lifelong separation from each other. The story was told because it was part of the mystery of God's ways in salvation history--his use of weak, sinful men to achieve his own ultimate purpose."
The mysteries of fate that sinful men are free-willing but are useful tools utilized by God for his own ultimate purpose. There are two mysteries here. Yahweh used a bad person, Jacob, to serve to bring about the most worth son to be blessed, Jacob himself. Second, Jacob seems to be sinning and deceiving of his own free will, but he also is a tool used by Yahweh to achieve an end, the heir favored by God does receive that special deathbed blessing.
Mysterious are the ways of God, and, to some degree, they always will be so.
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