God calls him back to his first point of departure; there Jehovah's name had been revealed to him; then the purified house of Jacob goes to the meeting place where he had become an outcast. Then God reveals Himself by His patriarchal name, directly, and the land comes in sight. But it is not said Jehovah appeared as to Abraham and Isaac, and there is nothing of the blessing of the nations in the seed. Isaac is much more lost in Abraham; God never reveals Himself directly to him by a name, He is the God of his father Abraham.. A vast deal afterward is history often interesting, and important, but only as a preparation for God's dealings as Jehovah. The only places in which we have " Jehovah " in the rest of the book, are in Judah's case, chapter 38: 7-10, where one sees they are His special ways, and government; with Joseph sold and in trial, chapter 39; and, after Dan, Jacob's waiting for His salvation, which is an Israelitish millennial desire, chapter 49:18; his present wish of blessing for Joseph is from God Almighty, his own name of relationship with God. We get "God" often—His dealings, as ruling all things, in contrast with men.
All is gone through, as if he was then just returned, and he really was then only returned to God at Bethel, where he had last been with Him in leaving Canaan.
11. Here God is revealed, but the promises are only Jewish; we are come down to that now—Jacob and Israel are their name.
God goes up then from Jacob—as from Abraham, after talking with him.
Experiences are useful to bring us to God, but they all disappear when God reveals Himself.
Here we get Jacob upon Abraham ground, because it is renewed in grace, see chapter 17: 1-22, but both are on earthly ground; Isaac was never placed on this, he was still alive too, see verse 27.
18. The true Heir, in figure, of renewed Israel; the former thing—Israel—dead and gone, and the new, the Son of its affliction, but of His Father's right hand.
Note the beauty of the order as to the Patriarchs.
Abraham, depositary of the promises, is a stranger in the place of promise. All we read of his journey, as owned of God—for he failed with Sarah, he had not departed as the Lord had said—was " he went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan he came." We have no sign of the Lord being with him in the way that he went down into Egypt, though He visited Pharaoh with plagues.
His history, of which we have detail, is—a stranger in the land of promise—communion with God as such—and depositary of the communications, and promises of God.
Of Isaac we have nothing, save the fact of his being offered up (which was the act of Abraham, though Isaac is submissive, God provided Himself with a lamb for a burnt offering) and his going out to meet Rebecca.
The history we have is of Eleazar fetching Rebecca to him—he is hidden; his dealings with Esau and Jacob only introduce these two, it is not his history. He represents Christ unseen, and the Church gathered.
As in Esau we have high-handed rebellion, and self-will—in Jacob, we have God with him in the path, secretly by His providence, but a path occasioned by his evil and unbelief. In this sense—God with us—"in the way," is a humbling, and to us an evil place—blessed and patient grace, and turned to good and blessing—still a humbling place; God's name is not revealed to us in it, even when we prevail to have blessing by faith through His grace.
God is with us " in the way," but we should not be " in the way," if unbelief had not, for a time, put us out of the proper place of promise. Jacob was a stranger from, not in, the place of promise; the Lord would keep him, and bring him again, when he was a stranger, and his way and wanderings from Canaan—but he was going from this place which might be an anchor to him.
It would seem that the wrestling had not set his heart right, for he buys land, and is not a stranger, and, but for God's providential interference, would have settled and made alliance. Also the strange gods were in his household, and he seems to have known it. He had not fairly come to God; chapter 37: alone brings us back to the proper patriarchal, Abrahamic place, and Allon Bachuth and Benoni accompany, or are connected with the altar that was raised; chapter 37:1 is grounded On chapter 35: 27, and 36: 6.
How entirely in Jacob's history we descend into a lower sphere; also he had reason to say " few and evil." But then we have more of the ways of God, and His supremacy above evil, and yet His dealing with evil, and therein His gracious process with the evil doer, and all this is very precious to us.
Of Abraham, the called man, the friend of God, we have an ample history of what man is in that place, imperfect surely, but most blessed.
Of Isaac, the heavenly man, little or nothing but the fact—he gets a wife, and does not go back to the place he was called out of.
Of Jacob, we have a long and detailed history, and the blessing of Isaac belongs to it. It is man, though man with promise, and the patient condescension of God with him, making good His counsels, and after all through faith, but giving us a sad history, though life shines through it.
We are still in dealings and providence—government; Simeon and Levi do what scatters them in Israel, in their cruel wrath. It is a human history, and human ways.
But further, when Israel gets back to Bethel, in which place alone he is fully back to God after his compulsory wanderings—and even the idols only then put away—yet kept and preserved, but then when God reveals Himself, we have nothing now of the blessing of the nations in the seed. It is purely Jewish, Rachel—representing the mother of the seed of power in the earth—departs, and he, who was the son of her affliction, is the son of his father's right hand. God takes care of him, blesses Jacob meanwhile, but he does not meet Him in the place of promise till Bethel, and then clear from all other gods.
When he had settled his own place on earth, he had to move away, though there he recognized El as the Elohe Israel.