There are three parts in the history of God’s ways with Jacob which are not only important because of their prophetic character, and still future application in blessing to Israel and the whole world, but on account of the deep moral instruction they convey to us, in the man who was thus called out to walk with God. The first is in Genesis 28, called “Jacob’s vision at Bethel;” the next in chapter 32, where “an angel wrestles with him;” and the third in chapter 35, when “Jacob is again summoned to Bethel.”
The name of Jacob (supplanter) casts its dark shade upon the man; and, as Esau said at the beginning of his path, “Is not he rightly named Jacob? for he hath supplanted me these two times: he took away my birthright; and, behold, now he hath taken away my blessing.” With such an one as this God had to walk in all the way by which He led him, but to correct him in grace, and to teach him in the end that human policy and cunning (especially when used in connection with the promises of God) only complicate the path of faith, which finds its sufficiency in the Promiser alone. One great lesson we all have to learn, who have to do with “the living God,” is that the ways and means by which He accomplishes His purposes touching our “birthright,” and also our “blessing,” are as distinctly His own care as the things He promises. Indeed, we may ask, How can it be otherwise, if His own glory lies hidden in the promised blessing? Human contrivance and cautious planning, which are the open faults in Jacob, not only stamp his character, but necessarily create, by their action, a moral distance between himself and the “God of his father Abraham and Isaac,” which must not be allowed.
Communication with Abraham, we may observe, did not begin in the distance of “a vision by night” (though he had a vision), nor was it measured by “a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reaching to heaven”—whatever this may and does mean prophetically. These would have been as much out of place morally in God’s intimacy with His “friend,” and with the head of the family of faith (who bound his only son Isaac upon the altar, in the day when God taught Abraham), as they were consistent and in keeping with Jacob, the supplanter and schemer. His first lessons were when “the sun was set, and he tarried all night in a certain place,” in the day that he fled away from Esau to Laban, at the advice of Rebekah. It seems to me that the ladder, whilst it allows of communication between parties at the top and at the bottom, yet marks as plainly the distance which it maintained. In John’s gospel “the ladder” is done away and gone; for how could there be a ladder when the Word was made flesh? “The angels of God henceforth,” Jesus said, “ascend and descend upon the Son of Man.”
God will not, however, allow anything in the man at the foot of the ladder to interfere with His purposes and objects; on the contrary, the promises are repeated and confirmed to Jacob, without condition or reserve on the part of God; for who or what can withstand Him when He is risen up out of His place? Still, as regards Jacob, when he awaked out of his sleep it was to say, “Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not.” Does not this mark his state? and is not the moral distance of the ladder confirmed by what follows? “And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place!” though he adds, “This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” Nevertheless, Jacob does not lose the relation of a worshipper; and this is very precious on the part of the God of Abraham towards the object of His love, for he took the stone pillow, and “set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it,” and changed the name of Luz into Bethel—though he be only at “the gate,” and “the ladder.”
The ruling passion of the supplanter and the bargainer breaks out even in this intercourse with God at Bethel. “And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on; .... then shall the Lord be my God: and I will surely give the tenth [of what He bestows] back to Him.” Nature, which always fears the circumstances it is in, shows itself to be at work under this form of piety, in order to find relief in God; but it does not get beyond their reach by such means. There may be a measure of faith in all this; but the stipulation is for God to be with Jacob in the way that he takes, so that he may come again to his father’s house in peace. How far outside and beyond this little circle of mere human interests and ideas lay the promises of God, which He had just rehearsed to the ear of faith: “Thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad.... and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” Instead of getting out into liberty by the exercise of faith in the largeness of God’s thoughts about him, which embraced “the whole earth” in ultimate blessing, Jacob would have been content with the measure of his own individual safety, and satisfied if the Lord would have limited Himself to the littleness of the vow that Jacob vowed, immense as this vow may have seemed to the contractedness of flesh and blood. Alas for us, if we see clearly the mote that is in our brother’s eye, and discover not (nor remove) the beam that is in our own eye!
Genesis 32 seems to me the correction of this forwardness of the flesh by the wrestling of the angel which it records. The beginning is significant — “And Jacob went on his way” — which introduces us to his methods and plans for appeasing the wrath of his brother Esau, whom he feared. The faith which strengthens itself, and can be at home only in the revealed purpose of God, and then occupy itself in intercession for those who lie outside, as Abraham did for Lot, is not after this pattern in Jacob. On the contrary, unbelief and carnal policy, carefully wrapped up in their own fears, betray themselves by the very expedients to which they have recourse, as well as by their style of action. The resources which would have commended another man in Jacob’s eyes are the things to which he turns, that he may find grace in the sight of his brother. All this fleshly cunning mixes itself up too with a certain dependence upon God, expressed in his prayer, though he has not confidence enough to be quiet in the hand of God for protection and deliverance. How often the flesh exposes itself to another by the very concealments which it practices upon its owner! So he turns again to the presents and gifts which he designs to employ in order to pacify Esau. He gets no answer to his prayer, and follows his own devisings with his goats and sheep, camels and asses. Nor is this enough; but he delivers them into the hands of his servants, every drove by themselves, with a further charge to “put a space betwixt drove and drove,” and arranges even the form of words for the messengers’ mouths. So far away is the heir of promise from the dignity that attaches to him as appointed by the Lord, that he is lost in the guilt of his own act, by which he supplanted his brother, and cringes before him as a servant in the presence of “my lord Esau.” Lower than this he cannot well go; and at this point it is, when at his wit’s end, that the Lord takes him in hand for gracious discipline: “Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.” The flesh itself is now to be dealt with, which occasioned all this corrupt and deceitful planning between himself and his brother; and the bargaining with God in chapter 28, when lying at the foot of the ladder he was afraid and said, “How dreadful is this place.”
The beginning of a deep lesson was introduced here, when the wrestler prevailed not, but put forth his hand, and “touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him.” In later times, and in a more spiritual and personal way (by grace), has the flesh and its actings been put to the proof, and discovered and dealt with summarily. It was when Jesus was on the earth, and had gathered the company of His disciples round about Him day by day in the enjoyment of His love, that “they all forsook Him, and fled.” It was in the weakness of their own flesh and when so intimate with such a One that they broke down, and denied Him in the hour of His own danger and death wrestling even till “the break of day” did not cure Jacob the supplanter, whatever the severer course of the touch, and the sinew that shrank in the hollow of the thigh, may have done with him individually. Nationally, when the law was given through “the disposition of angels” by the hand of Moses, wrestling, if we may so say, was again established with the tribes of Israel; but the effect of this striving was to learn that “the strength of sin is the law,” and they are dispensationally “broken out of their olive tree” as the consequence. It is indeed a long and humbling history of the wrestling, and the sinew that shrank up in the very place of its strength, from Jacob’s day to Peter’s, when the Lord said to him, “Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not.” The wrestling at Peniel, the law as the schoolmaster, Jesus in the midst of His disciples on earth, or Paul caught up to the third heavens, could not get rid of this “sin in the flesh.” Jacob might “halt upon his thigh” all the days of his life, and Paul might come from paradise with “a thorn in the flesh,” the messenger of Satan to buffet him, lest he should be exalted above measure; but the flesh in each was flesh still. Severer and final measures, which far exceed the sinew, or the law, or the sieve, or the thorn, thank God, have been adopted at the cross of Christ for our effectual deliverance from its dominion. It is there only it has received its death-blow; for there God has “condemned sin in the flesh,” and set it aside forever between Him and us. In prospect of this it may be, and at “Peniel,” that Jacob learned his early lesson by “the sinew that shrank” under the touch of the angel.
It is well to remember, too, that in this struggle “the name of Jacob,” the supplanter, was refused by the wrestler, and changed; for he said, “Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.” Nor is it without meaning that Jacob on his part called the name of the place Penuel. “For I have seen God face to face,” said he, “and my life is preserved.” And yet further we may notice what is pointed out to us, that as Jacob “passed over Penuel the sun rose upon him, and he halted upon his thigh.” Precious combinations were these in the experience of Jacob; and still more so are they to us who commemorate the deeper truth of death at the cross, where we reckon “the old man crucified,” and know in effect that we are “alive unto God through Jesus Christ” (not that life is preserved), and we see God face to face in our risen and ascended Lord: “For God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” This is our Penuel; and when we by faith in communion with the Father’s love pass over (like Jacob in his day), our sun, rises upon us, and “we all looking on the glory of the Lord with unveiled face, are transformed according to the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit.”
(To be continued)