Besides illustrating in a general way the life of a believer under discipline—its need, operation, and result, Jacob foreshadows in his history the wanderings and final deliverance of his descendants, the nation of Israel, and, since Christ is the true Israel, of that particular aspect of the Son of God which relates to His earthly inheritance. The promises originally given to Abraham were of the stars (heavenly) and sand (earthly) characters; but we find that they are divided, and that Isaac takes the line of Christ in resurrection, abiding in the heavenly place, to whom is brought the Gentile bride (therefore the repetition of the promise to him is of the stars only); Jacob takes the line of Christ outcast, wronged, and wandering in the earthly places; and to him the promise is of the sands only. Recently in opening the Liverpool Exhibition the Queen was handed a gold key which, being put into a small lock, by some elaborate mechanism, opened every door in the vast building: we know that Christ is the golden key to unlock all the courts of Scripture and lay open to us their opulent treasures of beauty and glory.
Therefore, after the episode of chapter 26, where we find Isaac dwelling in Canaan, blessed with the star-promises and, though not asserting his rights against Abimelech, yet digging again the wells (of hidden, heavenly ministry) which had been choked by Philistines, we read of Jacob traveling out of Canaan, blessed with the sand-promises which are fulfilled in a measure whilst he is in contact with the Gentiles and away from Canaan, and returning finally, having two wives and a great affluent household. In accomplishing this he has (unlike Isaac's yielding attitude) to defend his own cause against such as would wrong him, as will happen in the latter day when the “Kingdom and Patience” of Jesus Christ shall be succeeded, by the Kingdom and Power. He “will gather all nations...and will plead with them." “They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him, and his enemies shall lick the dust."
But there must intervene a long period of banishment, labor and adversity; and so we find Jacob “because the sun was set” lying down lonely and obscure on a stone-pillow at Luz. It is all very well for such as Burton (quoting from Seneca and Boethius) to say that “banishment is no grievance at all," and merely to change localities. But it is a bitter sorrow to most people; and especially to those who love their kin, and have the living tendrils of strong affections thus broken. Yet are there consolations and compensations even in this: the daylight of prosperity puts out the light of the heavenly spheres.; but when darkness comes, then do we behold the ineffable glories of the celestial constellations. They were (like Hagar's well) there all the time; but we see them not till the kind night reveals to us the splendor of the stellar radiance. “Wondrous truths, and manifold as wondrous, God hath written in those stars.” It is thus when outcast and lonely, that the servants of God have received their loftiest visions of rapt and holy ecstasy: that Moses in the desert sees the burning bush; that Ezekiel in Assyria sees the gorgeous cherubim; that Daniel in Elam saw the panorama of the world's history; that the ascetic Baptist in the wilderness of Jordan, saw Him on whom the Spirit descended; that John at Patmos, turning to hear the voice that spoke to him in his desolation, saw his Master invested with the loftiest attributes. It was thus in later times that Augustine, secluded at Cassiciacum, Luther at Wartburg, and Farel at Neuchatel, found the same divine Master in an especial way comforting their loneliness and sustaining their purposes; thus that Rutherford found in his— “sea-beat prison, My Lord and I kept tryst;” and thus when Charles Wesley was mobbed and hunted, he crept into an outhouse and gave birth to that holy poem which has comforted so many millions,
“Jesus, lover of my soul,
Let me to Thy bosom fly!”
Like that banished negro who, wandering in Brazil, found the “Star of the South” diamond, and instantly was prodigiously enriched; so the poor man of the Gospel who was cast out of the synagogue lifts up his new-found eyes, and, in his desolation, sees the Son of God approaching him, “fairer than all the earth-born race:” the wilderness and the solitary place are made glad by this mysterious Presence. And here in Jacob's banishment and darkness he lifts up his eyes and beholds a vision of Christ like that glorious and ecstatic one which his descendants shall see from “the Hill Mizar “—that vision of regal magnificence found in the forty-fifth psalm; he sees in type what Christ Himself sees when standing in rejection— “angels of God ascending and descending ON the Son of Man” — “a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached up to heaven; and, behold, the angels of God ascending and descending on it; and, behold, the Lord stood above it.”
This ladder then is the “Mediator between God and men, the MAN Christ Jesus” —being set up on the earth. “The top of it reached up to heaven,” which reveals His divinity; as the reaching down to earth shove His humanity— “equal with God” yet “a little lower than the angels.” It is the only means of man's approach to God, and of God's communication with man. Nathaniel understood how that the Messiah was “Son of God and King of Israel” —how that in His highest title He would reign over a smaller country than Italy—but the banished Christ must show him “greater things than these:” that hereafter in the Millennial earth He, Who has been thought unworthy by men to reign over a small province in His highest title, has been thought worthy by God to reign over the whole world in His lowest title. The second Psalm is answered by the eighth. “Ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the SON OF MAN!”