God's long-suffering leaves him not until the utmost bounds are overstepped. Succoth is in the path of God though its limit. Still can He deal in grace. Jacob is not yet the die cast before the eyes of men, by which the beauty of God's moral ways should be esteemed, therefore He can bless. And “Jacob built him an house, and made booths for his cattle” in peace. A stranger, still unknown of men— “few men in number, yea, very few, and strangers in it” —but holding to the everlasting covenant of God. “Therefore He suffered no man to do them wrong; yea, He reproved kings for their sake, saying, Touch not my anointed, and do my prophets no harm."
Man's ways, how low and groveling! God's way is one of grace and faithfulness—glorious in holiness. “He desired mercy and not sacrifice;” but Jacob, like Adam, transgressed the covenant—the everlasting covenant. God said unto Abraham, “I will give unto thee and to thy seed the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession.” To Jacob Jehovah said, “The land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed.” If Esau despised his birthright, Jacob bartered God's rights for a portion and peace with the Canaanites,” dealing treachery against the Lord."
Were it possible, he as heir, had cut off the entail forever from himself and seed, since he parted with his right as God's heir, that he might hold in his own right, grounded on the title of the Canaanite.
Thus he passed over from the paths of God into the way of Cain, who loved honor and slew his brother; who, out from the presence of Jehovah, “dwelt in the land of Nod—wandering.... and builded a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son Enoch” —dedicated—owning God in independence. So Jacob, moved by a fleshly mind, stands in God's land, not in independence only, but defection, wrapping it up withal under the cover of Israel's God; for when “he bought a parcel of a field.... of the hand of the children of Hamor,” “he erected there an altar, and called it El-elohe-Israel.” But there was no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God, but soon to be instead, swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery; thus breaking out, and blood touching blood, because they had left off to take heed to the Lord. Jacob is his name, but the Lord will plead with Israel, for He hath a controversy with His people.
Will he not know Jehovah's righteousness? What had He done to him? Brought out of Padan Aram, redeemed from the house of servants; for according to God's reckoning, not Jacob's righteousness, was Laban forced to give him wages (Gen. 30:33; 31:10-1333So shall my righteousness answer for me in time to come, when it shall come for my hire before thy face: every one that is not speckled and spotted among the goats, and brown among the sheep, that shall be counted stolen with me. (Genesis 30:33)
10And it came to pass at the time that the cattle conceived, that I lifted up mine eyes, and saw in a dream, and, behold, the rams which leaped upon the cattle were ringstraked, speckled, and grisled. 11And the angel of God spake unto me in a dream, saying, Jacob: And I said, Here am I. 12And he said, Lift up now thine eyes, and see, all the rams which leap upon the cattle are ringstraked, speckled, and grisled: for I have seen all that Laban doeth unto thee. 13I am the God of Beth-el, where thou anointedst the pillar, and where thou vowedst a vow unto me: now arise, get thee out from this land, and return unto the land of thy kindred. (Genesis 31:10‑13)); by His angel brought out, remember now, O Jacob, what the Syrian Laban had consulted, and God had answered him, “Take heed that thou speak not to Jacob either good or bad!"
Forced thus to take Jehovah's ground, and act in grace, now Laban seeks a string in his own heart which even Jacob's hand can harp upon; self-seeking, rash and wrathful Jacob.
Has Jacob daughters? Laban says, “my daughters.” Children? “My children.” Cattle? “My cattle.” “All that thou seest,” Laban says, “is mine.” This is Jehovah's righteousness. His way of grace He takes His springs of action from Himself, blinding as it were, His eyes to all the object is, He gives a gift and blesses the receiver for the gift's sake, since the gift is of Himself.
Not this alone. He takes the gifted one out from his old place and gives him a new standing where all things are of God.
Jehovah follows him from Mizpah unto Peniel, meets him there, and wrestling, withers him, so that no more Jacob is his name, but Israel; and He blessed him there in the name and place of God's appointment.
See the counterpart of this in Israel's history. Jehovah gives a gift, His presence and a king, when prophet, priest, and handmaid of the Lord had failed, been set aside as instruments of power. Then God uses money-loving, lust-tempting Balaam, to unveil the vision of the Almighty, take up his parable, and declare not only that the righteous rise again, but God, beholding His own gift, sees no iniquity in Jacob, neither hath He seen perverseness in Israel.
But more than this, God narrows up His circling glories nearer to Himself. Jacob, placed in kinship with his God, is drawn by every eddying wave of grace closer to the center all things tend to and evolve from. Nothing now against him as Jacob, elect of God, redeemed; all things also for him, as God's new man Israel; washed from the old, and as new set apart for God—His workmanship. But nearer still! rapt into that which is itself divine; sanctified, accepted, graced as a beloved who can give a blessing; once hated as a supplanter, now goodly as the trees of lign aloes which the Lord hath planted, and as cedar trees beside the waters, blessing those that bless him, because in him is One, a gift of God, who shall come a star out of Jacob, a scepter rising out of Israel.
Thus Esau, moved by sovereign grace, his circumstances being ruled of God that he may act His part, himself unwitting, sets forth God-like grace. His love wells over on the neck of him once hated as a cheat and liar! Why? “I have enough, my brother.” My soul is satisfied, and can run over in a shoreless stream. The glut of blessing is so great that mere relief, a thing on which it may be poured, is in itself a blessing. What odds how deep how wide, nay, bottomless the pit!—a Jacob! So much the better! Its emptiness, its fitness, and the very wages of its worthlessness become a blessing and its means.
This is Jehovah's righteousness, will he not know it?
The fount of love, out-gushing from the depths of God, flows from above, burst up from the fathomless abyss, and in divine all-filling fullness floats frail Jacob, fragrant in its fragrance, back into God Himself,
But there, what is that flood? Water from a Savior's side on Calvary! Water in the word by Jesus used in glory in the Father's house! A sea of glass like crystal before the throne! God is love and light, and all swept onward unto Him by its almighty tide must be thus in it: on earth by faith.
Jacob chosen, wrought of God, and planted; washed, sanctified, and justified; redeemed and graced; knowing Jehovah's righteousness, must judge and cleanse himself and walk in light.
At Peniel God accepted him; at Succoth he built booths, but he remembers not, and therefore knows not Jehovah's righteousness. Slipping clean out of God's paths, giving up God's right, “For Jacob came to Shalem, a city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan.... pitched his tent before the city; and he bought a parcel of a field, where he had spread his tent.... and he erected him an altar, and called it El-elohe-Israel.
“Wherewith shall I come before Jehovah, or bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before Him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old? While there are yet the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked!” Jehovah's voice cries, “Shall I count them pure with wicked balances? For they are full of violence, have spoken lies, and in their mouth they have a deceitful tongue."
He is a merchant buying the gifts of God of Luz; at Mahanaim he holds the balances of deceit, at Peniel be loveth to oppress.
How sad! how solemn! Tremble now before the Lord! Do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with thy God! Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy, break up your fallow ground.
Upright with God, unrighteous towards men. The smallest seed of flesh which turns from God's grace, branches one till fruitful with widespread misery. “They covet fields and take by violence, and houses, and take them away; so they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage;” the while ye have an altar, El-elohe-Israel.
Now is God's ground of government at stake, and Jacob must be forced to loose his grasp and quit his purchase. “Is the Spirit of Jehovah straitened? Are these His doings? Do not my words do good to him that walketh uprightly? Ye pull off the robe from them that pass by securely as men averse from war. The women of my people have ye cast out from their pleasant houses.” “I desired mercy, not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings;” but ye not only smite them that are sore and heal them not, nor restore those that are out of the way, but also cut off from the blessings of the land those in possession, who have God's covenant. Matt. 10:13; 11:713And if the house be worthy, let your peace come upon it: but if it be not worthy, let your peace return to you. (Matthew 10:13)
7And as they departed, Jesus began to say unto the multitudes concerning John, What went ye out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken with the wind? (Matthew 11:7).
The little leaven kneaded with the dough, and left to work unseen; unjudged in the fire of God's light and love, should, but for grace, soon leaven all the lump, end their own heart become an oven, hot and burning as a flaming fire, to devour them all. “Jacob, he hath mixed himself among the people, he is a cake not turned, half Shechemite, half Israelite, half judged, the other half untouched by fire.” He begged for flesh, has got it, kept it for himself. Corrupted is it? Arise ye and depart, for this is not your rest: because it is polluted, it shall destroy you. Jacob in the land is seemingly for God, but really in revolt and joined to the usurper. So judgment, not of faith, but from the Lord must come, lest he should be polluted with his rest. “And Dinah.... went out to see the daughters of the land, and Shechem saw her, and took her and defiled here, and his soul clave unto Dinah, he loved the damsel and spake kindly unto the damsel."
You begged to have your blessing in your hand! How have you kept it? You gathered all together, now you dissipate it You join yourselves to the citizens of that country now, as it were, you feed their swine, and, worse than all, you long to fill your belly with the husks the swine are eating.
At Peniel thou saidst, “Give me the share that falls to me.” At Shechem thou dost buy a field, and Dinah is defiled by Shechem; thy sons by deceit, and Simeon and Levi—instruments of cruelty, fierce anger, and cruel wrath—are cursed: and thou dost hold thy peace! Thou art a silly dove without heart!
Woe unto them, for they have fled from me! They have transgressed against me... I will change their glory unto shame! I will punish them for their ways and reward them for their doings!
So at another time, “when Israel joined himself unto Baalpeor Jehovah said unto Moses, “Take all the heads of the people and hang them up before Jehovah against the sun.” “So here was folly wrought in Israel.... which ought not to have been done” —matter of grief and wrath—a horrible thing in Israel. “Israel is defiled and Jacob holds his peace. Wail and howl; go stripped and naked; for the beginning of the sin, the transgressions of Israel were found in thee."
In crafty malice, lust of gain, do Israel's sons give men God's title to possess the land, and he, who counted it so worthless as to found his tenure on another's rights, would little scruple to barter circumcision, the reproach of Christ, separation from the world of the ungodly, the seal of faith, the sign of God's inheritance, for treasure in the world.
Unlike the One who came from God, found in the world a treasure, alienate, sold away through sin, held of right in the usurper's hand, and for the joy of it goes and sells all whatever He has and buys the right to all.
These despise the cross, the reproach of the circumcision, and have to endure the shame. These cat off from grace, thus bringing into judgment, the men averse from war, the women and their children, therefore they shall not dwell in Jehovah's land, but shall return to Egypt. Egypt shall gather them, Memphis shall bury them. The days of visitation, the days of recompense are come! Israel is swallowed up now; but know Jehovah's thought, and understand His counsel. Yet will He bring an heir unto thee, who shall go before them to preserve their souls.
"When they were sore, two of the sons of Jacob Simeon and Levi, pinch's brethren, took each man his sword and came upon the city boldly, and slew all the males, and they slew Harrier and Shechem his son with the edge of the sword The sons of Jacob came upon the slain and spoiled the city... they took their sheep, and their oxen, and their asses, and that which was in the city, and that which was in the field, and all their wealth, and all their little ones, and their wives, and spoiled even all that was in the house,” and Jacob “holds his peace."
Firstly, giving up God's right for gain, he now denies the validity of His title. But this, because he has himself in view. So setting self between his eye and God, it is all as though there were no God. Simeon and Levi say, “Should he deal with our sister as with an harlot?” making her honor cover their covetousness. At least is Jacob honest, for he says, “Ye have troubled me to make me to stink.... and I shall be destroyed; I and my house."
Jehovah's name at Peniel, unsaid, unknown, that Jacob may be blessed there. At Shechem, heritage of God, His portion, God's title is ignored. Knowledge is rejected. “He will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to Him.” Though God's name and portion are there set aside, yet He holds His peace, that grace in blessing may go out to Jacob.
One only hope is left in this extremity. All Jacob has is lost in principle; God's title to the whole land set aside, Shechem's right quite blotted out by blood. Jacob holds by force that only which he stands upon, and he but “few in number,” ready to perish.
To Jacob, had the promise been without condition, “The land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it.” If Jacob cannot stand where he has striven, will he lie where God has given? Will he take a place of thorough nothingness? At Peniel with a touch God withered up his strength: let faith lie down at Bethel helpless.
A place of stones which Jacob owned as God's, the house of God, the gate of heaven, where the ladder was set up on the earth, and Jehovah stood above, unfolding all his mercy. “To thee and to thy seed.... in thee and in thy seed.... I am with thee, and will keep thee, and will bring thee again into this land.... and Jacob was afraid."
It was in Jehovah's mind to take out Jacob for Himself, in Jacob's to get back to his father's house in peace.
At Bethel all may be retrieved. Impossible with man, with God all things are possible. Let but His right be owned, though to a place to lie on, and a stone set for a house, yet Jehovah can stand above, and, in the name and place of His appointment, have His house, His portion, and a priest.
Will faith triumph and grace be understood? Then Israel shall be the priest, Bethel the house, Praise God's portion.