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 God. And then set to work planning again, as though he could not depend on God. All the verses down to verse 21 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.