Abraham, depositary of the promises, is a stranger in the land of promise. All we read of his journey as owned of God (for he failed in not departing 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 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 (which was the act of Abraham, though Isaac is submissive, God providing Himself with a lamb for a burnt offering), and his going out to meet Rebecca. The history we have is of Eliezer fetching Rebecca to him, he being 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 Esan 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 place of promise. Jacob was a stranger from, not in, the place of promise. The Lord would keep him and bring him again where 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. Gen. 37:11And Jacob dwelt in the land wherein his father was a stranger, in the land of Canaan. (Genesis 37:1) alone brings us back to his proper patriarchal Abrahamic place; and Allon Bachuth and Benoni accompany, or are connected with, the altar that was raised. Gen. 37:11And Jacob dwelt in the land wherein his father was a stranger, in the land of Canaan. (Genesis 37:1) is grounded on 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, we have little or nothing but the fact that he gets a wife, and does not go back to the place he was called out of. Of Jacob we have a long 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, that is, government: Simeon and Levi in their cruel wrath do what scatters them in Israel. It is a history of 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 new 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. Meanwhile God takes care of Jacob and blesses him; but he does not meet God in the place of promise till Bethel, and there 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.
In Joseph is the depositary as well as object of the Messianic counsels. He is head among the Jews, supreme as to his personal dignity (the sun and moon are also to bow to him); then the interpreter of the counsels of life and death in his prison, the word of the Lord trying him also; and the knowledge and counsel of the world's condition, so that therein by power all should be reduced under the authority of the throne. After humiliation in righteousness and pardon come exaltation to power: at the right hand of the throne he becomes Lord and has his Gentile wife.