Genesis 32-33
Now Laban was gone, but Esau, the wronged brother, was yet to be met.
How kindly God sent his angels to meet Jacob, as though to welcome him back to Canaan, the promised land, and to remind him that God had never forgotten, and would always watch over him. Jacob ought to have before this prayed to God for help about meeting Esau, but if he did he kept on planning and worrying, instead of waiting in prayer for God to do what He would. He sent some of his servants on ahead to tell Esau, who lived in the South, that he was on his way back home from Laban’s country with flocks and herds, and men and women servants, and in his message to his brother, Jacob was very careful to say, “Thy servant Jacob,” and “My lord Esau,” for he was afraid; as he had a guilty feeling in his breast. And the messengers coming back with the alarming news that Esau was coming to meet Jacob, and bringing with him four hundred men, Jacob was now greatly afraid and distressed. He thought very likely that Esau was coming to kill him, or to do some other bad thing to him, and so he divided his party into two bands, thinking that if Esau came to the first one, the other would get away safely. But when he had done this with his flocks, Jacob was still as much afraid as ever, and so we find him in verses 9, 10, 11 and 12 praying to ,rod. And then set to work planning again, as though he could not depend on God. All the verses down to the twenty-first tell us about Jacob’s present for Esau, for he said he would make him forget his angry feeling with a present. No less than 550 animals, probably 580, did Jacob pick out of his possessions. and sent them on the road before him for his brother, to make him feel kindly towards him.
Evidently Jacob had intended to keep his family with himself on the north side of the little river Jabbok to which they had now come, but in the night he sent his wives arid children over to the south side. Then left alone, “a man” wrested with him until daylight. It was God who stood against Jacob in those dark hours of the night, and the reason was that poor Jacob needed to know and to trust God more. very much more, than he did.
We have seen all along about Jacob how he schemed and planned for himself, and seems to have given little of his time and thoughts to God. He did not know that his strong will needed breaking before he could be happy with God. At last the heavenly visitor touched the hollow of Jacob’s thigh so that it got out of joint, and then Jacob asked for a blessing, struggling no longer against God. Now God changed Jacob’s name to Israel, a prince of God, the name means. But even then Jacob only said, when left alone, “I have seen God face to face and my life is preserved,”—but not a word of His goodness to him.
Now came Esau and his four hundred men, and seeing them coming, Jacob divided up his family, each mother having her children with her, with those he cared the least about first, I suppose; and certainly the one he loved the most,—Rachel —and her child, the little Joseph, last. Then he went ahead of them to meet Esau, and how polite he was,—bowing right down to the ground seven times until Ile came near to his brother. No doubt all this was done to make Esau feel kindly towards him, but Esau’s behavior to Jacob was as though he had forgotten all about the past, for he ran to meet Jacob and kissed him. Then he asked about all the animals he had met, and when Jacob told him they were for a present to him, Esau said he had enough, hut he finally took the animals home, when Jacob urged him to. Here again, though, I am sorry to say, Jacob showed his old bad ways, for he told Esau that he was so pleased to meet Esau, that it was like his seeing the face of God, which can’t have been true; it was only said for a purpose, though of course, Jacob was glad that his brother didn’t hate him as he had feared. Then to there was deceit in Jacob’s saying to Esau that he would follow him to his home at Mount Seir, for he didn’t mean to. Esau at last started back for his home, and Jacob followed along slowly, but presently stopped at a place called Succoth where he built a house and made shelters for his cattle. Next we find him across the Jordan, back again in the land of God’s promises to Abraham and Isaac and himself. He settled down at Shalem, a city of Shechem, buying a piece of land, and building an altar to God there. Jacob’s father and grandfather had always been like strangers in the country, never buying land except for a cemetery or building houses and Jacob was wrong, and we shall see what trouble it brought on him. He ought indeed to have gone on to Bethel, and to his father’s home at once, and he would then have missed the disgrace, and other things of the thirty-fourth chapter.
Well. it’s very easy to point out other folk’s mistakes, sometimes. A. servant of God once said, when talking about Jacob and his ways, as God has told of them in His word, “Did you ever see Jacob in the mirror?” He meant that we all easily forget how bad we are, for the old selfish and bad ways come out sometimes after we are saved, but we should not let them, should we?
Messages of God’s Love 7/3/1921