# comment

text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>They grieved Isaac’s and Rebekah’s spirits</em>- Genesis 24 explained the great lengths and sacrifices they both went to in order to honour the principle of marrying within the faith, in order to raise the Godly seed. They of all believers would have been so heartbroken to see their son marrying unbelievers; but often we are tested in family life on the very issues over which we ourselves have taken a strong stand. The grief of spirit was intense; <em><a href='B:10 27:46'>Gen 27:46</a></em> records that Rebekah was 'weary of her life' because of these daughters in law.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>It happened, that when Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim, so that he could not see, he called Esau his elder son, and said to him, My son? He said to him, Here I am</em>- Isaac was 117 and Jacob 57. "<em>His</em> elder son" (:5 also) compares with Jacob being described as Rebekah's son (:6). If Esau was of integrity, he would at this early point have explained that he had sold his birthright to Jacob.</p><p> Isaac presents poorly here, in spiritual terms. Rebekah had been told that the elder would serve the younger- but Isaac either ignored that because it was God's word through a woman, or because he just wanted to all the same bless his older son, who was his favourite. He specifically states that the younger son is to bow down in service to the older son- as if Isaac specifically wants to undo God's principle stated 58 years previously. Over the years, he presumably forgot it, or just renegotiated it in his mind until the statement became irrelevant to him. As noted elsewhere, Isaac presents poorly throughout his life apart from possibly in being willing to be sacrificed- although a father being asked to sacrifice his son was something which the surrounding gods and religious cults often demanded, and Isaac may have gone along with it on that basis. For it is Abraham rather than Isaac who is warmly commended by God after the event. And yet, Isaac is held up as an example of faith and the Lord Jesus assures us that Isaac will be in the Kingdom. So as with Abraham, Isaac was counted righteous because of a core basis of faith, even though that faith was weakly articulated in his life. We should also be aware that the father had the right to choose who should receive the blessing of the firstborn; Jacob himself later demoted his firstborn son Reuben from "firstborn" status (Gen. 49:4), replacing him with Judah. And the Nuzi documents record how in those times, a father could indeed do this and it was not at all uncommon. So Isaac's insistence on giving Esau the firstborn status and blessing was a conscious act, and directly against God's intention. The blind Isaac was most impressed by "Esau's" hairy hands and the scent of the field on "his" clothes. The identity test for the firstborn, in Isaac's view, were completely secular and not spiritual. He loved Esau because Esau was a hunter and a macho man; not because of anything spiritual. "Who then was it who hunted game and brought it to me?" (:33) reflects how Isaac thought that the characteristic of being a hunter, with hands as hairy as the animals he hunted, was the prime characteristic of the firstborn whom he sought to bless. When it was well known that Nimrod, the antiChrist figure of earlier history, was characterized by his mighty hunting (Gen. 10:9,10). Isaac had become dominated by the thinking of the world around him, whereby kings and leaders were caricatured as succesful hunters. Thus King Ashurbanipal is presented as a mighty hunter of lions in many reliefs uncovered. Isaac likes to imagine that the smell of Esau's clothing is of a "field blessed by Yahweh", as if he was right in blessing Esau because Yahweh had blessed Esau with prowess in hunting. This of course was a totally wrong position. Yahweh's blessings were by grace alone, and given directly. And they are not given on any human basis; whereas Isaac discerned his firstborn, as he thought, using his human senses of touch, smell and hearing.  </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He said, See now, I am old. I don’t know the day of my death</em>- Isaac didn’t die for another 43 years. Now Isaac was 137 (<em><a href='B:10 41:46'>Gen 41:46</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 45:6'>Gen 45:6</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 47:9'>Gen 47:9</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 30:25'>Gen 30:25</a></em> cp. 29:18,21,27); which was the age at which his brother Ishmael had died, 14 years before. The Biblical record is Divinely inspired, and the psychological 'ring of truth' about the incidents confirms this. It is normal and psychologically credible to get a fear of death when you come to the age at which your brother died.&nbsp; </p><p> Isaac, and indeed all in the family, believed that the blessing of Yahweh (:7) was contingent upon it being given by Isaac. If he were to die, then, the blessing wouldn't be given. The idea of personal blessing direct from God, according to the Abrahamic covenant, was not appreciated by them. "He [Isaac] blessed him" (:23) is stressed. They felt that blessing and relationship with Yahweh had to be mediated through a living person, the elder of their family. Just as Israel turned away from direct encounter with Yahweh at Sinai, and wanted Moses to interact with Him on their behalf. This is the basis for religion, and it is the very opposite to personal spirituality. And they were persistently missing the point- that blessing from God was that of forgiveness, personal relationship with Him ["I will be their God"] and future eternal possession of the land. Jacob realizes this in Gen. 33, when he asks Esau to "take away my blessing". But just as his blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh reflects how he still sees parental blessing as important, we find in Gen. 49:25 that Jacob pretty much repeats the [relatively meaningless] blessing of Isaac in his words to his favourite son Joseph: “the Almighty who will bless you with blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that crouches beneath, blessings of the breasts and of the womb”. Indeed, Jacob's likewise rather meaningless blessings of his sons repeat elements of the blessing of Isaac which he deceitfully received: "Judah, your brothers shall praise you; your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies; your father’s sons shall bow down before you” (Gen 49:8); “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples” (Gen 49:10). We too may at some moments realize that nothing at all matters apart from God's spiritual blessings; but we may revert to hankering after material blessings, and still take that attitude to our grave planks.  See on :29.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Now therefore, please take your weapons, your quiver and your bow, and go out to the field, and take me venison</em>- About Jacob's last recorded words were his memory of how he took "Shechem... out of the hand of the Amorite with my sword and with my bow" (<em><a href='B:10 48:22'>Gen 48:22</a></em>). Perhaps subconsciously he wanted to prove to himself and others that he was not weaker than Esau, and was as adept at the use of bow and weapons as he had been. The connection is made the stronger once we realize that "quiver" is "scabbard" and refers to a sword. The ideas of "sword", "bow" and "take..." are repeated. And later Scripture stresses that Israel [Jacob] did not get the land in possession by their sword nor bow. Again, Isaac is set up as not at all understanding how blessing- true blessing- is mediated. Just as many today do not understand.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Make me savoury food, such as I love, and bring it to me, that I may eat, and that my soul may bless you before I die</em>- The grammar seems to suggests that eating the food was necessary to impart the blessing; see on :9. Clearly Isaac is thinking in human terms; for the only blessing ultimately worth having came from <em>God</em>, not from Isaac's "soul", and was not bestowed through having a ritual meal. However we note the understanding they had that blessing and covenant relationship were somehow attested by a meal. This continues in our time with the memorial feast, the breaking of bread, serving the same function. </p><p> Isaac believes that the blessing must somehow be mediated through food, over a meal. This is the force of "that my soul may bless you before I die". He is surely alluding to how Esau sold his birthright over food, feeling he too was about to die [and falsely thus feeling, because he didn't then die, and Isaac too didn't die for some years]. Isaac is seeking to reverse the sale of the birthright. Hence he stresses in :29 "Be lord over your brothers", literally 'become senior to your brother'. Isaac was trying to reverse the sale of the birthright, instead of accepting God's word that the elder must serve the younger. Isaac really does not present well here in spiritual terms.</p><p>Isaac blessed his sons by faith concerning things to come (Heb. 11:20). "Things to come" is literally "to come", and consistently this term is used in Hebrews about the things of the coming Kingdom of God. Abraham "would after", in the coming age, receive the eternal inheritance of the land (s.w. Heb. 11:8); our "continuing city" is "to come" (Heb.  13:14); the fire of judgment "shall" (s.w.) devour the condemned at judgment day (Heb. 10:27); we have only a foretaste of the powers of the world "to come" (Heb. 6:5); the world "to come" (Heb. 2:5) is that of the Kingdom, when we "shall be" saved (Heb. 1:14). The other examples of faith in Hebrews 11 are of faith in the future Kingdom and in the things of the Lord Jesus. So we are to deduce from this that Isaac's blessing of his sons was done with a perspective of the Kingdom within him- even though so much of his blessing was misplaced, wrong and unspiritual. And so often we see this in the NT comment upon Old Testament incidents, such as Sarah's angry words to Hagar, and her mocking reference to Abraham "my lord being old also...". </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Rebekah heard when Isaac spoke to Esau his son. Esau went to the field to hunt for venison, and to bring it</em>- See on <em><a href='B:10 33:10'>Gen 33:10</a></em>. The fact Isaac spoke to Esau privately, away from Jacob and Rebekah, could reflect his awareness that Esau had sold the birthright to Jacob but he chose to get around that. Isaac also seems to be in studied disregard of the opening prophecy that Esau as the firstborn would serve Jacob the younger. All through the lives of the patriarchs we see weakness, and they were saved by God’s grace and their faith in that grace, with occasional works which reflected that faith. But the general picture of their lives is not spiritually positive. In this sense they become our "fathers". </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Rebekah spoke to Jacob her son, saying, Behold, I heard your father speak to Esau your brother, saying</em>- One form of Bible study by questions is to ask questions like ‘What should Jacob have replied to Rebekah in Genesis 27?’, ‘What should Eve have said to the serpent’? &nbsp;</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>‘Bring me venison, and make me savoury food, that I may eat, and bless you before Yahweh before my death’</em>- Rebekah appears to have added "before Yahweh" (:4). The blessing of being the Abrahamic seed and covenant relationship ('before God' is used in this sense in <em><a href='B:10 17:18'>Gen 17:18</a></em>) was not predicated upon the paternal blessing of Isaac, but was given by God, by grace. But Rebekah assumed that the birthright was the covenant blessing; and she was bent on making the prophecy about the elder serving the younger somehow come true in her own strength and by her own device. This can so easily be our weakness too.</p><p>She confused material blessings with the covenant blessings of Yahweh- which are forgiveness and salvation. The only blessings worth having. She also fails to appreciate that the covenant blessings come from Yahweh Himself- not from a man like Isaac.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Now therefore, my son, obey my voice according to that which I command you</em>- This is clearly alluding to Adam obeying his wife's voice and falling into sin; doing what she commanded rather than what God commanded. And Isaac was surely intended to see the parallel, especially as the narrative included eating and blessing (and cursing). We too are set up with situations where we are intended to see the Biblical parallel, and act accordingly. This is where basic knowledge of the Bible text is valuable; and moreso, the willingness to perceive that we are really intended to see the links and act accordingly.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Go now to the flock, and get me from there two good young goats. I will make them savoury food for your father, such as he loves</em>- One goat was quite enough for two men to eat. Two goats suggest some kind of ritual meaning to the meal; we noted on :4 that Isaac felt the blessing had to be somehow mediated through a meal. This was a quite wrong understanding of "blessing", for true blessing is from God and not man. We note that the only other reference to two young goats is when the phrase is used about the ritual of the Day of Atonement (<em><a href='B:30 16:5'>Lev 16:5</a></em>; <em><a href='B:30 16:7-8'>Lev 16:7-8</a></em>), where one represented the sinner who must die, and the other the righteous who was set free.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>You shall bring it to your father, that he may eat, so that he may bless you before his death</em>- As noted on :4, they all understood that the blessing was predicated upon the meal ("so that..."). Her emphasis was clearly upon the word "you". She was aware of the sale of the birthright, and also wished to force to come true the prophetic word about the elder serving the younger. But blessing is of God; although the memorial feast, the breaking of bread, continues this theme of blessing being associated with a meal. But the meal is a celebration of the blessing already given, a reaffirmation that we want to be part of it; the meal doesn't of itself give blessing. This is the error of transubstantiation, and the essence of that misunderstanding is seen here.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man</em>- The way Jacob is described at the time as "smooth", without a covering of hair, may be a hint that he needed a covering of atonement. Jacob's concern was how to get away with the deception, rather than any moral issue with what Rebekah was suggesting. "Smooth" is only elsewhere used about flattery (<em><a href='B:240 5:3'>Pro 5:3</a></em>; <em><a href='B:240 26:28'>Pro 26:28</a></em>; <em><a href='B:330 12:24'>Eze 12:24</a></em>). It could be that by "smooth" there is a contrast set up with the hairy Esau to suggest Jacob was like a smooth lamb and Esau the kid of the goats hairy from birth; as explained on :16, "hairy" is usually translated "kid of the goats". The parable of the sheep and goats would then suggest Jacob as the righteous; but he was so far from that at this time, and was only counted as a sheep by grace.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>What if my father touches me? I will seem to him as a deceiver, and I would bring a curse on myself, and not a blessing</em>- See on <em><a href='B:10 25:31'>Gen 25:31</a></em>. The true blessing of God according to the Abrahamic promises could not be taken away by men, nor simply due to human failure. And yet Jacob had yet to come to perceive that. And the Divine blessing was given by God; it was not 'brought upon oneself' by dint of human device and skill. It took Jacob a lifetime to come to perceive this grace. "Touches" is the same Hebrew word translated "search" or "felt" when Laban felt all over Jacob's possessions in search of the stolen idols (<em><a href='B:10 31:34'>Gen 31:34</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 31:37'>Gen 31:37</a></em>). The word "recognize" is likewise common in both incidents; see on :23. We are intended to join the dots between our experiences in life. Jacob was intended to see how he had earlier survived such a 'touching' when he was in the wrong- but to what end? He was to later give back his blessing to Esau, rejoicing instead in God’s gracious blessing of him (see on <em><a href='B:10 33:11'>Gen 33:11</a></em>). </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>His mother said to him, Let your curse be on me, my son. Only obey my voice, and go get them for me</em>- The lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and his sons are held up in the NT as our examples. And yet their records are absolutely shot through with reference to the spiritual weakness of those men, and even the suggestion that as men they were not 'nice' people. They, the archetypical believers, aren't good people. Indeed, the records seem to juxtapose their weakness against the more humanly acceptable behaviour of the world around them. The whole business of Jacob obtaining the blessing from his slightly drunk father Isaac is almost comical; dressed up with skins, with his mum prodding him under the ribs saying "Go on, go on, it's my sin not yours"; Jacob must have been willing the old boy to hurry up, knowing as he did that Esau was about to come in with his meal.&nbsp;Yet this was the most Godly family on earth at the time. </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>There was no recorded curse from Isaac upon Jacob, and in any case if there was there is no record of it coming upon Rebekah. The whole idea of blessings and cursings uttered by men appears somewhat phony; they were indeed held to be of great value, but the Biblical record demonstrates that it is the Divine blessing and cursing which is important. Thus Jacob's later blessings of his sons don't all seem to have had direct fulfilment; and likewise the expected curse from Isaac either doesn't come or is not carried out. It should've been obvious that Isaac would realize the deception; but both Rebekah and Isaac assumed that what mattered was whether he uttered a curse during the blessing ceremony. And if he didn’t, and blessed Jacob, then this could not be retracted. They predicated the receipt of blessing upon the ceremony; but Jacob was slowly brought to realize that it is direct Divine blessing which is to be sought above all, rather than some secular blessing from an old man.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He went, and got them, and brought them to his mother. His mother made savoury food, such as his father loved</em>- Went, got and bought to her... all emphasize his total obedience and complicity in the plan. The only other times the Hebrew phrase "savoury food" is used outside of this incident is in <em><a href='B:240 23:3-8'>Pro 23:3-8</a></em>, where the "dainty food" is used in the context of deceivers who want to get rich; and as so often in Proverbs, we appear to have a commentary upon this earlier Biblical incident: "Don’t be desirous of his dainties, since they are deceitful food. Don’t weary yourself to be rich... Don’t eat the food of him who has a stingy eye, and don’t crave his delicacies: for as he thinks about the cost, so he is. Eat and drink! he says to you, but his heart is not with you. The morsel which you have eaten you shall vomit up, and lose your good words". </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Rebekah took the good clothes of Esau, her elder son, which were with her in the house, and put them on Jacob, her younger son</em>- These clothes were likely those of the firstborn, and they would have had religious meaning; just as they did when given to Joseph. This would explain why the clothes were not in Esau's own dwelling, but in that of Isaac and Rebekah. Rebekah didn’t have to go into Esau's home, and in full view of his pagan wives, grab his best clothes. Isaac liked to think that the smell of these robes was as the smell of the field or garden which God had blessed- perhaps an allusion to Eden. Esau usually led the family worship in these clothes- and yet he was very far from the true God. This shows the low level of spirituality which there was in the family.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>She put the skins of the young goats on his hands, and on the smooth of his neck</em>- Esau was "hairy", the same word translated "kid (of the goats)" (<em><a href='B:10 37:31'>Gen 37:31</a></em>; <em><a href='B:30 4:23'>Lev 4:23</a></em> etc.). The word is also used of idols made to goats (<em><a href='B:140 11:15'>2Ch 11:15</a></em> "devils" AV). Clearly Esau is being set up as an idolater by his very appearance. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'>S<em>he gave the savoury food and the bread, which she had prepared, into the hand of her son Jacob</em>- The level of detail increases, as it often does in the Biblical narrative when we are being invited to re-imagine the scene, playing "Bible television" with the information presented. Here, we see Rebekah putting bread and meat into Jacob's literal hands. The last time we have heard of Jacob with cooked food, he was again involved in a deception. He ought to have learnt from his mistakes, but like us, he didn’t. At the time.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He came to his father, and said, My father? He said, Here I am. Who are you, my son?</em>- The question "Who are you?" suggests that Jacob's carefully practiced imitations of Esau's voice just weren't much good. He would've panicked at the question.&nbsp; Jacob foresaw that the same question would be asked as he came to meet Esau (<em><a href='B:10 32:17'>Gen 32:17</a></em> s.w.); consciously or subconsciously, Jacob came to realize that the fruit what he had done in that tent with Isaac was being demanded of him. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob said to his father, I am Esau your firstborn. I have done what you asked me to do. Please arise, sit and eat of my venison, that your soul may bless me</em>- His proud claim to his father that "I have done according as thou badest me" (27:19 AV) when he had effectively done nothing of the sort was the basis for the character of the elder brother in the Lord's parable (<em><a href='B:490 15:29'>Luk 15:29</a></em>). Time and again, Jacob emphasizes his works: "I have <em>done</em> according as thou badest me (AV)... my days (of service) are fulfilled (therefore) give me my wife... did not I serve with thee for Rachel? (notice Jacob's legalism; <em><a href='B:10 29:21'>Gen 29:21</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 29:25'>Gen 29:25</a></em>)... give me my wives and my children, for whom I have served thee... thou knowest my service... how I have served thee (<em><a href='B:10 30:25-33'>Gen 30:25-33</a></em>)... with all my power I have served your father (<em><a href='B:10 31:6'>Gen 31:6</a></em>)". This trust in his own works was what prevented Jacob from a full faith in the promises. It was only the night of wrestling and his subsequent handicap that drove it from him.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>As noted earlier in this chapter, the family understood the blessing as being predicated upon eating this ritual meal; it had to be eaten <em>that</em> the blessing might be given. But this betrays a total lack of appreciation of the fact that the only blessing worth having, that from God, is not given by man, and is not dependent upon a meal or ritual. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Isaac said to his son, How is it that you have found it so quickly, my son? He said, Because Yahweh your God gave me success</em>- "Your God" is almost cynical; the sort of thing an unbaptized child of a believer might say to their parents. It was only at the very end of his life that Jacob was to talk of God as "my God"; it took him a lifetime to find God for Himself, rather than seeing Him as merely his father’s deity. And the same happens in the lives of many born and bred into believing households. "Success" translates a Hebrew word which has only so far been used in the Hebrew Bible in <em><a href='B:10 24:12'>Gen 24:12</a></em>, where the mission to find a wife for Isaac is met with Divine "success" through finding Rebekah. Perhaps Isaac and Rebekah had often rehearsed the story, and used this word- which Jacob now uses. As if to say: 'Just as your God gave amazing success in your search for a wife, so He gave me'. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Isaac said to Jacob, Please come near, that I may feel you, my son, whether you are really my son Esau or not</em>- Jacob was to use the very same words "come near" when he too was blind and Joseph's sons were brought before him for blessing (s.w. <em><a href='B:10 48:10'>Gen 48:10</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 48:13'>Gen 48:13</a></em>). It's not simply that what goes around, comes around. Even in his old age, God was still working with Jacob to help him realize how his aged father must have felt at that time. The same Divine hand works in our lives to help us appreciate how others feel, whom we have hurt. It's not punishment nor judgment, as it were; but more an attempt at our education and spiritual maturity, as thereby our deeper repentance is elicited. And God was still at work in Jacob's life when he was very old, as He works with us too right to the end.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob went near to Isaac his father. He felt him, and said, The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau</em>- For "felt", see on :12. Later, Jacob was to beg God to deliver him from "the hands of Esau" (<em><a href='B:10 32:11'>Gen 32:11</a></em> s.w.). He was being taught how wrong he had been to impersonate those hands and make them his own. God ever seeks to reform, rather than simply punish. His hope and intention was Jacob's repentance; and when Jacob finally meets Esau, he hands back to him the blessing he had stolen (see on <em><a href='B:10 33:11'>Gen 33:11</a></em>). Laban was also going to 'feel' all over Jacob's possessions in order to find the idols Rachel had stolen. And Jacob would be saved by grace then, surely being reminded of how he had been 'felt' by his father and had got away with his deception. He would have later reflected how indeed, his life had been a constant experience of grace. Life circumstances sometimes repeat in order to teach us that lesson. "The voice is Jacob's" may not have to be a reference to his tone of voice, because Jacob was surely impersonating Esau. Rather the reference may be to how Jacob spoke with the kind of words Jacob would speak, rather than the ever crude and brash style of Esau. There is a clear connection with Peter being betrayed by his own voice- and again, without doubt, what Jacob does here is condemned by later Biblical allusion and connection.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He didn’t recognize him- </em>The same word translated "recognize" is found in <em><a href='B:10 31:32'>Gen 31:32</a></em>, where Jacob invites Laban to "recognize" what is his, and Laban 'feels' his possessions in search for his lost idols; see on :12. Again we marvel at how the Divine hand repeated the essence of circumstances in Jacob's life, in order to lead Jacob to repentance and a transparent life, rather than a deceptive one. The same word is also used in <em><a href='B:10 37:33'>Gen 37:33</a></em>, again in connection with deception involving a garment; Jacob's sons bring him the robe of the firstborn, worn by Joseph, and Jacob 'recognizes' it (s.w.), although he draws wrong conclusions from it. He was again being put in the seat of his father Isaac; although Jacob would only have realized this deception some years later, when he met Joseph and the whole deception was exposed. </p><p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Because his hands were hairy, like his brother Esau’s hands. So he blessed him</em>- Jacob was smooth skinned, but he placed skins on his hands to deceive Isaac that he was Esau. Yet we read: "his hands were hairy". Were Jacob’s hands really hairy? No. He made them <em>appear</em> hairy, and this is the perspective the record adopts, without correcting it. It doesn’t say ‘Isaac didn’t realize, because Jacob’s hands <em>seemed </em>hairy’. This helps us understand the New Testament usage of the language of demons.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He said, Are you really my son Esau? He said, I am</em>- It's possible that "I am" is an allusion to the Yahweh Name, and that Jacob was thereby swearing by Yahweh. His point blank lie thereby becomes the more reprehensible. The question could be yet another expression of doubt by Isaac, as in :21. But the question and answer could also have been the beginning of the ritual by which the firstborn received the blessing. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He said, Bring it near to me, and I will eat of my son’s venison, that my soul may bless you. He brought it near to him, and he ate-</em> The verb translated "bring / come near" occurs often here (:21,22,25,26,27). We also find a similar cluster of occurrences when Jacob draws near to and meets Esau years later (<em><a href='B:10 33:3'>Gen 33:3</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 33:6-7'>Gen 33:6-7</a></em>). Clearly the hand of providence, the working of the Spirit, was seeking to remind Jacob of this earlier incident in his life, just as the Spirit restimulates memories and situations so that we might better understand both ourselves and the others who were involved. And Jacob did respond, for he hands back to him the blessing he had stolen (see on <em><a href='B:10 33:11'>Gen 33:11</a></em>).</p><p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He brought him wine, and he drank</em>- The taking of bread (:17) and wine over a meal was all part of a ritual for confirming a covenant; and we see the essence of it in the breaking of bread service. But we suspect that the intention was to get Isaac drunk. “Deceiving and being deceived” is so true of Jacob (<em><a href='B:620 3:13'>2Ti 3:13</a></em>). Laban likewise used alcohol and darkness (cp. blindness) to deceive Jacob into marrying Leah rather than Rachel. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>His father Isaac said to him, Come near now, and kiss me, my son</em>- The kissing was likely part of some ritual. For "come near", see on :25. Kissing a parent was a sign of leaving them and becoming independent (<em><a href='B:10 31:28'>Gen 31:28</a></em>; <em><a href='B:110 19:20'>1Ki 19:20</a></em>). Just as Abraham prematurely gave all that he had to Isaac even before he died, so it seems Isaac now wished to do to his firstborn Esau. This shows how much he loved Esau and wanted by all means for him to be his primary "seed". And in that desire we see an unspirituality and lack of faith in the prophetic words to Rebekah about the elder serving the younger. It was as if Isaac wished by all means to reverse it. God didn’t allow him to do so; and yet He worked through the unethical and sinful behaviour of Jacob and Rebekah. God works through sin to the extension of His purpose; rather than turning away from sinners in disgust.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He came near, and kissed him. He smelled the smell of his clothing, and blessed him, and said, Behold, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field which Yahweh has blessed</em>- The clothes had a distinctive smell, and they were used in family worship. The smell may have been from incense, which might suggest that their religious rituals were not as spiritual as they might have been. The whole question of "blessing" in its human sense is and was very subjective. Isaac liked to imagine that the ritual clothes of Esau even smelt of Yahweh's blessing; but that was in his imagination. Yahweh would bless the field if there was obedience to His covenant (<em><a href='B:50 28:3'>Deu 28:3</a></em>); but there was none of that with Esau. We too can imagine spirituality in those we love, especially family members, when it simply isn't there.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>The Hebrew for "smelled the smell" is only used elsewhere of God receiving acceptable sacrifice and being pleased with it (<em><a href='B:10 8:21'>Gen 8:21</a></em>; <em><a href='B:30 26:31'>Lev 26:31</a></em>). But the spirituality of this family had descended into mere tokenism and ritualism. Isaac "smelled the smell" of spiritual acceptability just because a man was wearing certain clothes which had a distinctive smell, perhaps from incense. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>God give you of the dew of the sky, of the fatness of the earth, and plenty of grain and new wine</em>- Isaac's mind was focused very much on earthly realities. He had failed to appreciate that his noticeable material blessings were really but visible indicators towards the far greater spiritual blessings which the covenant promises were centred upon. And he makes no reference to the all important aspect of the Abrahamic promises- the seed.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>The fatness of the <em>eretz</em> may refer to Canaan, the best part of the <em>eretz</em> promised. Isaac later wishes that wherever Esau dwells shall be likewise blessed (:39). </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>There are many examples of where God worked through Jacob's weakness, and blessed him in spite of it, imputing righteousness to Jacob. Thus Jacob's use of red stew to wrest the birthright from his red brother was used by God to give him the birthright (the words for "red stew" and "Esau" are related), even though Paul evidently disapproved of Jacob's attitude (<em><a href='B:520 12:20'>Rom 12:20</a></em> surely alludes here); his evil deception of his father was used by God to grant him the physical blessing (<em><a href='B:10 27:28'>Gen 27:28</a></em> is confirmed by God in <em><a href='B:50 33:28'>Deu 33:28</a></em>), even though at the time he was dressed like a goat (27:16), connecting himself with fallen Adam and the rejected at the day of judgment; “Deceiving and being deceived” certainly rings bells with Jacob (<em><a href='B:620 3:13'>2Ti 3:13</a></em>). Laban likewise used alcohol and darkness (cp. blindness) to deceive Jacob into marrying Leah rather than Rachel. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Let peoples serve you, and nations bow down to you. Be lord over your brothers- </em>This was a willful attempt to reverse the Divine statement that the elder would serve the younger. Isaac really doesn't come over as very spiritual. he wished Esau, as he thought, to be lord over Jacob because he seems to have disliked Jacob and wanted the Angel's words about his dominance over Esau to be untrue. And yet he had faith. It could be argued that his words here were <em>i</em>nitially fulfilled in Edom / Esau being dominated by Israel (<em><a href='B:100 8:14'>2Sa 8:14</a></em>; <em><a href='B:110 11:15'>1Ki 11:15</a></em>; <em><a href='B:120 8:21'>2Ki 8:21</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 60:8-9'>Psa 60:8-9</a></em>). But it seems to me that Isaac's blessings were not so much prophecy as simply his personal wishes, although within that there was still faith (<em><a href='B:650 11:20'>Heb 11:20</a></em>). </p><p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Let your mother’s sons bow down to you.&nbsp;Cursed be everyone who curses you. Blessed be everyone who blesses you</em>- "Your mother's sons" is a strange way for Isaac to talk about his own sons. He clearly considered Jacob to be more of&nbsp; Rebekah's child than his. We note the plural "sons", as if there may have been other unrecorded sons born later. The record of Isaac's blessing of Jacob is framed to portray Jacob as a type of Christ: "Let people serve thee" = <em><a href='B:450 8:23'>Zec 8:23</a></em>; <em><a href='B:290 60:12'>Isa 60:12</a></em> "nations bow down to thee" = <em><a href='B:230 72:11'>Psa 72:11</a></em>; "Be Lord over thy brethren" = <em>Php_2:11</em>; "Let they mother's sons bow down to thee" = <em><a href='B:530 15:7'>1Co 15:7</a></em>. But Jacob was so far from being the true Abrahamic seed at that time. The fact was that Jacob bowed down to Esau, thereby recognizing that this blessing was not for him; Jacob hands back to him the blessing he had stolen (see on <em><a href='B:10 33:11'>Gen 33:11</a></em>). The language of cursing and blessing is indeed taken from the Abrahamic promises; but there is no reference to blessings in the promised seed. Isaac seemed to understand the promises on a far too immediate and material level. Isaac's pronouncement of a curse upon any who cursed Jacob meant that he could not himself curse Jacob; so Jacob's fear of receiving a curse was therefore mitigated.</p><p>He effectively hands back the birthright to Esau after the night of wrestling, when he says "Take [away] my blessing..." because he had experienced God's grace. The blessing of the firstborn involved the other brothers bowing down to the firstborn (Gen. 27:29), so Jacob's protracted and emphasized bowing to Esau (Gen. 33:3,6,7) was likewise a way of resigning from the birthright which he had been born trying to grab hold of, and the desire for which had obviously filled his mind. We too are led to resign all our material, secular aspirations and dreams for the sake of God's grace. And in Jacob's case, he was born with the desire for the firstborn status, with his little hand desperately trying to grab his brother's heel to stop his brother being the firstborn. But encounter with God's grace [as happened to Jacob in Gen. 32] is enough to reorient a man away from even his natural, born-with passions and obsessions towards [in this case] materialism and jealousy. In Jacob's case his very name, 'heel catcher', reflected this obsession which was so strong it had become his self-definition; until he encountered God's grace. The blessing of the firstborn as given by Isaac involved the firstborn being "Lord" over his brothers; but Jacob repeatedly calls Esau his "Lord" in Gen. 32,33. Jacob's gifts to his brothers are described with a standard Hebrew word for "gift" [minha]; but in Gen. 33:11 Jacob then starts to consciously refer to them as berakah, the word for "blessing". And he urges Esau to take [s.w. 'take away'] his "blessing". I discussed on Gen. 25:23 how the blessing of the firstborn never came true- perhaps because Jacob's resignation of the firstborn blessings in Gen. 32,33 was accepted by God.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>It happened, as soon as Isaac had made an end of blessing Jacob, and Jacob had just gone out from the presence of Isaac his father, that Esau his brother came in from his hunting</em>- Isaac must have been willing the old man to get a move on. He obviously knew that the deception would be uncovered, but he had the idea that the words spoken at the ceremony were all powerful. He totally failed to understand that ultimately, all blessing is from God and not from man, and is not predicated upon any human ceremony. Jacob went away from "the face of Isaac" (Heb.) just as he was to flee from the face of Esau. The idea of being in the presence of / seeing the face of recurs in the incidents connected with Jacob's meeting of Esau, years later. Again, God was seeking to help Jacob join the dots and realize his need for repentance and for the face / presence of God, seeing he had ended his relationship with the face / presence of his earthly father and brother. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He also made savoury food, and brought it to his father. He said to his father, Let my father arise, and eat of his son’s venison, that your soul may bless me</em>- Again, the misunderstanding is repeated; the blessing was seen as dependent upon eating the food and doing the ritual. And the blessing was seen as most definitely proceeding from the person ("soul") of Isaac. The Divine blessing was of grace and mediated through direct personal relationship between God and man.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Isaac his father said to him, Who are you? He said, I am your son, your firstborn, Esau</em>- The insistence that he was the firstborn indicates that he refused to take seriously the selling of his birthright. Like us all, he liked to think that time works a kind of atonement for the past. But because the image of past events becomes distorted and far smaller on our horizon as the years pass, we should not think that the consequence of human action likewise diminishes; especially in God’s sight. The mention of "firstborn" is a hint that Esau was already beginning to guess what had happened; and that has the ring of psychological credibility to it. We can be certain that what we are reading actually happened.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Isaac trembled violently, and said, Who, then, is he who has taken venison, and brought it me, and I have eaten of all before you came, and have blessed him? Yes, he will be blessed</em>- The violent trembling was not simply in anger at having been deceived. Isaac realized that he had been trying to reverse the Divine statement that the elder would serve the younger; "Yes, he will be blessed" shows how he recognized this. He makes no attempt to annul what he has said in blessing. He trembled before God, knowing that he had gone against Him and His word. And it had been reversed, albeit through human dysfunction. He recognized that as Paul put it, the gifts and calling of God are without changeability (<em><a href='B:520 11:29'>Rom 11:29</a></em>). "Who is... he?" was not an enquiry, as all knew it was Jacob, but rather a rhetorical comment as to the nature of Jacob; as if to say "What kind of a person is he?". The reference was to Jacob's name (:36), "supplanter".</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>When Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with an exceeding great and bitter cry, and said to his father, Bless me, even me also, my father</em>- The Hebrews were warned not to follow Esau's sinful example, otherwise at the judgment they would experience what he did: "Afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing (cp. our desiring the Abrahamic promises of entry into the Kingdom), he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it with tears" (<em><a href='B:650 12:17'>Heb 12:17</a></em>). In view of this, the weeping of the rejected at judgment may be as a result of desperate pleading with the Lord to change his mind. There will be a sense, as with Esau, of an irrevocable decision. Just as the foolish virgins earnestly desire to enter the feast, but all too late. The request for the blessing all the same (this is the idea of the Hebrew word translated "also") may have reminded Isaac of how his father Abraham had requested this for his half brother Ishmael, and God had heard this. <em><a href='B:650 12:17'>Heb 12:17</a></em> suggests that he sought to change Isaac's mind, to get him to somehow reverse the blessing and all the same give it to him. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He said, Your brother came with deceit, and has taken away your blessing</em>- Isaac doesn't immediately agree to make up some kind of blessing. And he refused to change his mind about the blessing of the firstborn going to Jacob (see on :34). Because the blessing of the firstborn had indeed been uttered already, and taken by Jacob. This belief reflects their common understanding that the blessing was solely and totally dependent upon the uttering of the words by the father, and the ceremony. There was no idea that something could be recalculated; whereas God’s purpose and word is full of such recalculation. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He said, Isn’t he rightly named Jacob? For he has supplanted me these two times. He took away my birthright. See, now he has taken away my blessing. He said, Haven’t you reserved a blessing for me?</em>- "He took away my birthright" indicates that Esau thought he had done nothing wrong by selling his birthright. He chose to remember it as Jacob taking it away. The parental blessing and the birthright went together; so on one hand it seems unreasonable to count up two cases of supplanting. But in another sense, he was right. The demand of the birthright was effectively a taking of it away. And Jacob had used deceit to try to force through the fulfilment of the promise that the elder would serve the younger. <em><a href='B:350 12:2-3'>Hos 12:2-3</a></em> comment that God would punish Jacob for supplanting; so although what he did was morally wrong, God still worked through it.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Isaac answered Esau, Behold, I have made him your lord, and all his brothers have I given to him for servants. With grain and new wine have I sustained him. What then will I do for you, my son?</em>- Wine seems an unnecessarily significant item in Isaac's mind. "All his brothers" suggests there were other brothers who aren't mentioned in the records. Isaac seems to imply that as he had blessed with Jacob with lordship over his brothers and grain and wine, there wasn't much left he could now bless Esau with. This comment reflects his lack of appreciation of the promises to Abraham; the blessing of the seed and eternal inheritance of the land. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Esau said to his father, Have you but one blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, my father. Esau lifted up his voice, and wept</em>- At the time of Jacob's deception, Esau lifted up his voice and wept; and this is picked up in <em><a href='B:650 12:17'>Heb 12:17</a></em> as a warning to all those who would fritter away their spirituality for sensuality. The faithlessness of Jacob is disregarded, and the emphasis is placed upon Esau. If Esau's rejection by Isaac is indeed a picture of the rejection of the goats at the final judgment, Isaac there becomes a hazy prefigurement of our future judge. And yet the record presents a scene of both father and rejected son as shaken and helpless, both dearly wishing it could be different (<em><a href='B:10 27:33'>Gen 27:33</a></em>). The sadness of Isaac becomes a figure of the pathos and sadness of God in rejecting the wicked. Note how the LXX of <em><a href='B:10 27:38'>Gen 27:38</a></em> adds the detail: "And Isaac said nothing; and Esau wept". We are left to imagine the thoughts of Isaac's silence. Truly our God takes no pleasure at all in the death of the wicked (<em><a href='B:330 33:11'>Eze 33:11</a></em>). According to <em><a href='B:650 12:17'>Heb 12:17</a></em>, Isaac did not change his mind despite the tears; the blessing of the firstborn was not given to Esau, and the other blessings now spoken were not the result of any change of mind.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>Jacob too "lifted up his voice and wept" when he met Rachel (the same words are used, <em><a href='B:10 29:11'>Gen 29:11</a></em>). It's not simply that what goes around, comes around. God was working with Jacob to help him realize how his brother must have felt at that time. The same Divine hand works in our lives to help us appreciate how others feel, whom we have hurt. It's not punishment nor judgment, as it were; but more an attempt at our education and spiritual maturity, as thereby our deeper repentance is elicited.&nbsp; </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Isaac his father answered him, Behold, of the fatness of the earth will be your dwelling, and of the dew of the sky from above</em>- <em><a href='B:460 1:3'>Mal 1:3</a></em> speaks of how God made Esau's inheritance waste and barren. We therefore wonder whether Isaac's words had any relevance at all; the essential thing was the Divine blessing, not that of any man. Yet <em><a href='B:650 11:20'>Heb 11:20</a></em> says that Isaac blessed both his sons "by faith". He had faith that Esau's seed would have blessing and in Christ, that shall be ultimately true.  These blessings of dew and fatness were exactly what Isaac had bestowed upon Jacob. But now he repeats them to Esau, despite having said that Jacob had come and irreversibly taken away Esau's blessing (:35). This gives an insight into how the 'blessings' were simply the whim of Isaac and had no ultimate, binding meaning; although he was too proud to retract the blessing he had just given Jacob. He again presents as convinced that blessing depends upon his words, uttered at a certain point- rather than the words of God directly. Likewise "When you win your freedom, you will break his yoke from off your neck" (:40) is effectively Isaac's attempt to undo the blessing of mastery over Esau which he has just given to Jacob; and it is again a refusal to accept the Divine word that the elder must serve the younger. Isaac may have been the passive patriarch, but he is clearly struggling by all means to not obey and accept God's word. Even though Heb. 11:40 says he did all this "by faith". Such is God's positive view of His children.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>By your sword will you live, and you will serve your brother- </em>Esau was in a similar position to Ishmael (<em><a href='B:10 16:12'>Gen 16:12</a></em>). These words could only be seen as a "blessing" if Esau was proud to live by the sword. But the Lord Jesus alludes to this by saying that those who live by the sword shall perish by it (<em><a href='B:470 26:52'>Mat 26:52</a></em>), and the spiritual way of life was not to take the sword. There is no evidence that Esau ever served Jacob, confirming that these blessings, although uttered in faith (<em><a href='B:650 11:20'>Heb 11:20</a></em>), were Isaac's wishes rather than predictive prophecy. It could be that Isaac is referring back to the prophetic words that "the elder shall serve the younger" which he had tried so hard to overthrow, and is here accepting they would come true. Jacob would however have been aware of these words of Jacob to Esau when later he had to serve his brother Laban and was deceived into serving him for much longer than he expected (s.w. <em><a href='B:10 29:15'>Gen 29:15</a></em>). Jacob deeply resented this service of his brother Laban; he was taught at length what this "blessing" of having your brother serve you meant. He was learning the feelings which Esau would have had, had this "blessing" come true. Constantly, we are seeing the attempted education of Jacob.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'><em>It will happen, when you will break loose</em> This could imply that Jacob meant that if Esau broke away from Jacob and lived elsewhere, outside of the land of promise, then the whole blessing and cursing would not apply to Esau. And this is what happened. Esau did leave Canaan, whereas Jacob remained there; and so these prophesied relationships between the two sons didn't come true within the land of Canaan. The later record makes this clear: “So Esau returned that day on his way to Seir” is juxtaposed with the description of Jacob in Canaan, “And Jacob came safely to the city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan” (Gen. 33:16,18). And again in Gen. 36:8, Esau's settling in Seir is contrasted with how Jacob lived in the “land of his father’s dwelling, in the land of Canaan” (Gen. 37:1).</p><p>, <em> that you shall shake his yoke from off your neck</em>- Possibly a reference to how Edom broke free from Israel at the time of Ahaz (<em><a href='B:120 16:6'>2Ki 16:6</a></em>; <em><a href='B:140 28:17'>2Ch 28:17</a></em>). And Israel were in fact ruled over by the Idumean / Edomite Herods just before their final destruction as a nation in AD70, and frequently Israel are described as being yoked by the neck to their neighbours. That would rather disprove Isaac's blessing; but in fairness, blessings were seen more as wishes than as prophetic predictions. Yet <em><a href='B:650 11:20'>Heb 11:20</a></em> says that Isaac blessed both his sons "by faith". But his attitude at the time was weak and his understanding foggy; indeed he may well have been under the influence of alcohol at the time, and he set himself to go against the revealed word that the elder must serve the younger. And yet the Spirit in <em><a href='B:650 11:20'>Heb 11:20</a></em> discerns that somewhere within all that confusion, there was faith. We can take comfort from this in our weakness, and be encouraged to more positively view our brethren and focus upon the positive within the general picture they present to us.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father blessed him. Esau said in his heart, The days of mourning for my father are at hand. Then I will kill my brother Jacob</em>- Our thoughts <em>are</em> our words; the intention is the action. In any case, there is a Biblical theme that what we say in our heart comes out into the open: “Esau said <em>in his heart</em>, The days of mourning for my father are at hand. Then will I slay my brother Jacob. And the words of Esau her elder son were told to Rebekah” (<em><a href='B:10 27:41-42'>Gen 27:41-42</a></em>). What Esau said to himself became public knowledge through his actions. Isaac lived another 43 years, so Esau was held back from immediately killing Jacob by Isaac's sickness, which he apparently overcame. Jacob would later have perceived God’s grace in that. The connection with Cain killing his brother Abel is apparent; but Esau clearly didn’t care for the Biblical allusions.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>The words of Esau, her elder son, were told to Rebekah. She sent and called Jacob, her younger son, and said to him, Behold, your brother Esau comforts himself about you by planning to kill you</em>- Rebekah comes over as quite the amateur psychoanalyst of Esau (see on :44,45). She imagined him internally comforting himself with his plans to murder Jacob. She may have recalled how she had comforted Isaac after the death of his mother (<em><a href='B:10 24:67'>Gen 24:67</a></em> s.w.), and she saw this same need for comfort in her son at this time. The whole record has strong psychological credibility. Esau was inconsolable by anyone apart from his own inner thoughts; and Jacob was to go through this in later life, when he refused to be comforted over the loss of Joseph (<em><a href='B:10 37:35'>Gen 37:35</a></em>). We are brought to know how others feel or felt; we are intended to examine our lives, our histories; and to learn the lessons and come to greater sensitivity and repentance.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Now therefore, my son, obey my voice. Arise, flee to Laban, my brother, in Haran</em>- "Obey my voice" is what she had told Jacob about the whole plan of deceiving Isaac. Jacob comes over as dominated by his mother, although he was already in his 70s, and like Adam, lead by a woman into sin. The connection with Eve shows clearly that what Jacob and Rebekah did was wrong. Jacob flees, and Rebekah never sees her beloved son again. Her death is not recorded, unlike the deaths of the wives of the other patriarchs [Sarah and Rachel], and she is never mentioned again in scripture- unlike Sarah, Rachel and Leah, the other wives of the patriarchs. What she did was deeply wrong, and an attempt to force the fulfilment of God's word. And she likewise displays a great misunderstanding of Yahweh's blessing; for she adds the words "of Yahweh" to her comment that Isaac is now going to give the blessing. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Stay with him a few days, until your brother’s fury turns away</em>- She twice states that Esau's anger would turn away (:45). She knew her son to be a man of the moment, living for today, emotional for a moment and then calming down. The Hebrew phrase "fury turned away" is mostly used about God’s wrath turning away (<em><a href='B:40 25:11'>Num 25:11</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 78:38'>Psa 78:38</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 106:23'>Psa 106:23</a></em>; <em><a href='B:290 66:15'>Isa 66:15</a></em>; <em><a href='B:300 18:20'>Jer 18:20</a></em>; <em><a href='B:300 32:37'>Jer 32:37</a></em>; <em><a href='B:300 36:7'>Jer 36:7</a></em>; <em><a href='B:340 9:16'>Dan 9:16</a></em>). The Bible opens here in Genesis with a picture of a livid, furious man, burning in anger because of the wrong done to him... whose anger turns away. We are intended to apply that word picture to God, and ever remember that He has feelings, and gets red hot angry at sin. His grace and patience is thereby given a backdrop, and such far greater meaning. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>U</em><em>ntil your brother’s anger turn away from you, and he forgets what you have done to him</em><em>-</em> Rebekah knew Esau's character; just as he had effectively forgotten his sale of the birthright, so he would soon forget what Jacob had done, and calm down. He is presented as the epitome of the man of the flesh; living life for the moment, without care for longer term consequence, and seeing past history as of no meaning. "Anger" here is literally "nose"; it was as if Esau was a furious animal sniffing out Jacob as his prey and intending to kill him. We get the impression that Jacob must have run away or was hiding himself nearby; hence in :42 Rebekah sends for Jacob.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>The Hebrew phrase "anger turned away" is different to that in :44, but as there, it is mostly used about God’s wrath turning away. Again we observe as on :44, that the Bible opens here in Genesis with a picture of a livid, furious man, burning in anger because of the wrong done to him... whose anger turns away. We are intended to apply that word picture to God, and ever remember that He has feelings, and gets red hot angry at sin. His grace and patience is thereby given a backdrop, and such far greater meaning. </p><p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Then I will send, and get you from there. Why should I be bereaved of you both in one day?</em>- Rebekah feared that the revenger of blood law would mean that if Esau killed Jacob, he too would be killed perhaps the same day. For her to fear the loss of Esau that same day, there must have been credible revengers of blood nearby. I have noted so far in this chapter the double mention of Jacob being lord over his brothers, plural. There were likely other brothers, not recorded in Scripture, who would have immediately killed Esau. Rebekah paid the price for her obsession about Jacob in that she likely never saw Jacob again, as he was away for at least 20 if not 40 years. Rebekah gets no great mention for spirituality, apart from in her brave decision to immediately leave her family and go to the land of promise to marry the Abrahamic seed. Isaac likewise is not exactly stellar in his spirituality, apart from in his early willingness to be sacrificed by Abraham and his implicit faith in resurrection. Abraham and Jacob likewise only occasionally manifested the works that prove faith is real. Perhaps we are to conclude from all this that the patriarchs and matriarchs of God’s people were spiritually weak, but had a dogged faith in God, which they just only occasionally demonstrated in their works. And this is sadly the family characteristic which we too bear.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Rebekah said to Isaac, I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth. If Jacob takes a wife of the daughters of Heth, such as these, of the daughters of the land, what good will my life do me?</em>- Rebekah’s apparent zeal against marriage out of the faith was really a cover for her desire to save her son from problems which he had only her to blame for. And yet we do remember that Rebekah had personally paid a huge price to marry within the faith, and indeed Esau's marriages out of the faith had deeply grieved her (see on <em><a href='B:10 26:35'>Gen 26:35</a></em>). In family life we are so often tested on points where we have made a huge sacrifice, but our children act differently. For Rebekah, spiritually weak as she has been presented in the events of this chapter, life was not worth living if she failed to produce a Godly seed because her children had married unbelievers and thus denied the covenant. And yet those genuine feelings were clearly overridden by a simple desire to save Jacob's life and not be bereaved of her two sons (:45). Human motivation is never, or rarely, pure. Always there are other considerations, and our defence of the faith can so easily have more secular reasons for it. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Isaac called Jacob, blessed him, and commanded him, You shall not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan</em>- This 'blessing' is so significant. As noted throughout Genesis 27, all concerned in the sad drama had failed to realize that the true blessing was the Abrahamic blessing, and not corn and wine, i.e. material things. Isaac realizes now that he had been mistaken in trying to fight against the Divine plan that the elder should serve the younger; in this sense he blessed Jacob by faith (<em><a href='B:650 11:20'>Heb 11:20</a></em> - although the question is where his faith came in when blessing Esau). In connection with that blessing, he urges Jacob not to follow his brother and marry a Canaanite. Isaac had himself waited until 40 years old and seen his father go to huge effort to find him a wife within the faith. To remain within the Divine program of blessing, Jacob had to marry someone in the faith. And so he went to Mesopotamia subconsciously expecting to find a wife there, just as his father had found one there through Eliezer meeting Rebekah by the well.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Arise, go to Paddan Aram, to the house of Bethuel your mother’s father. Take a wife from there from the daughters of Laban, your mother’s brother</em>- Isaac had effectively taken that journey in the person of Eliezer in Genesis 24. He too had found a wife from the family of Laban.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>May God Almighty bless you, and make you fruitful, and multiply you, that you may be a company of peoples</em>- I noted on Genesis 27 that Isaac's allusions to the Abrahamic promises had focused on the immediate and the material, with no attention to the important promises of the seed who would multiply. But now Isaac appears to have learnt his lesson, and understands this as the most important blessing. And he speaks of<em> God</em> blessing Isaac, rather than of he himself blessing his sons ("that my soul may bless you", <em><a href='B:10 27:25'>Gen 27:25</a></em>).</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>Jacob self-admittedly didn’t believe as he slept that night at Bethel; for he said that if Yahweh would bring him safely home, only then would Yahweh be his God. But just days&nbsp; before that, as Jacob here sheepishly stood before his sorrowful, betrayed father; right there, right then, God promised Jacob that he would become "a multitude (LXX <em>ekklesia</em>) of people", words which could only become true through their application to Christ. The LXX gives: "Thou shalt become gatherings of nations". The idea is that the nations would be gathered together in unity through his seed.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>And give you the blessing of Abraham, to you, and to your seed with you, that you may inherit the land where you travel, which God gave to Abraham- </em>According to the New Testament, and the implications of the inheritance promise in <em><a href='B:10 15:7'>Gen 15:7</a></em>, the inheritance of the land was to be eternal, and not in this life. Jacob died in Egypt and didn’t inherit the promised land in his lifetime, and so the fulfilment must be yet future at the resurrection of Jacob; and he is to inherit it with "your seed with you", suggesting they too must be resurrected (<em><a href='B:650 11:8-13'>Heb 11:8-13</a></em>; <em><a href='B:650 11:39-40'>Heb 11:39-40</a></em>). Likewise the land was not given to Abraham in his lifetime; but Jacob is invited to see it as being as good as his, so sure is the promise of fulfilment. But Isaac still fails to fully perceive these things, and speaks as if Jacob would receive the full inheritance in his mortal life. But Isaac has commendably moved on from his level of appreciation of the promises displayed in Genesis 27; he accepts that <em>God</em> gives blessing, and that "the blessing of Abraham", rather than Isaac's wishes of corn and wine, were the only blessing worth having. But Isaac came to this understanding through God’s patient working with the failures and misunderstandings of all the family.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Isaac sent Jacob away. He went to Paddan Aram to Laban, son of Bethuel the Syrian, Rebekah’s brother, Jacob’s and Esau’s mother</em>- Jacob is now placed before Esau, in recognition that he really is being treated as the firstborn. We recall that Abraham "sent away" his sons by Keturah to the east, to this same location, because he perceived living and remaining in the promised <em>eretz</em> as fundamental to covenant relationship (see on <em><a href='B:10 25:6'>Gen 25:6</a></em>). Later, both Jacob and Joseph wished to be buried in the <em>eretz</em>. So to send Jacob away to the east, out of the <em>eretz</em>, to relatives whom Abraham had been told to separate from, could be seen as not the best decision. For Abraham had expressly forbidden Isaac to go there, but rather must a woman be willing to leave that area and come to him in the <em>eretz</em>. And indeed Jacob did suffer spiritually from his 20 or 40 years out of the <em>eretz</em>; although his earnest desire to be buried in the <em>eretz</em> showed that he learnt the lesson at the very end of his long life. </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>It must be remembered that Israel are ethnically linked to the other Arab nations in the ‘land’- Jacob’s 12 sons married wives from there; some of their mothers were Arab slave girls; Jacob’s wives were Arameans, as was his mother (<em><a href='B:10 28:5'>Gen 28:5</a></em>); historically there was much intermarriage with surrounding nations, throughout Israel’s history; Ephraim and Manasseh were half Egyptian. Rahab, Ruth etc. are all reminders of the amount of Arab blood in the average Jew. The definition of ‘Israel’ was therefore not so much on ethnic principles but rather on spiritual ones. Anyone who has walked the streets of modern Israel and pondered the question ‘What <em>is </em>a Jew?’ will have come to this conclusion, as they see Russians, Americans, black Africans… all wearing skull caps. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Now Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him away to Paddan Aram, to take him a wife from there, and that as he blessed him he gave him a command, saying, You shall not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan</em>- It is twice emphasized that Esau noticed that Isaac had blessed Jacob, although the blessing in view is the Abrahamic blessing, which required raising the Godly seed through not marrying unbelievers but those within the Abraham family of faith. He wished to have whatever blessings might be going, and so he takes more wives, from Ishmael's family. And yet although Ishmael was circumcised into the covenant, he had returned to Egypt in every sense and clearly didn’t want part in the covenant. Esau continues to be presented as the typical man of the flesh, vaguely interested in external appearances of doing the right thing, but not grasping the spirit of things at all.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>And that Jacob obeyed his father and his mother, and was gone to Paddan Aram</em>- There is sustained emphasis on Jacob's obedience to his parents, especially to his mother (<em><a href='B:10 27:8'>Gen 27:8</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 27:13'>Gen 27:13</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 27:43'>Gen 27:43</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 28:7'>Gen 28:7</a></em>). The whole story is a foretaste of the issues involved with Christians and parental expectation in our day. It might not be going too far to say that he grew up far too much under her thumb; he meekly obeyed her faithless suggestion that he deceive his father into granting him the blessing, content with her assurance that it would be mum's sin, not his (and I imagine her pecking him on the cheek as she gave him the tray with Isaac's food on). No wonder he fell madly in love at first sight, when he first saw the girl he knew his mother wanted him to marry, perhaps at the same well where his father’s servant had first met his mother. Jacob introduces himself as "Rebekah's son" (<em><a href='B:10 29:12'>Gen 29:12</a></em>), although it would have been more normal to describe himself as Jacob ben-Isaac. <em><a href='B:10 29:10'>Gen 29:10</a></em> labours the point three times that Laban was "his <em>mother's </em>brother". The fact Deborah, his mother's nurse, was taken under the wing by Jacob, further suggests his very close bond with his mother; he buried Deborah under Allon-Bachuth- 'the oak of his (Jacob's) weeping' (<em><a href='B:10 35:8'>Gen 35:8</a></em>). Jacob struggled to accept his father’s God as his God. And yet he in so many ways is portrayed as deeply influenced by Rebekah his mother. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Esau saw that the daughters of Canaan didn’t please Isaac, his father</em>- Perhaps he refers specifically to how his Canaanite wives were a grief of mind to his parents, and his mother had said she wanted to die because of the thought of Jacob marrying such women (<em><a href='B:10 27:46'>Gen 27:46</a></em>). Although Rebekah clearly used the 'marriage out of the faith' issue as an excuse to send Jacob away to safety, she also sincerely felt as she said she did about the matter; and we ever remember that both Isaac and Rebekah had sacrificed so much to marry only within the family of faith.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Esau went to Ishmael, and took, besides the wives that he had, Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham’s son, the sister of Nebaioth, to be his wife</em>- The polygamy of Esau, in an attempt to please his parents, is presented as so inappropriate- as they were not apparently polygamists, and Isaac isn't recorded as taking any other wives when Rebekah was barren for the first 20 years of their marriage. The names of these women all suggest idolatry.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went toward Haran-</em> Bethel is about 70 miles from Beersheba, so Jacob would have had a few days to reflect before the dream. He went from Beersheba, "the well of the path", to Haran, "the parched place". The hint could be that this was a bad move; it was the apostate who moved eastwards. If he wanted a wife from Abraham's family there, then he could have done what his father did, and send someone to invite someone to come to him within the land or promise.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He came to a certain place, and stayed there all night, because the sun had set. He took one of the stones of the place, and put it under his head, and lay down in that place to sleep</em>- Jacob's sleeping with a stone as his pillow is hardly a natural thing to do- but it was done in order to induce dreams and revelations from the gods (J.G. Janzen, <em>Abraham And All The Families Of The Earth</em> (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993) p. 108). And the one true God responded to Jacob, by showing him Angels ascending from him to God, and Angels descending from God to Jacob in response. It wasn't the other way around- because surely the idea was to show Jacob that his prayers really were being heard, Angels were in touch with God about them, and God was zealously responding even then through Angelic providence. Yet all this was done by God when Jacob was so far from Him. Just as a patient and loving father bears with his child, so God bore with Jacob; and He does with us too, and we are to reflect this in our dealings with our brethren.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He dreamed- </em>This was later understood by Jacob as an answer to his "distress" (<em><a href='B:10 35:3'>Gen 35:3</a></em>). God often sees situations as prayers, and responds; demonstrating that the effectiveness of prayer is not simply dependent upon our ability to verbalize, because this ability varies between persons.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Behold, a stairway set upon the earth, and its top reached to heaven. Behold, the angels of God ascending and descending on it</em>- See on <em><a href='B:500 1:51'>Joh 1:51</a></em>. The idea of a stairway leading into Heaven of course has obvious connections with the ziggurats of those times; the white limestone cliffs or slopes around him merged into a ziggurat in his dreams. But note that those stairways had a temple on the ground immediately where the stairway started, and led up to a temple at the summit. On a human level, Jacob's subconscious was thinking of pagan temple systems. But God turned all this around. For the man Jacob lying there that night, in all his weakness, was a temple, connected by the Angels to Yahweh's Heavenly temple. And we too in all our weaknesses are the temples of God on this earth. Thus his idolatrous dream of a Ziggurat was turned into an assurance of Divine care for him, the shrine which topped Mesopotamian ziggurats being turned by God in the vision into the throne of Yahweh. Indeed, ‘Babylon’ meant “gate of God”, and in thinking that he was at heaven’s gates, Jacob was confusing Babylon and the true city of God. But still God worked through all this.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>The stairway or ladder was "set", literally, erected or stood up. The same word is used for how Jacob later at this very same place stood up or erected an altar (<em><a href='B:10 35:14'>Gen 35:14</a></em>). A different word is used here in :18. Jacob realized that his altars and sacrifices were ascending to God Himself personally, just as this magnificent staircase led to God, with Angels ascending and descending upon it, between God and himself. This is the power of prayer, of covenant relationship, of sacrifice and fellowship with God. The idea of reaching up to heaven and God reaching down from heaven is meant literally here, but it is also a metaphor meaning that God paid attention to the point of feeling whatever was done on earth (<em><a href='B:10 11:5'>Gen 11:5</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 18:21'>Gen 18:21</a></em>; <em><a href='B:140 28:9'>2Ch 28:9</a></em>; <em><a href='B:300 51:9'>Jer 51:9</a></em>; <em><a class='bible' href='#b66:18:5'>Rev 18:5</a></em>). This sensitivity of God, and His response, is articulated through the Angels. Jacob was being taught that it is not just the situation at Babel or Sodom which elicits this huge attention; but the state of a lonely fugitive sleeping rough in the semi-desert. He deals directly with individuals. The order "ascending and descending" suggests that our situation is as it were taken up to God in heaven, and then He responds through Angelic means (descending). </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>We all grow up with some concept of God. This is as true for those with atheist or apostate backgrounds as it is for those steeped in Sunday School from the cradle. That concept of God which we have in our youth tends to stay with us, and in some ways dogs us for much of our lives. Growth towards a real, personal knowledge of the true God, <em>our </em>Father, is a lifelong process. Jacob grew up in the most spiritual home on earth at the time (although some of the goings on would have made the neighbours doubt this). He was brought up 'in the Truth', we could say. And yet his conception of God was woefully immature for many years. His struggle towards the true knowledge of God is not only fascinating; because Jacob's spiritual growth really is intended as <em>our </em>model. Nathaniel thought he really believed in the Lord Jesus. The Lord commented: "You shall see (usually used in John concerning faith and spiritual perception)&nbsp; greater things than these... you will see heaven opened, and the Angels of God ascending and descending upon the son of man" (<em><a href='B:500 1:51'>Joh 1:51</a></em> RSV). It was Jacob who saw Heaven opened and the Angels ascending and descending. And the Lord's comment that Nathaniel was "an Israelite (Jacob-ite) indeed, in whom is no guile" (i.e. Jacob without his guileful side) is a reference to Jacob's name change. It confirms that Nathaniel was to follow Jacob's path of spiritual growth; he thought he believed, he thought he saw Christ clearly; but like Jacob, he was to comprehend far greater things.&nbsp;&nbsp; </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Behold, Yahweh stood above it, and said, I am Yahweh, the God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac-</em> This is another way of reminding Jacob of the promise given to Abraham, "I will be their God". Yahweh Himself was involved with Jacob; the huge staircase was to make Jacob see that his situation was directly transferred to God, and God would directly respond; for the bottom of the ladder was Jacob, more precisely, Jacob's mind. And God saw all that was there and responded there, through a huge, awesome system. </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>It seems that great stress is placed in Scripture on the Angels physically moving through space, both on the earth and between Heaven and earth, in order to fulfil their tasks, rather than being static in Heaven or earth and bringing things about by just willing them to happen. The vision of Jacob's ladder showed the Angels coming and going, perhaps meaning that they are sometimes physically present with us, sometimes not. <em><a href='B:10 28:13-15'>Gen 28:13-15</a></em> are the words of the Angel to Jacob. God manifested through Jacob's specific guardian Angel then goes on to say, v. 15, "I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken of unto thee" (AV). At the end of his life, Jacob mentions the presence of the Angel which he had sensed all through his life. But that one Angel controlled the multitude of Angels which he saw that night in vision ministering to him. See on <em><a href='B:10 18:10'>Gen 18:10</a></em>.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'><em>The land whereon you lie, to you will I give it, and to your seed</em>- This was making specific the Abrahamic blessing, which Isaac had never clearly articulated to Jacob because he seemed so caught up in the literal, material aspects of the promises. So far as we know, Jacob had no wife nor children. He was being set up psychologically to expect that soon, therefore, he would have both. He meets Rachel, but finds that this promise was hard of fulfilment; he had to work seven years for her, and then there were major issues of infertility. All this was not God punishing Jacob, but rather seeking to hone his focus and faith in this prophetic word.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Your seed will be as the dust of the earth, and you will spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south. In you and in your seed will all the families of the earth be blessed</em>- See on <em><a href='B:10 12:3'>Gen 12:3</a></em>. Paul interprets the "seed" as singular, referring to the Lord Jesus, and the multiplication as being through individuals being baptized into that seed (<em><a href='B:550 3:16'>Gal 3:16</a></em>; <em><a href='B:550 3:27-29'>Gal 3:27-29</a></em>). This promise of spreading abroad geographically didn’t happen in Jacob's lifetime, and so he would have been driven to faith in a resurrection and future fulfilment in the Kingdom of God on earth. The mention of the compass points would have encouraged Jacob to see himself as Abraham, who was told the same (<em><a href='B:10 13:14'>Gen 13:14</a></em>). However, he does use the Hebrew for "spread abroad" in describing how his family has "increased greatly" (<em><a href='B:10 30:30'>Gen 30:30</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 30:43'>Gen 30:43</a></em>). The blessing of all families of the <em>eretz</em> came true in a limited sense through his seed Joseph being a blessing for them all in saving them from famine through giving all families of the earth the bread of life, pointing forward to the salvation of all peoples from all compass points in Christ (<em><a href='B:490 13:29'>Luk 13:29</a></em>; <em><a class='bible' href='#b66:21:13'>Rev 21:13</a></em>). And so we see what we ought to discern in our lives- an incipient fulfilment of the Kingdom blessings right now. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Behold, I am with you, and will keep you, wherever you go, and will bring you again into this land. For I will not leave you, until I have done that which I have spoken of to you</em>- <em><a href='B:650 13:5'>Heb 13:5</a></em> combines quotes from <em><a href='B:10 28:15'>Gen 28:15</a></em>; <em><a href='B:60 1:5'>Jos 1:5</a></em> and <em><a href='B:50 31:16'>Deu 31:16</a></em>. <em><a href='B:650 13:5'>Heb 13:5</a></em> doesn’t quote any of them exactly, but mixes them together. This is typical of how the New Testament quotes the Old, and is how the Rabbinic commentaries likewise functioned. The promises just made were eternal, and so the promise to not leave Jacob until they were fulfilled continues right up to the establishment of the Kingdom on earth at the Lord's return; He therefore will never "leave" Jacob and his seed, the true Israel of God. Which is why this promise is so frequently applied to all God’s people at various points in history. "I am with you", Emmanuel, God with us, is a promise carried on to all the true seed, as Jacob himself realized when he insists that "God will be with you" (<em><a href='B:10 48:21'>Gen 48:21</a></em>; repeated in <em><a href='B:50 31:23'>Deu 31:23</a></em>); although it maybe took him a lifetime to realize it, seeing that in :20 he seems to question it at this stage: "If God will be with me..." (AV). </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>The promise of Divine keeping connects with the Angel cherubim keeping the way to the tree of life (<em><a href='B:10 3:24'>Gen 3:24</a></em>); Jacob was promised to be kept in the way, however lonely that way must have seemed at the time, with the end in view being re-entry to a restored Eden. But the same word is used of how Abraham's seed were to "keep" the covenant and "the way of Yahweh" (<em><a href='B:10 17:9'>Gen 17:9</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 18:19'>Gen 18:19</a></em>); and Israel in the wilderness, for whom Moses was primarily writing Genesis, also had an Angel to "keep" them in that "way" (<em><a href='B:20 23:20'>Exo 23:20</a></em>). But the life of spiritually stumbling Jacob shows that this was and is not a tit for tat offer- 'If you keep My covenant, I'll keep you'. God kept Jacob in the way by grace, even when Jacob was not committed to keeping the covenant (see on :21,22). God unilaterally fulfilled His side of it, and it was this grace which finally led Jacob to respond. Moses uses this word "keep" multiple times in Deuteronomy, several times in almost every chapter. He urges Israel to both "keep" the covenant requirements, and also to "keep" themselves and their own hearts (<em><a href='B:50 15:9'>Deu 15:9</a></em>). The covenant was therefore so intensely personal, and the Angel who worked to "keep" them within the covenant way (<em><a href='B:20 23:20'>Exo 23:20</a></em>) was therefore working on a personal level with every heart within Israel. And that Angel in its work is understood as the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and lives today (<em><a href='B:290 63:9-10'>Isa 63:9-10</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:560 4:30'>Eph 4:30</a></em>). Under the new covenant, the Spirit is placed within our hearts to cause us to "keep" the covenant requirements (<em><a href='B:330 36:27'>Eze 36:27</a></em>). As Jacob came finally to "keep" the covenant in which he himself had been kept by grace, we are to follow his path (<em><a href='B:350 12:6'>Hos 12:6</a></em>). </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>"Bring you again into this land" is the same Hebrew word for word as in <em><a href='B:10 3:19'>Gen 3:19</a></em>: "return unto the ground", from which Adam had been taken just as Israel in the wilderness and Jacob had originally been in the <em>eretz</em> and were being brought again to it, albeit by a long and circuitous route. The connection is to highlight the way in which there is a way out of the curse upon Adam; we shall indeed return unto the ground, but we can also be brought into the promised land- necessarily, through a bodily resurrection from the dead. This is one of so many nudges throughout the Bible that the curses upon Adam can ultimately be reversed for God’s people.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>God promised that He would not leave or forsake Jacob. He said the same to Israel in the wilderness, and yet predicted that Israel would leave or forsake God by forsaking the covenant and thereby God would leave / forsake them (<em><a href='B:50 31:8'>Deu 31:8</a></em>; <em><a href='B:50 31:16-17'>Deu 31:16-17</a></em>). Likewise God did not forsake or leave Jacob's father Isaac because Isaac respected the implications of the covenant (s.w. <em><a href='B:10 24:27'>Gen 24:27</a></em>). But the way God speaks to Jacob here appears to be unconditionally promising that He would not leave Jacob; and it was that unmerited grace which in the end elicited Jacob's response to it.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob awakened out of his sleep, and he said, Surely Yahweh is in this place, and I didn’t know it</em>- The conflict of tenses is arresting. Yahweh <em>is</em> (present) here, but I did not (previously) know it. Although the vision was ended, Jacob realized that the promised presence of God, with Angels ascending and descending upon him, was ongoing, and not just a dream. And he admits that he had not appreciated this when he first laid down in that place, nor earlier in his life. We see here definite growth in Jacob. The same Hebrew term is found in <em><a href='B:20 6:3'>Exo 6:3</a></em>, where we read that Yahweh revealed Himself to Jacob and He was 'known' to him thereby. So we conclude that after the dream, Jacob 'knew' Yahweh, although he had not previously done so. We note the gradual growth of Jacob in knowing or having relationship with God.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>"Yahweh is" in Hebrew here means more than the present tense of the verb "to be". The idea is that Yahweh exists, right here. Moses was primarily writing for Israel in the wilderness, who had questioned whether "Yahweh is among us" using the same Hebrew (<em><a href='B:20 17:7'>Exo 17:7</a></em>, as <em><a href='B:70 6:13'>Jdg 6:13</a></em>). Even if they had not known it, they were to realize that His presence, mediated perhaps by the same Angel who dealt with Jacob, was just as real for them as it had been for him in the desert that night. <em><a href='B:50 29:26'>Deu 29:26</a></em>; <em><a href='B:50 32:17'>Deu 32:17</a></em> and other passages teach that the idols of the nations were not 'known' by Israel who worshipped them; the idea is that Yahweh alone enters into personal relationship, which is the Hebrew idea of 'knowing'. And likewise all the possible idols in our lives do not offer the personal knowing / relationship with God which He alone does.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! This is none other than God’s house, and this is the gate of heaven</em>- "Dreadful" suggests that Jacob feared God with the fear of one who has no real relationship with Him. He was on one hand in awe at God’s closeness; and yet he was afraid. I suggest this was the fear of sinful man before God Almighty. The first reference to "fear" is in Adam's words of guilt before God: "I was afraid" (<em><a href='B:10 3:10'>Gen 3:10</a></em>). He feared because he felt he was so close to God now; at the gate of heaven. The Lord maybe used this idea in speaking of the virgins in the parable knocking at the door of the Kingdom. Jacob felt he was still "outside", at God’s gate, so close, but perhaps he felt so far, and therefore feared. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put under his head, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil on its top</em>- See on <em><a href='B:500 1:50'>Joh 1:50</a></em>. As noted on :12,&nbsp; Jacob understood this makeshift alter as his poor replica of the stairway to heaven. His humble altar and sacrifice of the oil of his spirit were a way of ascending to God Himself personally, just as this magnificent staircase led to God, with Angels ascending and descending upon it, between God and himself. This is the power of prayer, of covenant relationship, of sacrifice and fellowship with God. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He called the name of that place Bethel, but the name of the city was Luz at the first</em>- Before that watershed night of Genesis 32, Jacob was influenced by the surrounding religious ideas, and was possibly involved with idol worship. The fact he openly says that Yahweh will only become his God <em>if</em> He brings him back home in peace is proof enough that up until age 77 at the earliest, Jacob was not an unreserved worshipper of Yahweh. Yet knowing the nature of the man, it seems impossible to believe that he was totally irreligious until the time of his repentance in Genesis 32. The connections between Jacob and idolatry are so very numerous throughout the prophets that it seems impossible to totally disconnect him from idolatry. "Luz" appears to refer to a tree which was associated with idolatry. Jacob renamed it to Bethel, the house of God, although his later life was hardly free from the influences of idolatry. But here we see the beginnings of the development of a rejection of idolatry. He also perceived that God needs no "house", for He reveals Himself deep within the heart of His people, and ascends and descends upon them, wherever they are. This was a not insignificant paradigm shift; for the 'religion' of his day as of ours tended to think in terms of having a 'house of prayer', a place you went to do your religious stuff and find contact with your deity. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go- </em>See on <em><a href='B:10 48:20'>Gen 48:20</a></em>; <em><a href='B:300 10:16'>Jer 10:16</a></em>. As Jacob set out to relatives in a distant land, hoping to find a wife, he was fully aware that he was in principle replicating his father’s experience. When he spoke of God keeping him "in this way that I go" and bringing him again "to my father’s house" (:21), his mind was on the story he had so often heard of how God lead Abraham's servant in "the right way" and leading back home with a wonderful wife for Isaac his father (<em><a href='B:10 24:27'>Gen 24:27</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 24:40'>Gen 24:40</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 24:42'>Gen 24:42</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 24:48'>Gen 24:48</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 24:56'>Gen 24:56</a></em>). When at this stage in life (he was 77, remember) things suddenly took a different turn, his great hope was that God would bring him back safely "again to my father’s house in peace" (28:21); he wanted to go back to the stay-at-home life. What God put him through in the rest of his life was the exact opposite of this. He says that if God does this, he will "surely give the tenth unto thee" (28:22 cp. 14:20)- exactly as granddad Abraham had done (<em><a href='B:10 14:20'>Gen 14:20</a></em>), who had doubtless told Jacob this many a time as they 'dwelled together in tents' (<em><a href='B:650 11:9'>Heb 11:9</a></em>). We very much get the impression that Jacob was wrapped up with his parents too much; he had not yet avowed Yahweh as his personal God, but he felt a safety in his religious family and consciously and subconsciously living out their expectations. He was like many raised "in the faith"; he had to discover it all for himself, alone, and throw away the crutches of the family environment, upon which a man shall never see his God for himself.&nbsp; </p><p style='margin-left:1em'><em>And will give me bread to eat, and clothing to put on- </em>This is simply incredible in its lack of faith; '<em>If</em> God will really look after me, which includes giving me food and clothes, <em>if</em> He's as good as His word, then I'll accept Him as my God'. And yet Paul speaks of how we should serve our Master well, especially if he is our brother (alluding to Jacob and Laban), and "having food and raiment be content" (<em><a href='B:610 6:2'>1Ti 6:2</a></em>; <em><a href='B:610 6:8'>1Ti 6:8</a></em>), as if the fact Jacob only expected food and clothing from God was a sign of his unmaterialism. The Spirit focused upon one part of Jacob's words and imputed righteousness to him because of them, just as the bitter and cynical words of Sarah are quoted so positively in the New Testament. At the very time Jacob said those words, he at best only half believed, and the next 20 (or 40) years of his life were devoted to accumulating far more than just food and clothing. And yet his words regarding food and raiment, sandwiched as they are between much that is wrong, are treated as a reflection of his spirituality. </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>Having heard the promises concerning his future seed and the present protection God would grant him, Jacob immediately seized on the latter: "If God will be with me... then shall Yahweh be my God" (:21). He brushed past the implications of Messiah, although later he came to see that these were the most fundamental things God had promised. The way he raised up (cp. resurrection) the pillar and anointed it at this time may have shown a faint conception of Messiah, but this took years to seriously develop. </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>“If God… then…” implies was that Jacob didn’t consider Yahweh to be his God at that time. He was not totally committed to Yahweh as his God. The fact he promises to give a tenth to God <em>in the future</em> suggests that he did not then consider God to be his King, for the idea of tithing seems to have been established before the Law of Moses was given (as were many other elements of that Law; <em><a href='B:10 14:20'>Gen 14:20</a></em>). Jacob's words sound as if he believed in 'God' as a kind of force or spirit, but did not have Yahweh as his personal God. And yet God had promised Abraham that He would be the God of his seed (<em><a href='B:10 17:7-8'>Gen 17:7-8</a></em>); Jacob was aware of these promises, and yet he is showing that he did not accept their personal relevance to him at this time. The fact at the end he does call God his God reveals that he then accepted the Abrahamic promises as relevant to him personally. His offer to give a tithe to God if God delivered him would have been understood in those days as saying that Yahweh would then be his <em>king</em> (cp. <em><a href='B:90 8:15'>1Sa 8:15</a></em>; <em><a href='B:90 8:17'>1Sa 8:17</a></em>); and yet he evidently felt that Yahweh wasn't then his King. &nbsp;There is no record that Jacob ever did build a temple or tithe; but at the end of his life he realizes that God had kept <em>His</em> side of the deal, in that He had been with him and fed him all his life long. The fact he hadn’t kept his side of the deal made Jacob realize the huge grace of God…</p>&nbsp;<p style='margin-left:1em'>The fact at the end he does call Yahweh his God reveals that he then accepted the Abrahamic promises as relevant to him personally (<em><a href='B:10 49:24-25'>Gen 49:24-25</a></em>). This is an essay in the titanic difference between knowledge and belief. At baptism we tend to have knowledge, which masquerades as belief. And all our lives long we must struggle, as Jacob did, to turn knowledge into faith. His <em>personal</em> grasp of the wonder of the promises at the end is revealed in <em><a href='B:10 48:4'>Gen 48:4</a></em>, where Jacob recounts how "God Almighty... said unto me, Behold, I will make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, and I will make of thee a multitude of people; and will give this land to thy seed after thee for an everlasting possession" (AV). God never actually said all this to Jacob; Jacob is quoting the promise to Abraham of <em><a href='B:10 17:8'>Gen 17:8</a></em> <em>and applying it to himself</em>. And with us too, a personal grasp of the wonder of it all, that it really applies to <em>me</em>, is a mark of that final maturity we fain would achieve.&nbsp;&nbsp; </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>So only at the end, Yahweh was Jacob's God. God seems to recognize this by describing Himself as the God of Jacob / Israel so very often. His joy, His sheer delight at Jacob's spiritual achievement is recorded throughout the Bible. The way God describes Himself as "the God of Israel" (201 times) or "the God of Jacob" (25 times) infinitely more times than anyone else's God is proof enough that God saw His relationship with Jacob as very special. "God of Abraham" occurs 17 times; "God of Isaac" 8 times; "God of David" 4 times. Remember that whenever we read "Israel", we are reading of the man Jacob and his children. That God was the God of mixed-up, struggling Jacob is a sure comfort to every one of us. God is not ashamed to be surnamed the God of Jacob (<em><a href='B:650 11:16'>Heb 11:16</a></em> Gk.). The clear parallel between the historical man Jacob and the people of Israel is brought out in <em><a href='B:460 1:2'>Mal 1:2</a></em>: “I loved you… I loved Jacob”. Had Israel appreciated God’s love for the man Jacob, and perceived that he was typical of them, then they would never have doubted God’s love for them. And the same is true of us, whom Jacob likewise represents.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>The covenant God made with Abraham was similar in style to covenants&nbsp; made between men at that time; and yet there was a glaring difference. Abraham was not required to do anything or take upon himself any obligations. Circumcision (cp. baptism) was to remember that this covenant of grace had been made. It isn’t part of the covenant (thus we are under this same new, Abrahamic covenant, but don’t require circumcision). Perhaps this was why Yahweh but not Abraham passed between the pieces, whereas usually both parties would do so. The promises to Abraham are pure, pure grace. Sadly Jacob didn’t perceive the wonder of this kind of covenant- his own covenant with God was typical of a human covenant, when he says that <em>if</em> God will give him some benefits, then he will give God some. Although he knew the covenant with Abraham, the one way, gracious nature of it still wasn’t perceived by him. &nbsp;</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>Because of the great importance of Angels or a specific Angel in our lives, many of God’s people seem to have conceived of God in terms of an Angel. Jacob (<em><a href='B:10 48:15'>Gen 48:15</a></em>) and the patriarchs are clear examples. The extent of this is shown by Jacob vowing to his Angel at Bethel that "if God (the Angel) be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go... so that I come again to my father’s house in peace; then shall the Lord (Yahweh) be my God" (<em><a href='B:10 28:20-21'>Gen 28:20-21</a></em>). That the 'God' was definitely the Angel is shown by <em><a href='B:10 31:11'>Gen 31:11</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 31:13'>Gen 31:13</a></em>: "The Angel of God spake unto (Jacob)... I am the God of Bethel, where thou anointedst the pillar, and where thou vowedst a vow unto me". So was Jacob promising his Angel that if He protected him, "then shall Yahweh be my Elohim (Angel)"- i.e. 'then I will recognize Yahweh is behind you, and I will relate to Him as I do to you'?</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>So that I come again to my father’s house in peace, and Yahweh will be my God</em>- The AV and others suggest that Yahweh becoming Jacob's God was part of the deal which Jacob was offering God. See on :20 for the implications of this. We can each personally, as members of the seed, enter into Jacob's experience at this time. David certainly did:</p><table><tr><td><em><a href='B:10 28:20-21'>Gen 28:20-21</a></em> re. Jacob </td><td>Psalms 23 re. David </td><td></td></tr><tr><td>He is with me </td><td>For You are with <em>me </em>(i.e. just as You were with Jacob) </td><td></td></tr><tr><td>He will keep me </td><td>He makes me lie down, he leads me, he restores my life </td><td></td></tr><tr><td>He will give me bread to eat </td><td>He prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies </td><td></td></tr><tr><td>I come again to my father’s house in peace </td><td>I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever </td><td></td></tr></table>&nbsp;<p style='margin-left:1em'>David was a man who saw the height of Jacob, perceiving Jacob as our example, and the deep significance of his spiritual growth as our pattern. His almost fanatic devotion to "the Law" would have included the record of Jacob- around a fifth of "the Law" which he studied all the day (and deep into the night watches). </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>It's questionable whether Jacob ever did really return to his father’s home in peace. But all the same, as is clear from Jacob's final words, he fully accepted Yahweh as his God at the end of his life. He realized that his passionate hankering after being back home with mum and dad, of returning to how things used to be... was of the flesh. God wanted him to be a man, standing alone before Him. And Jacob realized that, and made Yahweh his God all the same, despite never really returning home in peace. He likely never saw his mother again, and the record of his burial of Isaac with Esau leaves us to imagine his nervousness and inability to ever live again near Esau. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Then this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, will be God’s house. Of all that you will give me I will surely give the tenth to you</em>- As noted on :20, this was understood as accepting Yahweh as his king. There is no record that Jacob ever did tithe to Yahweh, nor that he ever attempted to build a sanctuary, a literal "house", at the spot where he had erected that pillar. He does return there and erect a pillar later (see on :12), but he built no literal "house" of worship for God. He would've looked back and perceived how inappropriate was his bargain with God; and all he offered to do, he concluded was inappropriate. God was worthy of his all, not just a tenth; and the house of God was him, his heart, upon which Angels ascended and descended constantly because of his covenant relationship. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Then Jacob went on his journey, and came to the land of the children of the east</em>- A 450 mile journey. Balaam was from here (<em><a href='B:40 23:7'>Num 23:7</a></em>), and he apparently had a relationship with Yahweh. So the knowledge of the true God was somehow still around there; perhaps Abraham had told his family why he was leaving Ur, or had sent message back there of his relationship with Yahweh. But as noted on <em><a href='B:10 25:6'>Gen 25:6</a></em>, to go to the East was a sign of leaving the land of promise and returning to where the true seed of Abraham should have left from. Jacob's parents had operated on the principle that Isaac would not go to the land of the east, rather Rebekah must leave there. So the whole journey was not on the right basis; yet still God worked through it, and out of so much failure and dysfunction there, forged the people of Israel, His covenant people.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He looked, and behold, a well in the field, and, behold, three flocks of sheep lying there by it. For out of that well they watered the flocks. The stone on the well’s mouth was large</em>- The repeating similarities between our lives and those of others also reveal to us that God at times arranges for us to suffer from our <em>alter ego</em>- persons who behave similarly to us, and who through those similarities cause us suffering. In this way we are taught the error of our ways, both past and present. It seems that Jacob the deceiver suffered in this way from Laban the deceiver- in order to teach him and cause his spiritual growth. For example, as Jacob deceived his blind father relating to an important family matter, so Laban deceived Jacob in the darkness of the wedding night. And Jacob learnt from this- whereas Laban (so it seems) just didn’t "get it". Indeed, so many themes repeated in Jacob's life in order to teach him. For example, when he first meets Rachel, there are three other flocks of sheep waiting to be watered (<em><a href='B:10 29:2'>Gen 29:2</a></em>); but the implication of <em><a href='B:10 29:10'>Gen 29:10</a></em> is that Jacob rolled away the stone from the well and watered them and ignored the other three flocks. But did not this stone return upon his own head when God rolled away the reproach of the other three women in Jacob's life (Leah and the two servant girls) but not that of Rachel, who initially remained barren? Is this the significance of the three unwatered flocks? We wonder at the significance of these three flocks of sheep. Perhaps the reference is to the division of the earth / <em>eretz</em> dwellers into the three sons of Noah. </p><p>Jacob went to Haran expecting to find a wife. He was the favourite son of his mother Rebekah, and she wanted him to marry into her family. He also, at either 57or 77 (depending how you read the chronology of his life), was eager to marry. He had always lived with mum and dad, the favourite son of his mother, staying at home with her all the time. Jacob introduces himself as "Rebekah's son" (29:12), although it would have been more normal to describe himself as Jacob ben-Isaac. Gen. 29:10 labours the point three times that Laban was "his mother's brother".  Her marriage had been arranged at a well; she had encountered the invitation to marry Isaac at the well in Haran. And now Jacob is at a well near Haran, just possibly the same well. He was psychologically set  up to fall in love with any woman from his mother's family. And a pretty girl comes to the well to water her sheep; just as his mother had done. Men have a tendency to want a wife to be a surrogate mother for them. Isaac too, Jacob's father, had been the same. He too had been a mumma's boy, the obsessive love of his elderly mother, and so he was comforted after her death by Rebekah. He took Rebekah into his mother's tent, as if he had kept her tent just as it was when she died, and slept with her there. Clearly, he treated his wife as a surrogate mother. Jacob was going down the same path. He had lived at home, apparently single, for a long time. And now he was looking for a surrogate mother. And he found her. Both Isaac and Jacob come over as weak men, mumma's boys who had not individuated from mummy and their father's house. Just as the macho man who falls for the girl who looks like his mother and irons his work clothes as she did, and cooks like mum did at home... is not really strong, psychologically, not rugged at all- but weak. He is not (at least, not yet) a real man, his own person. My point is, that from such weak, pathetically pampered mumma's boys, came the house of Israel, God's people. For He worked to make them men, to individuate them. </p><p>Rebekah had told him to go there "for a few days" and, by implication, to find a wife there and return with her to Canaan. This is why we read that the seven years service for Rachel seemed to Jacob but "a few days" (:20). And this is why he says to Laban at the end of the period that he has served his days for Rachel (:21). Jacob told himself throughout the seven years of service that this was the "few days" his mother had spoken of. He was totally dominated by the desire to do his mother's  will. But he ended up serving another 7 years for Rachel; when he ought to have just accepted Leah and returned to Canaan. Rachel was an idolater, just like the wives whom Esau had married who were a grief of mind to Rebekah. So Jacob failed to see the spirit behind his mother's reasoning, and just followed her desires on the basis of living out parental expectation. Just as many raised Christian do today, at least in the shape of their early lives. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>There all the flocks were gathered. They rolled the stone from the well’s mouth, and watered the sheep, and put the stone again on the well’s mouth in its place</em>- This was their tradition- to wait until all the flocks were gathered and then remove the stone. Jacob felt this to be inefficient, as the sheep could have been grazing for the hours they were kept hanging around the well (:7). The headstrong, intelligent, hard working Jacob was to soon face years of looking after sheep day and night, consumed by the frost at night. Truly he was brought down, that he might be exalted.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob said to them, My relatives, where are you from? They said, We are from Haran</em>- Jacob apparently didn’t know how close he was to Haran. There would've been no informative signposts on the road of the type we are used to. He addresses them as "brothers", a standard Middle Eastern form of address; but he could have sensed that he was drawing near to where his relatives lived. He was psychologically set up to expect a meeting of his relatives and his future wife, by a well- just as had happened to Eliezer in choosing a wife for Jacob's father. So he was hopeful that these indeed might be his relatives.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He said to them, Do you know Laban, the son of Nahor? They said, We know him</em>- Laban was Nahor's grandson, but Hebrew genealogies frequently skip generations. The identification of Laban with Nahor is significant, in that Nahor is specifically defined as an idolater. Jacob's marriage back into the family of origin must be read as continuing a long line of such failure. Abraham was to separate from his native land and family, in order to be given a new land and family / seed. But he was very reluctant to do so. And Isaac and Jacob likewise were. But despite this refusal to fulfil the apparent conditions for the promises to be fulfilled, God still as it were drove forward His purpose to fulfil them. By grace alone.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He said to them, Is it well with him? They said, It is well. See, Rachel, his daughter, is coming with the sheep</em>- The structure of the Hebrew language seems to reflect something of God’s way of thinking. In Biblical Hebrew, there's no term for "yes" in replying to a question. Instead, the person answering repeats the question. Thus here Jacob asks: "Is he well?"; and the shepherds reply "Well". God’s way of saying "Yes" to our prayers / requests is to repeat back to us as it were our requests; and thus the form and wording of our prayers becomes in some sense important; for what we ask for is what we will receive back, if He answers positively. </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>"Rachel" means "ewe", identifying her with her sheep. Jacob's heart would have been in his mouth, expecting to meet his future wife. The fact Laban used his daughter to water the sheep indicates that he was not wealthy. For this was the work of slaves. And if one young woman could control his entire flock, his flock was not large. We reflect how Laban had been made rich by the lavish presents given him in return for his sister Rebekah marrying Isaac. Back then, Rebekah had shepherded and watered the flock. But despite Laban's avarice, his economic position had apparently not progressed much. I suggested on Gen. 24 that Laban only agreed to the quick marriage of his sister because he wanted the expensive gifts on offer. But desire for wealth has no lasting effect, as we see here. We also reflect that Jacob was from a very wealthy family; and he was marrying in to a relatively poor family. His 14 years of slave labour for his wives was therefore a bringing of him down from his previous soft and prosperous life. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He said, Behold, it is still the middle of the day, not time to gather the livestock together. Water the sheep, and go and feed them</em>- Jacob displays here the typical zeal and acumen of the Abraham family. The shepherd girls were wasting time, as he saw it; they should water the animals and then take them for feeding, rather than losing feeding time milling around the well with them. However it may be that Jacob wanted to meet Rachel alone, or at least, without the presence of the male shepherds; and he therefore took the initiative to get these men watering their flocks, so that he could meet Rachel without them. He was absolutely psychologically set up to expect that he would be meeting his future wife.</p><p>Or Jacob could be read as accusing the men of being lazy- perhaps he thought they were hired hands, and were gathering the animals together to water them and then return them to their stalls. But, he considered, it was too early in the day to be doing that. </p><p>Whatever, Jacob was driven to observe that what they were doing with the flocks was not, to his mind, very wise. He comes over as hard working and knowledgeable about pasturing animals. And then... Rachel, the beautiful shepherd girl, appears on the scene. Herself the very picture of hard work; her name meaning 'ewe', she is associated with the sheep. He was psychologically set up to fall in love with her. And yet my suggestion is that he would have been better off marrying into the Canaanite worshippers whom Melchizedek had pastored, rather than into an idolatrous family. Of whom Rachel turned out one of the most fanatic idolaters. But that was his choice, and we see God confirming him in it, and setting him up to fall headlong in love with Rachel and marry into that unbelieving family. We are indeed confirmed in the way in which we wish to go.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>They said, We can’t, until all the flocks are gathered together, and they roll the stone from the well’s mouth. Then we water the sheep</em>- They may be alluding to some local custom; for Jacob alone could move the stone. It wasn't that they couldn't budge the stone. Perhaps they were fearing evaporation from the well or water warming if the stone was left off for too long. But see on :7 and :10. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>While he was yet speaking with them, Rachel came with her father’s sheep, for she kept them</em>- This is emphasized (:7 too). "Coming with the sheep" would have restimulated images of his mother Rebekah coming with her father’s sheep to a well near Haran. The record very cleverly presents Jacob as bound to fall in love with Rachel at first sight, and indeed he does.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>It happened, when Jacob saw Rachel the daughter of Laban, his mother’s brother, and the sheep of Laban, his mother’s brother, that Jacob went near, and rolled the stone from the well’s mouth, and watered the flock of Laban his mother’s brother</em>- As explained previously, Jacob was psychologically set up to fall in love with Rachel at first sight. We don't read that he fell in love on first sight, but rather that he moved the stone. He had been psychologically set up to expect that like his father, he too would find a wife in Laban's family (<em><a href='B:10 28:2'>Gen 28:2</a></em>), and God would bless him in his mission (<em><a href='B:10 28:15'>Gen 28:15</a></em>). So when he finds that one of the pretty shepherd girls he meets by a well is in fact Laban's daughter, his heart and whole psychology would have been elated. And so he finds the physical strength to impress the girl by shifting the heavy stone; or, as suggested on :8, to upset the local customs of only moving the stone once&nbsp; all the flocks were gathered. And then the stress and relief issues forth in the tears of emotional breakdown (:11). This has absolute credibility in psychological terms and confirms the internal veracity of the inspired record.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>We see reflected here Jacob’s psychological domination by his mother- Laban is three times called “his mother’s brother”. And he followed his mother's weaker side too. Rebekah rejected the promise of <em><a href='B:10 25:23'>Gen 25:23</a></em> in ch:27; as Jacob in <em><a href='B:10 33:3-5'>Gen 33:3-5</a></em>. There is sustained emphasis on Jacob's obedience to his parents, especially to his mother (<em><a href='B:10 27:8'>Gen 27:8</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 27:13'>Gen 27:13</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 27:43'>Gen 27:43</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 28:7'>Gen 28:7</a></em>). The whole story is a foretaste of the issues involved with Christians and parental expectation in our day. It might not be going too far to say that he grew up far too much under her thumb; he meekly obeyed her faithless suggestion that he deceive his father into granting him the blessing, content with her assurance that it would be mum's sin, not his (and I imagine her pecking him on the cheek as she gave him the tray with Isaac's food on). No wonder he fell madly in love at first sight, when he first saw the girl he knew his mother wanted him to marry. Jacob introduces himself as "Rebekah's son" (29:12), although it would have been more normal to describe himself as Jacob ben-Isaac. 29:10 labours the point three times that Laban was "his <em>mother's </em>brother". The fact Deborah, his mother's nurse, was taken under the wing by Jacob, further suggests his very close bond with his mother; he buried Deborah under Allon-Bachuth- 'the oak of his (Jacob's) weeping' (<em><a href='B:10 35:8'>Gen 35:8</a></em>). &nbsp;Jacob struggled to accept his father’s God as his God. And yet he in so many ways is portrayed as deeply influenced by Rebekah his mother.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob kissed Rachel, and lifted up his voice, and wept</em>- That he should break down in tears is absolutely in line with the psychology of the situation which I have outlined so far in this chapter. The pressure release would have been enormous, mixed with joy that the apparently chosen wife for him was very beautiful. And yet God’s intention was that he should marry Leah, not Rachel. Jacob was being led this way to try to teach him that marriage is not about the flesh but the spirit. For Rachel never comes over as very spiritually minded, indeed she was so attached to the family idols that she stole them when the family left Laban's encampment. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob told Rachel that he was her father’s brother, and that he was Rebekah’s son. She ran and told her father</em>- We note his self-identity as <em>"</em>Rebekah’s son"- not Jacob ben-Isaac, as would've been the usual introduction. See on :10. Her running was another connection with how Rebekah, Jacob's mother, had likewise run from the well back to her father with the news. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>It happened, when Laban heard the news of Jacob, his sister’s son, that he ran to meet Jacob, and embraced him, and kissed him, and brought him to his house. Jacob told Laban all these things</em>- Again the similarities are so clear with Eliezer's visit to get Rebekah as a wife for Isaac. Circumstances do indeed repeat in human lives, so that we might discern the principles and lessons. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Laban said to him, Surely you are my bone and my flesh. He lived with him for a month</em>-&nbsp; We recall Laban wanting Rebekah to stay with them about a month before agreeing to marry Isaac. As noted above, the similarities with the marriage of Rebekah are so clear. But the spiritual aspect wasn't paralleled at all. To continue that, Jacob ought to have explained that Rachel would have to leave the land of the east and return to the <em>eretz</em> with him; and he should have pointed out to everyone that he had had a vision at Bethel which had assured him that this was God’s program for him, and he wished to remain part of it. But the spiritual side of things was quite lacking. He apparently only saw a pretty girl who restimulated his feelings for his mother. </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>We note that "my bone and my flesh" means 'blood relative', and the same term is used of our relationship to the Lord Jesus within His body (<em><a href='B:560 5:30'>Eph 5:30</a></em>). This is indeed a challenging level of intimacy; our relationship with Him is no mere occasional hobby. In a very detailed study of this language, the theologian Henricus Renckens concluded: "In Israel, in order to say that someone was a blood relation, one said: "He is my flesh and my bones" (<em><a href='B:10 29:14'>Gen 29:14</a></em>; <em><a href='B:70 9:2'>Jdg 9:2</a></em>; cp. <em><a href='B:10 37:27'>Gen 37:27</a></em>; <em><a href='B:100 5:1'>2Sa 5:1</a></em>; <em><a href='B:100 19:13'>2Sa 19:13</a></em> ff.; <em><a href='B:290 58:7'>Isa 58:7</a></em>)" (H. Renckens, <em>Israel's Concept of the Beginning: The Theology of Genesis 1-3</em> (New York: Herder & Herder, 1964) p. 228). This is how close we are to the Lord Jesus- blood relatives. This language could in no way be justified if Jesus were God Himself in person.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Laban said to Jacob, Because you are my brother, should you therefore serve me for nothing? Tell me, what will your wages be?</em>- Laban had been given a fortune in the ten camels' worth of expensive presents and metals which he had been given when Rebekah married Isaac. But his avarice is clear. He saw in Jacob a good worker. We meet here the idea of 'serving', and in the next verse, the idea of older and younger siblings. Jacob had laboured wrongly and in his own strength to bring about God’s prediction that between him and his brother, the elder would serve the younger. The word "serve" is so repeatedly used about how Jacob served Laban (:18,20,25,27,30; 30:26,29; 31:6,41; <em><a href='B:350 12:12'>Hos 12:12</a></em>). Jacob had so wanted the blessing to come true, of his older brother serving him. But he never really got that in his life, and he was made to realize what serving your brother or relative (Laban) was really like. He was being made to understand how Esau would have felt if he had served Jacob as Jacob intended. We too are taught how things we once hankered after would've been, had they come true. And this is why the motif of elder and younger siblings is included in Jacob's experience of "serving", to remind him of the whole drama in his own earlier life about the elder serving the younger. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Laban had two daughters. The name of the elder was Leah, and the name of the younger was Rachel</em>- See on :15. If we are to assume these were his only daughters, then he had not been greatly blessed with children. Laban is presented as focused on material wealth and blessing, and yet never really achieving it as he wished, despite his schemes. And Jacob ought to have learnt from that.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Leah’s eyes were weak, but Rachel was beautiful in form and attractive</em>- The reference could be to weak eyesight, which was a feature of the Abraham family. Or the reference could be to how Semitic peoples value vivacious, sparkling eyes; Rachel had these, but Leah didn’t. Leah was "in appearance dull" (another acceptable translation) in comparison to Rachel. Again we see that Jacob's attraction to Rachel was of the flesh.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob loved Rachel. He said, I will serve you seven years for Rachel, your younger daughter</em>- Jacob had been promised that he was to “let people serve you” (<em><a href='B:10 27:29'>Gen 27:29</a></em>) and yet he effectively said he didn’t want that promise, by serving Laban for a wife (29:18,25,27); at the end he was brought through life’s experiences to see that the promises are the basis of life, and that we must let God fulfill them to us.&nbsp;Seven years labour was a significant dowry; the once wealthy Jacob, apparent heir of Isaac's huge wealth, was now reduced to a penniless man in love, willing to sign himself up for seven years hard manual labour in order to get married. It was a huge comedown, and he must have wondered at times how God’s promise "I will be with you" would really work out, as it certainly seemed to have little cash value through all those years; "for a wife he kept sheep" (<em><a href='B:350 12:12'>Hos 12:12</a></em>). </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>The deal was clearly defined- it was for "your younger daughter", perhaps stressed because Jacob was aware of the tradition to marry off the elder daughter first. He ought to have realized that it was God’s plan he marry Leah, and seeing she was weak eyed, possibly an invalid, he would've served fewer years for her. But he wanted to go his own way and marry the pretty but less spiritual girl, and he suffered for it. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Laban said, It is better that I give her to you, than that I should give her to another man. Stay with me</em>- The implication could be that she was already promised to "another man" but Laban was prepared to cancel that agreement. In this case, we again are left with the impression that Jacob was Divinely intended to marry Leah and return with her to his father’s house in peace. But he wanted to get around that and have Rachel, and so the whole sorry saga unravelled further; and yet through it all, God worked to build up His people from such unspiritual beginnings. Just as He does with us.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob served seven years for Rachel. They seemed to him but a few days, for the love he had for her</em>- This may seem commendable, but we must remember the observations already made that it was the Divine 'Plan A' that he marry Leah. Instead he was obsessed with Rachel and making God’s purpose work out in such a way that would reinforce his own desires. In essence, this temptation is present with all God’s children. That same kind of obsession had led Jacob and Rebekah to defraud Esau of the birthright and blessing.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob said to Laban, Give me my wife, for my days are fulfilled, that I may go in to her</em>- We note that he didn’t sleep with his betrothed for seven years, which is commendable. The fact Jacob had to take the initiative in asking Laban for his betrothed may already hint at a reluctance on Laban's part. Jacob's term "my days are fulfilled" sounds as if he had counted the days; to still feel like this toward Rachel after seven years of betrothal indicates a besotted love for her, although I have suggested earlier that this was an obsession which was ignoring the fact God had clearly intended him to marry Leah and then return to the <em>eretz</em>. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Laban gathered together all the men of the place, and made a feast</em>- Laban was perhaps expecting some attempt by Jacob to take Rachel by force, or otherwise make a scene. So he gathered all the local men to be present. Surely they knew what was being planned. See on :27 "we". The Hebrew for "feast" is literally "a drinking", and this would explain why Jacob didn’t realize he had slept with Leah rather than Rachel.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>It happened in the evening, that he took Leah his daughter, and brought her to him. He went in to her</em>- Surely one reason that Jacob disliked Leah subsequently was that he understandably felt she had played a conscious part in the deception. As noted on :32 and :34, she seems to have truly loved Jacob and wished that he would be joined to her in love. He clearly didn’t feel joined to her nor love her, at least initially. However it's hard to imagine that Rachel didn’t get wind of the conspiracy, and was not in some way part of it too.&nbsp; We are to suppose that in the earlier part of the ceremony, Rachel was acting the part of the bride; and then, as stated here, only in the evening, when Jacob was drunk, was Leah brought to Jacob. The idea was clearly that once Jacob had slept with her, he had to have her as his wife. So Rachel was surely involved in the deception. After all, where was she whilst all this was going on? What did she feel, what did she say?</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Laban gave Zilpah his handmaid to his daughter Leah for a handmaid</em>- Laban gave Jacob his castoff maidservant, rather than Leah having her own maidens, as happened with Rebekah. This was somewhat of an insult, and an attempt to get power over Jacob in this way too. Zilpah was apparently given to Leah before the evening, if these verses are chronological. So she too was part of the deception. Jacob must have felt so alone, but that was all part of the Divine plan- to bring him to Him, just as He did at the vision of the ladder at Bethel.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>It happened in the morning that, behold, it was Leah. He said to Laban, What is this you have done to me? Didn’t I serve with you for Rachel?- </em>We naturally enquire why only "in the morning" did Jacob realize the deception. I suggest he may well have been drunk; as noted on :22, "feast" is literally 'a drinking'. This would form a parallel with how Jacob had given Isaac his father wine when he likewise deceived him, under cover of the darkness of Isaac's blindness.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Why then have you deceived me?</em>- Jacob was verbalizing the thoughts and words of Isaac and Esau whom he had deceived. The truthful answer was more or less: 'For money / material advantage'. And that was the answer which Jacob had to give to the same question asked of himself. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Laban said, It is not done so in our place, to give the younger before the firstborn</em>- The obvious response is that he should not have therefore contracted with Jacob for her. There is however evidence that this tradition of only giving the elder first could be waived if the elder was in some way deformed or blind; and there is the possibility that Leah was indeed like this, which would explain why it was Rachel and not Leah who was out with the sheep when Jacob first met her. It would also explain why Laban was at such pains to marry her off; and why Jacob specifically made the contract stating that Rachel was the younger daughter. So in every way, Laban had deceived Jacob, just as he had deceived his own father. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Fulfill the week of this one, and we will give you the other also for the service which you will serve with me yet seven other years</em>- The "we" connects with "the men of the place"; see on :22. This really left Jacob trapped; he had to agree. His obsessive love for Rachel had led him into the position; whereas if he had married Leah as it seems God planned, then he wouldn't have gotten into the impossible situation he was. For marrying two sisters was not only immoral, it was going to give rise to a miserable domestic life. He, the one time heir to all Isaac's huge wealth, was indeed brought very low.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob did so, and fulfilled her week. He gave him Rachel his daughter as wife</em>- He had a Divinely provided opportunity here to accept Leah as the wife God intended, and return home to the <em>eretz, </em>trusting God to keep His promise of bringing him home in peace. But his infatuation with the unspiritual Rachel and his pride led him to agree. And so many spiritual people have become obsessed with an unspiritual partner, leading to many wasted years, and frustration of the Divine possibilities for them. And we all miss Divine possibilities and potentials.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Laban gave to Rachel his daughter Bilhah, his handmaid, to be her handmaid</em>- As noted on :24, unlike Rebekah, Rachel was not given her own virgins to assist her, but rather her father’s ex. We notice that Bilhah and Zilpah were "his" handmaids. No mention is made of his wife. They may well have effectively been his women on the side, perhaps having had his children, and were therefore a way of exercising control over Jacob's family. To later have children by the ex-mistresses of his hated master would've been so emotionally painful for Jacob. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He went in also to Rachel, and he loved also Rachel more than Leah, and served with him yet seven other years</em>- Jacob was under the one man: one woman ideal of Genesis; and yet he evidently didn’t take this too seriously. His mad infatuation with Rachel meant that he thought nothing of polygamy. The idea of accepting one's married circumstances for the sake of principle was obviously foreign to our Jacob. Many aspects of the Mosaic Law were already in place before it was pronounced to Moses; the prohibition on marrying a second wife who was the sister of the first wife could well have been known among God’s people in Jacob's time, seeing that it was a precept based on the principles of Eden (<em><a href='B:30 18:17-18'>Lev 18:17-18</a></em>). "It is wickedness" was God’s comment to Moses, and there is no reason to think that His essential moral judgment on this kind of thing has ever changed much. Yet Jacob thought nothing of breaching this command, and committing this "wickedness".</p><p>Likewise, Dt. 21 was clear that when in a case when a man had two wives and loved one and hated the other, and the firstborn son was from the hated / loved less wife... he was not to promote the firstborn of the loved wife to be his firstborn, and to demote the firstborn by the hated wife. But this is precisely what Jacob does. He demotes Reuben in favour of Joseph and in fact Joseph's sons: "Now your two sons, who were born to you in the land of Egypt before I came to you into Egypt, are mine; Ephraim and Manasseh, even as Reuben and Simeon, will be mine" (Gen. 48:5); Reuben "was the firstborn; but, forasmuch as he defiled his father's bed, his birthright was given unto the sons of Joseph the son of Israel: and the genealogy is not to be reckoned after the birthright" (1 Chron. 5:1). The connection is so precise that we can assume that Dt. 21 is warning Israel to not do what Jacob did. Jacob, the founding father of Israel, was far our of step with the spirit of God's law. The two passages are clearly connected; Dt. 21:17 uses the term "the firstborn of his vigour", just as in Gen. 49:3 about Reuben being the firstborn of Jacob's vigour.</p><p> Leah's reaction to Jacob's evident favouritism for Rachel was to become obsessed with having children. When she failed to conceive, she panicked that she was barren, and therefore asked Jacob to have intercourse with her servant Zilpah in order to produce children. During the first seven years of her marriage, she produced 6 sons and 1 daughter. This indicated not only an incredible fertility, but also a high womanly status in those times, seeing that she produced so many more sons than daughters. The fact none of her children died in babyhood was also remarkable for the times. Her fertility became proverbial in later Israel (<em><a href='B:80 4:11'>Rth 4:11</a></em>). And yet despite this evident fecundity, whenever she thought she had failed to conceive, she asked Jacob to have intercourse with Zilpah. Despite knowing her fertility, Jacob did so. It seems he sacrificed basic principles in order to placate a neurotic wife who, it would seem, he didn’t care too much for anyway, seeing he made it plain he had never wanted to marry her in the first place (29:25,31). The whole sense that we get is that his relationship with Zilpah was unnecessary, and he was far too casual in his attitude to it. </p><p> Leah felt she was "the hated one" (:33), she was "afflicted" (:32- depressed, miserable, victim of injustice). She was in a miserable position; Jacob loved her sister, her father had used her, and Jacob clearly felt she was guilty of going along with Laban's deception of him. Leah's father didn't love her, but had used her to trick another man in order to get more labour out of him on his farm (and Gen. 31:14-16 reflects how she felt unloved by her father). She was unloved by her husband, and jealously hated by her sister, who was more attractive than her. Rachel surely also hated Leah for having played her role in Laban's great deception on the wedding night. Leah was, in a word, unhappy. And she was unhappy all her life because of what happened on one night. The names of her children express her hope her husband would now love her, or be joined to her; she was married to a man who was not joined to her in the spirit of God's intention for marriage in Genesis. Gen. 29:32: “‘Yahweh has seen my misery’; and she said, ‘Now my husband will love me’”; Gen. 29:33: “Yahweh heard that I was unloved, and so he has given me this one too". Gen. 29:34: “This time my husband will become attached to me, because I have borne him three sons". She longed for love and true connection with her husband, and thought having children was going to lead to that. Children were going to be her only source of human love; she was obsessed with having children. She recognizes this, and her naming of Issachar in Gen. 30:18 could mean she feels like a whore: "God has given me my reward for giving my slave-girl to my husband". Indeed it would seem from Gen. 30:20 that Jacob didn't live with Leah, but just slept with her when she begged him to, in order to produce children: "Now my husband will live with me, because I have borne him six sons. She named him Zebulun". But all this miserable existence was used in God's bigger purpose to build up the house of Israel. She had been railroaded into a marriage with a man who didn't love her; she felt it was all so unjust and unfair. And in a way it was. The only way forward for her, as she saw it, was to produce many sons for Jacob. And she produced six in seven years, plus a daughter. And none of them died, all survived to adulthood. Which was amazing for those days. Psychologically, she as it were willed herself to do this. Her firstborn Reuben means "See! A son!", as if he fulfilled her all consuming desire to produce a male offspring for Jacob. But out of the misery of her depression and tough situation, she was used to build the house of Israel. And so many dead end situations and unhappy lives are used by God to extend His purpose and to build up His people on this earth. The unloved, the used, those manipulated, or who suffer all their lives for the misjudgment of 'going along' with something unethical one evening... are used powerfully by God. What Leah did at the wedding was somewhere on the border between sin and misjudgment, somewhere between 'going along' with her father [and probably other males in her male dominated society], and the moral failure of not standing up to what was wrong. We've likely all met people like that, whose unfortunate lives were defined by an evening and night many years ago. Whereas Rachel, lover of idols, died before she reached Bethlehem, the birthplace of the Lord Jesus. She dies giving birth to Benjamin, whom she names Ben-Oni, 'son of my sorrow / affliction'; the very word used about Leah's affliction / sorrow / depression. In fact, Rachel didn't at all have a happier life. Gen. 30:1 could well be a suicide threat by her. She had the same affliction / sorrow that Leah had. Life is not so awesome for anyone; but for the believer (Leah), that sorrow is used by God for greater ends, whereas as Paul puts it, "the sorrow of the world works death" (2 Cor. 7:10). The isolation, depression, dead ends, lack of love, being used by others... is all used towards a far more glorious end. But those whom we may feel have a great life, like Rachel- they go through the same feelings. But unproductively, for nothing. Their lives are not in fact awesome at all. The "Leah" type tend to look at the "Rachel" type on social media and think that "Rachel" is having an awesome life... but they suffer as much as "Leah". Whether or not Leah was culpable for going along with Laban's deception, it was after all the failure of a day or so, into which she had been railroaded. And she was suffering because of it all her life. Indeed Jacob was the deceiver who was now being deceived; he had used the darkness of his father's blindness to switch the two brothers, himself and Esau; and now, in the darkness of that night and his own drunkenness, he was himself deceived, and two siblings were switched.  Jacob's anguished "Why have you deceived me?" (Gen. 29:25) is the cry of Esau; he was being made to feel how he had made Esau feel. Again, the issue is related to 'Who is the firstborn?'. The firstborn must be recognized as the firstborn and treated as such. And the answer to his question is so clear to us readers: 'Because that's what you did to your father and your brother'. It's clear enough, but from Leah's viewpoint- 'Why me? Why mess up my life just to complete this Divine circle of 'measure for measure'?'. The idea of going to Haran and marrying Laban's daughters was so that Yahweh would make Jacob "fruitful, and make you multiply so that you become a group of nations" (Gen. 28:3). Rachel was barren, so the channel for the fulfilment of God's purpose and promises was clearly through Leah. But on the ground, she only became fruitful because of the awful background situation she found herself in, driving her psychologically to become hyper fertile and to produce male offspring; as she felt that having many male children was the only answer to her dead end situation. Leah's situation appears to be alluded to in Ps. 10:12-14, where she is presented as programmatic of us all: "Rise up, O LORD; O God lift up your hand; do not forget the oppressed... But you do see! Indeed you note trouble and grief... that you may take it into your hands; the helpless commit themselves to you". There are other allusions to Leah's "affliction" as representative of all God's children (Ps. 9:12; 25:18; 31:7). "The Lord has heard that I am hated" (Gen. 29:33) is perhaps alluded to when David often thanks God for 'hearing' him, the hated one (Ps. 30:11 and often when he says to the effect 'They all hated me, but You heard me'). </p><p>Jacob had set out for Laban's home intending to get married, and God had promised to be with him. It could be argued that he should have accepted God’s choice in Leah, especially as she clearly loved him (:32,34). But he wished to force things through his way, and so ended up marrying two sisters and serving at least 14 years of his life in relative poverty. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Yahweh saw that Leah was hated- </em>Jacob maybe did hate Leah because of her part in the deception practiced on him. But it is also possible to understand "hated" as meaning "loved less", he loved Rachel more than he did Leah (:30), and he possibly speaks with fondness of Leah after her death at <em><a href='B:10 49:31'>Gen 49:31</a></em>. This is a Semitic idiom, and is seen by comparing <em><a href='B:490 14:26'>Luk 14:26</a></em> (hating parents) with <em><a href='B:470 10:37'>Mat 10:37</a></em> (loving parents less than Christ). We note that God gave these barren women children because He felt sorry for them, as part of His sovereign purpose; there is no mention of the women and Jacob praying to God for children, as there is with Jacob's parents. Again we see the establishment of God’s people Israel upon the basis of unilateral grace and Divine pity rather than human spirituality. One loved and one hated / loved less was exactly the situation God was in with Jacob and Esau (<em><a href='B:520 9:13'>Rom 9:13</a></em>). And Jacob was the beloved one. He ought to have perceived this, and responded with a similar grace.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'><em>And he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren</em>- Scripture repeatedly speaks as if God notices things and only then responds (also in <em><a href='B:390 3:10'>Jon 3:10</a></em>; <em><a href='B:20 3:4'>Exo 3:4</a></em>; <em><a href='B:50 32:19'>Deu 32:19</a></em>; <em><a href='B:120 14:26'>2Ki 14:26</a></em>; <em><a href='B:140 12:7'>2Ch 12:7</a></em>; <em><a href='B:330 23:13'>Eze 23:13</a></em>; <em><a href='B:290 59:15'>Isa 59:15</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:490 7:13'>Luk 7:13</a></em>). If He knew in advance what they were going to do, this language is hard for me to understand. I suggest God so enters our experience that in a sense He may limit His omniscience just as He can limit His omnipotence.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'><em><a href='B:10 29:31'>Gen 29:31</a></em> speaks of closed and open <em>wombs</em>, not fallopian tubes. There was no need for inspiration to produce a document that was so scientifically correct that the generation contemporary with it couldn’t cope with it. Indeed, the whole beauty of God’s revelation is that He takes people from where they are as they are, and leads them on to higher truth without having head on confrontation with them regarding their incorrect scientific understandings.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Leah conceived, and bore a son, and she named him Reuben-</em> The root meaning fallacy arises from the false assumption that a word has a "proper meaning", which can be reached by tracing it to its source. But seeing that words change their meaning, the 'root' of a word isn't really much of a guide to its meaning. Take the English word 'nice', i.e. pleasant. In the eighteenth century this word meant 'precise' rather than 'pleasant'; and it actually derives from the Latin <em>nescius</em>, meaning 'ignorant'. It's obviously wrong to read the word 'nice' in a contemporary book and think that the word therefore means 'precise', or, even more accurately, 'ignorant'. Context and usage is obviously the key. I'm constantly amazed at how respectable lexicons like Liddell & Scott use the term "prop.", i.e. 'proper meaning', with the evident understanding that the earliest use of a word is somehow its real, 'proper' meaning. This is an utter fallacy. The meaning of the names of Jacob's children are parade examples. Reuben means 'behold a son', but the inspired narrator suggests a meaning of 'affliction' because the consonants with that word are vaguely similar to 'Reuben'.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'><em>For she said, Because Yahweh has looked at my affliction-</em>‘Looking upon’ is an idiom for answered prayer or God’s response to human request (<em><a href='B:10 6:12'>Gen 6:12</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 29:32'>Gen 29:32</a></em>; <em><a href='B:20 2:25'>Exo 2:25</a></em>; <em><a href='B:50 26:7'>Deu 26:7</a></em>; <em><a href='B:70 6:14'>Jdg 6:14</a></em>). Now apply this to how in <em><a href='B:490 1:48'>Luk 1:48</a></em> Mary exalts:&nbsp; "he hath looked upon…" (ASV). All this implies that Mary like Elisabeth had requested to have this child- to bear Messiah. She sees what God has done as “His mercy” to her (<em><a href='B:490 1:50'>Luk 1:50</a></em>), as if a request had been granted.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'><em>For now my husband will love me</em>- The way Leah comments about Jacob to Rachel “Now will my husband love me… now this time will my husband be joined unto me” (<em><a href='B:10 29:32-34'>Gen 29:32-34</a></em>) all imply that Jacob’s marriage was in a mess. Jacob, Rachel and Leah were indeed a tangled web. God joins together a married couple; yet Jacob, apparently, neither loved his wife Leah / Rachel, nor had allowed God to join him unto her in emotional bonding. And there he was, having kids by his domestic servants as well, his boss’s cast-offs. And God <em>loved</em> this man, and worked with him <em>so</em> patiently, to build the house of Israel His people. There’s comfort enough for every man and woman, reading this record. The way Jacob is simply described as the one whom God loved in <em><a href='B:230 47:4'>Psa 47:4</a></em> is majestic in its brevity. God loved Jacob. He really did. Simple as that. When Jacob is the one presented as having struggled with God more than any other.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>We can assume from <em><a href='B:10 49:4'>Gen 49:4</a></em> that Reuben later committed incest with Bilhah, his father’s concubine. Leah was perhaps obsessed with the fact she had produced Jacob his firstborn son, and came to dote inappropriately upon her son. Whatever happened, the seeds of his later perversion would've been sown in early childhood. Truly Jacob's family life was a tragedy and a moral shambles; and yet out of it came the twelve sons who would be the foundations of God’s people. This perhaps was to encourage us as that people, that we were created and are saved by grace and not by any moral purity or spirituality of our own.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>She conceived again, and bore a son, and said, Because Yahweh has heard that I am hated, He has therefore given me this son also. She named him Simeon</em>- Her hopes that Reuben's birth would lead to Jacob loving her (:32) were misplaced; he still "hated" her, perhaps literally because of her willing part in the wedding night deception, or perhaps in the sense of being loved less; see on :31. If "loved less" is the sense of "hated", then we can conclude that Leah wanted to be loved <em>more</em> than her sister. The whole situation was an unspeakable agony for Jacob, but it was of his making. The wife God gave him was Leah, but he was so infatuated with Rachel that he ignored God’s clear movement, and suffered for it in his family life. And yet out of that came God’s people, Israel.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>She conceived again, and bore a son. She said, Now this time will my husband be joined to me, because I have borne him three sons. Therefore his name was called Levi</em>- She seems to have truly loved Jacob and wished that he would be joined to her in love. He clearly didn’t feel joined to her, for the reason noted on :23. The Genesis record has explained that God would help a married couple cleave or be joined together (<em><a href='B:470 19:6'>Mat 19:6</a></em>). The fact Jacob and Leah were not "joined" therefore reflects how Jacob or perhaps both of them were resisting God’s joining power. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>She conceived again, and bore a son. She said, This time will I praise Yahweh. Therefore she named him Judah. Then she stopped bearing</em>- She actually started bearing again later (<em><a href='B:10 30:17'>Gen 30:17</a></em>); but here we have an example of Scripture reporting things as they seemed at the time; we see&nbsp; something similar in the language of demons being cast out in the New Testament. The way Leah uses the Yahweh Name implies something positive about her level of spirituality; and despite feeling unloved by her husband, she felt she had something to praise Yahweh for. We don't see this kind of spirituality in the record of Rachel.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>When Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister. She said to Jacob, Give me children, or else I will die</em>- Proverbs often alludes to historical portions of the Hebrew Bible, and <em><a href='B:240 30:15-16'>Pro 30:15-16</a></em> surely alludes here; the barren womb says "give!" and will never be satisfied. I suggested throughout Genesis 29 that God intended Jacob to marry Leah and return in peace to the <em>eretz</em>, but instead he became obsessed with Rachel, the vivacious but unspiritual beauty. He dreamed for 7 years of hard labour about marrying her, and instead of returning home with Leah, he agreed a further 7 years labour for Rachel. And now it turns out she is barren, and she seems to have little love for Jacob. She would've had to play a conscious part in the deception at the wedding ceremony when she was replaced with Leah. And Jacob's domestic life becomes really awful, married to two sisters, with the younger bitterly jealous of the older. And that was surely exactly how Jacob had been with Esau, seeking by all means to get equal to him, taking the birthright and then deceiving Esau out of the blessing of the firstborn. Rachel clearly blames her infertility upon Jacob, and unlike Rebekah, doesn't bring God into the situation; although fertility is from God (<em><a href='B:90 2:6'>1Sa 2:6</a></em>).</p><p>The repeated promise was that the Abraham family would become many, and their children would be fruitful. But there is a repeated theme that all the women struggled with fertility. This is typical of God's work. He achieves His purpose through our inadequacy. We are being prepared to rule the entire cosmos in glory, the rulers of the age to come; but we are not fit for purpose, just as Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel were infertile and yet were to build the fruitful and widely multiplying people of God; and those who are fit for purpose, like the very fertile Leah, are persuaded that they are not. As we learn in Job, He seals up the hand of man, that His hand might work. The infertility of the matriarchs is repeatedly seen as being from God (Gen. 16:2 and see Jacob's response to Rachel). So He did this, in order to glorify His ability to make fertile and bring life from death. </p><p>"I will die" is a phrase used in contemporary inscriptions to describe how a barren woman felt her line would die out if she didn't have a male heir. Probably that is the sense here- but she is displaying lack of faith in the promises about Abraham's seed. She was failing to learn the lesson of Sarai being barren when the promises of the seed were first given. It could be that she was threatening suicide unless Jacob got her pregnant, and his anger was in response to the unreasonable placement of such guilt upon him. We again see, as discussed on Gen. 29:30, that both Rachel and Leah were equally miserable- but Leah ends up concluding "From now on, I will praise the Lord", whereas "the sorrow of the world brings death" in Rachel's case. </p><p>Gen. 48:7 records Jacob stating simply that "Rachel died by me", before she reached Bethlehem, birthplace of the Lord Jesus, the great seed of Jacob. Surely Jacob has in mind Rachel's threat "Give me children or else I will die" (Gen. 30:1). "By me" could mean 'next to me', but if that were the intention then this would've been stated differently in Hebrew. The plain meaning of the text is that she died by Jacob, because of Jacob. He took false guilt over Rachel's barrenness, right to the end. Instead of giving up trying to 'make it work' through Rachel, and accepting Leah as his intended wife. And the promised seed, the Lord Jesus, came through Judah, through Leah, and not through Rachel. Hence she died without reaching Bethlehem, His birthplace. And so many die still desperately trying to make things work in their own strength, when God clearly intended another path.  Rachel was obsessed with producing male children for Jacob, just as Leah was. Rachel was unsatisfied by Jacob's amazing love for her, unimpressed by his 14 years labour for her. But it was this obsession to produce male children which was used by God, dysfunctional as it was, in order to found His people of Israel. And He works through similar human dysfunctions to the same end. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob’s anger was kindled against Rachel, and he said, Am I in God’s place, who has withheld from you the fruit of the womb?</em>- Jacob saw the infertility as coming from God, and insisted Rachel was wrong to blame him for it; after all, he had had children by Leah her sister, and Rachel's suggestion he sleep with her maid was a tacit recognition that Jacob was fertile and the problem was with her. These words of Jacob were surely remembered by Rachel, and she quoted them to her son Joseph when she finally did become fertile; for he alone uses this Hebrew phrase in comforting his brothers that he is not going to judge or punish them, as he (like Jacob) was not "in God’s place" (<em><a href='B:10 50:19'>Gen 50:19</a></em>). Joseph learnt from the story of his mother's previous barrenness that we are not in God’s place; and in practice, this helped him in the psychologically gigantic task of forgiving his brothers and not seeking to judge them. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>She said, Behold, my maid Bilhah. Go in to her, that she may bear on my knees, and I also may obtain children by her</em>- Jacob should have been aware from the situation with his grandfather Abraham and Hagar that this was unwise; Sarah's suggestion to Abraham brought nothing but grief and family feuding, and it was clearly a lack of faith in the Divine promises. But Jacob wouldn't learn from that, and again went along with the suggestion of the woman in his life. He failed to learn from his mistake in listening to his mother's idea about deceiving Isaac into blessing him. It could be that Rachel was in fact alluding to the example of Sarah as a precedent (<em><a href='B:10 16:2'>Gen 16:2</a></em>); whereas the spiritually perceptive would have seen this as an example which ought not to be followed. The implications of "also" imply this. What Sarah did was wrong, but it was used as a justification. Just as Solomon justified his many women and horses on the basis of his father David's weaknesses. Bearing 'on my knees' is something reported often in the texts uncovered from those times. The idea was not simply that the newborn baby was placed on the knees of the surrogate mother after birth, as a sign of ownership. This ritual was done because it was thought it would give fertility to the surrogate mother. So again we see how pagan notions were used to achieve fertility; and the material later in the chaper about achieving fertility amongst animals are parallel to this. In this case "And I also may obtain children by her" would be read as meaning that Rachel hoped she would herself fall pregnant because of what her handmaid had done. Leah seems to think the same; she too had her handmaid sleep with her husband, and she sees her own next pregnancy as being because of this: "Leah said, God has given me my hire, because I gave my handmaid to my husband. She named him Issachar" (:18).</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>She gave him Bilhah her handmaid as wife, and Jacob went in to her</em>- The woman slept with was considered a "wife", which was why Laban was at such pains to get Jacob to sleep with Leah at the wedding ceremony. if Jacob had remained with Leah as the Divine provision, he would not have slipped into polygamy let alone marrying two sisters; nor would he know slip further into the immorality of having children outside marriage. Once he had agreed to this with Rachel, he was going to have to with Leah. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Bilhah conceived, and bore Jacob a son</em>- Conception is portrayed as being of God, and although all the circumstances surrounding this were unspiritual, clearly God worked through it in order to create the basis for His future people of Israel. Bilhah and Zilpah had had children by Laban (Gen. 37:2). As with Leah and Rachel, a spaghetti junction, deeply dysfunctional situation involving four miserable women... was used to found Israel. Jacob must have hated Laban because of the deceptions, and to sleep with women whom Laban had also slept with and had children by... would've been very humilitating for him. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Rachel said, God has judged me, and has also heard my voice, and has given me a son. Therefore called she his name Dan</em>- Rachel felt that God hearing her voice was Him judging her. The prayer of the poor is judged by God in His response to them (<em><a href='B:230 10:7-8'>Psa 10:7-8</a></em>). Coming boldly before the throne of grace in prayer is again judgment seat language (<em><a href='B:650 4:15'>Heb 4:15</a></em>). Our attitude to God in prayer now will be our attitude to Him at the judgment; we are 'bold / confident' before Him now, and we can be 'bold' then (<em><a href='B:690 2:28'>1Jn 2:28</a></em>). Before the throne of grace we find grace to help (<em><a href='B:650 4:16'>Heb 4:16</a></em>); whereas we will “find” (s.w.) mercy in the day of judgment (<em><a href='B:620 1:18'>2Ti 1:18</a></em>). Each time we receive grace to help before the throne, we are anticipating the judgment day scenario.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>But did God really judge and justify Rachel through this? I'd say this was just her imagination. We note however that in :1,2 she had left God right out of the question, but now Rachel brings God into it, and even prayed for the child to be conceived. But her naming of it "Dan", Divine judgment, seems rather bitter. She may have meant that God was judging her sister somehow, as the next child refers also to her wrestling with her sister (:8); or liking to imagine that God judged her faithful to Him just because she had suggested her husband sleep with another woman. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Bilhah, Rachel’s handmaid, conceived again, and bore Jacob a second son</em>- As Leah had apparently stopped having children, maybe because Jacob stopped sleeping with her, Rachel was apparently set on getting an equal or greater number of children. And so the use of Bilhah was not just a one off situation but was intended to be ongoing. The race for numbers is reflected in Leah then getting Jacob to sleep with her maid, and naming the first child "A troop comes!" (:11). </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Rachel said, With mighty wrestlings have I wrestled with my sister, and have prevailed. She named him Naphtali</em>-  Translated literally, 'Naphtali' means 'my wrestling / struggle'. Again, it was all about Rachel and her feelings. Translated into German, this would be Mein Kampf, the title Hitler chose for his autobiographical ranting that led to the destruction of multi millions of lives worldwide in World War 2. Such intense self obsession drags everyone else into it, and we see this with Rachel. See on :13. </p><p>Another take on this is to see 'Naphtali' as Naphtalijah, the wrestling of Yah. "Mighty" is literally <em>elohim</em>, and the parallel with the 'Yah' form is another nail in the coffin of the hypothesis that there were different source documents for Genesis, one using Yahweh and the other <em>elohim</em>. The name suggests that her struggles with her sister were her struggles with God; and the whole idea is lived out in Jacob's wrestling with an Angel, which was effectively his wrestling with Isaac, Laban and Esau. We sense that the women named their sons in reflection of their obsession with the male baby race, as they desperately vied to be the one who produced the most boys. The names reflect how <em>they</em> wished to see things, rather than how they were in reality. For Rachel hardly "prevailed" just because her maid had another son. Leah had more male sons at this point and 'won' the race to get the most. It's an example of where people drag "God" into their interpersonal struggles; her struggle with her sister became a struggle with God. She may not have "prevailed" as she meant, in a human sense. But the similarities with Jacob's wrestling with God continue when we realize that "prevailed" is the same word used of how Jacob did "prevail" over "God" in the form of the Angel he wrestled with (<em><a href='B:10 32:25'>Gen 32:25</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 32:28'>Gen 32:28</a></em>). He started off trying to force his way upon God, but because he repented, he did in another sense prevail over the Divine judgment which was what Jacob deserved; Jacob prevailed over God in that he asked for grace and was granted it, and in this he becomes our example (<em><a href='B:350 12:4'>Hos 12:4</a></em> s.w.). Rachel's struggle with God perhaps went according to the same pattern. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>When Leah saw that she had finished bearing, she took Zilpah, her handmaid, and gave her to Jacob as a wife</em>- This is recorded from the viewpoint of Leah (see on <em><a href='B:10 29:35'>Gen 29:35</a></em>); she actually did bear more children. But the Bible at times records things from the viewpoint of the subjects of the narrative, without correcting their limited perspectives. Which is why we have the language of demon possession in the New Testament. Leah didn't actually stop bearing at this point, so we see again her obsession with producing male offspring for Jacob- an obsession, dysfunctional as it was, which was used by God in His bigger purpose of founding His Israel from Jacob's many sons, all born to used, manipulated and miserable women who all had an obsessive interest in producing male children for him.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Zilpah, Leah’s handmaid, bore Jacob a son</em>- As noted on :12, she gave Zilpah to Jacob "as a wife", but the inspired record still calls her "Leah's handmaid". For that is who she was, and Jacob's behaviour with these women was not really moral.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Leah said, How fortunate! She named him Gad</em>- Or, "a troop cometh!" (AV), which is how Jacob understood the name in <em><a href='B:10 49:19'>Gen 49:19</a></em>. As noted on :7, the race for numbers is reflected in Leah&nbsp; getting Jacob to sleep with her maid, and naming the first child "A troop comes!". The names of the sons who were to be the basis of the people of God, Israel, were anything but spiritual. And yet God works through such unspirituality to form His people, as He does to this day. Indeed "Gad" was a local deity (as in <em><a href='B:290 65:11'>Isa 65:11</a></em>); even Leah, the more apparently spiritual, was caught up with paganism at this time. Perhaps Jacob alludes to this in his final comment upon Gad; that he would be overcome by a troop rather than leading a troop, although he would overcome at the last (<em><a href='B:10 49:19'>Gen 49:19</a></em>). </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Zilpah, Leah’s handmaid, bore Jacob a second son</em>- Although Leah gave Zilpah to Jacob "as a wife" (:9), the Divine commentary is that she remained Leah's handmaid. God worked through a situation which was hardly moral, just as He does today. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Leah said, Happy am I, for the daughters will call me happy. She named him Asher</em>- Asher meams 'my happiness'; as with Isaac, the name reflects the mother's feelings at the time. It is all about her at that moment and not anything further. The personhood for the child appears irrelevant; the child served a function for the parent, and the name reflects that. All the sons of Jacob have names which reflect this feature. No future hope was expressed for the child, but rather for the mother. Thus Joseph means adding, because Rachel hoped that now she had had one son, she would have another. Likewise Zebulun, now will my husband dwell with me; Gad, a troop of more children will come from me. There is no spiritual dimension in these names. Thus we read of Dan and not Daniel. God's Name doesn't feature in the names of the sons. But from all this came the Israel of God. </p><p>The Lord’s mother constantly quoted and alluded to Old Testament scripture. All this reflects the level of spiritual ambition to which Mary attained. Her self-perception went beyond that of Leah to whose words she alludes (“all women call me fortunate / blessed”, <em><a href='B:10 30:13'>Gen 30:13</a></em> LXX). Elisabeth had said the same: “Blessed are you among women” (<em><a href='B:490 1:42'>Luk 1:42</a></em>). But Mary perceives that all generations, not just all contemporary women, would call her blessed. So when Mary spoke of all generations calling her blessed, her mind was here in&nbsp; <em><a href='B:10 30:13'>Gen 30:13</a></em>: "the daughters (i.e. future generations of them) shall call me blessed" , and yet at the same time on Zilpah the servant maid (cp. Mary the handmaiden) bearing Asher (happy). These women were seen by Mary as representatives of her. And yet Leah was mistaken in thinking that all would call her "blessed" because her servant girl had got pregnant again, and she now had the lead in numbers of children compared to her sister. The one who would be called "blessed" by all was not her, but Mary; the real seed was the Lord Jesus, not these sons who were being born as part of a race for superiority between two bitter sisters in a polygamous marriage.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Reuben went in the days of wheat harvest, and found mandrakes in the field, and brought them to his mother, Leah. Then Rachel said to Leah, Please give me some of your son’s mandrakes</em>- Rachel wanted the mandrakes so that Jacob would sleep with her. But initially as soon as his seven years service for Rachel had finished, he asked Laban to give her to him so that he might sleep with her. Clearly things had changed. Jacob was being brought down, so that he might arise as the true Israel of God. The evidence seems to be that until he left home, Jacob was influenced by the idolatrous thinking of the surrounding world. For the next 20 years, he more tacitly went along with these things being practiced in his family. The mandrakes used by Leah were not just aphrodisiacs, but were believed to have the magical ability to induce fertility. This pagan nonsense was believed by Leah and Reuben, and tacitly gone along with by Jacob- although God worked through these wrong ideas, apparently uncorrected, in order to bring about His purpose. And yet from these mixed up women God built the house of Israel.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>The love apples were understood to induce a man to sleep with a woman. This would suggest that Jacob had stopped sleeping with his wives, perhaps in response to their endless desire to keep trying to get pregnant in their race for numbers of children, when both had fertility problems and both had already produced children for Jacob, even if fictively in Rachel's case. This again shows how low Jacob was brought; he had signed away 14 years of his life due to his obsession with Rachel, impatiently asking Laban to give him Rachel so that he might sleep with her (<em><a href='B:10 29:21'>Gen 29:21</a></em>). But now he didn’t sleep with her. Because Rachel wants the mandrakes so that Jacob would sleep with her. He is pictured as a man returning tired from work in the field, wanting to eat and as it were watch telly and go to bed early as he had another early start. </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>We note it was Reuben who brought the mandrakes, and it was also Reuben who slept with Rachel's maid Zilpah (<em><a href='B:10 35:22'>Gen 35:22</a></em>). Perhaps this was done at Rachel's bidding, in order to notch up another pregnancy; perhaps Reuben had fallen out with his mother Leah and was as it were on Rachel's side at the time. This is where jealousy and lack of spirituality lead- to a downward spiral of behaviour which affects more and more people. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>She said to her, Is it a small matter that you have taken away my husband? Would you take away my son’s mandrakes, also?-</em> One is hard pushed to find women-only scenes in contemporary literature written during Biblical times. The women are presented in terms of the men with whom they inter-relate. Yet Elizabeth and Mary are recorded as having a conversation with no male present (<em><a href='B:490 1:39-45'>Luk 1:39-45</a></em>); and there are other such passages in Scripture (<em><a href='B:10 19:32'>Gen 19:32</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 19:34'>Gen 19:34</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 30:14-15'>Gen 30:14-15</a></em>; <em><a href='B:20 2:1-10'>Exo 2:1-10</a></em>; <em><a href='B:70 5:28-30'>Jdg 5:28-30</a></em>; <em><a href='B:80 1:6'>Rth 1:6</a></em> to <em><a href='B:80 2:2'>Rth 2:2</a></em>; <em><a href='B:80 3:16-18'>Rth 3:16-18</a></em>; <em><a href='B:80 4:14-17'>Rth 4:14-17</a></em>; <em><a href='B:120 5:2-3'>2Ki 5:2-3</a></em>). The narrative of the women at the tomb and the resurrection is another example (<em><a href='B:490 23:55'>Luk 23:55</a></em> to <em><a href='B:490 24:4'>Luk 24:4</a></em>). In all these passages, the reader is invited to share the woman’s perspective.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>It could be that the "She said to her" is Rachel talking, not Leah (although the AV translates otherwise), complaining that Reuben had actually stolen her son's mandrakes and taken away her husband. In this case, Rachel was also not being slept with at this time, hence she too wanted the mandrakes. She taunts Leah that Jacob is "my husband" whom Leah has "taken away"; perhaps Jacob came to love Leah more, because she had produced more children for him than Rachel. At least, Rachel perceived it that way. I have argued throughout Genesis 29 that God intended Jacob to marry Leah and return to the promised land; his obsession with Rachel made his path home so much harder. If indeed he did become more attached to Leah, then this would really demonstrate that all too late, he was accepting God’s rightness in the matter. </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>If the speaker is Leah, then the complaint that Rachel had 'taken away' her husband is harder to understand. Maybe she legalistically held to the idea that as she was the firstborn, and married Jacob a week before Rachel did, therefore she was the legitimate husband. This is the kind of contorted reasoning that arises out of family jealousy and stress. It was no secret that Jacob loved Rachel and had agreed to marry her, but Laban and Leah had played a cruel deception on Jacob, with Leah clearly wanting Jacob and also in love with him. So Leah can hardly complain that Jacob loved Rachel more than her. </p><p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Rachel said, Therefore he will lie with you tonight for your son’s mandrakes</em>- This could be mocking, as if to say "Jacob really loves me, not you; he'll only sleep with you for the mandrakes, not because he loves you". And so we have yet another insight into the endless feuding between the two, with every word and action being twisted and used as a source of conflict. The Hebrew can also be translated, as GNB: "Rachel said, "If you will give me your son's mandrakes, you can sleep with Jacob tonight"". This would indicate that Rachel placed huge faith in the power of the coveted mandrakes to make Jacob sleep with her; clearly his love for her had abated, a far cry from serving seven years to have sex with her, as <em><a href='B:10 29:21'>Gen 29:21</a></em> implies. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob came from the field in the evening, and Leah went out to meet him, and said, You must come in to me; for I have surely hired you with my son’s mandrakes. He lay with her that night</em>- The record brings out the bizarre nature of what she did. Jacob did not then dwell with her (:20). He was on his way to Rachel's tent, but she says that because she has mandrakes, he must come to her tent. But the idea of mandrakes was that they were supposed to attract a man to a woman. But she reasons as if mere possession of them was enough to demand he come and sleep with her. The language of "hire" is used in :18, where Leah bitterly suggests she feels like a prostitute, hired by God to have sons. And here she implies she is treating Jacob as a male prostitute. The language is very low, and reflects how Leah felt; she was so addicted to having sex with Jacob because she so wanted to get pregnant by him, and so she came to feel like a whore. This was how far love went right out of the whole situation, because Jacob didn’t follow God’s direction- which was to marry Leah and return to the promised land. The scene is so reminiscent of Jacob's father Isaac walking in the field, apparently one evening, and meeting Rebekah, in a love marriage that only Heaven could have arranged. The same Hebrew words are used in <em><a href='B:10 24:65'>Gen 24:65</a></em>. But this meeting with Leah was for Jacob similar but tragically different; tragic, for a man so clearly dominated by a desire to replicate his parents' relationship.&nbsp; </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>God listened to Leah, and she conceived, and bore Jacob a fifth son</em>- Maybe Leah prayed to God and He heard, and her attempt to use the mandrakes was just a surface level thing, and the essence was her prayer. Or it could be that God looked with pity at the whole situation with the mandrakes, and 'heard' the whole situation as if it were Leah's prayer to Him. Because God responds to our spirit, our overall situation, sometimes He does things which seem to be an answer of prayers which were not properly believed in by the person who prayed. Examples include: <em><a href='B:10 30:16-17'>Gen 30:16-17</a></em>; <em><a href='B:20 14:10-11'>Exo 14:10-11</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:160 9:9'>Neh 9:9</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 31:22'>Psa 31:22</a></em>; <em><a href='B:490 1:13'>Luk 1:13</a></em>. Presumably the Father reads circumstances as prayers, even though the believer's faith in their actual verbalized request may be weak. </p><p>Leah got pregnant because she prayed (:17). Not because of the mandrakes. We see here clearly how their human efforts to become fruitful were misplaced, but God still gave the fruitfulness. And it will be the same with the fertility of the animals. God often does give blessing even when it is wrong ly sought. Because He is more subtle than to simply reward righteousness and punish or refuse badly motivated desires. But later reflection leads us to marvel at His grace. Just as Abraham and Isaac must have later done after they received material blessing right after their unfaithfulness. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Leah said, God has given me my hire, because I gave my handmaid to my husband. She named him Issachar</em>- Although she apparently prayed and God heard her (:17), Leah's attitude is so wrong. She considers that God has rewarded her for allowing her maid to sleep with her husband, when this was immoral. The idea of being given her "hire" is however decidedly cynical; she feels as a&nbsp; prostitute, paid by God, who later gives her a dowry (:20). Yet despite this unspirituality, God listened to her and gave her conception (:17). This is His grace, focusing upon the positive, and patiently bearing with our anger and immaturity. God saw through all this (the bitterness of post natal depression?), through her recourse to using mandrakes to induce fertility... and God discerned the real faith in her. And this God is our God, who likewise bears with our Christian hypocrisy. Isaachar means something like 'So these are my wages'. Her husband Jacob had been paid her and her sister as his wages. And so she sarcastically quips that she too was a worker for wages, and her kids were her wages. This reflects how deep in her psyche was the fact that she had been paid as a wage. Again we see no spirituality, just an obsession with producing children for her own psychological and personal needs. But from all this unspirituality came the people and Israel of God. </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>We note that the women named the children themselves, which was unusual at the time; and the names reflected their struggles and feelings. One gets the impression that Jacob was a distant father and wife, at least at this stage, finding the domestic scene unbearable and staying out at night with the flocks (<em><a href='B:10 31:40'>Gen 31:40</a></em>). </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Leah conceived again, and bore a sixth son to Jacob</em>- Notice "son". We read only of their male children, apart from Dinah, which is just the female form of "Dan". But surely there were daughters born as well, but the women didn’t count them in the race to produce as many sons as possible for Jacob and thereby to acquire the ascendancy in domestic life.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Leah said, God has endowed me with a good dowry- </em>We note the metaphor becomes somewhat more respectful than when she spoke earlier of God giving her her "hire" as if she was a prostitute used by God (:18). But she still mixes her metaphors, suggesting that the gift of sons from God was in fact a dowry paid, and a high price too.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Now my husband will live with me, because I have borne him six sons. She named him Zebulun</em>- &nbsp;“Now will my husband live with me” surely implies that Jacob and Leah had effectively split up. He wasn't sleeping with her, hence the use of aphrodisiacs on him. And yet including Dinah, Leah managed to produce at least seven children in 7 to 14 years. This is why her fruitfulness became proverbial in later Israel. It would have been evidence enough that Leah had been the wife intended for Jacob and not Rachel; it was his insistence on forcing that through which led to so much grief.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>Jacob was under the one man: one woman ideal of Genesis; and yet he evidently didn’t take this too seriously. His mad infatuation with Rachel meant that he thought nothing of polygamy. The idea of accepting one's married circumstances for the sake of principle was obviously foreign to our Jacob. Many aspects of the Mosaic Law were already in place before it was pronounced to Moses; the prohibition on marrying a second wife who was the sister of the first wife could well have been known among God’s people in Jacob's time, seeing that it was a precept based on the principles of Eden (<em><a href='B:30 18:17-18'>Lev 18:17-18</a></em>). "It is wickedness" was God’s comment to Moses, and there is no reason to think that His essential moral judgment on this kind of thing has ever changed much. Yet Jacob thought nothing of breaching this command, and committing this "wickedness". Leah's reaction to Jacob's evident favouritism for Rachel was to become obsessed with having children. When she failed to conceive, she panicked that she was barren, and therefore asked Jacob to have intercourse with her servant Zilpah in order to produce children. During the early years of her marriage, she produced 6 sons and 1 daughter. This indicated not only an incredible fertility, but also a high womanly status in those times, seeing that she produced so many more sons than daughters. The fact none of her children died in babyhood was also remarkable for the times. Her fertility became proverbial in later Israel (<em><a href='B:80 4:11'>Rth 4:11</a></em>). And yet despite this evident fecundity, whenever she thought she had failed to conceive, she asked Jacob to have intercourse with Zilpah. Despite knowing her fertility, Jacob did so. It seems he sacrificed basic principles in order to placate a neurotic wife who, it would seem, he didn’t care too much for anyway, seeing he made it plain he had never wanted to marry her in the first place (<em><a href='B:10 29:25'>Gen 29:25</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 29:31'>Gen 29:31</a></em>). The whole sense that we get is that his relationship with Zilpah was unnecessary, and he was far too casual in his attitude to it. “Now will my husband dwell with me” (<em><a href='B:10 30:20'>Gen 30:20</a></em>) surely implies that Jacob and Leah had effectively split up. The evidence that Leah bore seven children in seven years is evident from the chronology of Jacob's life, reflecting as it does the traumatic Jacob, Rachel, Leah relationship.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Afterwards, she bore a daughter, and named her Dinah</em>- As noted on :19, their obsession was with bearing sons in order to acquire dominance in the family. Even "Dinah" is just the female form of her son Dan. She probably bore other daughters, but only Dinah is mentioned because of her later significance in the narrative. 'Dinah' is the female form of 'Dan', and again we see how the sisters were competing and wrestling with each other. It was as if Leah thought she could as it were get equal with Rachel over the birth of Dan by having a female 'Dan'. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her, and opened her womb</em>- In :1,2, Rachel is presented as not having God on her horizon at all. But the misery of the whole situation maybe led her to pray to her husband's God. Or it could be that she didn’t specifically pray, but rather God took pity upon her, reading the whole sad situation as prayer, and responded to her. Psychologically, it appears sometimes true that when a barren woman adopts a child, she then becomes fertile. But the stress here is that the pregnancy was from God, no matter what psychological processes were at work. And yet again we find the language of the day being used- her "womb" was opened, when it was her tubes not her womb that was opened. Just as the language of demons is used in the New Testament, so here the limited scientific perspective of the time is reflected in the narrative; because God is concerned with relationship and communication with people, rather than purist truth for the sake of it. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>She conceived, bore a son, and said, God has taken away my reproach</em>- As noted on :22, Rachel was brought through her domestic misery, in her case being the loser in the race to produce sons, to turn to God. Initially she lacked this dimension (see on :1,2). Her comment here is tacit recognition that her idea of getting Jacob to sleep with her maid did not in fact resolve her misery, it didn’t take away her reproach. The idea of "reproach" occurs nearly 100 times in the Old Testament, mainly reflecting a fear of reproach or shame. It was and is so important in Middle Eastern society. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>She named him Joseph, saying, May Yahweh add another son to me</em>- Rachel's use of the Yahweh Name, when initially she didn’t have God on her horizons much at all (see on :1,2), is all reflective of how through the endless Divine patience, Rachel herself grew in spirituality. Even though she was so attached to her father’s idols that she stole them when she finally left home. Yet "Joseph" can also mean 'one who takes away', and this would have been in reference to how she felt now her reproach at being barren was taken away (:23). </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>It happened, when Rachel had borne Joseph, that Jacob said to Laban, Send me away, that I may go to my own place, and to my country</em>- Jacob seems to have seen Rachel giving birth as the sign that he could now return home in peace. But this was a self-assigned signal. I explained throughout Genesis 29 that he ought to have married Leah alone, and returned with her to his country. It is commendable that after 20 or 40 years, Jacob still sees the <em>eretz</em> as "my place... my country". His heart was in the land of promise. However, "my place", Jacob's particular <em>maqom</em>, often used of a sanctuary or altar, may have in his own mind referred to Bethel, where he intended to build a house or sanctuary for God if indeed he returned to his father’s house in peace. <em>Maqom</em> is used three times in <em><a href='B:10 28:11'>Gen 28:11</a></em> alone, and often throughout the record of Bethel in Genesis 28. </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>We note that it is twice recorded that Isaac "sent away" Jacob (s.w. <em><a href='B:10 28:5-6'>Gen 28:5-6</a></em>). Now, Jacob wants to be "sent away" by Laban. We get the impression of a man who needed direction; which might explain why he remained to long with Laban. He ought to have returned to the <em>eretz</em> in faith in the promise that God would bring him back there; and yet he was perhaps lacking in initiative, perhaps the result of "living in tents" with his parents and being dominated by his mother.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>When Jacob asks Laban to allow him to leave, he uses very similar words to those used by Eliezer when he asked Laban's family to let Rebekah leave to go marry Isaac:</p><table><tr><td></p><p style='margin-left:1em'>Eliezer in Genesis 24</td><td>Jacob in Genesis 30</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>"Send me back" (<em>shallehuni</em>) 24:54 </td><td>"Send me away" (<em>shalleheni</em>) 30:25 </td><td></td></tr><tr><td>"Let me go (<em>shallehuni</em>) that I may go (<em>w'eleka</em>) to my master" 24:56 </td><td>"that I may go (<em>w'eleka</em>)... let me go (<em>w'eleka</em>)" 30:26 </td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Laban's blessing of Rebekah 24:60 </td><td>Laban's blessing of his grandchildren and daughters 31:55 </td><td></td></tr><tr><td>The servant "went his way (<em>wayyelak</em>)" 24:61 </td><td>"Jacob went on his way" (32:1) </td><td></td></tr></table>&nbsp;<p style='margin-left:1em'>Intentional or not, the inspired record strives to bring out the similarities. The lesson is that culturally, Jacob was very much his mother's son- just as those raised Christian today may be culturally Christian, and yet not truly accept their parents' God as theirs until they pass through the valley of the shadows, the school of hard knocks. See on <em><a href='B:10 28:7'>Gen 28:7</a></em>.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Give me my wives and my children for whom I have served you, and let me go; for you know my service with which I have served you</em>- See on <em><a href='B:10 25:31'>Gen 25:31</a></em>. The suggestion could be that Laban effectively kept Jacob's wives and children within his encampment, refusing to honour the agreement regarding serving for them. It could be that Laban had further manipulated Jacob by demanding he serve also for the children. It was a way of keeping a person in endless servitude; and yet Jacob had been promised that the elder would serve him, the younger. His extensive experience of servitude was surely to help him fuller appreciate what this promise meant. And Laban's continual deceit of him regarding what was rightfully his... taught him what he had done to Esau. </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>Genesis was written by Moses primarily for the wilderness generation. So much in the story of Jacob would have demonstrated the wisdom of the various laws that generation were given- to release servants after the seventh year (<em><a href='B:20 21:2'>Exo 21:2</a></em>), and especially the command not to marry two sisters (<em><a href='B:30 18:18'>Lev 18:18</a></em>) nor for a polygamist to have a "hated" (loved less?) wife (<em><a href='B:50 21:17'>Deu 21:17</a></em>). </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Laban said to him, If now I have found favour in your eyes, stay here, for I have divined that Yahweh has blessed me for your sake</em>- We see here the mixture of paganism and spirituality which was apparent amongst all of them. Laban "divined", by paganism, that there was the blessing of Yahweh in all this. Anyone who used enchantment (s.w. "divined") was to be killed under the Mosaic law (<em><a href='B:30 19:26'>Lev 19:26</a></em>; <em><a href='B:50 18:10'>Deu 18:10</a></em>), and it's hard to think that God’s basic morality was radically different before the law was codified by Moses. </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>We have here a primary fulfilment of the promise that Abraham's seed would be a blessing to the nations; for Laban was blessed because of his association with the seed. Laban is presented as a "foreigner" in relation to Jacob; see on <em><a href='B:10 31:15'>Gen 31:15</a></em>). And the covenant promises we likewise have received have their primary fulfilments in this life, as well as the promise of eternal inheritance in the future Kingdom of God on earth. And yet the grace of it all is that at the time, Jacob was largely still in unbelief. He had been promised that he and his seed would be a blessing to those of north, south, east and west; and straight after that promise he continues his journey <em>to the east</em> and is a blessing to those there (<em><a href='B:10 28:13-15'>Gen 28:13-15</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 29:1'>Gen 29:1</a></em>). See on :39.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He said, Appoint me your wages, and I will give it</em>- We recall how initially, it was Jacob who offered the terms of wages to be given. Clearly Jacob is now in the ascendancy, with Laban desperate for him to stay. Jacob reasons in the typical Eastern way: 'I intend to do this, but if you pay me that, then I will not do so, at least not straight away'. Perhaps Jacob took some time to think about the possibilities, coming up with the mad idea of increasing his wealth by pagan practices if he could obtain large numbers of spotted animals.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He said to him, You know how I have served you, and how your livestock have fared with me</em>- The repeated idea that "You know I have served you" (:26) may be referencing some claim by Laban that Jacob had actually not finished his service and owed him more time. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>For it was little which you had before I came, and it has increased to a multitude- </em>The allusion is to the promises to Abraham about multiplication and blessing, and that there would be blessing for those who blessed his seed. Laban had hardly blessed Jacob, and yet Jacob perceives now that the fulfilment of those promises is by grace; for even Laban had picked up some of the promised blessing. "Before I came" is Heb. "at my footsteps" which reflects again how Jacob feels now in the ascendency over Laban, and is sensing that the elder (Laban) is serving the younger (Jacob) by Divine blessing, according to the promises to Abraham.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Yahweh has blessed you wherever I turned. Now when will I provide for my own house also?</em>- Jacob saw God as the one who gave physical blessing; he saw the promises of Divine blessing as primarily about material blessing. He missed their basic import, which was of forgiveness and the Kingdom (<em><a href='B:510 3:26'>Act 3:26</a></em>). However it is also true that God did bless Laban materially because of Jacob. This was very much part of the promise that Abraham's seed would be blessed and be a blessing to others. But Jacob didn't himself accept Yahweh as his God at this point. We see again how the covenant promises to Abraham had initial fulfilments even when the people were not committed to the covenant. Just as the preconditions of leaving land and family, in order to receive another land and family, were not obeyed by Abraham and Isaac- and yet they still received the blessings promised. It's rather like how the Lord shared His table with sinners, in order to lead them to repentance. The goodness of God leads us to repentance, as Paul says. God therefore doesn't simply reward righteousness with blessing, and disobedience with cursing. He is more subtle than that. Because He wants to elicit our obedience. And He does that by blessing us even when we are disobedient- so that the thoughtful soul will later perceive and marvel at His grace, and respond. It is so that God is outside of our kind of time, but beyond that, we see here how grace operates. And we too are to relate to others beyond an immediate response to their acceptance or rejection of our message and love for them. </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>Jacob thought that God had blessed Laban in fulfillment of the Abrahamic promises, simply because Laban's flocks had greatly increased; he saw the "blessing" as physical prosperity. He was sharing the over-physical view of the promises which his father Isaac held, who mentioned the promised blessing as essentially concerning material blessings in this life (<em><a href='B:10 28:3-4'>Gen 28:3-4</a></em>). As with David and Solomon, the weakness of the parents was repeated in the child. This perception of the promises as only for his personal, physical benefit was clearly evidenced in the way in which he was so bent on obtaining the birthright from Esau.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>"Now when will I provide for my own house also?" Jacob slyly asked Laban, and on this pretext spent then next six years using some pagan myth about cattle breeding to take Laban's cattle from him and amass them for himself. What he came to think of as "his flock" (<em><a href='B:10 31:4'>Gen 31:4</a></em>) was a reflection of his mad materialism; he used all his (considerable) human strength to achieve it, and then turned round and said he had only been serving Laban with it (<em><a href='B:10 31:6'>Gen 31:6</a></em>). Yet these very words are alluded to in <em><a href='B:610 5:8'>1Ti 5:8</a></em> as an example for faithful men to copy; indeed, Paul says, if you don't do as Jacob did, you're worse than a pagan! We see here the great focus of God upon what is positive in a person, just as elements of Sarah's bitter and sceptical words are quoted in the New Testament with approval. And yet the Spirit through Paul also recognized the weak side of Jacob; "evil men... deceiving and being deceived" (<em><a href='B:620 3:13'>2Ti 3:13</a></em>) is a sure reference to Jacob. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He said, What shall I give you? Jacob said, You shall not give me anything. If you will do this thing for me, I will again feed your flock and keep it</em>- Jacob asks not for wages, but for Laban's spotted cattle. Perhaps Jacob was beginning to think more of his grandfather Abraham, for "You shall not give me anything (because God has blessed me)" was the spirit of Abraham after his victory near Damascus (<em><a href='B:10 14:23'>Gen 14:23</a></em>). He may well also have been sardonically alluding to Laban's words that he 'could not give' Jacob his younger daughter Rachel despite his having served for her (<em><a href='B:10 29:26'>Gen 29:26</a></em>). </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>I will pass through all your flock today, removing from there every speckled and spotted one, and every black one among the sheep, and the spotted and speckled among the goats-</em> Stipulating the terms of his own contract recalls how Jacob did likewise when offering to work seven years to marry Rachel. The similarity is such that it would seem Jacob is here trying to get equal with Laban for the deception done to him. He is seeking to deceive Laban, as Laban deceived him. But he later wouldn't wish Esau to so take revenge for the deception he had performed, and would've remembered this with shame. Jacob believed that through some pagan ritual, he could increase the numbers of the spotted animals; and perhaps he also had some idea to get them to breed unspotted offspring if they conceived in front of white rods. This has no truth to it and yet God worked through it. We must look for the positive in others, and like the Lord in His attitude to demons, bear with them and recognize faith when we see it. God worked through the pagan superstitions of Jacob regarding the speckled animals, and through the wrong beliefs of Rachel and Leah regarding their children… in order to <em>build </em>the house of Israel. He didn’t cut off His dealings with men at the first sign of wrong understanding or weak faith or mixed motives. </p><p style='margin-left:1em'><em>This will be my hire</em>- Leah has just used this word in claiming that one of her pregnancies was her "hire" from God (:18 s.w.). All of them had the idea that good and wise behaviour led to directly related reward or "hire". Such justification by works was and is a way of feeling good about ourselves. Jacob was yet to learn the reality of grace; that it's not about measure for measure. The <em>wages</em> of sin are contrasted with the <em>free gift </em>or grace of God in <em><a href='B:520 6:23'>Rom 6:23</a></em> and elsewhere.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>So my righteousness will answer for me hereafter, when you come concerning my hire that is before you. Every one that is not speckled and spotted among the goats, and black among the sheep, that might be with me, will be counted stolen</em>- See on <em><a href='B:10 25:31'>Gen 25:31</a></em>. This attitude that <em>he</em> could bring about the fulfillment of God’s promises through his own efforts was the outcome of Jacob's self-righteousness; see on :32. This is clearly shown when he says that his righteousness had caused his cattle to increase, although he later came to see that this increase of cattle was due to his receipt of the promised Divine blessing (<em><a href='B:10 32:10'>Gen 32:10</a></em>). The RSV renders "righteousness" as "honesty"; Jacob had been far from honest in his life, and although he was intimating to Laban that he was going to gain from this because of his honesty / righteousness, Jacob does come over as very hypocritical and self-righteous. Jacob's plan was to use a pagan myth to multiply his initial flock of speckled and spotted goats and black sheep. "Black sheep" had the same connotations in those days as the term has even today; the flock of Jacob / Israel were black sheep, and yet God blessed and multiplied them and they became the foundation of His people.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Laban said, Behold, let it be according to your word</em>- The idea could be as the AV implies, 'You must be joking, I wish it might be so advantageous for me!'. Jacob was aiming to multiply his numbers of black sheep, which were despised by other shepherds and surrounding society, to such a degree that he would redefine and change the negative perception of black sheep and spotty goats. And he succeeded; as in a wider sense the Father did likewise through His work with black sheep and spotty animals. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>That day, he removed the male goats that were streaked and spotted, and all the female goats that were speckled and spotted, every one that had white in it, and all the black ones among the sheep, and gave them into the hand of his sons</em>- It's hard to know whether this refers to Laban or Jacob. If to Laban, then he was removing even the spotted animals so that Jacob would have even fewer of them to start off with, hence Jacob accuses Laban of deceit in this matter (<em><a href='B:10 31:7'>Gen 31:7</a></em>). Yet despite this, from the tiniest group of black sheep and spotty goats... God’s purpose of blessing worked out, just as it does today, despite all Jacob's misunderstandings and wrong attitudes.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He set three days’ journey between himself and Jacob, and Jacob fed the rest of Laban’s flocks</em>- The last phrase shows that despite Laban removing even the spotted animals, Jacob acted with integrity in still feeding Laban's flocks. Although he had not been honest in the past, Jacob was learning integrity. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob took to himself rods of fresh poplar, almond, plane tree, peeled white streaks in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods</em>- Jacob’s superstitious use of mandrakes and poplar rods was used by God to fulfill the physical aspect of the promised blessing; he used "white" rods to take power from Laban, the "white" one ("poplar" and "Laban" are related words in Hebrew), and to give him white animals- and God worked through it. Poplar had pagan associations (s.w. <em><a href='B:350 4:13'>Hos 4:13</a></em>); Jacob was acting according to paganic beliefs and yet claiming it would be Yahweh's blessing of him. He later came to see how wrong he was, and that the increase had not been due to the paganism but alone due to Yahweh's actual blessing (<em><a href='B:10 32:10'>Gen 32:10</a></em>). "Almond" is <em>luz</em>, the name of the place where God had first appeared to him and promised him blessing (<em><a href='B:10 28:19'>Gen 28:19</a></em>); again we see a hopeless mix of paganism and tokenism along with his awareness of Yahweh's promises, wishing to make those promises come true through his paganic rituals. </p><p>The streaks in the rods were supposed to encourage the streaked animals to bear prolific numbers and quality of streaked offspring if they looked at them whilst mating. This has no truth in reality, although similar myths about looking at certain colours or images during intercourse are around to this day in some parts of the world.</p><p>The whiteness of the rods appears to be thought to serve the same function as the mandrakes; a kind of animal aphrodisiac. And the point is that all these human attempts to fulfil the promise of fertility are inappropriate. Indeed the record almost pokes fun at them, not least in Jacob returning from work to be told he must sleep with a woman because her son had gathered mandrakes. The account of Jacob and his wives is clearly parallel with that of Jacob and his flocks. That is the key to understanding the otherwise enigmatic and difficult story of Jacob's breeding experiments. This becomes even clearer if we understand the rods as being inserted into the female animals so that they "conceived / became heated upon the rods" (Heb.). Jacob returns from a day doing this kind of thing with animals to have his wives trying to get pregnant by him through mandrakes. </p><p>The connection between rods and a phallic symbol is clear in Hos. 4:10–12: "Truly, they shall eat, but not be sated; they shall  fornicate, but not be satisfied, because they have forsaken obeying Yahweh; fornication, wine, and new wine take the mind of my people: it consults its rod, its phallus directs them". This is confirmed if indeed the 'poplar rods' are styrax officinalis (Arabic lubnay), which are called in this way from the secretion of a milk-like gum. All this was pagan idolatry, and Jacob uses these things. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He set the rods which he had peeled opposite the flocks in the gutters in the watering-troughs where the flocks came to drink. They conceived when they came to drink</em>- The idea was as in some primitive cultures today, that by looking at something at the time of intercourse, the offspring will become like it. He wanted his spotted animals to produce more spotted offspring; and then through the procedure of :40-42 to produce white offspring (although :33 might preclude that view), and so he made them conceive whilst looking at white peeled poplar rods, which would've been "streaked" in the sense that there was some white and some dark showing on the rods. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>The flocks conceived before the rods, and the flocks produced streaked, speckled, and spotted</em>- See on :38. On :37 I suggested that they conceived <em>upon</em> the rods. The flocks conceiving in front of the rods / poles surely has reference to the concept of the pagan <em>asherah</em> poles, before which worshippers had sex. Jacob was clearly influenced by this wrong idea- and yet God patiently worked with him through it. Jacob appears to have had the idea that what a female thinks about or has before her eyes at the time of labour or conception, will affect the child. And so he peeled stripes off the rods so they appeared 'ringstraked', or striped- in the belief that if the female cattle gave birth or conceived looking at them, then the offspring would be striped too, like the striped rods. However, the connection with the asherah poles suggests that Jacob's beliefs were associated with pagan fertility myths, rather than faith in Yahweh the God of his fathers. <em><a href='B:400 1:5'>Mic 1:5</a></em> explicitly links Jacob's sin with idolatry. Jacob's superstitious ideas about the cattle mating were used by God to teach Jacob that He would bless him physically, as a prelude to the more important spiritual blessings which Jacob was later to value. There is no biological truth at all in what he did. Jacob wasn't specifically corrected for his paganism; later he must have realized the depth of God’s grace in still working through him at this time, still giving him blessing. God blessed the whole thing so that it worked, apparently confirming Jacob in it by a vision (<em><a href='B:10 31:10-12'>Gen 31:10-12</a></em>). God will go along with things which are poorly motivated and even incorrect- but in order to finally teach that it was all nonsense, and His gift of grace shines through it all. We have been introduced to this whole mixture of paganism and Yahweh's involvement in :27, where Laban's pagan 'divination' was used by Yahweh. And now we are reading of how Jacob's pagan ideas were likewise used by Yahweh, to bless him. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob separated the lambs, and set the faces of the flocks toward the streaked and all the black in the flock of Laban: and he put his own droves apart, and didn’t put them into Laban’s flock</em>- Although initially Laban had separated many of the spotted and speckled and put them in his own flocks, Jacob still had the job of looking after them. Perhaps the idea is that Jacob made his black sheep look at the white sheep in Laban's flock, which he had at his disposal as he cared for them. His theory was that the offspring of black sheep whilst mating would be speckled if they conceived whilst looking at white sheep. This has no truth to it, but God used it to provide Jacob with great fertility and blessing of speckled animal offspring. We recall that "Rachel" means "ewe lamb", so perhaps the idea was that he was using the Rachel situation, under God’s hand, to still produce blessing. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>It happened, whenever the stronger of the flock conceived, that Jacob laid the rods before the eyes of the flock in the gutters, that they might conceive among the rods</em>- The "stronger" may refer to the flocks who were more strongly in heat, and the "feeble" those who were less in heat. The peeled rods would have secreted gum and resin which were thought to be aphrodisiacs. The situation here is introduced by Leah using mandrakes to get Jacob to sleep with her and to induce her fertility; the mandrakes didn’t give fertility, God alone did. And yet God worked through this bunk science and quasi-faith to give blessing. And again here. The "stronger" or more virile animals were Jacob's because they had been supposedly influenced by the aphrodisiacs from the rods; but as we learn in <em><a href='B:10 31:10-12'>Gen 31:10-12</a></em>, the blessing was from God and not from that.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>But when the flock were feeble, he didn’t put them in. So the feebler were Laban’s, and the stronger Jacob’s</em>- The idea is not the "the feeble cattle..." were not put in. Rather, those who had less virility at the time because they had not been put into intense heat by the supposed aphrodisiac effect of the rods. As noted on :40, although initially Laban had separated many of the spotted and speckled and put them in his own flocks, Jacob still had the job of looking after them. He did them no harm and didn’t steal them. He simply didn’t operate his pagan trick on them; and his cattle brought forth stronger animals than those of Laban, for whom he didn’t place his striped rods in their troughs. And so <em>relatively speaking</em>, Jacob's flocks were stronger than Laban's. </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>The blessing was due to God not the rods (<em><a href='B:10 31:10-12'>Gen 31:10-12</a></em>). But the flocks would have been stressed by the separation made by Laban (:40). The differing behaviours of pure white and spotted animals <em>when the group is under stress</em> has been studied, and it has been found that the spotted will become dominant and more virile, and the unspotted less so. This on a human level may have been behind the blessing experienced. An academic article in the <em>Russian Journal of Genetics: Applied Research, 2011 </em>confirms this, and actually quotes this passage in Genesis 30 as confirmation for what was observed by academics at the University of Novosibirsk, Russia: "Stress can induce piebaldness in progeny. We are able to test this statement not only experimentally, but in natural conditions. Animals with white spots are always present in the water vole population that we have been studying for many years. We regularly assessed the level of stress in this population. Indeed, the assumption that in years with higher stress more white spotted animals would be born was confirmed. Then we found that the spotted animals are more resistant to stress and outperform unspotted animals in reproduction in stressful years" (Mikhail Anatolievich Potapov, 'Evolutionary ecology of animal fertility: Five decades of studies of reproduction as a link between generations' in Russian Journal of Genetics: Applied Research · July 2011).&nbsp;&nbsp; </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>The man increased exceedingly, and had large flocks, female servants and male servants, and camels and donkey</em>- This indicated to him that the promise to him at Bethel was coming true (<em><a href='B:10 28:14'>Gen 28:14</a></em>). "The man" hints that Jacob was very human in all this. He used his newfound wealth from the spotted animals, and his redefinition of the value of black sheep, to buy servants, camels and donkeys. We recall how both Abraham and Isaac are recorded as being materially blessed straight after they had lied about their wives. Likewise, the use of paganism, folklore and bunk science to increase his wealth was not exactly spiritual; but God worked through it to bring about the primary fulfilment of the promises to him. Just as He so graciously works with us.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He heard the words of Laban’s sons, saying, Jacob has taken away all that was our father’s. From that which was our father’s, has he gotten all this wealth</em>- This recalls how Esau spoke in his heart, that he would murder Jacob; and those words were heard. Attitudes were heard as words, as they are today. Laban had doubtless misrepresented the agreement about the spotted and speckled, as noted on :8. They likely believed his story, and of course noted that the Jacob who had been a poor shepherd for 14 years had now suddenly got wealthy. The sudden wealth did of course look suspicious. The tension served to help their sisters, Rachel and Leah, to have to make a decision between Jacob and their fathers' family; and they came down on the right side.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob saw the expression on Laban’s face, and, behold, it was not toward him as before</em>- Laban had abused Jacob for 14 years. But the sudden increase in Jacob's wealth had altered the balance of power; and no longer was Jacob legally bound to serve Laban. Laban would have sensed that he the elder was coming to serve the younger. The changed relationship became a push factor, encouraging Jacob to do what he should have done earlier- to make returning to the <em>eretz</em> a priority.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Yahweh said to Jacob, Return to the land of your fathers, and to your relatives, and I will be with you</em>- The plan had originally been that Jacob would remain with Laban until Rebekah his mother sent him a message to return home. That message apparently never came, and it seems Rebekah was dead. God now replaces Rebekah for Jacob. I've noted several times that he seemed psychologically dominated by her, the stay at home mamma's boy who ended up trapped in a complex situation far from home, obsessively in love with a woman who restimulated his feelings toward his mother; and for whom he spent 14 years in servitude. And now God replaces Rebekah; <em>He</em> specifically calls Jacob homeward, and not Rebekah. This was all part of His program to draw Jacob into a direct personal relationship with Himself, rather than Jacob passively going alone with the religion of mum and dad.</p><p>Here we have God telling Jacob whilst he lived with Laban to return to the land and people of his fathers- Canaan. This is the very opposite of Abraham's reasoning in Gen. 24:6- that the land of his fathers was Mesopotamia. The real land of his fathers was not there in Mesopotomia, but Canaan. Yet Abraham had not perceived that, for he reasons exactly the other way around. This is yet another hint at incomplete faith in Abraham, and his desire to not totally separate from his land and family as required.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob sent and called Rachel and Leah to the field to his flock</em>- Seeing they had young children to care for and bring with them, this was a major invitation. It seems from :17 that they left from "the field" without returning home. The need to all be together "in the field" was fabricated so that they could make the escape without Laban and his sons forcing them to remain. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>And said to them, I see the expression on your father’s face, that it is not toward me as before; but the God of my father has been with me</em>- We note "my father"- not ‘<em>my</em> God’. Although Yahweh was still not fully Jacob's God, Jacob puts before his wives a clear choice- the god of their father, or the one true God of <em>his</em> father. There is something almost childishly proud about the way Jacob sets off <em>his</em> father against the deceitful father of his wives (:5-7). Laban mocks this almost immature homesickness in <em><a href='B:10 31:30'>Gen 31:30</a></em>. "Has been with me" could refer to an Angelic visitation, but it is more likely referring to the promise of Genesis 28 at Bethel, that "I will be with you". Jacob was starting to see that that promise of 20 (or 40) years ago had indeed been fulfilled; and he had vouched that if it were, then Yahweh would be his God. He still struggles with fulfilling that, as he talks about Yahweh as the God of his father, rather than his own God. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>You know that I have served your father with all of my strength</em>- The suggestion could be that he had served Laban with all his strength, when the implication of the first commandment was that a man should serve God with all his strength (<em><a href='B:480 12:30'>Mar 12:30</a></em>). Now Jacob wanted to serve God and not Laban; his heavenly Father rather than "your father". The scene would have been programmatic for the wilderness generation who first heard the Genesis history; they had been called to no longer serve Pharaoh, but to escape and travel through the desert to the promised land of Canaan and serve Yahweh instead of Pharaoh. There was a period of great physical blessing upon their offspring, just as there had been upon Jacob's cattle; see on :7,21,28.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Your father has deceived me, and changed my wages ten times, but God didn’t allow him to hurt me</em>- The situation is similar to how God "didn’t allow" the Abimelechs to take Sarah or Rebekah and sleep with them. Jacob was coming to see that there was this same unmerited, gracious activity on his behalf by the Spirit. Jacob had of course deceived his own father. He was being helped to realize how Isaac had felt; to the end he might repent the more deeply and learn the lessons. We go through similar prodding from the Lord who works also in our lives.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>I suggested on :6 that Jacob's escape from Laban has similarities with Israel's exodus from Egypt and Pharaoh. As Laban "deceived" Jacob, so the same word is used of how Pharaoh dealt "deceitfully" with Israel (<em><a href='B:20 8:29'>Exo 8:29</a></em>). See on :21. LXX "ten lambs" could suggest 'ten lambing seasons'. Each season, Jacob offered Laban a different deal as to which types of animals he could keep; and each time, those types multiplied.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>If he said this, ‘The speckled will be your wages’, then all the flock bore speckled. If he said this, ‘The streaked will be your wages’, then all the flock bore streaked</em>- Laban was obviously aghast at how Jacob's flocks were growing so rapidly, and tried to amend the original agreement so that some of the increased numbers would be his. He is portrayed as an avaricious liar and deceiver; although Jacob had been little better. The difference between Jacob and Laban was simply God’s grace, and Jacob's eventual openness to this.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Thus God has taken away your father’s livestock, and given them to me</em>- Yet Jacob was soon going to be telling Esau that he wanted him to 'take away' all his material blessings; see on <em><a href='B:10 33:11'>Gen 33:11</a></em>. Jacob didn’t steal Laban's animals, but his own flock did grow from the stock of black and spotted animals which Laban originally agreed to give to Jacob. Their increase was as it were taken away from Laban and given to Jacob. But Jacob insists this was done by God, and perhaps this is an admission that the paganism and folklore bunk science he had used was not the real cause of the great increase. He now justifies what he did as obedience to an Angelic dream (:10,11), although the dream is ill defined and unspecific about how the breeding was to be done.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>It happened during mating season that I lifted up my eyes, and saw in a dream, and behold, the male goats which leaped on the flock were streaked, speckled, and grizzled</em>- The explanation suggests that the wives were ignorant as to how Jacob had acquired such huge fecundity amongst his flocks. Or perhaps he is telling them to the effect: 'We thought it was all due to those pagan rituals and folklore we believed; but let me tell you, it wasn't that at all. It was from God'. There was nothing told Jacob about using the rods, bunk science or other pagan devices which he did. That was his interpretation of the dream. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>The angel of God said to me in the dream, ‘Jacob’, and I said, ‘Here I am’</em>- These were the very words of response to Angelic visitation made by Abraham and Isaac. Jacob is being led into situations which they were in, and he responds as they do. His knowledge of how they responded was therefore significant; and whilst Biblical knowledge of itself will not save anyone, the more we are aware of Biblical history, the quicker we will perceive when we are in essentially similar situations and will respond correctly. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He said, ‘Now lift up your eyes, and behold, all the male goats which leap on the flock are streaked, speckled, and grizzled, for I have seen all that Laban does to you</em>- “Lift up your eyes, and behold...”&nbsp; is a promise couched in the language with which God invited Abraham to lift up his eyes and behold the land which He would give him (<em><a href='B:10 13:14-15'>Gen 13:14-15</a></em>). Even whilst Jacob was trying to fulfill God’s promises for Him, still half worshipping idols, God gently went along with him to teach him firstly that He <em>would </em>&nbsp;keep promises, and then to show Jacob the more spiritual essence of it all.&nbsp;The idea was that God had seen Jacob's affliction, and His response was to give Jacob huge numbers of spotty animals. But Jacob worked this out in practice through his usage of the pagan rods and other devices; but all the same, God worked through it. &nbsp; I see this as the first hint at Jacob''s conversion, which will become more developed over the next two chapters. He is accepting the teaching that despite all his human efforts to be fruitful, it is God who has given him blessing.  </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar, where you vowed a vow to me. Now arise, get out from this land, and return to the land of your birth’</em>- The memory of 20 or 40 years ago would have been dim for Jacob, so maybe he needed reminding. It was presumably an Angel who appeared to him at Bethel, so the Angel he now sees is saying that He is the same Angel as in the earlier vision. As noted before, Jacob originally planned to only return to the <em>eretz</em> when he received a message from his mother; but she was probably dead, and so the Angel is effectively telling him that He is now replacing Rebekah. Jacob is to grow up and relate with God as a man, directly, and not through fulfilling parental expectation. Jacob is saying that the call to return to the<em> eretz</em> came from God at the same time as the vision of amassing wealth from spotted and black animals. It could therefore have been six years before this time of final exodus. But Jacob is only now telling his wives about the vision. We sense a distance between him and both of them, and a lack of spiritual connection between them. Yet out of this dysfunctional and unspiritual background, the Father formed His special people.</p><p>So although Jacob may have forgotten his vow, God was needling him to return from Mesopotamia to Canaan- so that God could fulfil the promise and keep covenant with Jacob. Just as Abraham had been 'encouraged' to make the same journey. In Jacob's case, God worked through the totally dysfunctional situation with Laban as the push factor to make Jacob obedient and return to Canaan; just as with Abraham, it was his father Terah who wanted to emigrate from Ur and took Abraham with him. Man is not alone before the call to obedience; God nudges and coaxes us towards it. Jacob left Mesopotamia for Canaan because he feared Laban ["Because I was afraid...", :31]; not because of faith and perception that Canaan was the land of the covenant. Jacob's wives were likewise prepared by their father's materialism and abuse- they had to leave, as they saw it, in order to assure their inheritance and old age provision.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Rachel and Leah answered him, Is there still any portion or inheritance for us in our father’s house?</em>- There was no statement here of love for Jacob nor Yahweh. Rather they considered that being Jacob's wives cut them out of any possible inheritance in their father’s family, and so they may as well throw in their lot with Jacob. The decision making process as revealed here seems very mercenary. The idea is as GNB "There is nothing left for us to inherit from our father"- because he had spent it on himself (:15). This could mean that he had spent their dowry on himself- perhaps implying that any benefit arising through Jacob's 14 years of service to Laban should have gone to them. And there is material in the Nuzi documents which suggests this was how dowry was reckoned in those times. Hence they consider that whatever Jacob had taken from Laban (:16) was not in fact theft, but a taking of what was rightfully theirs. Or it could be that Laban had declared that he was leaving his estate to the sons he had had by Bilhah and Zilpah. We can then see again the spaggheti junction syndrome- the sons Jacob had had by those same women received nothing. There would have been huge conflict between the sons. Jacob's family was riven by conflict and dysfunction- but out of it came the Israel of God. Yahweh showed for all time how He works through human dysfunction.  </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Aren’t we accounted by him as foreigners? For he has sold us, and has also quite devoured our money</em>- We learn from this that Laban counted Jacob a "foreigner". This means that the blessing he felt from Jacob was an example of the Abrahamic blessing starting to come upon 'foreigners' (see on <em><a href='B:10 30:27'>Gen 30:27</a></em>). It seems that as Laban ten times changed the "wages" of Jacob (:7), so he had also added to the terms of marriage. It was not only seven years service for each daughter, but also "money", or (Heb.), "silver". And he had spent that money, in ways the daughters seem not to approve of, because it has left them with nothing to inherit anyway (:14). Devouring an inheritance is the language of the prodigal son; and yet that same parable presents Jacob as the prodigal. But the language is in places also appropriate to Laban, showing that in essence these two deceitful and materialistic men were little different. The saving difference was simply God’s grace and Jacob's openness to it. </p><p>"Sold" is 'deceived' or 'tricked'. The sisters had been deceived by their father, both at the wedding night and in subsequent issues. The whole Jacob family had been both deceivers and deceived. Jacob 'deceives' Laban (:20). "Money" is a term used in the Nuzi tablets about a dowry. Laban had presumably demanded even more dowry than the 14 years of service- and had been given it, and blown it. The idea of a dowry payment in Mesopotamia was so that the father had resources to care for his daughter if for any reason she returned to live with him. Or the dowry was kept by the wives, worn as gold around their heads, in case they were divorced or widowed and needed to care for themselves later in life. Remember that divorce was very easy for men at that time, and was often practiced for petty reasons. Rachel and Leah consider that they have no assured future with their father, because he had spent their dowry money. He treated them "as foreigners"- perhaps meaning that he treated them as foreigners treated their daughters, just spending the dowry money, rather than following the local custom of keeping it in case the father had to care for his daughters again. Their decision to remain with Jacob is therefore presented as being not out of love, but from fear for their future without him. Just as Leah so wanted to have male children so that Jacob wouldn't divorce her. So out of this loveless family, God formed the Israel of God. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>For all the riches which God has taken away from our father, that is ours and our children’s. Now then, whatever God has said to you, do</em>- They seem to reason that their father has spent all his wealth, so they have no inheritance from him anyway (:14); therefore it's as well that God had taken some of their father’s wealth and given it to Jacob. And they feel justified in taking it because they consider it to be their inheritance anyway. However, they were repeating a misunderstanding common amongst Laban's children (see on :1). Jacob hadn't stolen or taken away anything from Laban. They are saying how it appeared. He had originally had a prime flock of unspotted animals, which Jacob would look after in return for Laban's spotted animals becoming his. But God had hugely blessed those spotted animals and the herds of them had multiplied. It was only an incorrect appearance that God had taken Laban's wealth and given it to Jacob. But as with the language of demons, the Bible often records things from the perspective of the characters, without clarifying that their viewpoint is actually false or only partially correct.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Then Jacob rose up, and set his sons and his wives on the camels</em>- Travel by camel would have recalled the account of Rebekah, Jacob's mother, travelling from the same area to the <em>eretz</em> on camel. Now finally Jacob was doing what God had intended he do when he first met Leah; marry her and return to the land of promise. The motivation of Rebekah was spiritual, it seems; whereas Rachel and Leah returned because they effectively had no other option, and faced poverty if they remained behind (see on :14,15). Jacob clearly would have had daughters too, although we only read of Dinah. But the focus is upon the sons; because this is to be taken as the account of when "Israel" as a nation, "the fathers", first entered the land of promise. And it was in a state of unspirituality. </p><p>We note that Jacob put his sons and then his wives on the camels, whereas when Esau moved, it is mentioned that he took his wives first and then his sons (Gen. 36:6 "Esau took his wives and his sons"). It could be argued that Jacob didn't really love his four wives apart from Rachel. His focus was upon the sons they had produced. Whereas Esau focuses firstly upon his wives- perhaps another of several indications that on a secular level, Esau was a far nicer guy than Jacob. But Jacob the twister was the one God worked with, as Jacob had that basic faith which Esau apparently didn't. On its own, this may appear to be over interpretation; but it must be put together with many other instances of Esau appearing a 'nicer guy' than Jacob in secular terms. More forgiving, more honest etc.  </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>And he took away all his livestock, and all his possessions which he had gathered, including the livestock which he had gained in Paddan Aram, to go to Isaac his father, to the land of Canaan</em>- The AV better reflects the manic 'getting': "all his goods which he had gotten, the cattle of his getting, which he had gotten". After 14 years of servitude as a labourer, his plan with the rods had led to huge and sudden increase of wealth. This would have surely reminded him of the Divine promise at Bethel to bless him and be with him, and return him to his land. His plan to return "to Isaac" suggests Rebekah was dead; her ruse to get blessing for her favourite son led to her never seeing him again in this life. </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>An example of following the negative spiritual traits of our forbears is seen in Jacob's penchant for materialism. This was a weakness of the whole Abraham family; a specific word is used about how they “gathered" material wealth. Abraham did it (<em><a href='B:10 12:5'>Gen 12:5</a></em>), and so now did Jacob. The list of what they "gathered" is almost identical (<em><a href='B:10 24:35'>Gen 24:35</a></em> cp. <em><a href='B:10 30:43'>Gen 30:43</a></em>). Faithless fear (cp. <em><a href='B:50 20:8'>Deu 20:8</a></em>; Mt. 25;25; <em><a class='bible' href='#b66:21:8'>Rev 21:8</a></em>) was another characteristic; in Abraham (<em><a href='B:10 15:1'>Gen 15:1</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 20:11'>Gen 20:11</a></em>); Isaac (<em><a href='B:10 26:7'>Gen 26:7</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 26:24'>Gen 26:24</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 31:42'>Gen 31:42</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 31:53'>Gen 31:53</a></em>); and followed by Jacob (<em><a href='B:10 28:17'>Gen 28:17</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 31:31'>Gen 31:31</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 32:7'>Gen 32:7</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 32:11'>Gen 32:11</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 41:3'>Gen 41:3</a></em>). &nbsp; </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Now Laban had gone to shear his sheep: and Rachel stole the teraphim that were her father’s</em>- He used them for divination (<em><a href='B:10 30:27'>Gen 30:27</a></em>), so maybe she thought Laban would use them to divine where Jacob and his family had fled to, or would use the teraphim to curse them. Such images were also thought to be the guardians of the family property and the source of blessing, "teraphim" coming from the root<em> taarap</em> to be prosperous. Rachel had just lamented that she was written out of the inheritance, as it were, such as it now was. So it wasn't simply that it was her idolatry which led to her stealing them; she was angry with her father and was bitter about the issue of the inheritance (see on :14,15). This was used providentially by God to ensure she would wish to emigrate with Jacob to the land of promise. They were also thought to be the source of fertility; Rachel should have learnt that they actually had no power in this at all, but such power was only of God. It was not until <em><a href='B:10 35:2'>Gen 35:2</a></em> that Jacob ordered these images to be discarded and buried beneath a tree; they were likely valuable, as such teraphim were typically covered in gold and precious stones. He sacrificed family wealth to ensure that idolatry was ended amongst his children and wives, and that they recognized that blessing was solely from Yahweh; a principle which remains relevant to this day.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>The escape was planned for when Laban would be out in the field. Rachel presumably knew that her going out to meet Jacob in the fields was a signal to escape; so she stole the teraphim before leaving. Or perhaps she was the guardian of them anyway and carried them in her personal stuff; for they may have been quite small household gods. Her lack of spirituality is here clearly displayed; and yet Jacob had spent 14 years working for this woman. Jacob had recently protested to Laban that he would not steal a thing from him (<em><a href='B:10 30:33'>Gen 30:33</a></em>); and now his favourite wife steals her father’s images. The same word for "stole" is now used in :20,26,27 for how Jacob "stole away" (AV) from Laban, as if to suggest that he was just as deceitful as was Rachel.</p>&nbsp;


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob deceived Laban the Syrian, in that he didn’t tell him that he was running away</em>- Laban is called "the Syrian"; although he was a member of the Abraham family, he is spoken of now as a Gentile. And yet his "blessing" on account of Jacob was therefore the primary fulfilment of the Abrahamic blessing, that the nations would be blessed through his seed. Jacob's behaviour at this point is presented as 'deceit' although it was perfectly understandable- in order to continue the idea that both Jacob and Laban were equally deceitful. It was just that Jacob accepted God’s grace.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>So he fled with all that he had. He rose up, passed over the River, and set his face toward the mountain of Gilead</em>- "The river" refers to the Euphrates, the boundary of the <em>eretz</em>. Jacob is presented as now returning to the promised land. But the "river" also refers to the Nile, and is perhaps used to portray the similarities with Israel's exodus from bondage in Egypt, and then passing through the water of the Red Sea; see on :6,7,22.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Laban was told on the third day that Jacob had fled</em>- This continues the connection with Pharaoh, who was "told... that the people fled" and then pursued them over the water (<em><a href='B:20 14:5'>Exo 14:5</a></em>; <em><a href='B:20 14:8'>Exo 14:8</a></em>). The parallels were of great relevance to the initial audience of Genesis- Israel in the wilderness, who had likewise fled their abusers and been pursued. And they too were saved by grace; for Ezekiel 20 says that they took the idols of Egypt with them after spoiling the Egyptians, just as Jacob was accused of spoiling Laban and taking his idols with him. See on :6,7,21.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He took his relatives with him, and pursued after him seven days’ journey. He overtook him in the mountain of Gilead</em>- See on :22; this continues the parallel with the exodus from Egypt, with Pharaoh (cp. Laban) being informed the Israelites had fled (<em><a href='B:20 14:5'>Exo 14:5</a></em>) and taking his chosen people with him to purse and overtake the fleeing Israelites (<em><a href='B:20 14:9'>Exo 14:9</a></em>); see on :6,7,21,22. The distance is about 500 km. from Haran to the Gilead mountains. We wonder why it took Laban so long to catch up with Jacob, who was moving slowly because of the huge herds he was driving, some of whom were pregnant (<em><a href='B:10 33:13'>Gen 33:13</a></em>). Surely the delay was providentially overruled so that Jacob had time to cross the Euphrates into the promised land, and the meeting between them with the conclusion that Jacob and family could never return past that point was made once they were firmly in the<em> eretz</em>. <em>&nbsp;</em></p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>God came to Laban the Syrian, in a dream of the night, and said to him, Take heed to yourself that you don’t speak to Jacob either good or bad</em>- If this is the correct translation, then we reflect that there are times when God leaves us with a kind of neutral situation- in order to elicit our own self-examination and choice of the right path ourselves without it being forced upon us by Him. But the LXX reads: "Take heed to thyself that thou speak not at any time to Jacob evil things", and the literal Hebrew: "From good to bad". This makes better sense of Laban's words in :29; and in :42, Jacob understands this visitation of Laban as a "rebuke". This can only mean that Laban intended to murder Jacob, but was "rebuked" from that plan by God. Jacob would've recalled how Esau had likewise wanted to pursue and murder him, and he had been saved by grace. Again, circumstances repeat within our lives, as a loving Father teaches us the extent of His grace. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Laban caught up with Jacob. Now Jacob had pitched his tent in the mountain, and Laban with his relatives encamped in the mountain of Gilead</em>- The impression is given of two camps, Jacob's and Laban's. This forms the basis of "Mahanaim", the place of the two camps (<em><a href='B:10 32:2'>Gen 32:2</a></em>). But those two camps then were Angels on one camp and Jacob in the other. And he was saved from the camp of Angels coming in judgment by his pleading with the Angel he wrestled with. We are therefore to conclude that Laban indeed was coming to destroy Jacob, as noted on :24. But Jacob had been saved by the Angel who came and warned Laban not to; the same Angel Jacob wrestled with. The Angel foresaw that Jacob would at a point then future wrestle with him in prayer and prevail; and so the answer to that prayer was granted ahead of time, in saving Jacob from Laban and his camp. Laban in this sense had God behind him, as noted on :29.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Laban said to Jacob, What have you done, that you have deceived me, and carried away my daughters like captives of the sword?</em>- Jacob was indeed a deceiver, of Esau and Isaac; but this was a relatively false accusation. And yet through the process of false accusation we often find that our real and actual sins are elicited. Laban perhaps genuinely considered that his daughters were still his; he had lied so often about the conditions upon which Jacob obtained them that he perhaps came to actually believe his own lie, just as the sons of Jacob did regarding the supposed death of Joseph. And this is the problem with lying; unless repented of, the lie becomes our perceived truth.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Why did you flee secretly, and deceive me, and didn’t tell me, that I might have sent you away with mirth and with songs, with tambourine and with harp</em>- The only other party Laban had arranged for Jacob, when he married Leah, had been riddled with deceit. Laban is presented as clearly being deceitful. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>And didn’t allow me to kiss my sons and my daughters? Now have you done foolishly</em>- The charge of doing foolishly has a moral dimension, as if to say 'You sinned' (<em><a href='B:90 13:13'>1Sa 13:13</a></em>). This was a false accusation when taken specifically; and yet Jacob was indeed a sinner. And so we have what I myself have experienced, and likely many others too- a totally false and unreasonable accusation elicits within us an awareness of wherein we have actually sinned; see on :31. Laban's desire to kiss his sons and daughters could refer to his grandchildren; but it could also mean that some of his sons, the brothers of Rachel and Leah, had gone over to Jacob's side (cp. :1), just as some of the Egyptians joined with the Israelites in fleeing Egypt (see on :6,7).</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>It is in the power of my hand to hurt you- </em>"Power" translates <em>el</em>, "God"; Keil translates "there is to God my hand". He felt he had Divine right to hurt Jacob, as noted on :25, but God had also warned him not do. Laban was wrong as to why he thought Jacob could be "hurt"; Jacob had done nothing wrong to him, but we are aware from Jacob's earlier life that he had much in it that deserved Divine judgment.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'><em>But the God of your father spoke to me last night, saying, ‘Take heed to yourself that you don’t speak to Jacob either good or bad’</em>-&nbsp; See on :24. That Jacob worshipped the God of his father rather than his own God was well known. "<em>Your</em> (plural) father" (cp. AV "thee" in the previous and following verses) may suggest that Jacob was confident enough of his father’s God to have introduced it to his family, although he himself still had not reached the point where he had made this God completely his own.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Now you want to be gone, because you greatly longed for your father’s house, but why have you stolen my gods?</em>- The implication is that Jacob was a homesick boy, pining for his mum and dad. Whilst this was provocative, I have repeatedly noted that Jacob was indeed psychologically dominated by his parents to an unhealthy extent. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob answered Laban, Because I was afraid, for I said, ‘Lest you should take your daughters from me by force’</em>- "Because I was afraid" is the language of a guilty Adam in Eden. As noted on :28, a false and unreasonable accusation can elicit in us an awareness of wherein we have actually sinned. And this seems to have happened to Jacob. Jacob wisely ignores the provocation noted on :30, and focuses on the essential accusation; a good pattern for our dealing with such difficult situations. The reason Jacob gives here is absolutely true; and total honesty was not his strong point. Just as his sons were led by Joseph's interrogations to total honesty, so Jacob was led here. And we too are led to this point by the Divine hand in human life.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Anyone you find your gods with shall not live. Before our relatives, discern what is yours with me, and take it. For Jacob didn’t know that Rachel had stolen them</em>- We note the contrast between "your gods" and "the God of your father" (:29). Jacob loved Rachel and obviously assumed she had a higher level of ethics and spirituality than she actually did, imputing righteousness to the one he loved. Jacob would later reflect how the life of his beloved and yet spiritually weak Rachel had been saved at this point by absolute grace. We see again how God uses Jacob's over confident self righteousness and Rachel's human weakness and even sin- for Rachel was surely wrong to have stolen the idols- in order to finally awe us with His grace and bring us to repentance and devotion to Him alone. </p><p>Jacob's cursing of whoever had taken the idols actually came true. For Rachel died soon afterwards. Hence Jacob later reflects that Rachel died by or because of him. This is one of many Biblical warnings that what we say, especially in wishing evil, has a way of coming true. We think of David's cursing of Saul and Absalom in his Psalms, and how bitterly he wept when his cursings came true. Again we see the importance of life and living, and the significance of words, even if said in anger. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Laban went into Jacob’s tent, into Leah’s tent, and into the tent of the two female servants; but he didn’t find them. He went out of Leah’s tent, and entered into Rachel’s tent</em>- The Divine cameraman is zooming in, so we can visualize the movement at close range, as Laban moves from tent to tent, with us knowing that the idols are in the last tent, building up a sense of suspense, realizing that Rachel's life depends upon this... and he doesn't find them. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Now Rachel had taken the teraphim, put them in the camel’s saddle, and sat on them. Laban felt about all the tent, but didn’t find them</em>- The Mosaic laws about uncleanness from contact with menstruating women were surely known in essence at this time. The holy was not to be mixed with the unclean. For a menstruating woman to squat upon an idol, the supposedly holy, would've been anathema and deeply obnoxious; and the power of the idol would surely be seen as having been compromised. Rachel was driven to do this in desperation to save her own life; and God in His amazing economy worked in this way, so that Rachel had to desecrate her own beloved idols in order to save her life.</p><p>It has been suggested that Rachel stole the teraphim because they were the equivalent of the title to inheritance. Even if this is the case, she thereby betrays the same kind of obsessive materialism as her father Laban. And moreover, a lack of faith in the promises to Abraham- which were all about receiving the ultimate inheritance at a future point. Perhaps she was concerned that Laban's earlier sons by his handmaids would inherit Laban's wealth- whereas she obsessively wanted the inheritance to pass to her son. She considered herself the senior wife and that therefore her son should inherit most. Whereas Leah was technically the first wife of Jacob, at least by one week; and had born Jacob more sons, including his firstborn. "But I am the favoured wife", her argument may have run, "And so the inheritance should pass to my son". In the Emar wills from this period, uncovered in the same area in the late 20th century, there appears the case of a father bequeathing his property to his daughter "if she invoke my gods". Some of the wills on the Nuzi tablets use the same phrase. Perhaps Rachel had done this, and thought that possession of those gods would bring her inheritance from her father. She thereby appears insecure in her relationship with Jacob, just as Leah did [judging from how she named her sons]. But from all this dysfunction, God built the house of Israel. Whatever reconstruction we make, Rachel appears totally unspiritual by her actions.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>When Laban sets out to attack Jacob, it was clearly in his power to kill him. But the incident of him accusing Jacob of stealing his idols, him publicly searching the whole camp, feeling absolutely everything, and not finding them, probably led to a loss of face which meant he couldn't do what he planned to Jacob. Jacob then bursts out in proud, arrogant denunciation of Laban- not realizing that his beloved, idolatrous Rachel couldn't bear to be without those idols, and had stolen them. Despite Rachel's deceit and idolatry, and Jacob's arrogance, God worked through all this to save them. The way God works with us in our weakness, leading us on, hoping we will later reflect back and marvel at His grace and patience... all this God works oftentimes with man. Not only should we be deeply humbled as a result of our self-examination. We ought to reflect this kind of patience and going along with weakness in the hope of later change in our attitude to our brethren. &nbsp;</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>She said to her father, Don’t let my lord be angry that I can’t rise up before you; for I’m having my period. He searched, but didn’t find the teraphim</em>- They may well have been under some precedent of the laws about touching menstruating women which were later codified in <em><a href='B:30 15:22'>Lev 15:22</a></em>; and Laban surely assumed that his daughter would not sit upon a holy idol whilst menstruating. The theme of deceit continues; Rachel lies to her father, deceiving him as Jacob had done to his father. The idea is that the chosen family were not more righteous than the surrounding unbelievers; they were chosen and transformed through grace alone.</p><p>The Hebrew is literally "let it not become hot in my lord's eyes" or "let not my lord's eyes burn". The reference is almost certainly to the popular idea of the 'evil eye', something we often find alluded to in the Hebrew Old Testament. We note that Laban claimed the power to do Jacob 'evil', although Jacob's God had warned him not to use it. Rachel believed in the 'evil eye' just as many mistakenly believe in the existence of demons and a 'Satan' figure today; rather than accepting that Yahweh really is God almighty and all power is with Him alone. Jacob apparently also used the 'evil eye'; for the same phrase is used in Gen. 30:2 of how "Jacob's face glowed against Rachel". If nothing else, we see a family angry with each other; Jacob against his wife Rachel, and Rachel's father Laban against her. This is all part of the same nexus of belief which led Rachel to steal the teraphim; we know the family were idolators because after the incident with Dinah and Shechem, Jacob appeals to the family to quit idolatry and they bury their idols. Later Scripture features frequent appeals to "Jacob" / Israel to abandon their idolatry- after the pattern of their father Jacob. But at this point, he was an idolater, who only wanted Yahweh as his God if Yahweh returned him safely to his father's house. Which at this point was yet distant with many obstacles in the path. Condemnation of using the 'evil eye' is common: “Those who hate pinch with their eye in vain” (Ps. 35:19); “a wicked man… pinches with his eyes" (Prov. 6:12,13); “what do your eyes wink at?” (Job 15:12). Prov. 28:22 likewise: “he who has the evil eye hastens after riches”. Zech. 3:9 features a stone with seven eyes which Yahweh presents to Joshua, as if assuring him that all the supposed power of the 'evil eye' was nothing compared to Yahweh's power. If Yahweh turns His eyes upon a man for evil, then this shall happen; it is His  'evil eye' which was to be feared, not that of pagan superstition (Am. 9:4; Lev. 20:5 "I will set My eye against that man"; Jer. 24:6; Ps. 34:17).</p> <p> Jacob has told his wives that their father's face is not toward him as before (Gen. 31:5); he feared the 'evil eye' from Laban. But Rachel defeats it through her lie. The overall impression, as with God's usage of the myths about conception in Gen. 30, is that wrong ideas and beliefs are worked with by God- to bring the thoughtful to realize that He is really all powerful.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob was angry, and argued with Laban. Jacob answered Laban, What is my trespass? What is my sin, that you have hotly pursued after me?</em>- Jacob was indeed innocent and his flight from Laban was not morally wrong. But he was a big time sinner apart from that. The trouble with being falsely accused is that it can make us very self-righteous, failing to accept that we may not have sinned in <em>that</em> matter, but we have indeed failed in others.&nbsp; Jacob would later have realized God’s grace to him when he learnt that Rachel had in fact stolen the idols. And he would have repeated back to himself his question: "What is my sin...?". No sin against Laban, indeed; but the question would have elicited self-examination. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Now that you have felt around in all my stuff, what have you found of all your household stuff? Set it here before my relatives and your relatives, that they may judge between us two</em>- Laban and his relatives had travelled 500 km. at high speed. This was a real showdown, as their haste and anger would have been fuelled by the thought that Jacob had stolen their teraphim. The situation had been reflected upon by Jacob's son Joseph, when he later sets up his brothers in a similar situation- accusing them of things (stealing the cup, lying to him about their family) of which they were guilty and yet thought they were innocent, in order to elicit in them repentance. Because Joseph would've perceived that this incident had led his father Jacob to repentance; indeed, Jacob may have told his sons as much in reciting the family history to them. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>These twenty years I have been with you. Your ewes and your female goats have not cast their young, and I haven’t eaten the rams of your flocks</em>- The chronological problem is well addressed by H.P. Mansfield: </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>"Jacob was ninety-seven years of age when he fled from Laban. If he were with his father-in-law only twenty years, the events of his life are compressed in too narrow a compass to be practical, and introduce contradictions.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>Consider the following: At the end of two years' famine (<em><a href='B:10 45:6'>Gen 45:6</a></em>) Joseph would have been between 39-40 (<em><a href='B:10 41:46'>Gen 41:46</a></em>), and Jacob was 130 (<em><a href='B:10 47:9'>Gen 47:9</a></em>). Joseph was thus born when Jacob was 90-91, and this is dated just prior to the six years that he served Laban for his cattle (<em><a href='B:10 30:25'>Gen 30:25</a></em>). If, to that point of time, he had been only fourteen years with Laban, it would mean that he fled from Esau to seek a wife when he was about 77! Assuming that he first worked seven years for Leah, his first son would not be born before he was 85; and if Joseph were born when he was 90, he had eleven sons and at least one daughter in five years! In that case, also, he had children and grandchildren to the number of sixty-six in the short space of forty-five years. At that rate, Judah, the fourth son could not have been born before he was 88, and would have been about 42 when the events of Genesis 38 took place, or 48, if Jacob married Leah before the completion of the seven years that he worked for Laban to obtain her.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>Esau visited Ishmael and married his daughter after Jacob left for Haran at the age of 77, though Ishmael died when Jacob was 63 (<em><a href='B:10 25:17'>Gen 25:17</a></em>). Isaac married at 40 (<em><a href='B:10 25:20'>Gen 25:20</a></em>). Jacob was born twenty years later (<em><a href='B:10 25:26'>Gen 25:26</a></em>). Ishmael, thirteen years older than Isaac died at 137 (<em><a href='B:10 25:17'>Gen 25:17</a></em>). These problems are solved if we can add a further twenty years to Jacob's sojourn with Laban, making his age 57 when he fled from Esau, though still 97 when he left Laban. This would allow for forty years with Laban, the period of probation or trial. And that forty years seem to be provided for in Jacob's conversation with Laban. He makes reference to two periods of "twenty years" each (cp. vv. 38,41). The first twenty years, he was with Laban as a friend: "I have been with thee." The second twenty years, he was there as a covenant servant: "I have been twenty years in thy house; I served thee..." The first fourteen years he served Laban for his two daughters; the following twenty years, he was with Laban in his capacity as shepherd; the final six years, he served him for his cattle. The first fourteen years, and the last six years, represented twenty years of servitude; the intervening twenty years he was employed as a shepherd, during which Laban's flocks remarkably increased.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>The Hebrew provides some warrant for this interpretation which also disposes of the difficulties mentioned above. The Hebrew <em>zeh</em> (rendered this: v. 38, and thus v. 41) when used in conjunction one with the other is often used by way of distinction as in <em><a href='B:20 14:20'>Exo 14:20</a></em>, there rendered one and other; <em><a href='B:250 6:5-8'>Ecc 6:5-8</a></em>: "this and that"; <em><a href='B:220 21:23-25'>Job 21:23-25</a></em>: "one and another". And so here. Jacob could have meant "this twenty years have I been with thee" and "that twenty years I have been in thy house." The first twenty years he served Laban as a friend. At some personal loss, but in gratitude to his father-in-law, he cared for his flocks (Vv. 38-40), the other twenty years he profited from his labour: first in the acquisition of his wives; and then from Laban's herds. The Hebrew<em> zeh li esrim</em> signifies "this for myself (<em>li</em>) twenty years..." In other words, during one twenty years he showed a profit; whilst during the other twenty years he showed a loss. In all, he was in Haran forty years: fourteen for his wives; twenty as a friend and son-in-law; six for the cattle. In all, forty years, a period of probation".</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>That which was torn of animals, I didn’t bring to you. I bore its loss. Of my hand you required it, whether stolen by day or stolen by night</em>- See on <em><a href='B:10 33:10'>Gen 33:10</a></em>. Jacob was afflicted with legalism, and struggled all his life to understand and accept grace. Here we see Jacob at his most self congratulatory and meretricious; although his anger and self-justification is understandable, seeing how Laban had abused and manipulated him through legalistic methods. But again, both Laban and Jacob are presented as legalists as well as both being deceivers. The legalistic attitude of Jacob and his family is brought out by the behaviour of his wives as well as himself when they are caught up with by Laban as recorded here in Genesis 31. The society in which they lived had codified legal practices, as has been established by archaeological research into contemporary towns in the area. For example, part of the bride price had to be kept by the wife personally; and thus Rachel and Leah accuse their father of taking away from them that which was rightfully theirs. Likewise, according to the Nuzi documents, daughters and sons-in-law had legal title to part of the father’s estate, and this was proven by their possession of the household idols. Hence Jacob and his wives stole those idols. E.A. Speiser quotes par. 266 of the Code of Hammurabi, which states: "If there occurs in the fold an act of god, or a lion takes a life, the shepherd (cp. Jacob) shall clear himself before the deity; the owner of the fold (cp. Laban) must then accept the loss incurred" (E.A. Speiser, <em>Genesis</em> (The Anchor Bible) (New York: Doubleday, 1964) p. 247). It was surely with allusion to this that Jacob complained that he as the shepherd had had to bear the loss of Laban's lost cattle.</p><p>Earlier in his life, Jacob had learned to "bear the loss" of that which was "torn in pieces of beasts"; and the same terms are used in Gen. 31:39 and Gen. 37:33, when again Jacob has to 'bear the loss' of [apparently] having his beloved son torn in pieces of wild beasts [s.w.]. As so often in our lives, one experience is used to prepare us for a similar one, but to a much greater extent. In this case, not bearing the loss of an animal, but of a beloved son.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>This was my situation: in the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night; and my sleep fled from my eyes</em>- Jacob appears to have distanced himself from the domestic nightmare caused by his various relationships; see on <em><a href='B:10 30:18'>Gen 30:18</a></em>. Through those years of insomnia and slave labour, Jacob must have struggled to believe the promises of blessing made at Bethel, and the idea that he the younger would have the elder and more powerful serving him. We too may pass through whole periods of life where the promised blessings seem mythical. But those valleys are needed in order to appreciate the wonder of the blessings, and also to drive us all, as happened with Jacob, to perceive that the essence of "blessing" is not material prosperity in this life, but rather the blessing of forgiveness and fellowship with God (<em><a href='B:510 3:25-26'>Act 3:25-26</a></em>).</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>These twenty years I have been in your house. I served you fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your flock, and you have changed my wages ten times</em>- See on :38. Spare a thought for Jacob at this time. During those years he would have gone through all the shame of an intelligent man who is desperately poor, and knows himself to be hopelessly in love (at 77). And when he finally gets the object of his lust, still having to work for her, it really doesn't turn out as he thinks. Bitterness between his wives escalates to the point where he has to have sexual relations with their handmaids; who were, remember, Laban's ex women. He had to go in to the women of a man he must have hated, picking up his throw offs. And then his wages were changed ten times, the conditions of service were ridiculous. To escape from his domestic pain he must have gone out and talked to those sheep, consumed at night by the cold and by the heat in the day time (:40). This was all a far, far cry from the cozy life with mum and dad and granddad, thinking that he'd go off and pick up a lovely wife just as Isaac obtained Rebekah.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>Speaking in the context of Israel's punishment for idolatry (remember, in God’s eyes Israel = Jacob), we are told, apparently out of context, that Jacob served for a wife (singular), and for a wife he kept sheep (<em><a href='B:350 12:12'>Hos 12:12</a></em>). Yet this is in the context of <em><a href='B:350 12:2'>Hos 12:2</a></em>, which says that God would punish Israel for their idolatry, according to their ways. And the terrible 14 years of keeping the sheep which their forefather Jacob went through was a type of their punishment for idolatry. As Jacob <em>served</em> for Rachel, so Israel served idols and would have to <em>serve</em> those idolatrous nations as an appropriate punishment. Keeping sheep in Gentile lands is the basis of the prodigal parable; the young man who left home, tricked his father, sidled past his hostile elder brother with what he was sure was his inheritance by rights, squandered it, kept sheep, and came back a new man. Clearly the Lord had his mind on Jacob, although that parable is full of reference to prophetic descriptions of the nation of Israel, too. <em><a href='B:350 12:4-6'>Hos 12:4-6</a></em>; <em><a href='B:350 12:12-13'>Hos 12:12-13</a></em> seem to say that Jacob's humiliation at the hands of Laban is a type of the future suffering of Jacob, before their final homecoming </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Unless the God of my father, the God of Abraham- </em>Again, not <em>my</em> God. And he saw God as the supplier of physical blessing; he understood the promise to Abraham that "I will be with you" as referring to blessing of cattle more than anything more spiritual. See on <em><a href='B:10 25:31'>Gen 25:31</a></em>. Abraham was promised that his seed would have Yahweh as their personal God, and would eternally inherit the land. But Jacob, like us, was slow to perceive this. In a sense, the promises that the seed <em>would </em>inherit the land, and that God <em>would be</em> their God were fulfilled straight after God said them. He became Isaac's God (<em><a href='B:10 31:42'>Gen 31:42</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 31:53'>Gen 31:53</a></em> refer to this), the God of Abraham's son. Time and again God reminds Israel that He <em>is </em>their God. And that land in a sense <em>was </em>given to the Jewish fathers (<em><a href='B:10 15:18'>Gen 15:18</a></em>; <em><a href='B:50 28:63'>Deu 28:63</a></em>; <em><a href='B:50 30:5'>Deu 30:5</a></em> NIV; <em><a href='B:60 1:2-9'>Jos 1:2-9</a></em>; <em><a href='B:60 21:43'>Jos 21:43</a></em>; <em><a href='B:110 4:20-21'>1Ki 4:20-21</a></em>). </p><p style='margin-left:1em'><em>And the fear of Isaac, had been with me, surely now you would have sent me away empty. God has seen my affliction and the labour of my hands- </em>See on <em><a href='B:20 23:27'>Exo 23:27</a></em>. An element of fear is not wrong in itself. Israel in the wilderness had the pillar of fire to remind them of God’s close presence, and to thereby motivate them not to sin: "His fear (will) be before your faces, that ye sin not" (<em><a href='B:20 20:20'>Exo 20:20</a></em>). Notice how Isaac's guardian angel is described as "the fear" in <em><a href='B:10 31:42'>Gen 31:42</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 31:53'>Gen 31:53</a></em> cp. 48:15,16. But "the fear of Isaac" would've been alluding to how after Jacob deceived Isaac, he trembled greatly at the realization that he had tried to force a stop to the fulfilment of God’s promises about Jacob. And this image remained with Jacob, and he now clings on to belief that those promises shall be fulfilled; just as he admits that God "had been with me", alluding to the promises to Jacob at Bethel, that God would be with him.&nbsp; </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>God seeing affliction and noticing hard labour alludes to how God saw the similar sufferings of His people in Egypt (<em><a href='B:20 3:7'>Exo 3:7</a></em>; <em><a href='B:20 4:31'>Exo 4:31</a></em>; <em><a href='B:50 26:7'>Deu 26:7</a></em> s.w.); see on :6,7. But the very same Hebrew phrase "God has seen my affliction" is used by Leah when she gives birth to her first son (<em><a href='B:10 29:32'>Gen 29:32</a></em>). As happens in families, the same turns of phrase were used, especially about God. In the hard servile years, Jacob would have remembered his wife's words and come to believe that God was likewise seeing his affliction at Laban's hands.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'><em>And rebuked you last night</em>- Laban's intention was to murder Jacob, but by grace, he was restrained. The "rebuke" was therefore to stop him killing Jacob. The same word has just been translated "judge" in :37. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Laban answered Jacob, The daughters are my daughters, the children are my children, the flocks are my flocks, and all that you see is mine: and what can I do this day to these my daughters, or to their children whom they have borne?</em>- These accusations were false and so easy to answer. Unless he was claiming that Jacob was somehow his adopted son, or that some agreement meant that Jacob had resigned his claims upon his wives and children. For sure Laban had acted even more deceitfully than is recorded, and is presented as a scheming materialist who still never quite made it in life.  But Laban had travelled 500 km. with his relatives and now had to travel them back home. Jacob was sensitive to the need to save Laban from a&nbsp; loss of face, so that peace might ensue. And we too are unwise to 'take up' every issue of false accusation and unreasonable treatment. We have to allow a saving of face and be pragmatic, with peace for God’s true seed as the desired final outcome. The accusation of theft of the teraphim had been dropped; but Jacob isn't recorded as questioning these wider accusations of theft. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Now come, let us make a covenant, you and I; and let it be for a witness between me and you</em>- This was a way of saving face and Jacob accepted it. Notice the connection between covenant and witness. It is axiomatic that those who are in the new covenant must be witnesses to it; such witness is not therefore optional, but part and parcel of covenant relationship. God witnesses His covenant to us (<em><a href='B:120 17:15'>2Ki 17:15</a></em>), and we too witness to the covenant; both in witness to the world, and in witness to Him through the breaking of bread service, in our day. The equivalent of that in Jacob's time was to eat a sacrifice as a meal together.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob took a stone, and set it up for a pillar</em>- This was to recall the pillar he had erected that night at Bethel, where God had promised him that he would be with him and make him return from Paddan Aram to the <em>eretz</em>. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob said to his relatives, Gather stones. They took stones, and made a heap. They ate there by the heap</em>- The "relatives" may refer to Laban's relatives who had accompanied him on the pursuit; for they were Jacob's relatives by marriage. The record notes that there was this family connection. Sacrificial meals were understood as confirming a covenant, and this is what the breaking of bread meeting is all about; a confirmation of the new covenant with us.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Laban called it Jegar Sahadutha, but Jacob called it Galeed</em>- Despite 40 years living with non-Hebrew speakers, Jacob didn’t forget his native tongue. His heart was in the land of promise, the Kingdom, for all his weakness. And Jacob insists that the circular heap of witness stones ("Galeed") be named in Hebrew, perhaps because he wanted his future seed never to return to the land of the east, never to leave the promised land as he had done.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Laban said, This heap is witness between me and you this day. Therefore it was named Galeed</em>- Inanimate things are often spoken of in the Old Testament as being somehow alive; or non-human things spoken of in human terms, e.g. forests clapping their hands. The Bible doesn't footnote these things; just as the usage of the language of demons isn't specifically explained in the New Testament, and yet it is not to be taken as literally true.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>And Mizpah, for he said, Yahweh watch between me and you, when we are absent one from another</em>- Again we see Laban using the Yahweh Name; as noted on :53, he wrongly mixed pagan and Divine things, although Jacob and his wives did the same. To harp on about 'God sees even when men don't' (:50) was of course hypocritical for Laban; but Jacob had likewise failed to perceive this. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>If you afflict my daughters, or if you take wives besides my daughters, no man is with us; behold, God is witness between me and you</em>- Perhaps Laban did have some reason for thinking that Jacob might harm his daughters; because it does seem that Jacob's relationship with them was strained as I have pointed out throughout these notes. And we recall his great anger with Rachel at <em><a href='B:10 30:2'>Gen 30:2</a></em>. Laban appears to mean what he says here and to believe it; that God sees even when no other witness is present. And the nature of his argument seems to presuppose that just one all-seeing God is in view, which was certainly not what the surrounding culture believed. We dare to hope that through all his weakness, Laban may have turned to the one true God at the end of his life. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Laban said to Jacob, See this heap, and see the pillar, which I have set between me and you</em>- It was Jacob who set up the pillar, and so we can interpret this as meaning that Laban was setting the significance of these things as being that they marked the boundary between the two families (:52). </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>May this heap be a witness, and the pillar be a witness, that I will not pass over this heap to you, and that you will not pass over this heap and this pillar to me, for harm</em>- Laban proposed this condition; but God used it to ensure that Jacob and his family would never be tempted to leave the land of promise back towards the East. For they all promised, including Laban's daughters, never to return. And the heap of stones was near the river Euphrates, the border of the land of promise; see on :21. Again we see God as it were needling Jacob towards Canaan, the land and things of the Kingdom. For due to this initiative of Laban, Jacob now cannot return to Mesopotamia. He can only go onwards towards the things of the Kingdom, to Canaan. As we eat the symbols of the covenant at the communion service (:54), we can likewise perceive that God is locking us up into a one way direction towards His Kingdom, making the way of return to the world harder and harder.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>The God of Abraham, and the God of Nahor, the God of their father, judge between us-</em> Here we see the classic mixing of true and false worship. The god of Nahor was an idol (<em><a href='B:60 24:2'>Jos 24:2</a></em>); the God of Abraham was Yahweh, whose Name Laban knew. But Laban mixes the two together, and the grammar for "judge between" is plural, as if both 'gods' would judge. Perhaps here Laban means to imply that his god was the god of Nahor, and Jacob's was the God of Abraham. </p><p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Then Jacob swore by the fear of his father, Isaac</em>- Jacob unashamedly swore "by the fear of his father Isaac"; the picture of his father trembling in fear of God when he realized his superficiality stayed with Jacob (<em><a href='B:10 27:33'>Gen 27:33</a></em>). It seems he spoke publicly of God as the God of his father, for this is the term Laban used to him (<em><a href='B:10 31:29'>Gen 31:29</a></em>). The influence of his father and grandfather lasted a lifetime; even in old age, he feared to go down to Egypt because of the precedents set by the bad experience of Isaac and Abraham there; it seems that he delayed to obey Joseph's invitation to visit Egypt because of this, and was possibly rebuked by Yahweh for this: "Jacob, Jacob (such repetition is often a rebuke), Fear not to go down into Egypt" (<em><a href='B:10 46:3'>Gen 46:3</a></em>).&nbsp;Likewise Christians can&nbsp; live out parental expectation without much personal faith.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>The structure and balance of the statement seems to be emphasizing that Laban swore by his fathers' gods, because he knew no better, and Jacob did likewise. A Baptist is a Baptist because his father is, and at the beginning of spiritual life, a Christian can be one for no better reason than his parents are. Jacob was still at this stage in middle age. And so many of us must pass through that inevitable growth curve of Jacob. That Abraham did finally break with his family is hinted at by the way that Laban speaks of "the God of Abraham and the God of Nahor- may they judge between us (<em><a href='B:10 31:53'>Gen 31:53</a></em> Heb.). Laban recognized that Nahor and Abraham worshipped different gods- whereas we know that initially, they worshipped the same gods.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob offered a sacrifice in the mountain, and called his relatives to eat bread. They ate bread, and stayed all night in the mountain</em>- Eating bread was a sign of covenant fellowship. Jacob did this with a self-confessed unbeliever in the true God (see on :53); just as the memorial meal of the new covenant can be used in various ways, and there is no guilt by association through sharing it even with an unbeliever. The calling of "his relatives" may refer to Jacob inviting Laban's family to eat bread as a sign of their agreement to the covenant; they were his relatives by marriage. So the story with Laban ends with a reminder of their unity; see on :55. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Early in the morning, Laban rose up, and kissed his sons and his daughters, and blessed them. Laban departed and returned to his place</em>- This is Laban at his best, and the curtain closes on Laban with us feeling somewhat sorry for him, as he knows he will never see his family again, and we note his fondness for his daughters who were clearly agree with him and saw no point in living further with him (see on :14,15). We note that some of his sons (or grandsons?) were with Jacob now. We get the impression of a humbled Laban returning those 500 km. to Haran, and although he clearly at that time believed in other gods, we are left with the hope that he converted to the one true God with all his heart and repented, or at least regretted, his behaviour with Jacob.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him</em>- Jacob had promised the Angel that if he was kept on his way, then Yahweh would be his God. Hence the connection between the Angels and Jacob going on his way. The meeting of Jacob by Angels looked forward to the meeting with Esau; the angels could have rightfully slain Jacob as could have both Laban and Esau, but they did not, because God influenced them by grace not to. These Angels were representative of the forces of Esau who were coming to likewise 'meet' Jacob, and so his reconciliation by grace with the Angels was prophetic of his reconciliation with Esau.</p><p>Jacob had promised at Bethel, at least 20 years ago [possibly 40, depending how you read the chronology] that Yahweh would be his God if Yahweh brought him back to his father's house. And Yahweh wanted that... even though I suggested on Gen. 31:13 that Jacob may have forgotten that vow ["I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar, where you vowed a vow to me"]. And even though the whole tenor of Jacob's vow was sceptical and not exactly generous towards Yahweh, offering to give Him just a tenth of all he had if Yahweh came through for him. And so the Angels as it were come forth to meet Jacob, who now stands near the Euphrates, the border of the promised land, to welcome him home. As the Angels meet Jacob now, so they had done at Bethel (Gen. 28:12 s.w.); as Jacob was "on his way" (Gen. 32:1 s.w. Gen. 28:20). Jacob names the places with words which have very similar meanings, Bethel and Penuel. Clearly this meeting with Angels was to help Jacob see that in order to return "home" to the land of promise and the covenant, he had to engage with God, through the Angels, and not just keep ignoring Him. Perhaps this explains the otherwise strange way that Hos. 12:3,4 appears to call Penuel "Bethel": "he struggled with the angel, and prevailed; he wept, and made supplication to him. He found him at Bethel, and there He spoke with us". The apparently obvious error is in order to make a point- that the wrestling with Angels was effectively at Bethel, because the Penuel incident was so similar to that at Bethel.</p><p>
Rabbinic Judaism understands that the one met is greater than those who go forth to meet him, as the one carried is greater than the one who carries. And that is not without Biblical support. We see here the huge respect of God for a man who as yet had not returned to his God. Jacob's last experience with Angels was at Bethel, so this was to remind him of that experience. The Angels had appeared in their hosts to Jacob, as he fled from his brother. Now they appeared as he returns to meet his brother. The meeting with the Angel is clearly parallel with Jacob's meeting with Esau. Jacob perceives this when he says in Gen. 33:10: "I have seen your face, as one sees the face of God, and you were pleased with me". The simple take away is that our attitudes to our brother are of extreme interest to God. Hosts of Angels were involved with Jacob at the point of leaving his brother and reconciling with his brother. God saw Jacob's attitude to Esau as so absolutely significant. His struggle with his brother was his struggle with God. Hosea states this in so many words: “In the womb he grasped the heel of his brother, and in his manhood he struggled with God”.   </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>When he saw them, Jacob said, This is God’s army. He called the name of that place Mahanaim</em>- The idea of "camps" is developed throughout this section. Jacob and Laban had both camped in Mount Gilead, forming two camps. And the Angel had influenced Laban's camp not to harm Jacob, as explained on <em><a href='B:10 31:25'>Gen 31:25</a></em>. But now Jacob perceives that the 'two camps' of Mahanaim had not so much been his and Laban's; but Laban's and this Angelic camp. And he is now to learn that likewise Esau's "camp" had an Angelic "camp" reflecting it in Heaven; and Jacob's camp was hopelessly set against the Angelic camp. See on :7.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>Jacob actually saw the Angels. "This is God’s host", he commented, with the implication that this sight further humbled him and led him towards the necessary contrition of mind for deliverance from Esau. If "the sign of the son of man" which appears over Israel and leads the tribes of Israel to mourn in repentance is a literal vision of the Angel-cherubim (<em><a href='B:470 24:30'>Mat 24:30</a></em>), then this has a basis in Jacob seeing the Angelic vision in the time of his distress, the "time of Jacob's trouble".</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>Particularly in that watershed night of wrestling, Jacob was our example. The Lord taught that we must all first be reconciled with our brother before we meet with God (<em><a href='B:470 5:24'>Mat 5:24</a></em>)- an obvious allusion to Jacob's reconciliation with Esau in his heart, and then meeting with God. We really must <em>all</em> go through that process, whether in one night or a longer period. The commentary on that night in Hosea 12 makes this point: "In his (spiritual) manhood (RVmg.) he had power with God... he wept, and made supplication unto him: he (God) found him (Jacob) in Bethel, <em>and there He spake with us</em>, even the (same) Lord God of Hosts (armies of Angels)... therefore turn <em>thou</em> to <em>thy</em> God" as Jacob made Yahweh <em>his</em> God and <em>turned</em> to Him (vv. 3-6). Jacob is our example. Jacob only truly turned to God that night of wrestling, at the age of 97, despite having been brought up in the ways of the true Gospel, and after having lived almost a century of half commitment to God. We can so easily slip into the same life of half-commitment and never, even for a century, turn to our God with all our heart. <em><a href='B:230 34:3'>Psa 34:3</a></em> promises that the Angel of the Lord will encamp / Mahanaim around <em>all</em> His servants, just as the Angel did at Mahanaim for Jacob. Jacob’s struggle at (or with) Peniel strikes a chord with each of us. Frank Lake has pointed out that each person struggles to find peace in their relationships with others and also with their God- whether or not they are conscious of those struggles (Frank Lake, <em>Clinical Theology</em> (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1966)). Jacob’s experience is clearly set up as representative of our own.&nbsp;</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob sent messengers in front of him to Esau, his brother, to the land of Seir, the field of Edom</em>- "Messengers" translates the same word <em>malak</em> just used in :1. If the record intended us to make a distinction between human and divine messengers, surely another Hebrew word would have been used at this point; for there were other words which carry the idea of 'messenger' or 'sent ones' which could have been employed. I suggest therefore that Jacob meets the Angels and then sends some of them to Esau. This impression of apparent command over Angels then sets the context for him then wrestling with one of them; and <em><a href='B:350 12:4'>Hos 12:4</a></em> comments that Jacob "had power over the angel and prevailed". </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>Through the whole incident with the wrestling Angel, Jacob was led to understand something of the meaning of the Genesis 28 vision of a ladder with Angels (<em>mal'akim</em>) ascending <em>from</em> him to Heaven and returning to him. He sends messengers (<em>mal'akim</em>) to Esau (<em><a href='B:10 32:3'>Gen 32:3</a></em>)- and they return to him as it were as a mighty host of an angry army. Hence he named the place Mahanaim, two camps / hosts- for he perceived that Esau's host was indeed the host of God in His Angels. And thus he comments that he saw the face of the Angel / God as if it were the face of Esau (<em><a href='B:10 33:10'>Gen 33:10</a></em>). And so God can masterfully arrange incidents in our lives too, which are somehow the summation of all our previous encounters and interactions with people... to teach us His way. This is why there is sometimes a sense of <em>deja vu</em> in our lives. </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>Jacob evidently forgot or resigned the promise that the elder would serve the younger when he sent messengers to Esau, describing himself as Esau's servant, and Esau as his Lord; yet just a few hours later he was pleading in almost unparalleled intensity to receive the promised blessings of forgiveness. Such oscillating faith and perception of the promises is tragically a characteristic of Israel after the Spirit too.&nbsp;</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He commanded them, saying, This is what you shall tell my lord, Esau: ‘This is what your servant, Jacob, says. I have lived as a foreigner with Laban, and stayed until now</em>- Describing Esau as his lord and himself as Esau's servant is all a studied rejection of the blessing he had stolen, that he would be lord over his brothers and they would bow down to him (<em><a href='B:10 27:29'>Gen 27:29</a></em>). The way Jacob bows to Esau and asks him to "take away" the blessing in <em><a href='B:10 33:11'>Gen 33:11</a></em> is all tantamount to saying that he was handing back the blessing of the firstborn, because he had experienced the Abrahamic blessing. Having the blessing of forgiveness and fellowship with God was all he needed.</p>&nbsp;<p style='margin-left:1em'>Jacob's desperate humility before Esau is remarkable: "My lord Esau... I have sent to tell my lord, that I may find grace in thy sight... peradventure he will accept of me" (<em><a href='B:10 32:4-5'>Gen 32:4-5</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 32:20'>Gen 32:20</a></em> AV). This was a far cry from his nonchalance and cold shouldering of Esau at the time of the theft of the birthright. Likewise the present Jewish attitude towards the Arabs will dramatically change. Jacob sending droves of presents to appease Esau will connect with Israel's frequent appeasement of their aggressive Arab neighbours in the last days, on the road to their final repentance in the time of Jacob's trouble.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>Jacob says that he had lived as a foreigner with Laban- for either 20 or 40 years. This is so much the language of the patriarchs, living as passers through and not permanent residents; and that is the spirit of all the true seed. But he says he "stayed until now" with Laban. The Hebrew implies procrastination, as if he had stayed longer than he should have done. Significantly, it is the same word used by Eliezer when he had gone to Laban seeking Rebekah as Isaac's wife; he refused to be 'delayed' by Laban (<em><a href='B:10 24:56'>Gen 24:56</a></em> AV "hinder me not"). Jacob is recognizing that he had remained longer than he should with Laban because initially he had been obsessed with Rachel and had not taken Leah and returned home sooner; and latterly, he had remained longer with Laban as he built up his fantastic wealth with the myth of the rods, which was really Divine blessing. He recognized he had not been as his mother and father in spiritual terms, he had delayed with Laban, whereas Rebekah had followed the Spirit and not allowed Laban to delay her. </p><p>"Lived as a foreigner" [AV "sojourned"] has a numerical value of 613, the number of commandments in the Law of Moses. Perhaps we are to deduce that it was through his exile in the East that he learned obedience to God's law.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>I have cattle, donkeys, flocks, male servants, and female servants. I have sent to tell my lord, that I may find favour in your sight’</em>- This isn't Jacob boasting; he was hardly in the mood for that. Rather is he wishing to inform Esau that he has indeed received Divine and human blessing, and wishes to share this with Esau. If indeed the messengers were Angels (see on :3), then Jacob was sending them, relying upon God, in order to find grace before Esau.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>The messengers returned to Jacob, saying, We came to your brother Esau. Not only that, but he comes to meet you, and four hundred men with him</em>- As noted on :4, this is the going and returning of the Angels ("messengers") upon Jacob which he had seen in the staircase vision of Genesis 28. I suggested on :3 that these messengers were in fact Angels, even if they appeared as men. This suggestion is confirmed by the way this verse seems to differentiate between the Angel-messengers 'coming to Esau' and also, separate to that, 'finding out' that he was coming to meet Jacob with 400 men with him. The Angels coming to meet Jacob in :1 were in a sense representative of Esau coming to meet Jacob. Just as Laban was out to kill Jacob but he was saved by Angelic grace, so Esau was out to kill him. Rebekah had been wrong in thinking that Esau would soon forget it all. Having 400 men with him was really evidence enough that he was out for conflict. The same figure of four hundred men refers to a battallion of soldiers (1 Sam. 22:2; 25:13; 30:10).</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Then Jacob was greatly afraid and was distressed- </em>Jacob has just been "afraid" of Laban (<em><a href='B:10 31:31'>Gen 31:31</a></em>), just as he now was of Esau (:11 s.w.). Yet he had learnt that God’s Angels had saved him from what he feared; for the Angel appeared to Laban and warned him not to do evil to Jacob. We pass through one experience or test in order to prepare us for the next one; and we see this so clearly in the parallels between the meeting with Laban and now that with Esau. Jacob is clearly not believing the promise made at Bethel- that Yahweh would indeed bring him back to his father's house / family in peace, i.e. peace with Esau. His chronic fear reflects his lack of faith in the promises to Abraham and himself.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He divided the people who were with him, and the flocks, and the herds, and the camels, into two companies</em>- Literally, two camps- Mahanaim. These two camps of Jacob are stressed (:8,10,21). </p><p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed</em>- This is the basis of "the time of Jacob's trouble" (<em><a href='B:300 30:7'>Jer 30:7</a></em>), the "time of trouble" from which Israel will be Angelically "delivered" (<em><a href='B:340 12:1'>Dan 12:1</a></em>) after the pattern of Jacob. Yet this "time of trouble" is picked up by the Lord in <em><a href='B:470 24:21'>Mat 24:21</a></em> and applied to the time of great tribulation "such as was not" which will encompass all God’s people, natural <em>and</em> spiritual. What this means is that the Jacob experience must be gone through by all of us, natural and spiritual Israel; and this will entail a desperate praying to God and an earnest repentance, recognizing that we have lived out our parental expectations for too long; and above all, a realization that "this God is <em>our</em> God", a personalizing of God, a grasping of the wondrous reality of those things which we have previously seen as only so much correct theology and logical theory.</p>&nbsp;<p style='margin-left:1em'><em><a href='B:10 32:8'>Gen 32:8</a></em> <em>And he said, If Esau comes to the one company, and strikes it, then the company which is left will escape</em>- "Company" is "camp"; Jacob should have perceived that there was a camp of Angels with him, that we was not alone, but his camp was but a reflection of the heavenly camp of Angels whom he had just "met" as a foretaste of how he would "meet" Esau's camp / company. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob said, God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, Yahweh, who said to me, ‘Return to your country, and to your relatives, and I will do you good’</em>- He came to see that 'God' was Yahweh (cp. notes on <em><a href='B:10 28:20'>Gen 28:20</a></em>); he saw that there was only one 'God', and that the vague sense of 'God' which he had was in fact 'Yahweh'. But still he speaks of this Yahweh God as someone else's God. And the promise made was that he would be kept, blessed, and brought to his father’s house in peace. Yet he admits that he 'fears' this will not be the case, and he and his family will be 'struck' by Esau (:11). He was being led to realize that he couldn't just plead a part of the promise, and doubt that the rest would be fulfilled too, questioning whether in fact it was God’s plan to "do (him) good" and not evil. We likewise have this tendency. And Moses' primary audience, Israel in the wilderness, were likewise challenged to believe that indeed it was God’s purpose to do them good and not evil in their latter end (<em><a href='B:50 8:16'>Deu 8:16</a></em>). The story of Jacob was to be their encouragement.</p><p>Jacob however is still manipulative. Yahweh had promised that "I will be with you", but Jacob turns this into claiming God had promised "to do you good" (Gen. 28:15; 31:13; 32:9). He wanted God to come through for him in material, visible terms. God's promise of His abiding presence was not enough for Jacob. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>I am not worthy- </em>This is new language for Jacob, and we see that indeed as <em><a href='B:50 8:16'>Deu 8:16</a></em> teaches, he had to be humbled before being done good and not evil in his latter end. The same word for "worthy" is used by David when likewise faced with God’s covenant promises (<em><a href='B:100 7:19'>2Sa 7:19</a></em>). David was humbled when he received the promises, just as we should be by realizing that we really are in covenant relationship with God. “Who am I…?” was his response (<em><a href='B:100 7:18'>2Sa 7:18</a></em>). Like Jacob, he felt himself unworthy of all the “mercy and truth” shown him in the promises. And we too should be humbled by these promises; for we are in the same new covenant. The word is also used of how Jacob was the "younger" son (<em><a href='B:10 27:15'>Gen 27:15</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 27:42'>Gen 27:42</a></em>). He surely alludes to that; he had so struggled to rise above being the younger son, but he now finally realizes that he is who he is before God. And once he realized that, the promise could come true- that the elder would serve the younger. And the little one, Jacob the small / not worthy / younger, would become a great multitude finally (<em><a href='B:290 60:22'>Isa 60:22</a></em> s.w.).</p><p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Of the least of all- </em>The LXX here is alluded to by Paul when he confesses that he is less than the least of all (<em><a href='B:560 3:8'>Eph 3:8</a></em>). Jacob's path is indeed that of us all.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'><em>The loving kindnesses, and of all the truth, which You have shown to Your servant; for with just my staff I passed over this Jordan- </em>Strong comments that the word for "staff" here suggests a magical, pagan stick associated with fertility, coming from a root meaning 'to germinate'.&nbsp; Jacob and idolatry go together. The same word occurs when we read that Jacob put the animals before the "rods"; it seems this is an intensive plural for 'the great rod', i.e. his staff. Yet, fascinatingly enough, at the very point when Jacob leaves home to start his wilderness journey with only (in his eyes) his pagan staff to bring him good luck, God as it were takes a snapshot of him, and asks Israel to leave Egypt with a staff in their hands- a strange request, surely, unless it was intended to drive their minds back to Jacob, asking them to emulate his example. Again we see the relevance of the Genesis narrative to its primary audience, Israel in the wilderness.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>Jacob saw material prosperity as an indicator of the fulfillment of the promises to him. Because he <em>was </em>physically blessed in his life, he came to feel that the promises had been fulfilled, and therefore he almost lost sight of the future aspect of our relationship with God. There are powerful lessons for us here. He saw the promises ("mercies... truth") as having been fulfilled to him already, and therefore he needed the night of wrestling to bring him to the realization that the blessing of <em>forgiveness </em>(<em><a href='B:400 7:20'>Mic 7:20</a></em>), with its eternal, future implications, was what the promises are really all about. But now perhaps he was realizing this- that he had indeed been materially blessed, but what he needed far more than that was forgiveness for his sin against his brother Esau, both by Esau and God, and peace thereby with God and man. This dimension of the promises suddenly came into focus for him. We likewise can dwell too much upon the material aspect of the promises- resurrection of the body to receive eternal life in future. What we need even more essentially is the blessing of forgiveness and reconcilliation with God and man which will enable that to be so.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'><em>And now I have become two companies</em>- Before the wrestling began, Jacob evidently felt that basically, the promises to him had been fulfilled in the material prosperity which he had; for "kindness and truth" is a common idiom for the promises. &nbsp; </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Please deliver me from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau: for I fear him, lest he come and strike me, and the mothers with the children</em>- Because Jacob saw, for much of his life, that the fulfillment of God’s promises depended on his effort, he so often doubted them; because, of course, men can never make enough effort. And as noted on :10, he had seen the promises as too much about material blessing rather than the blessing of forgiveness and reconcilliation with God and man which is the more essential part of them. Thus he asks God to deliver him from Esau, because if Esau killed him, the covenant would not be fulfilled. "I fear him, lest he come and strike <em>me</em> (first!) and the mothers with the children". The AV and Hebrew have "mother" singular- as if he was still fixated upon Rachel and her son, and those born to her maid. Whether he died or not that night would not have nullified God’s promise that his seed would become a multitude (:12) and that God would return him to his father’s home in peace and blessing (<em><a href='B:10 28:20'>Gen 28:20</a></em>). Until now, Jacob had seen the promises as offering him personal, temporal blessing, rather than having a firm faith in their future and spiritual implications. His wrestling with the Angel was a cameo of this whole attitude; he thought that the promised blessing of God could be achieved through <em>his</em> wrestling and struggling. This is why, in the course of that night, he stopped wrestling with the Angel and clung on to him with tears, begging that through pure grace he might receive the spiritual blessing of forgiveness (<em><a href='B:350 12:2-4'>Hos 12:2-4</a></em>). </p><p>The blessing of the firstborn involved the other brothers bowing down to the firstborn (Gen. 27:29), so Jacob's protracted and emphasized bowing to Esau (Gen. 33:3,6,7) was likewise a way of resigning from the birthright which he had been born trying to grab hold of, and the desire for which had obviously filled his mind. We too are led to resign all our material, secular aspirations and dreams for the sake of God's grace. And in Jacob's case, he was born with the desire for the firstborn status, with his little hand desperately trying to grab his brother's heel to stop his brother being the firstborn. But encounter with God's grace [as happened to Jacob in Gen. 32] is enough to reorient a man away from even his natural, born-with passions and obsessions towards [in this case] materialism and jealousy. In Jacob's case his very name, 'heel catcher', reflected this obsession which was so strong it had become his self-definition; until he encountered God's grace. The blessing of the firstborn as given by Isaac involved the firstborn being "Lord" over his brothers; but Jacob repeatedly calls Esau his "Lord" in Gen. 32,33. Jacob's gifts to his brothers are described with a standard Hebrew word for "gift" [minha]; but in Gen. 33:11 Jacob then starts to consciously refer to them as berakah, the word for "blessing". And he urges Esau to take [s.w. 'take away'] his "blessing". I discussed on Gen. 25:23 how the blessing of the firstborn never came true- perhaps because Jacob's resignation of the firstborn blessings in Gen. 32,33 was accepted by God.</p><p>He effectively hands back the birthright to Esau after the night of wrestling, when he says "Take [away] my blessing..." because he had experienced God's grace. The blessing of the firstborn involved the other brothers bowing down to the firstborn (Gen. 27:29), so Jacob's protracted and emphasized bowing to Esau (Gen. 33:3,6,7) was likewise a way of resigning from the birthright which he had been born trying to grab hold of, and the desire for which had obviously filled his mind. We too are led to resign all our material, secular aspirations and dreams for the sake of God's grace. And in Jacob's case, he was born with the desire for the firstborn status, with his little hand desperately trying to grab his brother's heel to stop his brother being the firstborn. But encounter with God's grace [as happened to Jacob in Gen. 32] is enough to reorient a man away from even his natural, born-with passions and obsessions towards [in this case] materialism and jealousy. In Jacob's case his very name, 'heel catcher', reflected this obsession which was so strong it had become his self-definition; until he encountered God's grace. The blessing of the firstborn as given by Isaac involved the firstborn being "Lord" over his brothers; but Jacob repeatedly calls Esau his "Lord" in Gen. 32,33. Jacob's gifts to his brothers are described with a standard Hebrew word for "gift" [minha]; but in Gen. 33:11 Jacob then starts to consciously refer to them as berakah, the word for "blessing". And he urges Esau to take [s.w. 'take away'] his "blessing". I discussed on Gen. 25:23 how the blessing of the firstborn never came true- perhaps because Jacob's resignation of the firstborn blessings in Gen. 32,33 was accepted by God.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>There can be no doubt that the wrestling experience of our lives will result in our rejection of materialism, and wholehearted devotion to the more spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Jacob began that night by pleading: "<em>Deliver</em> me from Esau", and he concludes by marveling that his life is "preserved (s.w. "deliver") from <em>God’s</em> wrath (<em><a href='B:10 32:30'>Gen 32:30</a></em>). The camp of Esau coming to meet him was the camp of Angels he had met and in a way become superior to as noted on :1,3,4. His&nbsp; concern with immediate physical problems became dwarfed by his awareness of his need for reconciliation with <em>God</em>. In essence, this is Paul's teaching concerning peace in the NT; if we have peace with <em>God, </em>the wonder of this will result in us having peace in any situation. This is easy to write, so easy. And yet it is still true. If we see the seriousness of sin, and the wonder of being in free fellowship with the Father and Son, we will have peace. The wholehearted repentance and clinging on to God of Jacob that night is used in Hosea 12 as an appeal to all Israel to repent as our father Jacob did, and rise to his level of maturity.&nbsp; </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>If Jacob's prayer had not been heard, Esau would have smitten " the mother with the children". This will be done by the latter day Esau to those Jews who do not match Jacob's intensity of prayer and repentance (<em><a href='B:450 14:2'>Zec 14:2</a></em>), as it happened at the time of the Babylonian invasion which prefigured the Arab attack of the last days (<em><a href='B:310 5:11'>Lam 5:11</a></em>).</p>&nbsp;


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>You said, ‘I will surely do you good, and make your seed as the sand of the sea, which can’t be numbered because there are so many</em>’- The promise to make Abraham's seed as the sand of the sea, he saw as implying that his children would not be physically harmed; yet the New Testament teaches that this promise fundamentally refers to Messiah, and those of all nations who would become "in him". At the end of his life, it seems that Jacob learnt this. We note that Jacob doesn't plead so much the promises made to him of personal preservation (<em><a href='B:10 28:20'>Gen 28:20</a></em>), but those to Abraham (<em><a href='B:10 22:17'>Gen 22:17</a></em>). He had spiritually grown to the point that he no longer viewed Abraham's God as somehow different to his God; he now believes that this God is his God, and the promises made to his ancestor are indeed to him personally, and have real implication for him in his personal crises. This growth is to be our pattern, as we move on from Sunday School Christianity, the faith of our fathers or of those who first taught us the Gospel, to the awesome personal reality- that this is all deeply true for little me.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>The latter day “time of Jacob’s trouble” is based upon Jacob’s meeting with Esau at Jabbok. Jacob's reliance on his own strength and subsequent semi-faith in God’s word of promise typifies the Jews of today; his time of trouble truly humbled him, and his wrestling in prayer brought out the great faith which he was potentially capable of, as the last days will do for the Jews. Jacob's prayer is peculiarly apt to a repentant Jewry: "O God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac (going back to their roots), the Lord which saidst unto me, Return unto thy country (since 1948)... I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which Thou hast shewed unto Thy servant; for with my staff I passed over this Jordan (cp. the Atlantic, Mediterranean; the airways of Eastern Europe; through the immigrant ports of Haifa, Tel Aviv...); and now I am become two bands. Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother (cp. the Arabs), from the hand of Esau: for I fear him... and Thou saidst, I will surely do thee good, and make thy seed as the sand of the sea" (32:9-12 AV). The reference to the Jewish fathers will be the result of listening to the Elijah ministry, which will turn "the heart of the children to their fathers" (<em><a href='B:460 4:6'>Mal 4:6</a></em>). And this message of ‘back to the promises, the Hope of Israel’ is exactly the message we can take to the Jews in our communities today. My dream is that world-wide, we will make this witness.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He lodged there that night, and took from that which he had with him, a present for Esau, his brother</em>- Jacob is an example of the hurrying man beset with unvoiced inner conflicts trying to buy off his guilt. Struggling with an awful conscience, he sent huge gifts ahead of him to try to appease his offended brother Esau. But he wasn’t thereby freed from his bad conscience. He had to wrestle it out with God, with an Angel who at times appeared in the form of both Jacob’s father and brother, and come to know his own desperation and God’s utter grace and love towards him.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>"Present" translates a word more commonly used for sacrifice or offering; if simply a "present" was in view, a different word would be used. Jacob came to see his meeting with Esau as his meeting with God; he met the Angels as if he met Esau (:1), and he makes the connection specific in <em><a href='B:10 33:10'>Gen 33:10</a></em>. The presents to Esau were therefore his equivalent of a sacrifice to God, by which he sought reconciliation. He would be taught that the sacrifice was in a sense necessary- for it indeed pacified Esau; but essentially it was his clinging to the Angel in tears begging for grace which was the essential thing.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Two hundred female goats and twenty male goats, two hundred ewes and twenty rams</em>- All told, Jacob gave Esau 550 animals. His wealth in terms of herds was therefore immense; and he had acquired this by the relatively sudden Divine blessing upon his herds in the final part of his life with Laban. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Thirty milk camels and their colts, forty cows, ten bulls, twenty female donkeys and ten foals</em>- Just one camel was considered very valuable; to give 30 plus their colts was a huge gift or sacrifice. I noted on :13 that "present" is better translated "sacrifice". As we learn from Noah's ark, there was a concept of clean and unclean animals, and yet unclean animals such as camels are here effectively offered as sacrifice; and were accepted, as the impure likewise was. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He delivered them into the hands of his servants, every herd by itself, and said to his servants, Pass over before me, and put a space between herd and herd</em>- There were five different groups of animals: goats, sheep, camels, cows and donkeys. And then there was Leah and her children, and finally, as the seventh group, Jacob and Rachel. This would connect with Jacob bowing seven times to Esau (<em><a href='B:10 33:3'>Gen 33:3</a></em>). "Before me" is literally 'before my face'; and the idea of faces / presence occurs often here in this incident. Jacob had feared the face of Laban and been preserved (<em><a href='B:10 31:2'>Gen 31:2</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 31:5'>Gen 31:5</a></em>). Now he was preparing for his face to come before the face of Esau, and again with Angelically provided Divine grace, he would see his face and be saved. All this leads up to the significance of the wrestling incident, where for an extended period, Jacob looks at close quarters into the face of an Angel as they wrestle, and due to Jacob's desperate tears of repentance he is preserved to see the face of Esau and finally that of God, by grace. So he comes to marvel that he has seen God face to face and was preserved (<em><a href='B:10 32:30'>Gen 32:30</a></em>); and he saw in the Angel's face that of Esau (<em><a href='B:10 33:10'>Gen 33:10</a></em>). </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He commanded the foremost, saying, When Esau, my brother, meets you, and asks you, saying, ‘Whose are you? Where are you going? Whose are these before you?’</em>- The question 'Who are you?' was exactly that which Isaac had asked Jacob, and he had lied (<em><a href='B:10 27:18'>Gen 27:18</a></em> s.w.). It was the question Jacob had asked the shepherds when he first came to Mesopotamia. Now all the wrestlings of his life, against Isaac, Laban and Esau, were coming together. They same questions were being asked, to take him back to previous failures. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Then you shall say, ‘They are your servant, Jacob’s. It is a present sent to my lord, Esau. Behold, he also is behind us’</em>- Jacob was of course aware that "the elder shall serve the younger". But he wanted to give away the blessing of the firstborn to Esau (see on <em><a href='B:10 33:11'>Gen 33:11</a></em>). He felt quite unworthy of the blessing that the elder should serve the younger and is as it were resigning it. Or it could be that he was driven to realize a future dimension to the fulfilment of the promises. In this life just as he was not to literally inherit the <em>eretz</em> for ever, so too, he would not be served by the elder. As Abraham bought land- his own eternal inheritance- in which to bury Sarah, so Jacob may have humbled himself as the younger before the elder, when he knew that in the scheme of eternal realities the opposite would be the case.&nbsp; </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He commanded also the second, and the third, and all that followed the herds, saying, This is how you shall speak to Esau, when you find him</em>- I suggested on :16 that there were in fact five droves of animals sent. Jacob had rightly guessed the psychology of his brother. The droves of 'presents' or offerings did indeed appease Esau and turn away his wrath. But as Esau had come to slay him, so had the Angel who was to wrestle with him. And Moses' own account of how an Angel sought to slay him for his unfaithfulness to the covenant is surely based upon this. Moses recognized that the path of all the true seed, including himself, was to be based upon Jacob's. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>You shall say, ‘Not only that, but behold, your servant, Jacob, is behind us’. For, he said, I will appease him with the present that goes before me, and afterward I will see his face. Perhaps he will accept me</em>- The appeasing of Esau by sacrifice ("presents") is not to be taken as meaning that God too was somehow appeased by sacrifice. For God is not an angry deity. Rather, God’s anger turned away by Jacob's appeal to His grace with tears, and deep repentance. As noted on :16, Jacob's seeing of Esau's face represented how he saw the Angel's face and was preserved. In the end, the plan to appease Esau using presents / sacrifice wasn't used.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>The approach of Esau in angry judgment reflected God’s attitude to Jacob (<em><a href='B:10 33:10'>Gen 33:10</a></em>). Jacob realized that he must "appease" (Heb. <em>kaphar</em>, normally translated 'to make atonement') Esau with gifts of animals. This is surely a confession of sin on his part. But when he offers them to Esau, Esau kindly responds that he “has all”. But all the same Jacob wants to make the sacrifice, to give up the material things... and in all this, too, we see an accurate reflection of God’s position with Jacob (and indeed all of us).&nbsp; </p><p>The Hebrew here is significant: "He said that I may cover his face with the gift to go toward his face; and after I will appear to his face, perhaps he will uplift his face". He had "set his face" to make the journey (Gen. 31:21), and now he realizes that he must meet the face of Esau. We note that Jacob is concerned about the face of Esau; and now he will wrestle with the very face of God. And afterwards reflect that in the Angel's face he saw the face of Esau. His attitude to his brother's face was his attitude to the face of God. And the wrestling match brings him right up against that face. Jacob tried to "appease" Esau with material things, in his own strength; but later he reflects that he was seeking "to find favour  / grace in the eyes of my lord" (Gen. 33:8). And so it was with God; he realized that God cannot be appeased, He is not an offended deity who is appeased by sacrifice [the word used for the "presents" Jacob sent Esau is that for sacrifice]; rather must He be appealed to for His pure grace. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>So the present passed over before him, and he himself lodged that night in the camp</em>- "The present" uses the Hebrew term usually and many times translated "offering"; and acceptable offerings come up before the face of Yahweh. That is stressed many times; and the offering here comes before the face; "before <em>him</em>" is added by the translators as the phrase as it stands seems strange. But so many times these words offering and "before (the face)" are used together about sacrifice coming acceptably before Yahweh. So there is the hint that this present / sacrifice, although it largely included unclean animals, was acceptable with God. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two handmaids, and his eleven sons, and passed over the ford of the Jabbok</em>- Jacob passed over the ford; but then we find him alone, wrestling with the Angel all night; and then in :31 he passes over the ford again. So I suggest his fear was at such a pitch that he left his family and crossed back over the ford, alone. And it was at that point, so alone and so fearful, that he met God.</p><p>'Jabbok' and 'Jacob' are related; the idea is that now Jacob was crossing over from his old name and being obsessed with material blessing and catching his brother's heel; and becoming Israel, the struggler with God. The idea of 'crossing' is emphasized four times in the Hebrew of :22,23; and 'Hebrew' means 'one who crosses over'. And yet in his final blessing of his sons, and demoting Reuben from being firstborn, Jacob shows that he still retained the elements of the old Jacob, and his conversion here was a peak of spirituality and perception that tailed off, as so often happens in human spiritual experience. </p><p>There are clear similarities with how Jacob had fled from Laban and passed over a river, being again "two camps", and again being saved by God’s grace articulated through Angels. Here again Jacob passes over a river. The primary audience of Genesis were Israel in the wilderness, who likewise "rose up in the night" with all they had, and passed over the Red Sea to salvation and the <em>eretz</em>. Constantly, Moses was seeking to encourage them from the historical precedents found in the story of the Abraham family. We note that the "two wives" are differentiated from the "two handmaids", even though the wives both gave their maids to Jacob 'to be his wife'. The inspired commentary clearly doesn't accept that, and thereby raises questions over the legitimacy and spirituality of what Jacob (and Abraham) did in this regard. </p><p>I noted earlier on Gen. 31:2,35 that Jacob believed in the 'evil eye' and in the standard mythology of his time; he had not yet made Yahweh his God. Which ought to have precluded all such beliefs. And so it cannot be ignored that the folklore of the time believed there were 'river demons' which must sometimes be overcome before crossing a river. Jacob wrestles with the Angel on the banks or on the pebbly shore of the Jabbok, before he himself passes over it. He was being taught that the real demon he had to wrestle with was himself, and his attitudes to his father and brother. And there are in fact no river demons to wrestle with- only God. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He took them, and sent them over the stream, and sent over that which he had</em>- The language of taking and sending over is exactly that used of how he had crossed the Euphrates before meeting Laban (<em><a href='B:10 31:21'>Gen 31:21</a></em>). Truly circumstances repeat; one situation is to strengthen us for the next. "That which he had" meant that Jacob was now stripped of everything. He wasn't even with Rachel; he had sent her over the Jabbok, and was totally alone. We wonder whether he was hatching some desperate plan to try to return alone toward Haran, or at least to cross the Euphrates back into the land of the east. He was in a similar situation to when 20 or 40 years previously, he had been left alone at Bethel and saw the staircase with Angels. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob was left alone, and wrestled with a man there until the breaking of the day</em>- Through this, Jacob learnt the real import of the promises. Like us and Elijah, he had to come to a point of being totally alone to perceive how they applied to himself personally (the same Hebrew phrase "left alone" is used in <em><a href='B:110 18:22'>1Ki 18:22</a></em>; <em><a href='B:110 19:10'>1Ki 19:10</a></em>; <em><a href='B:110 19:14'>1Ki 19:14</a></em>). The tension of ideas is between being "left alone", and yet having "a man" with him- clearly an Angel, representing God’s presence when a man is truly stripped of all else, just as Jacob had been earlier at Bethel. All Jacob's scaffolding was removed, to leave him "alone" with God, and yet not alone because God was with him. This is the path of all who comprise the Israel of God. Perhaps it was in retrospect that he named the place Mahanaim, the two camps, Jacob's camp and that of his guardian Angels. Jacob came to realize that all his life, he had been wrestling with God, his Angel, and he now came to beg his God for the blessing of forgiveness, implying he had repented. The Hebrew for "wrestle" can mean both to wrestle and also simply to cling on to. It seems he started wrestling, and ended up clinging on to the Angel, desperately begging for salvation and forgiveness. His great physical strength (remember how he alone moved the huge stone from the well, <em><a href='B:10 29:2'>Gen 29:2</a></em>) was redirected into a spiritual clinging on to the promises of forgiveness and salvation. And this will be our pattern of growth too. It seems Jacob was familiar with the idea of wrestling with God as being related to prayer. Rachel speaks of how "with wrestlings of God have I wrestled... and I have prevailed" in obtaining a child (<em><a href='B:10 30:8'>Gen 30:8</a></em>; AV "great" = Heb. 'elohim'). We know from Hosea 12 that Jacob became aware that he was wrestling with an Angel, not just a man. At first, he thought this was a random stranger. But the random stranger in his life was in fact God. He began wrestling, then the Angel touched his thigh, and then he realized... and clung to the Angel in prayer with tears, begging for mercy, as Hosea describes. And received the Angelic blessing. And so it was a case of the magnificent defeat; the wrestling turned into a desperate clinging to the Angel, refusing to let go until he was blessed / forgiven; even though the promises to Abraham were all about blessing. His wrestling is therefore to be understood as prayer and pleading, although doubtless it started as a physical struggle with an unknown stranger, who he later recognized as an Angel, and then perceived as God Himself. The Angel came to Jacob with the desire to kill him, as Esau (whom the Angel represented) approached him in the same spirit. It was by Jacob's desperate clinging on to God, his pleading, his intense prayer (<em><a href='B:350 12:4'>Hos 12:4</a></em>) that he changed God’s intention, after the pattern of Moses in later years. The sentence of death we received in Adam perhaps doesn't mean as much to us as it should. Our reversal of it will involve quite some struggle. </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>Jacob wrestled / struggled in prayer with the Angel. Consider the Biblical emphasis on the idea of struggle, quite apart from the fact that Jacob's night of wrestling is a cameo of the experience of all who would be counted among the Israel of God. Job felt that his prayers were a striving with God (<em><a href='B:220 33:13'>Job 33:13</a></em>). Christ's prayers in Gethsemane are described as a "striving" (<em><a href='B:650 12:4'>Heb 12:4</a></em>); Paul asks the Romans to <em>strive</em> in prayer, so that he may be <em>delivered from unbelievers</em> (cp. Esau), and <em>return</em> to them with a <em>blessing </em>(<em><a href='B:520 15:30'>Rom 15:30</a></em>). This is all allusion to Jacob. Likewise Epaphras 'strove' for the Colossians in his prayers (<em><a href='B:580 4:12'>Col 4:12</a></em> AVmg.). Our prayers are to give the Father no "rest" (<em><a href='B:290 62:7'>Isa 62:7</a></em>), no cessation from violent warfare (Strong).</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>The spiritual weakness of Jacob at the time of the wrestling incident can be inferred from the way Hosea speaks about Jacob in Hosea 12. Hosea paints Jacob as a hypocrite, one who prays to God and yet serves idols. Hosea is recognizing that the sins of the fathers tend to continue in subsequent generations; and yet those generations are still culpable for their sin (alcoholics who blame 'inherited genes' should bear this in mind). But the point is, Hosea is reasoning upon the basis of the similarities between Jacob and the Israel of his day; and he's urging them not to be like Jacob, not to blame their weakness on the fact Jacob was their genetic ancestor; and perhaps urging them to go and make the conversion to true spirituality which Jacob eventually made. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>When he saw that he didn’t prevail against him- </em>God had taught Jacob this idea through Rachel saying that she had wrestled with God’s wrestling in order to have a child (<em><a href='B:10 30:8'>Gen 30:8</a></em>). Jacob however did not prevail in prayer, and neither did God as it were prevail against or upon him. It was a perfectly equal balance of power (or so it seemed to Jacob). But then the Angel with a touch demonstrated that this apparent balance of power between God and man was (and is) utterly illusory. Jacob was being made to realize that this was how he had perceived things; but God’s grace makes all such balance of power theory irrelevant. <em><a href='B:350 12:4-6'>Hos 12:4-6</a></em> presents the wrestling as Jacob begging the Angel for grace, and prevailing over God, as it were, by receiving this. So I suggest that the hours of wrestling to a perfectly balanced stalemate was not the time Hosea 12 refers to. Rather it was once Jacob had got to this point of apparent balance of power with God, that the Angel touches his thigh. And then after that, knowing he was utterly beaten, Jacob begs for grace and mercy and will not let the Angel go, looking right into his face, and it is in this sense that he 'prevails' as Hosea says. </p><p>Hosea comments that Jacob had power with God and prevailed. But the folklore of the time was full of stories of mighty men who wrestled with the gods- and always lost. But here, with Yahweh the only true God, God allows Himself to be defeated; or, holds Himself back from conquering and humiliating man. And in fact, allows man to win; in that man's collapse and clinging to God for His grace is in fact the magnificent defeat. Until both sides collapse into each other's arms in love and mutual respect. Hence the Hebrew words for "wrestle" and "embrace" are virtually identical. It is therefore hugely significant that Esau embraces Jacob in Gen. 33:4. His embrace of Jacob reflected how the Angel ended up embracing Jacob, as Jacob clung to him begging for mercy. Esau's embrace of Jacob reflects how after Jacob's repentance, the Angel embraced him. Indeed, all God's wrestling with Jacob was really an embrace of him, all done in love.  </p><p>This is what it is, to be Israel. When a man starts to wrestle with another, the other has to wrestle against the body that begins wrestling against his. And this is how wrestling becomes such an appropriate image. Man wrestles with God in resisting His ways; and so God ends up wrestling with man. And He never prevails against man by some overpowering use of force or strength; indeed, He allows His Israel to win, although thereby He also wins; and He shows at the end how with just one touch, all our muscular strength is revealed as nothing. The wrestling was at night, recalling how it was in the darkness of the womb that he had grasped at Esau's feel; and how he had used the darkness of his father's blindness to deceive him and grasp the blessing of the firstborn. He now realizes that the only blessing he desperately wants is that of God's mercy and forgivenss ["I will not let you go until you bless me", :26].</p><p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He touched the hollow of his thigh, and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was strained, as he wrestled</em>- "Wrestled" translates a Hebrew word which is a form of that for 'Jacob'. Jacob's wrestling, trying by sleight of hand to win in his own strength, was what Jacob was all about. He 'Jacobed' against God. To touch the thigh is an image used elsewhere in the Jacob story, where the same Hebrew word for "thigh" is used: When Abraham makes his servant touch his thigh to promise to not marry Isaac to a Canaanite (Gen. 24:2); and about Jacob asking Joseph to promise not to bury him in Egypt (Gen. 47:29). So to touch the thigh is to promise. God through the Angel was reaffirming the promises to Jacob- even whilst he was pitting all his strength against God. And that touch of the thigh disabled Jacob, making him give up all reliance upon human strength. Our response to being sworn to by God has to be the same. We limp the rest of our lives, clinging on to His grace. We would have expected God to wait until Jacob realized he was fighting God, beg for forgiveness- and only then reconfirm the covenant with him. But God's grace is such that whilst Jacob was pitting all his strength against God, God reconfirms the covenant. Grace takes the initiative. We have the same experience. Jacob was born the seed of Abraham, but we likewise are the seed of Abraham, in the same covenant, through baptism. Jacob had [rather manipulatively] pleaded the promise to Abraham that his seed would be "as the sand of the sea", reasoning as if that promise was also made to himself. When that had not yet been promised to Jacob personally. So Jacob was slowly moving towards accepting he was the seed of Abraham; and God moved towards him in leaps and bounds. He does the same with us. </p><p>The sign of circumcision was given as the confirmation that the promise regarding a son would be fulfilled. Abraham had to figuratively cut off part of his vital organ in order to be assured that <em>God</em> would provide a son for him. Accepting God’s promises means that we too must give up our human strength and attempts to fulfil them. Likewise when Jacob was given the repeated covenant acceptance, he was wounded in his "thigh" and thereafter walked with a limp. "It is not impossible that the damage to the "thigh" means Jacob was assaulted in his vital organs. Thus, the "limp" refers to the mark left on his very manhood and future". So the touching of the thigh may have removed his virility; whatever, it was a touch at a very deeply internal point. God likewise touches us deep within, to convict us of our weakness. And we walk through the rest of life limping, just as we have a choice to fall upon the stone of Christ and be broken, or have that stone fall upon us and grind us to powder.</p><p>It has been observed: "Three biblical scholars, S. Gervitz, L. Eslinger, and S. H. Smith, also argue that
Jacob’s injury occurs to his genitals.The kap yareh, they point out, refers either to the “hand of the thigh”—the penis, or to the “hollow, pouch-like” scrotum. Citing J. Skinner, L. Eslinger suggests that when Genesis says that Jacob’s hip was put out (32:25), what it means is that “Jacob had a hernia at the place of the scrotum’s attachment to the body in the course of the struggle.” This interpretation of Jacob’s injury as sexual has far-reaching implications...". Possibly we could argue that his wasted years with Laban were a result of his sexual list for Rachel, and now this was revealed to him- by one gentle touch of the Angel.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>The man said, Let me go, for the day breaks. Jacob said, I won’t let You go, unless You bless me</em>- We enquire why the Angel was so urgent that Jacob stop wrestling before daybreak. It could be that the idea was that Jacob was to be slain by the Angel unless he learnt his lesson before daybreak. But it was clear Jacob wasn't going to do so. But the Angel wanted to bless him; hence he urges him to give up his wrestling with God before daybreak. Rather like Gen. 19:22,23 could imply that the Angel could do nothing to destroy Sodom until Lot was in Zoar at day break. So we see again how God urges Jacob to meet the preconditions for salvation, despite Jacob struggling against submitting to them. Just as Abraham was dragged kicking and screaming, as it were, from Ur to Canaan. We see here the essence of Yahweh, the God who so desperately wants to save, and who was to be so exactly manifested in His Son Yahshua, 'Yah saves'.</p><p>Notice the chronology of events and the explanation give on :25. They wrestle but neither wins. They are apparently at perfect balance between Divine strength and Jacob's. Then the Angel touches Jacob, and after that Jacob knows he is humanly beaten. But he clings on to the Angel begging for mercy and in this way 'had power with God' as Hosea 12 says; he in that sense "had power over the Angel" and prevailed, refusing to let the otherwise victorious Angel go, unless he blesses him with forgiveness. There is a strong link between blessing and forgiveness; we think of Pharaoh asking to be blessed (<em><a href='B:20 12:32'>Exo 12:32</a></em>), and David speaking of the blessedness of forgiveness (<em><a href='B:520 4:6'>Rom 4:6</a></em>). <em><a href='B:510 3:25-26'>Act 3:25-26</a></em> makes explicit that the Abrahamic blessing was essentially of forgiveness.&nbsp; Having been made powerless and beaten, Jacob clung on to the Angel (this is one possible understanding of the Hebrew translated 'wrestle'). And it was this which paradoxically gave Jacob the upper hand.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He said to him, What is your name? He said, Jacob</em>- There is reason to think that the Angel also reminded Jacob of his father Isaac; for it was Isaac who had asked Jacob 'Who are you?', and he had lied in saying 'I am Esau'. His father had loved him less than Esau; and he had struggled with his father because of this. The way Jacob begs the Angel to bless him recalls how he so earnestly wanted to obtain his father's blessing. Jacob's pleading for blessing with the Angel would have reminded him of Esau's desperate pleading for the blessing from Isaac.. But the struggle with his father, as with his brother, was all now revealed as essentially a struggle with God. There is reason to think that the Angel also reminded Jacob of his father Isaac. The way Jacob begs the Angel to bless him recalls how he so earnestly wanted to obtain his father’s blessing. Jacob's pleading for blessing with the Angel would have reminded him of Esau's desperate pleading for the blessing from Isaac. All these things were restimulated in Jacob's mind by the wrestling. The Angel asks him what his name is, in exactly the same way as Isaac had asked him 20 or 40 years before. At that time he had lied. But now he truthfully answers the Angel: "Jacob", the deceiver. And then he begs for the blessing of forgiveness. He had struggled with men, with Isaac and Isaac's influence of Jacob's spirituality, with his brother Esau, with Laban, and with himself. And the Angel said that in all these struggles with men, Jacob had ultimately won in that he had confessed he was a deceiver, a sinner. &nbsp;</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He said, Your name will no longer be called Jacob, but Israel; for you have fought with God and with men, and have prevailed</em>- As explained on :25-27, after reaching a stalemate where Jacob did not prevail against God, the Angel touched his thigh and he became powerless. But he desperately clung to the Angel, peering into his face, and begged for the true Abrahamic blessing of forgiveness and fellowship with God. And this was granted. So the paradox was that by not prevailing in his own strength, he did prevail. This is why he was renamed "Israel". "Israel" effectively means something like 'God rules' (<em><a href='B:10 32:22-28'>Gen 32:22-28</a></em>) (James Muilenburg, <em>The Way Of Israel</em> (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962) p. 45); His people of the new Israel are those over whom He rules. We therefore are under His Kingdom now, if we accept Christ as King over our lives. The name was a testament to the fact that in a way, God had prevailed; in another sense, Jacob had prevailed. We see here the endless mutuality between God and man, once we surrender. He wins, and we win. "With God and with men" confirms the idea often presented in this section, that the Angel represented men like Isaac, Laban and Esau with whom Jacob had wrestled. </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>The Hebrew idea of a name is connected with the idea of who a person essentially is. In Biblical Hebrew, one would enquire after a person's literal name by asking "Who (<em>mi</em>) are you?"- not, as was asked of Jacob, "What (<em>mah</em>) is your name?" (<em><a href='B:10 32:28'>Gen 32:28</a></em>). This question to Jacob was therefore a request for him to ask himself who he really was. God’s Name in this sense is to become part of ours- hence after God’s declaration of His Name to Moses, the Israelites started to insert parts of the Yah / Jah name into their own. </p><p>But the meaning of 'Israel' is hard to define; just as the true nature of God's people, His "Israel", is hard to define. It can mean 'God struggles' just as much as it means 'struggler with God'. It can also imply 'let El rule / prevail / win'. Israel are those who let Him rule and have His way in their lives. It perfectly reflects the mutuality of man's relationship with God. Our struggle with Him means that He inevitably, axiomatically struggles with us. "Israel" is the epitomy of the whole Divine-human encounter. "Israel" likewise can mean 'God struggles' as well as 'God rules', i.e. wins the struggle. God wrestles with us because we wrestle with Him. But because He struggles / wrestles, He must win / rule. For God shall not be ever defeated. And His 'winning' means our salvation and blessing, as happened with Jacob. This incident gave birth to the whole name 'Israel'; it is therefore programmatic of every man's walk with God. And so Hosea says, commenting on this incident, that there God spoke with us; or as the Hebrew means, “There He keeps on speaking with us". This is what it is, to be Israel. And I suggest that "Israel", with all it implies, is the fulfilment of the promise to Abraham to make his name great. Great in significance, freighted with God's grace and human struggle against it. The question is whether man, as Jacob, wants to become Israel, or remain fearful Jacob in the darkness, trying to manage life in our own strength.  </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob asked him, Please tell me Your name. He said, Why is it that you ask what My name is? He blessed him there</em>- The Hebrew idea of a name is connected with the idea of who a person essentially is. In Biblical Hebrew, one would enquire after a person's literal name by asking "Who (mi) are you?"- not, as was asked of Jacob, "What (mah) is your name?" (Gen. 32:28). This question to Jacob was therefore a request for him to ask himself who he really was. God's Name in this sense is to become part of ours- hence after God's declaration of His Name to Moses, the Israelites started to insert parts of the Yah / Jah name into their own. Jacob's request to know [effectively] God's Name is not answered with a specific word or lexical item. His natural quesion would have been "Will you please not harm me?". Instead he asks for the Name of his opponent. He guesses it's an Angel. It is God. And he asks for the Name, because he senses that he needs the grace which he guesses is in that Name. It is answered by giving Jacob a blessing by grace, and that blessing is of forgiveness. Jacob of course would have perceived that "This is Yahweh"; but Yahweh is not so much a word [and all who are obsessed with the Name per se are missing this], but an intention, the Divine intention to bless by grace. That is His Name, His "I will". And it came to full term in Yahoshua, 'Yah saves'. Jacob's statement 'I am Jacob', 'the twister', is effectively a statement of repentance. He twice lied to his father, "I am Esau". Now he is honest about who he really is. God's response is to bless, to forgive, and to assure Jacob that this is effectively His eternal Name. And "Jacob have I loved...". In fact all obsession with pinning God down to a lexical item like Jehovah or Yahweh is utterly misplaced. </p><p>Manoah had to learn the same in Jud. 13:17-19: "And Manoah said to the angel of the LORD, “What is your name, so that, when your words come true, we may honor you?” And the angel of the LORD said to him, “Why do you ask my name, seeing it is wonderful?”". The Name is to be experienced, not mouthed off as a word, as a mere lexical item. "Why do you ask my Name?", as here with Jacob, is a rhetorical question. 'Why do you ask it? Because you want to just think that relationship with Me is a question of knowing a word. But it's more wonderful than that. Experience My grace and blessing, and then you will know My Name'. Likewise when Moses asked to be given the name of God in order to tell Israel who had met with him, he was told a seven fold series of "I will..." statements. God is who He is to us in our experience of His salvation."I am who I am" to you, in experience. The obsession with pronouncing the Name, as seen in the "Jehovah's Witnesses" and other groups, is thus presented as primitive and totally misplaced. 
</p><p>Jacob knew the Yahweh Name, he knew the name El Shaddai (<em><a href='B:20 6:3'>Exo 6:3</a></em>); surely he was asking for a deeper exposition of the Name. He realized his need to draw closer to God. But the Angel grants him the blessing of forgiveness, and says that Jacob doesn't need such an exposition, because he now knows the character of God: he has received such grace and forgiveness and future assurance. This is the Name / character of God revealed. Thus Jacob realized that he knew the theory of God, but not the practice. Latter day Jacob, natural and spiritual, are little better. In so many ways, so often, we know but don't believe; and it has been commonly observed that the problem with us is that we are right in doctrine but very weak in practice. This shouldn't surprise us. It was exactly the characteristic of our father Jacob. But the God of Bethel is our God too, and will bring us through to a deeper maturity. That night, Jacob reached "manhood", spiritual maturity (<em><a href='B:350 12:3'>Hos 12:3</a></em> RV).</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for, he said, I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved</em>- Jacob's comment at the end of the wrestling experience was that "my life is preserved"; and that Hebrew phrase is so often used by David (<em><a href='B:230 7:2'>Psa 7:2</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 22:20'>Psa 22:20</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 25:20'>Psa 25:20</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 33:19'>Psa 33:19</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 56:13'>Psa 56:13</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 86:13'>Psa 86:13</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 97:10'>Psa 97:10</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 120:2'>Psa 120:2</a></em>). Likewise Jacob commented that the experience had shown him that God had been gracious unto him (<em><a href='B:10 33:11'>Gen 33:11</a></em>); and <em>that</em> Hebrew phrase too is a catch phrase of David’s (<em><a href='B:230 4:1'>Psa 4:1</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 6:2'>Psa 6:2</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 9:13'>Psa 9:13</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 25:16'>Psa 25:16</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 26:11'>Psa 26:11</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 27:11'>Psa 27:11</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 30:8'>Psa 30:8</a></em>; <em><a href='B:230 31:9'>Psa 31:9</a></em> and many others). We too can make Jacob our hero, as David did. </p><p>It could be that 'seeing face to face' is being used in the same way as in 2 Kings 14:8, where armies 'see each other face to face', i.e. in confrontation. He is marvelling that he has had confrontation with God, both that night and throughout his earlier life- but has been preserved by grace.</p><p>Jacob will tell Esau, “I see your face as seeing the face of God” (Gen. 33:10). Clearly He saw what happened at Peniel, 'the face of God', as having been a foretaste of meeting Esau- and being saved from rightful death by grace. The Angels went out to meet him (:1) just as Esau came out to meet him. His meeting with God [in the Angel] was his meeting with his brother. Again he was shown that wrestling with our brother, even in our own mind, is actually wrestling God. We have here an Old Testament form of the explicit New Testament teaching, that our attitude to our brother is our attitude to God. The blessing of Num. 6:24-26 associates God's face with blessing and peace. And Jacob saw that face. We can infer from this that Esau was totally forgiving towards Jacob, because Esau's faith reflected that of God. We note that in wrestling, Jacob would have looked right into the face of the Angel, from very close quarters. This is how close we can get to God in our struggles. It is not possible for man to see God's face (Ex. 33:20). The idea is that Jacob has done the impossible. Without realizing it at the time; just as at Bethel he felt that "The Lord is in this place, and I knew it not" (Gen. 28:16). The experience of grace and blessing is the experience of that which is impossible by any other means. </p><p>The Hebrew for "preserved" is that used in :11, where Jacob prays to be preserved from Esau. The wrestling with the Angel and obtaining blessing and victory through surrender... was understood as prophetic of Jacob's preservation from Esau, and final victory over him.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>The sun rose on him as he passed over Peniel, and he limped because of his thigh</em>- Paul may well allude to Jacob in speaking of how his "thorn in the flesh" humbled him. The same word for "limped" is used of how latter day repentant Israel will also limp, and yet likewise be saved by grace from their neighbouring enemies, whose ancestors were Laban and Esau (<em><a href='B:400 4:6-7'>Mic 4:6-7</a></em>; <em><a href='B:430 3:19'>Zep 3:19</a></em>). Again we have a case of 'Bible television', of the text enabling us to envisage the situation, and focusing in upon an individual; and here the spotlight is upon Jacob limping, silhouetted against the dawn of a new day and worldview for him.</p><p>Yahweh had earlier promised Jacob, quite simply: "I will do you good", and had undertaken to return Jacob. But this involved His meeting with Jacob and wrestling with him, and wounding him so that he limped the rest of his life. All this was the path needed [because of Jacob's being 'Jacob'], in order to ultimately 'do him good'. And as Hosea notes, "There He spake with us" each one. We limp into God's Kingdom. All the calls and claims to triumphalism, to healing and blessing now, are rather missing the whole point.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Therefore the children of Israel don’t eat the sinew of the hip, which is on the hollow of the thigh, to this day, because he touched the hollow of Jacob’s thigh in the sinew of the hip</em>- This refers to the nerve tendon which extends from the thigh down the leg to the ankle. But I suggested above that the wound to the thigh may have been an equivalent to circumcision, and could refer to damage to Jacob's reproductive organ. The Hebrew for "thigh" is used in this way both specifically (<em><a href='B:10 24:2'>Gen 24:2</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 47:29'>Gen 47:29</a></em>) and more figuratively when it is the same word often translated "loins" in the context of begettal of a child. As with us, it was the touch of Jacob at his most sensitive which humbled him, and made him give up his attempts to justify himself in his own strength. This is why we often fail, or made to realize our weakness, at what we may think of as our strongest point. The careful driver runs a red light, the capable craftsman makes a foolish mistake. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob lifted up his eyes, and looked, and, behold, Esau was coming, and with him four hundred men. He divided the children between Leah, Rachel, and the two handmaids</em>- We should read this as reminding us that Jacob had already divided up his family. For he had sent them over the Jabbok whilst he wrestled alone with the Angel. Jacob had already been informed by the "messengers", who I suggested were Angels, that Esau was coming with 400 men. We imagine Jacob counting them and accepting that the Angel messenger had told the truth; although he perhaps hoped they had got it wrong. </p><p> I suggested on Gen. 32 that "four hundred men" is a term elsewhere used about a military brigade. The fact Esau keeps coming with this large group of soldiers suggests that Jacob's attempts at appeasement by "presents" [the same Hebrew word for "sacrifice"] had been unsuccesful. All he could do was cast himself upon Esau's grace. And so it had been in his wrestling with the Angel, just one of the army of [400?] Angels who had come to meet him. His attempts to appease God by sacrifice were no good; and he had thrown himself upon God's grace, and succeeded. It all looked ahead to how reconcilliation with God was to be by grace and not sacrifice. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He put the handmaids and their children in front, Leah and her children after, and Rachel and Joseph at the rear</em>- We see here his favouritism; not only of Rachel and Joseph, but his consideration that the sons of the maids were somehow second class children. We again see how his wives' attempt to give him their maids 'as his wife' was mistaken and didn’t work out happily in the end. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He himself passed over in front of them-</em> Before wrestling the Angel, he had been behind them, having sent them in front of him; and I suggested his plan had been to try to return alone to Haran. But after his experience of grace with the Angel, he believed that if he had seen God’s face, peering right into it close up as he (as it were) wrestled with God, and had been accepted by grace... so it was going to be with Esau. And so he changes plan, and instead of putting himself last, passes in front of them all. This explains the force of "he himself".</p><p style='margin-left:1em'><em>And bowed himself to the ground seven times, until he came near to his brother</em>- Jacob's new appreciation of the blessing of forgiveness is reflected by the way in which he effectively tells Esau that he is handing back to him the birthright, the physical blessings. The way he bows down seven times to Esau is rejecting the blessing he had obtained by deceit from Isaac: "Be master over your brethren, and let your mother's sons bow down to you" (<em><a href='B:10 27:29'>Gen 27:29</a></em>). His experience of the blessing of God’s grace was sufficient for him, and he rejected all else. I noted on <em><a href='B:10 32:16'>Gen 32:16</a></em> that the seven bows were intended to be preceded by the six droves of gifts; but now, apparently, Jacob forgets that plan and himself goes to Esau. "Present" is the word more usually translated sacrifice or offering. So Jacob as it were makes the sacrifice but realizes that grace removes its power, and goes himself to the front. Jacob casting himself upon grace is every man. The image of a man falling seven times to the earth, and then arising in spiritual triumph, is used about every believer in Prov. 24:16. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Esau ran to meet him, embraced him, fell on his neck, kissed him, and they wept</em>- Jacob's meeting with the Angels (<em><a href='B:10 21:1'>Gen 21:1</a></em>) and then with the Angel was all predictive of his meeting with Esau. He feared God’s judgment, as he feared Esau. But in a beautiful way, his fears are met. God runs to meet the sinner, meeting us in Christ, by grace; and Esau Jacob's rightful enemy meets him in tears, probably much to the shock of the 400 men with Esau. The primary audience of Genesis was Israel in the wilderness, who likewise were called to go and meet God and yet feared to do so because of their conscience of their sins and idolatry (<em><a href='B:20 19:17'>Exo 19:17</a></em> s.w.). The same word for "meet" is used of how Edom, which is Esau, came out to "meet" Israel with the sword (<em><a href='B:40 20:18'>Num 20:18</a></em>; <em><a href='B:40 20:20'>Num 20:20</a></em>), as did other formidable enemies of Israel as they travelled through the wilderness (<em><a href='B:50 1:44'>Deu 1:44</a></em>; <em><a href='B:50 2:32'>Deu 2:32</a></em>; <em><a href='B:50 3:1'>Deu 3:1</a></em>). The encouragement was that what seemed impossible odds would somehow be overcome. </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>The Lord Jesus reflected the Father’s positive spirit in the way He framed the parable of the prodigal son to feature the Heavenly Father as running out to meet the returning son, falling on his neck and kissing him…in <em>exactly</em> the language of <em><a href='B:10 33:4'>Gen 33:4</a></em> about Esau doing this to Jacob. The connection can’t be denied; but what was the Lord’s point? Surely He was willing to see something positive in the otherwise fleshly Esau at that time, He as it were took a snapshot of Esau at that moment…and applied it to God Himself, in His extravagant grace towards an unworthy Jacob. This was how positive minded the Lord was in His reading of even the darkest characters. </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>At the end of Jacob's life, Joseph also falls on his neck and weeps for him, just as the Father does to the repentant prodigal (<em><a href='B:10 46:29'>Gen 46:29</a></em>). Jacob's neck had once been covered with animal skin in the deceit of his father Isaac (<em><a href='B:10 27:16'>Gen 27:16</a></em>), and Esau too wept on that same neck, the neck which had been used to deceive and rob Esau. And Joseph was to weep upon it too, after Jacob has again sent an ambassage ahead of him to Joseph as he did to Esau (see on <em><a href='B:10 46:28'>Gen 46:28</a></em>). These otherwise strange connections with Jacob's neck would have served to show him that through his acceptance of the spiritual seniority of his great son Joseph, he had indeed been forgiven of all this miserable past. </p><p>The Hebrew word for 'wrestle' and for 'embrace' are the same. I discussed on Gen. 32:25 how Esau's embrace of Jacob reflects how after Jacob's repentance, the Angel embraced him. Indeed, all God's wrestling with Jacob was really an embrace of him, all done in love.  </p><p>Hosea uses the wrestling incident as an appeal for Israel / Jacob to come to intimacy with God. The idea of the wrestling incident is that the Angel like Esau came out to destroy Jacob because of his deceit- which is a major complaint of God against Israel, and Hosea against Gomer. Jacob began life in the womb in a wrestle with Esau, and the Angel represents Esau. Hosea repeatedly warns that destruction is just around the corner for Israel. The Assyrians / Babylonians are about to pounce, like an eagle hovering above God's house. But Jacob wrestled with the Angel, and ended up getting a blessing, with his life preserved. And in the wrestling, both Jacob and the Angel changed or matured. And so it could have been between God and Israel. The tortured mind of God revealed in Hos. 11:8 was reflected in the Angel whilst wrestling with Jacob. Jacob is alluded to, as he was a deceiver like Gomer / Israel had been. Yet even he came to faith and covenant with God, as Gomer / Israel could do. And just as the wrestling produced literal intimacy between Jacob and the Angel, so intimacy between God and Israel, as between Hosea and Gomer, could be created. Jacob had been a wrestler from the start. The Hebrew word used for wrestling is abaq, related to the word yabboq, the Jabbok river which Jacob crossed to wrestle with the Angel. And these words likewise sound like 'Jacob', Yaaqob. The word for "heel" likewise is aqeb, and Jacob's first wrestling was with the heel of Esau. In Gen. 33:4, Jacob embraces Esau, and the word habaq is used. The wrestling [abaq] resulted in the intimacy of embrace, habaq. Just as it did with the Angel. Literally, the Angel 'yabboq'ed Jacob, he Jacobed Jacob. And yet "he [Jacob]struggled with" contains the Hebrew letters for "Israel". Jacob 'Israeled' the Angel. This is what it is to be Israel, to struggle with God and attain His grace, as God 'Jacobed' Jacob. We have here a picture of the mutual intimacy achieved through the wrestling.    </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He lifted up his eyes, and saw the women and the children; and said, Who are these with you? He said, The children whom God has graciously given your servant</em>- As noted on :3, Jacob's original plan of sending droves of presents in front of him and then appearing last of all... had been changed by the wrestling experience. Knowing God’s grace, Jacob had presented himself alone. But as the droves pulled up behind him, Esau naturally enquired about them.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>Jacob called Esau his master by describing himself as Esau's servant, in evident rejection of the Divine promise they both knew: that Esau would serve Jacob (<em><a href='B:10 25:23'>Gen 25:23</a></em>). And yet at this very point, Jacob speaks of "the children which God has graciously given your servant"; and this scene is cited in <em><a href='B:290 8:18'>Isa 8:18</a></em> as a type of Christ and his spiritual children of promise. In similar vein, <em><a href='B:290 49:21'>Isa 49:21</a></em> uses this scene as a picture of the faithful remnant among Jacob in the last days. Jacob was reflecting his experience of grace; he realized that his many children were a gift of grace. All the human devices used to produce them- marrying two sisters, sleeping with their maids, mandrakes etc.- he now realized were not the real source of them. This blessing was solely and totally of God’s gracious gift. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Then the handmaids came near with their children, and they bowed themselves</em>- The original plan had been that they would all meet Esau alone, and then Jacob would come. The wives were after all Esau's relatives. But as explained on :3, Jacob's encounter with grace the previous night had led to a radical change of plan. He came to Esau first, and the wives and children afterwards. They too bowed down, as if recognizing that they were inferior to Esau and he was master of all their clan.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Leah also and her children came near, and bowed themselves. After them, Joseph came near with Rachel, and they bowed themselves</em>- The Hebrew for "came near" is used insistently and multiple times in the record of Jacob's coming near to Isaac and deceiving Esau out of the blessing (<em><a href='B:10 27:21-22'>Gen 27:21-22</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 27:25-27'>Gen 27:25-27</a></em>). The whole incident is an undoing of the sin, an attempted repentance. The other women go forward first, followed by their children. But Joseph went in front of Rachel. Perhaps even as a child, he felt himself to be the saviour of others. Or perhaps Rachel was so utterly self absorbed that she used her child as a human shield. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Esau said, What do you mean by all this company which I met? Jacob said, To find grace in the sight of my lord</em>- "Present" is the Hebrew word usually translated sacrifice or offering. Esau, like God, was saying that such sacrifice was not needed for reconciliation. Grace is found in the face of God and man not by sacrifice, but by a broken and contrite spirit. David had to learn the same.</p><p>Jacob admits he had sent the presents in order to buy grace, but Esau makes it clear that such grace cannot be bought, and he is not interested in having them. Esau in this way exactly reflects God's position with Jacob. Esau may be asking a rhetorical question: 'Why are you trying to buy grace from me with these presents? You can't buy it. I'm giving it'. The meaning of the gifts, and their acceptance, is therefore that we give in response to what God has given us- and not in order to attain His gifts in the first place. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Esau said, I have enough, my brother; let that which you have be yours</em>- God likewise is not in need of presents / sacrifice. "Enough" is the same Hebrew word translated "elder" in the controversial promise that the elder would serve the younger (<em><a href='B:10 25:23'>Gen 25:23</a></em>). Esau may be saying that he considers himself hugely blessed, and doesn't therefore need any more confirmation that he was in fact the elder; he felt Isaac's material blessing of the firstborn had come true for him in any case. Esau therefore also learnt something through this incident; he came against Jacob not to get the blessing, as he felt he already had received it; but for revenge. But he now realizes that having God’s blessing means that revenge is not something that is necessary. </p><p>Esau's statement that he has everything may be a way of saying that he has anyway received the blessing of the firstborn and therefore all Jacob's machinations to get it had not achieved anything anyway. This would also be a tacit recognition that Isaac's much coveted words of blessing had not come true for Jacob anyway.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob said, Please no, if I have now found grace in your sight, then receive my present at my hand, because I have seen your face, as one sees the face of God- </em> Jacob is brought to understand that it was not his gifts that had earned him acceptance by God and Esau. It was of grace alone. But his response to that grace was to give perhaps all he had materially. </p><p>Jacob recognizes that the second stage of his wrestling with the Angel, when his natural strength had been neutralized and he was close up face to face with God begging for grace, had effectively been seeing the face of Esau. "Present" is the Hebrew usually translated offering or sacrifice. Jacob had at the last minute reversed his plan of sending presents / sacrifice ahead of him to appease Esau; see on :3. He realized that sacrifice of itself would not enable sinful man to meet the face of God nor his offended brother. Only a desperate, face to face appeal for grace could do that. But having learnt that, he all the same wants to give the present / sacrifice. And this should be our motivation too for any offering we bring. Of itself, it cannot reconcile us to God and man. We offer it in gratitude for grace. And this would have been so relevant to the primary audience of Genesis, Israel in the wilderness who were hearing commandments about sacrifice. </p><p style='margin-left:1em'><em>And you were pleased with me</em>- "Pleased" in Hebrew carries the idea of satisfying debt, and is often used of how God "accepted" sacrifice. So the purposeful paradox of ideas is: 'Because you accepted me without sacrifice, you accepted by broken and contrite heart as sacrifice, then please in any case accept my material sacrifice'. And this was exactly what David was brought to understand when forgiven regarding Bathsheba and Uriah. The unexpected nature of Esau's forgiveness and acceptance is therefore felt by Jacob to be a reflection of God's forgiveness of him. His wrestling with the Angel reflected his wrestling with his father, and with his brother. All of that was wrestling with God. God's forgiveness, when properly perceived, has a similar unexpected quality to it, as explained well by C.S. Lewis in "Surprised by Joy". </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>The Angel commented that Jacob had struggled with both God and men, and had prevailed. Which men? Jacob recognized that the face of the Angel represented that of Esau, his brother with whom he had emotionally struggled all his life. The struggle in the womb had been lived out all their lives to this point. Perhaps the Angel's face appeared like that of Esau? Jacob saw the face of the Angel as it were the face of Esau- implying that the Angel he wrestled with was Esau's guardian Angel. He was being more obliquely shown the truth which New Testament passages like <em><a href='B:690 4:12'>1Jn 4:12</a></em>; <em><a href='B:690 4:20-21'>1Jn 4:20-21</a></em> state plainly: that our relationship with our brother is our relationship with God. And Jacob was thus repenting of how badly he'd treated his brother. </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>The parable of the prodigal contains multiple allusions to the record of Jacob and Esau, their estrangement, and the anger of the older brother (Esau) against the younger brother. K.E. Bailey, <em>Jacob And The Prodigal</em> (Downers Grove: IVP, 2003) lists 51 points of contact between the Jacob / Esau record and the prodigal parable. There is a younger and an elder son, who both break their relationships with their father, and have an argument over the inheritance issue. Jacob like the prodigal son insults his father in order to get his inheritance. As Jacob joined himself to Laban in the far country, leaving his older brother Esau living at home, so the prodigal glued himself to a Gentile and worked for him by minding his flocks, whilst his older brother remained at home with the father. The fear of the prodigal as he returned home matches that of Jacob as he finally prepares to meet the angry Esau. Jacob's unexpected meeting with the Angel and clinging to him physically is matched by the prodigal being embraced and hugged by his father. Notice how <em><a href='B:10 33:10'>Gen 33:10</a></em> records how Jacob felt he saw the face of Esau as the face of an Angel. By being given the ring, the prodigal "has in effect now supplanted his older brother" (A.J. Hultgren, <em>The Parables Of Jesus</em> (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000) p. 79); just as Jacob did. As Esau was "in the field" (<em><a href='B:10 27:5'>Gen 27:5</a></em>), so was the older brother. </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>What was the Lord Jesus getting at by framing His story in terms of Jacob and Esau? The Jews saw Jacob as an unblemished hero, and Esau / Edom as the epitome of wickedness and all that was anti-Jewish and anti-God. The Book of Jubilees has much to say about all this, as does the Genesis Rabbah (see e.g. Jacob Neusner,<em> Genesis Rabbah: The Judaic Commentary To The Book Of Genesis</em> (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985) Vol. 3 p. 176). The Lord is radically and bravely re-interpreting all this. Jacob is the younger son, who went seriously wrong during his time with Laban. We have shown elsewhere how weak Jacob was at that time. Jacob was saved by grace, the grace shown in the end by the Angel with whom he wrestled, and yet who finally blessed him. As <em><a href='B:350 12:4'>Hos 12:4</a></em> had made clear, Jacob weeping in the Angel's arms and receiving the blessing of gracious forgiveness is all God speaking to us. The older brother who refused to eat with his sinful brother clearly represented, in the context of the parable, the Jewish religious leaders. They were equated with Esau- the very epitome of all that was anti-Jewish. And in any case, according to the parable, the hero of the story is the younger son, Jacob, who is extremely abusive and unspiritual towards his loving father, and is saved by sheer grace alone. This too was a radical challenge to the Jewish perception of their ancestral father Jacob. </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>The parable demonstrates that both the sons despised their father and their inheritance in the same way. They both wish him dead, treat him as if he isn't their father, abuse his gracious love, shame him to the world. Both finally come to their father from working in the fields. Jacob, the younger son, told Laban that "All these years I have served you... and you have not treated me justly" (<em><a href='B:10 31:36-42'>Gen 31:36-42</a></em>). But these are exactly the words of the older son in the parable! The confusion is surely to demonstrate that both younger and elder son essentially held the same wrong attitudes. And the Father, clearly representing God, and God as He was manifested in Christ, sought so earnestly to reconcile both the younger and elder sons. The Lord Jesus so wished the hypocritical Scribes and Pharisees to fellowship with the repenting sinners that He wept over Jerusalem; He didn’t shrug them off as self-righteous bigots, as we tend to do with such people. He wept for them, as the Father so passionately pours out His love to them. And perhaps on another level we see in all this the desperate desire of the Father and Son for Jewish-Arab unity in Christ. For the promises to Ishmael show that although Messiah's line was to come through Isaac, God still has an especial interest in and love for all the children of Abraham- and that includes the Arabs. Only a joint recognition of the Father's grace will bring about Jewish-Arab unity. But in the end, it will happen- for there will be a highway from Assyria to Judah to Egypt in the Kingdom. The anger of the elder brother was because the younger son had been reconciled to the Father without compensating for what he had done wrong. It's the same anger at God’s grace which is shown by the workers who objected to those who had worked less receiving the same pay. And it's the same anger which is shown every time a believer storms out of an ecclesia because some sinner has been accepted back... </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Please take away my blessing that I brought to you, because God has dealt graciously with me, and because I have all things. He urged him, and he took it</em>- Jacob now saw God as the one who graciously gave physical blessings, not simply to fulfil Divine predictions for the sake of it, but in order to pour out His grace. And that grace was not so much gifts of material things as the God who gives spiritual grace / mercy to undeserving sinners like himself. Thus a growing appreciation of grace was a facet of Jacob's perception of God and spiritual growth.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>It's a shame that the English translations often conceal Jacob's rejection of the physical blessing here. The Hebrew for "Take" is 51 times translated "take away". The only ultimately important thing is grace and right standing with God; that now for Jacob was having "all things". The Hebrew words translated "take (away)" and "blessing" are exactly the same as in <em><a href='B:10 27:35-36'>Gen 27:35-36</a></em> AV: "(Jacob) came with subtlety, and hath <em>taken away</em> thy <em>blessing</em>... Is not he rightly named Jacob? he <em>took away</em> my birthright, and now he hath <em>taken away</em> my <em>blessing</em>". Yet now Jacob is saying: 'I have experienced the true grace of God, I stand forgiven before Him, I see His face in His representative Angel, I therefore have all things, so I don't want that physical, material, temporal blessing I swindled you out of'. This is why Jacob pointedly calls Esau his “Lord” in the record. He was accepting Esau as the firstborn. And Paul, in his spiritual maturity, came to the same conclusion; he counted all the materialism of this world as dung, that he might win Christ and be found in him, clothed with his gracious righteousness. Because God had dealt graciously with him, he felt that he had “all things”. All he needed was God’s grace, and he had that. <em><a class='bible' href='#b66:21:7'>Rev 21:7</a></em> appears to allude to Jacob by saying that he who overcomes (by wrestling?) shall inherit “all things”. We are all to pass through Jacob’s lesson; that material advantage is nothing, and God’s grace is everything. Truly could Jacob later say, after another gracious salvation, that there God had appeared to Him, had been revealed to him (RV) in the experience of grace (<em><a href='B:10 35:7'>Gen 35:7</a></em>). &nbsp; </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>Jacob had made "supplication" to God (<em><a href='B:350 12:4'>Hos 12:4</a></em>) as he wrestled the Angel; and at that very same time, God dealt "graciously" (the same word translated "supplication") with Jacob. At that time, God "recompensed" to Jacob according to his sins in that the Angel like Esau came forth to slay him; and Jacob responded by "turning" (same word translated "recompensed" ) to his God (<em><a href='B:350 12:2'>Hos 12:2</a></em>; <em><a href='B:350 12:8'>Hos 12:8</a></em>). It's too bad our translations disguise these things. By the end of his life, this spirit of mutuality between him and God had become perfected. And so with us; we too can live our lives thinking that if we do this, that and the other, God will do this and that for us. The idea of a two-way relationship with Him, of His Spirit, with all that implies, dwelling in us, until our will is His will; all this takes time to develop. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Esau said, Let us take our journey, and let us go, and I will go before you</em>- This may simply be because Esau knew the route better than Jacob. But it may also reflect Esau's acceptance of the blessing that had been given back to him by Jacob; he was a man of this life, and he enjoyed that blessing of the firstborn, and made use of it by going in front of Jacob.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob said to him, My lord knows that the children are tender, and that the flocks and herds with me have their young, and if they overdrive them one day, all the flocks will die</em>- "My lord" reflects Jacob's genuine recognition that Esau in this life was to be as his master; the younger was to serve the elder. But Jacob's faith in the promises was undiminished; he now appreciated as never before their future dimension. This is a feature of our spiritual growth too. But Jacob's deceitfulness returns- he is making excuses here. He simply doesn't want to be with Esau. Esau's character comes out too, however; as a hunter, he had never had to bother with caring for animals and moving at their pace. He wanted to live life in the fast lane, and wouldn't move over to go at Jacob's pace. If the children were indeed "tender" and unable to move quickly, we would have to assume Jacob was with Laban 20 years and not 40 years, as suggested on Genesis 28; otherwise they couldn't have been described in this way.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Please let my lord pass over before his servant, and I will lead on gently, according to the pace of the livestock that are before me and according to the pace of the children, until I come to my lord to Seir</em>- As noted on :13, "Lord" (stated twice) and "servant" reflect Jacob's genuine resignation of his stolen birthright blessings, and his recognition that Esau in this life was to be as his master. Jacob's deceit still had not been completely cured; he gave the impression that he would come to Esau's encampment at Seir, but it seems he never did. </p><p>"Gently" or AV "softly" may also allude to Jacob's limp. It is s.w. 1 Kings 21:27 of Ahab walking softly in humbled repentance. Indeed Jacob at this point is every man after encounter with God. As Hezekiah resolved to walk softly and quietly the rest of his days [Is. 38:15 "He has both spoken unto me, and He Himself has done it. I will [now] go softly all my years with a broken soul"]. This must be our resolve. But all these men failed to keep their resolve. Even Jacob, at the very end of his life, returned to his obsession with material blessings and the angst over the firstborn. We too can come down very small at times, and walk softly / gently- but life with its petty schemes obtrudes upon that spirit, and we tend to return to the old ways of self assurance. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Esau said, Let me now leave with you some of the folk who are with me. He said, Why? Let me find favour in the sight of my lord</em>- He could be saying 'Don't, please, force me to come live with you. If indeed I have found grace in your eyes, then please let me go my own way'. And that is indeed an aspect of grace; to let the beloved go their way and not have to live with us in every way. Jacob, on a human level, compares unfavourably to Esau. He was deceitful of Esau even after this watershed time. When Esau had the chance to take vengeance on Jacob, he wonderfully forgave him. He never lied to Jacob. <em><a href='B:460 1:4'>Mal 1:4</a></em> makes the point that Edom (Esau) was zealous to return and rebuild the ravaged land which God had once given him, whereas Israel wasn’t. And yet despite this, God says He still chose to love Israel (Jacob) and hate Esau. His behaviour in this is an example of how He saves by pure grace and not works. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>So Esau returned that day on his way to Seir</em>- The differing destinations of Esau and Jacob are emphasized; Esau to "Seir", the place of wild goats, whilst Jacob went to the place of booths. The wandering, roaming nature of Esau is compared with the more stable lifestyle of Jacob, and in this sense the predictions of Isaac about the firstborn came strangely true, even though Jacob had handed that blessing back to Esau.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob travelled to Succoth, built himself a house, and made shelters for his livestock. Therefore the name of the place is called Succoth</em>- See on :16. The faithful seed were characterized by continual dwelling in tents and moving on. As noted on <em><a href='B:10 26:22-23'>Gen 26:22-23</a></em>, whenever they tried to settle down, as Isaac had tried to at Rehoboth, they were moved on by the leading and work of the Spirit. So although Jacob was seeking for the stability of a house and permanent residence, he was to be moved on from that. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Jacob came in peace to the city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan, when he came from Paddan Aram; and encamped before the city</em>- As noted on :17, Jacob's attempt to settle permanently in Succoth was not to be. Even if we live in the same suburban house all our days, the way of Abraham's seed is to be moved on all their lives long. Jacob's 'coming in peace' is surely to connect with the promise at Bethel, which Jacob interpreted as meaning that Yahweh would bring him back to his father’s house "in peace" (<em><a href='B:10 28:21'>Gen 28:21</a></em>). And Jacob's bargain with God had been that in this case, Yahweh would be his God. "Paddan Aram" is maybe mentioned in order to positively strengthen the similarities with Rebekah coming from there to the land of promise to marry Isaac (<em><a href='B:10 28:2'>Gen 28:2</a></em>). </p><p> "Father's house" nearly always refers to a family, rather than a physical house. "Tents" is how a 'home' was referred to at the time, not "house". So Jacob had promised Yahweh that he would accept Him, if Yahweh returned Jacob to his father's family in peace. He said that having just stolen the birthright and firstborn blessing from Esau his brother, and having deceived his father Isaac. It would've seemed impossible to ever return to that family in peace, and probably Jacob made that wager with Yahweh in a sceptical spirit- as if 'You would never be able to achieve this!'. But he has met Esau and has been forgiven by him, and Esau has urged Jacob to come and live with him. And now he is back within the borders of the land of promise, Jacob does respond. He builds an altar, although not a "house" to God as promised, nor is there any record of him now paying tithes to Yahweh. But he calls the altar 'the God who is the strength of Israel'. He accepts his new name, and the now limping Jacob confesses that God is his strength. But God has to later reemind Jacob that he is indeed Israel; again, he slipped from that intensity.   </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He bought the parcel of ground where he had spread his tent, at the hand of the children of Hamor, Shechem’s father, for one hundred pieces of money</em>- The New Testament emphasizes the paradox: that the patriarchs bought land in the land which was their eternal inheritance. They couldn't bury their dead nor pitch their tent without having to realize that the land wasn't theirs. The same paradox was taught in Jacob having to call Esau his "lord", the younger serving the elder; but in faith that things would not eternally be that way. Joseph's bones were buried here later (<em><a href='B:60 24:32'>Jos 24:32</a></em>), which suggests that Jacob bought it with a view of it becoming a burial place and Israelite sanctuary. Yet <em><a href='B:510 7:16'>Act 7:16</a></em> says that Abraham bought this land as a burial place; perhaps the paradox deepens in that they were deceived out of their "own" land and had to pay for it twice, even though it was eternally theirs. </p><p>In the bigger picture, we wonder 'why things like the Dinah incident in Gen. 34 happen'. I have suggested on Gen. 34 that one dimension was in order to stop the Jacobites intermarrying and socializing with the Canaanites. But we also note that Jacob had bought [probably leased] some land near Shechem and therefore intended to settle down there (Gen. 33:19). But after this incident, Jacob obviously wanted to move on- and God confirmed this by telling him in Gen. 35 to go to Bethel, to fulfil his covenant with God to make Yahweh his God if he returned to Bethel. We too look back on our lives, and perceive that we were moved on, even when we wanted to stay. The record shows weakness all around- but God works through that weakness.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>He erected an altar there, and called it El Elohe Israel</em>- This seems to have been a flash of spiritual insight, a peak of faith which was not afterwards sustained; not only did Jacob accept the new name God had given him (although he needed reminding of this again in <em><a href='B:10 35:9'>Gen 35:9</a></em>), he saw that 'God' was his God, the God behind the powerful ones (Angels) who looked after Jacob / Israel. He had come "in peace" (:18 cp. <em><a href='B:10 28:21'>Gen 28:21</a></em>) and now wished to keep his bargain, to accept Yahweh as his God. But still he saw God as pre-eminently <em>physically</em> powerful, and manifested in many Angels. And still he had not fulfilled his promise to make <em>Yahweh</em> his God, for he doesn't use the term "Yahweh" here. Jacob hid behind the idea of God manifestation too long. This is not to say that there is no such thing; but we can take it to such a point where we lose sight of the glorious reality of the one true, real God, who is our God, and who is ultimately <em>there</em>, at the back of all the things and ways in which He may be manifested. Jacob saw God manifest in Angels to the point where he failed to see the God who was behind them. Building the altar 'El-elohe-Israel' was his first step towards rectifying this. As time went on, he saw God as one, not as multitudes of Angels, even though he knew from the vision of Bethel that they were all active for him; he saw the El behind the Elohe, and realized that this was Yahweh, his very own God.</p><p style='margin-left:1em'>Shechem was the spot where Abraham had built an altar upon entering Canaan, the promised land. Jacob progressively felt a sense of identity with Abraham and Isaac on a spiritual level.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Dinah, the daughter of Leah, whom she bore to Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land</em>- She went to see the girls, not the boys; but any movement toward the world exposes to further temptation. And that's just what happened here. The Jacob family by reason of their life path would've been quite insular; being on the move all the time, they had no opportunity to build up friendships or relationships with others outside the group. And so we can understand the desire for a young person to go out to meet the locals. But females in those days never travelled alone, always there was a male relative present. But it seems Dinah almost escaped alone. We can assume she was a naive teenager.</p><p>It is the fashion these days to present Dinah as totally innocent. But Gen. 27:46 ff. has spoken negatively of "the daughters of the Canaanites" and "the women of the land"; they were seen as not suitable for God's people to marry into. In my judgment, Dinah was very young and acted in a teenage way; but her choice and action was unwise and not ideal. And yet the lesson is that we see how huge chains of events ensue from unwisdom and misjudgment, even if it is not sin per se. Which is how I read Dinah's sneaking off to hang out with the local girls. Mass genocide, women and children taken off by Jacob's sons, mass looting, the abuse of the covenant symbol of circumcision etc. </p><p>And Jacob surely is at fault because he allows his daughter to slip out of the encampment to the nearby city, without any chaperone. Perhaps because she was the daughter of Leah, the unloved wife, he paid little attention to her. Dinah "went out", using the same term used of how Leah "went out" to meet Jacob in the field. She was her mother's daughter- likewise treated as an incidental, unloved and uncared for. Jacob's 'silence' when he receives the news must be compared to his passionate outcry regarding the loss of his son Joseph. He presents as having no great passion for Leah's daughter. Everyone in the story of Genesis 34 is at fault in some way. There are no heroes here. We have at very least a reminder that God's Israel came, and comes, from very weak spiritual beginnings.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her. He took her, lay with her, and humbled her</em>- "Humbled" is the same word translated "afflict"; and yet if he brutally raped her, his genuine love for her in :3 and :12 is hard to understand. So the idea may be that she was humbled by the experience. See on :3.</p><p>The use of the word "humbled" rather than 'raped' suggests this was not rape. This was the result in the long term, yes. But there is no Hebrew word for "rape" so we are required to interpret this. We note that the word order is the other way around when Amnon shamed and then lay with Tamar. Here, the couple lie together, and then shame arises from that act. The word "forced" is not used here as it is in other rape scenes [e.g. "Forces and lies with her", Dt. 22:25]. Dinah's brothers of course wanted to take it as rape, but that doesn't mean it was; although they then went and carried off for themselves all the women of Shechem, effectively doing far worse than the supposed crime they were protesting. It was their shame rather than their sense of righteousness which motivated them. Jacob later curses their "anger" and "selfwill". They used the moral failure of others to unleash their native anger in a totally immoral way. Just as many religious people today seem to allow the weakness of others to trigger an unleashing of their native anger. Shechem firstly "took her", and that may simply mean he took her into his home; the very same word is used in :9,16 of taking a woman in marriage. If forced kidnap were in view, a different word would have been used. This was not therefore street rape. Indeed to take someone into your home meant hospitality and acceptance. And yet contra the idea of teenage romance gone too far is the way that 'saw and took' is the language of sin throughout the Bible, beginning with Eve seeing and taking the fruit, the sons of God seeing and taking the daughters of men, and Achan seeing and taking the spoil of Jericho. Time and again in this chapter we will see the same- we are invited to consider the degree and nature of the sin or failure, but there is no doubt that there was moral failure in all the characters involved. But the way we are left to ponder the degree and nature of sin is intentional- for we look back on our own lives and ponder the same issues. </p><p>My suggestion is that this entire chapter is intentionally left open to interpretation. To what degree did Shechem's lust overcome his love? Dinah is presented as silent- we aren't told her feelings. We are left to imagine. Is her silence that of the raped woman? Or the silence of the lover who has lost her beloved at the hand of her own brothers? Shechem "took her, lay with her" can be simply read as saying that they had sex. Feminist 'translators' like to read this as "he seized her and lay with her by force". But the Hebrew words required for such a translation would have been different. And there is actually no word in Biblical Hebrew for "rape". Perhaps indeed he did rape her, although that rape is presented by the text as part of "love". My point is, we aren't told. As often in Biblical narrative, we are left to reconstruct so that we might enter more deeply into the situation. And that process may restimulate self examination, as we ponder the path of our own lives. Did we do this or that for God from pure motives? Were we in love or in lust when we married? Those questions are provoked by these narratives which invite us to reconstruct what might have been the feelings and situations. Or perhaps the silence concerning Dinah is to lead us to appreciate that she was the victim of Shechem's lust, Hamor's political machinations, her father's shame, her brothers' anger issues etc. And this is to provoke our sympathy for her and many similar women at the time. The very fact we hear no more of Dinah leads us naturally to enquire 'What happened to her? How did she feel?'. There are other gaps in the narrative which beg questions from us, which in turn lead us deeper into imagining the feelings and situations- which we ourselves have been in, in essence. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>His soul joined to Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, and he loved the young lady, and spoke kindly to the young lady</em>- The language of 'joining' or (AV) 'cleaving' is that of <em><a href='B:10 2:24'>Gen 2:24</a></em> about cleaving in marriage. His kind words and genuine love for her all suggest his desire to marry her was sincere. What was wrong was that he prematurely slept with her. But the whole incident had a far grosser spin placed upon it by Jacob's sons. Shechem spoke kindly to her, Heb. 'to her heart', with comfort- presumably the comfort that he had not just used her, but would marry her and promised her a wonderful life. This is quite opposite to how her brothers interpreted the situation, falsely claiming Shechem had used her as a prostitute (:31).</p><p> Shechem's behaviour was wrong, but Dinah's brothers imputed wickedness to him rather than righteousness. We note from the Biblical example of Amnon, as well as observation, that rapists typically hate their victims after the sex act- even murder them. But Shechem loves her and is desperate to marry her. And yet, he "saw... and took". He did wrong. But it was not rape. And there are degrees of sin, just as there are degress of righteousness. And there is wisdom and unwisdom, at times beyond the parameters of "sin" and morality generally.</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Shechem spoke to his father, Hamor, saying, Get me this young lady as a wife</em>- She was indeed young. If Joseph was only 17 when he was sold into Egypt about 11 years later, Dinah would have been around 16 at this time (cp. <em><a href='B:10 30:21'>Gen 30:21</a></em>).</p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Now Jacob heard that he had defiled Dinah, his daughter. And his sons were with his livestock in the field. Jacob held his peace until they came</em>- Perhaps she had gone with other young folks, who returned to the encampment with the news. "Defiled" is a strictly ceremonial or moral word. The idea is not of rape; see on :2. The response and evil plan of the sons appears to have been done without Jacob's knowledge. He appears very passive; if he had acted more decisively at the time, perhaps events might have turned out differently. The entire story is full of weakness and failure on the part of absolutely all involved; and yet the end result of it was the casting away of idols from Jacob's family, as they threw themselves upon God’s grace to preserve them.</p><p>We wonder what Jacob was thinking and planning as he "held his peace"; which is typical of how this record begs so many questions, to help us reconstruct the situation and to elicit our own self examination. What we do know is that Jacob later boasts about the conquest of Shechem:  "Shechem... which I took out of the hand of the Amorite with my sword and with my bow" (Gen. 48:22). Shechem was a fertile area: " It is to you and not to your brothers that I am giving Shechem, that fertile region which I took from the Amorites with my sword and my bow" (GNB). Jacob later condemns Simeon and Levi for their anger; but he also boasts that he took Shechem by violence. Even though later scripture comments that the land was not possessed by their own sword and bow but by God's grace (Ps. 44:3). So we can infer that Jacob's silence was spent scheming how he could manipulate the situation to his own benefit. His complaint is that Simeon and Levi went too far; but clearly Jacob also had his own agenda. Some manuscripts, followed by the AV, offer in :17: "But if ye will not hearken unto us, to be circumcised; then will we take our daughter, and we will be gone". "Our daughter" rather than "our sister" would suggest that the brothers were speaking on behalf of Jacob at this point; he was clearly involved. He was the deceiver [of his father and brother] who had been deceived [by Laban]. But still Jacob had not learnt his lesson. He answers Shechem "deceitfully". But even so, Yahweh still miraculously protected Jacob from the consequences, and we marvel at that grace. He had far slipped from the attitude of Gen. 33, that having experienced God's grace was all he needed, and he didn't need any material blessings, and had given up trying to get it by his own strength. </p><p>Jacob gave Shechem to Joseph, but in fact Shechem was later given to Levi as one of the priestly cities- as if in the bigger picture, God did somehow work through what Levi did although it was so wrong. Jacob's intention was undone by God's later choice: " It is to you and not to your brothers that I am giving Shechem, that fertile region which I took from the Amorites with my sword and my bow" (Gen. 48:22 GNB). And to ultimately give Shechem to the pillager and genocidal Levi, whilst accepting Levi's sin... is nothing but grace. This later connection between Shechem and the Levites is one of those things where we clearly sense 'something's going on', but to attach meaning to event is difficult. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>Hamor the father of Shechem went out to Jacob to talk with him</em>- We have the impression of Jacob living at the city limits, and the city clearly defined with a gate and houses within the walls. Hence Shechem 'goes out' to Jacob. There may be an intended similarity with how Lot pitched his tent just outside Sodom, and then moved in to the city (<em><a href='B:10 13:12'>Gen 13:12</a></em>). Shechem was also an area of rich pastureland which would've been attractive to Jacob. </p>


text:
<p style='margin-left:1em'><em>The sons of Jacob came in from the field when they heard it. The men were grieved, and they were very angry, because he had done folly in Israel in lying with Jacob’s daughter; a thing which ought not to be done</em>- There is reason to think that even at the end, Jacob was still in some ways weak. Thus despite his name having been changed from Jacob to Israel, the two terms are used by God in the record in juxtaposition&nbsp; (here and <em><a href='B:10 35:22'>Gen 35:22</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 46:2'>Gen 46:2</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 46:5'>Gen 46:5</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 46:8'>Gen 46:8</a></em>; <em><a href='B:10 48:2'>Gen 48:2</a></em>) as if to reflect the way the full change of Jacob would only take place in the Kingdom, when each believer will receive his new name (<em><a class='bible' href='#b66:3:12'>Rev 3:12</a></em>). </p><p style='margin-left:1em'>The sons of Jacob are presented here as hypocritical; they despised the sign of the covenant, circumcision, and were ruthless and self-willed, murdering and pillaging. So their outrage was hardly because of their own morality. And as noted on :2 and :3, it was they who had decided that Shechem had raped their sister and treated her as a prostitute (:31). "Folly" is an extreme term, used of prostitutes and rapists (<em><a href='B:50 22:21'>Deu 22:21</a></em>; <em><a href='B:70 19:23-24'>Jdg 19:23-24</a></em>). In reality he had not raped her, and she was at least partially responsible. But the problem with the usage of inflammatory language is that it creates images which do not easily subside. This incident stands for all time as a warning to us all; a mistake is made, a sin is committed, as these youngsters Shechem and Dinah did; but others get involved, and for the sake of family pride, they exaggerate what happened into something quite different, and once that image is in their mind, they will kill and pillage for it. This sort of thing goes on in secular and religious life all the time.&nbsp;&nbsp; </p>


