Hey friends, welcome back.
Thanks for being with us today.
As we kind of wrap up a significant
part of the Jacob story,
Jacob story is going to continue.
We have lots of material left
in his family lineage for sure,
but today we finished this tale
we’ve been looking at, this story,
the narrative of Jacob and Esau,
and sandwiched within that,
this story about Jacob wrestling,
a character that we
historically have thought of as God.
And in fact, we
reference that regularly, though we’re not told that explicitly.
That seems to be the assumption of the text.
Now with that behind him,
Jacob does have today the meeting,
the showdown between he and his brother,
and his brother is sort of looms over this story.
You know, Jacob has wronged him
and Esau has legitimate reason to be upset.
And the question is,
what will he do with that?
He’s brought 400 men with him.
There’s no indication that he isn’t still angry.
But that’s kind of the threat hanging over the text.
Yeah,
I like that actually,
that’s probably gonna end up being the title of this,
the showdown between Jacob and Esau.
Let’s just jump into it,
Clint.
Okay, so chapter 33 here,
Jacob looked up, he saw Esau coming and 400 men with him.
So he divided the children among Leah and Rachel
and the two maids.
He put the maids with their children in front,
then Leah with her children,
and Rachel and Joseph last of all.
He himself went ahead of them,
bowing himself to the ground seven times
until he came near his brother.
But Esau ran to meet him and embraced him,
fell on his neck and kissed him and they wept.
When Esau looked up and saw the women and children,
he said, “Who are these with you?”
Jacob said, “The children whom God
has graciously given your servant.”
Then the maids drew near they and their children and bowed down.
Leah likewise and her children drew near and bowed down.
And finally Joseph and Rachel drew near and they bowed down.
Esau said, “What do you mean by all this company that I met?”
Jacob answered, “To find favor with my Lord.”
But Esau said, “I have enough, my brother.
Keep what you have for yourself.”
Jacob said, “No, please, if I find favor with you,
then accept my present from my hand.
For truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God
since you have received me with such favor.”
Please accept my gift,
the gifts brought to you
because God has dealt graciously with me
and because I have everything I want.
So he urged him and he took it.
Won’t we stop there, Michael?
So a couple of fascinating things about this story.
The first of which I think is this line that Jacob,
verse 3,
went on ahead of them.
Remember that when we first saw Jacob arrange the company,
he had stayed behind.
And you almost had the impression
he was going to put everybody in front of him.
But now,
wounded,
probably still limping from the wound to his hip,
he goes on ahead
and he bows himself to the ground.
And this is when we have sort of the big reveal about Esau, Michael.
So the text here, Clint,
is putting everyone in surprising positions.
So Jacob returning home is humbling
himself not just once,
seven times, the repetitiveness of that motion.
Of course, numbers have significance beyond just the number.
So the number seven has this idea of completeness.
He’s completely subservient.
He is willing to go to the furthest extent
to prove that he is indeed humbling himself.
And then maybe even more surprising,
we have Esau, the one who would be receiving him
and receiving this gesture of humility.
He comes running,
which is another thing that you don’t do.
Men in the ancient culture from which this text comes
don’t get caught running.
That would be a shameful action.
So here, he’s running to his brother.
We wouldn’t expect that.
We wouldn’t necessarily expect Jacob,
except we’ve heard about the anxiety and the fear.
Maybe it’s a little bit less surprising
that he’s humbling himself.
But this gesture that he has is also surprising
in its own way.
So together, we have two brothers meeting,
each surprising us for different reasons.
And I think that’s part of what makes this text
so compelling is there’s been so much work thus far
into setting up what might happen.
All of the anxiety and fear about the 400 men,
this sort of militaristic kind of there’s a threat.
And then now suddenly it’s two brothers humbling themselves
as they greet one another.
And that sort of is what this story hinges on.
Yeah, we will see this again late in Genesis,
but there is this moment here of reconciliation.
And in this case,
it seems only to be goodwill.
Esau runs,
he grabs him,
he hugs him, fell on his neck as a way of saying that they embraced,
he kissed him and they wept.
This is a kind of cathartic moment.
It’s as if whatever is between them
is gone now.
And there is,
I think this is a really great scene of reconciliation.
Now,
the text doesn’t go into whether Esau has forgiven
or whether he dwelt on this or what it meant to him.
He only plays the role of the gracious one here.
He runs,
he hugs.
In fact,
he says,
when Jacob says, I wanted to give you all that, he says,
brother, I have enough.
Keep that for yourself.
As if
to say, you don’t owe me things.
You don’t have to give me things.
We are family,
we are brothers.
And I think Esau has a fascinating character
in this regard and really throughout the scripture,
you know, there’s no moment where Esau really
is credited with doing anything wrong.
And here we see that he probably has the power
to make Jacob’s life miserable,
possibly to destroy him.
And yet he has come to a place in his life,
however he got there,
where he is beyond
whatever harm might have been done to him,
whatever wrong might have been done to him.
And he acts here with a beautiful expression of grace.
I think one of the more
powerful expressions of grace
that I can think of in the Old Testament.
Clint,
there have been several characters already in this book
who we have readily admitted
have gotten the short end of the stick.
And many of them thus far,
in fact, maybe we would say all of them thus far have been women.
You certainly think of Hagar,
who was put out.
I think it’s also fair to say that of Leah,
both of them,
people who in the midst of this telling
of God’s covenant and the promise,
have really had very negative experiences.
And here,
Esau being a man was supposed to be the one
to inherit the blessing and then this younger brother, the heel grabber,
now the one who strove with God.
This character has sort of inverted
what we would have expected along the story.
And Esau is a character who we have to readily admit
didn’t get what he quote unquote deserved.
That said,
we might be uncomfortable as we were
in those other cases, Clint,
because we would say,
well, what about Esau?
And I don’t think that the text intends
to answer that question.
The text is certainly portraying Esau
as a gracious figure in this story,
but the text isn’t interested in whether he’s resolved this
for himself or not.
It’s rather the covenant has been passed on.
God will be faithful to Jacob,
and it just so happens in this story
that as Jacob returns,
the covenant goes with him
and the blessing doesn’t divide brothers,
but rather it just continues on
in this sort of circuitous way.
Yeah, the scripture is not prone to psychology.
And so when something happens,
especially in these patriarch stories,
it’s not the character that receives attention, it’s God.
But having said that,
the last thing we heard from Esau
was I’m going to kill you.
And now this number of years have elapsed,
and the same person who said that now hugs
and weeps with his brother and says,
you don’t owe me,
you don’t need to give me anything.
Now, from our perspective, that’s an important journey for Esau.
From the scripture’s perspective,
that’s just another sign of God’s providential grace
to Jacob and the honoring of the covenant.
How Esau got there is just not a question
the Old Testament spends a great deal of time with.
I think it’s a fascinating one
for us.
And
I think,
again, Michael, I’m trying to think,
there aren’t many scenes of this kind of reconciliation.
We’ll see another one in Genesis,
but it’s not this.
It’s not quite as
gracious, I think, as this one with Joseph and his brothers later in the story.
But I do wanna point out,
we talked about this
just briefly yesterday.
There’s a verse laid in this where Jacob says to Esau,
“To see your face is like seeing the face of God.”
I mentioned yesterday, there are some interpreters
that play with that that suggest
maybe it’s trying to tell us that it was,
in fact, Esau, who attacks Jacob and they wrestle through the night.
I think a more likely and a more historic
kind of consensus of interpretation is
that to see Esau reach out with graciousness and kindness
is for Jacob to see God at work.
It is for,
remember that he prayed,
“I’m afraid of my brother,
God, can you deliver me?
“If you want to keep this covenant,
“you have to keep me safe.”
And for him to now experience Esau’s willingness
to reconcile and his graciousness,
to see that is like seeing the face of God.
It is like witnessing God at work in his,
right before his very eyes.
Yeah, that’s a great point here,
Clint. And I also want to point out verse eight,
I’ve got it highlighted in blue here.
Esau asked his brother,
“What do you mean by all this company that I met?
“You remember these waves that got sent over and over?
“That’s where Jacob answered it,
“and you’ve already said this, Clint,
“to find
favor with my Lord.”
What I find interesting about this,
Clint, is Jacob regularly uses the tool of wealth to his ends.
I think that’s a theme that stretches
all throughout this story,
right?
He uses his cooking ability
to get his brother’s birthright.
He uses his economic growth as a sort of bartering tool
when he is with Laban.
And now when it comes to this matter with his brother, once again,
he’s not the one out in the field
with the strength and the men behind him
that he can defend himself.
He utilizes the
economic means of the blessing.
What is striking about that
is we’ve seen
economic blessing before in Genesis.
I want to be clear,
Abraham,
we’re told,
was blessed.
In fact, you remember many times
when he got sent out from places with more wealth
than when he arrived there.
I mean, this was all because of God’s blessing.
But Jacob, it seems to me,
and Clint, push back on this,
but he seems to me a character in Genesis
who may be unique in the economic emphasis
of the blessing.
He certainly is
talked about using money
in ways that I’m not sure that we’ve seen before
or exactly we’ll see after.
Yeah, I think that’s fair.
We saw Abraham acquire possessions.
We saw Abraham give to Melchizedek.
But it seems that Jacob is a little more of an accountant
than we’ve seen in other parts of the story.
As we finish here,
I also want to suggest that
even after a profound moment of togetherness,
of reconciliation,
I wonder if there’s a sense
in which Jacob can never stop being Jacob.
So let me read this and we’ll talk about it.
Verse 12,
Esau said, “Let’s journey on our way.
“I’ll go alongside you.”
Jacob said, “My Lord knows the children of frail,
“the flocks and the herds which are nursing
“are a care to me,
and if they’re overdriven
“for even a day,
all the flocks will die.
“Let my Lord pass on ahead of his servant.
“I will lead slowly according to the pace of the cattle
“that are before me and the pace of the children
“until I come to my Lord in Sier.” So Esau said,
“Let me leave some of the people with you
“who are with me.”
But he said, “Why should my Lord be so kind to me?”
So Esau returned that day on his way to Sier.
But Jacob journeyed to Succoth,
build himself a house and made booths for his cattle.
Therefore, the place is called Succoth.
Jacob came safely to the city of Shechem,
which is in the land of Canaan,
on his way from Padenarim,
and he camped before the city.
And from the sons of Hamor, Shechem’s father,
he bought for 100 pieces of money the plot of land
on which he pitched his tent.
And there he erected an altar and called it El Hoey
Israel, which means the God,
the God of Israel.
So I can’t help but wonder as we read this
that Esau says, “Hey, I’ll go with you.”
And Jacob says, “Nah, no, it’s okay, you go on.” And Esau says, “Let me leave my people,
“some of my people with you.”
And Jacob says, “Nah,
we don’t really need that.”
And you have to wonder a little bit,
is Jacob still being cautious?
Is he still a little nervous around Esau
or a little nervous with the thought
that Esau’s people might be keeping an eye on him?
Or is it just a matter of he’s been with his father-in-law,
this drama is now behind him with his brother,
and he just wants to be his own place?
And it could be both of those things,
but it’s an interesting thing
that the story chooses to tell us.
Yeah, well, ’cause Esau’s assumption is
that Jacob’s gonna go with him back to his place,
and Jacob conveniently doesn’t end up there.
So once again, the text isn’t really interested
in answering some of the why’s for us, but realistically,
Jacob is always playing
one or two moves ahead.
I mean, the text has been clear about that
all the way along,
and I think we see that here again.
But when we come to the idea of the covenant,
it’s always irrespective of what the humans intend,
right?
‘Cause there’s a ton of intentions
throughout the entire story.
God just takes those intentions and turns them
and bends them into the ultimate covenantal promise.
God is going to work even through
these imperfect human means.
Now,
I do think there’s something beautiful
about the reunion that we’ve seen,
the hospitality that Esau’s shown,
and quite frankly, the fact that Esau didn’t demand
either way, right?
So I think there’s a lot here if you’re willing to see it,
but then if we’re gonna be asked,
there’s a lot not here that we’d like
to read between the lines too.
Yeah, and I do think you have to be cautious
when you read too much into secondary
characters in Scripture.
And of all the places that’s true,
Genesis may be the place where it’s most tempting.
But I’m really fascinated by the character of Esau.
I wish we knew
more of his story.
I wish we knew something that led him
to get past those events of his childhood
and to treat the very one who had wronged him
with some measure of graciousness
and what seems to be genuine affection.
I think as much as this is supposed to be Jacob’s story,
for me, the spotlight kind of shines on Esau in this moment,
and I’m intrigued by him.
I would like to know more.
Now,
that’s not a real profitable thing to do in Scripture
because we’re almost inevitably going to find ourselves
reading into things that it doesn’t wanna tell us
or doesn’t feel the need to tell us.
So to be very careful in those moments.
But as a character study,
this makes me wish
that the Scripture told us more about Esau.
Last couple
cleaning up sort of notes
that we should not pass by this text without noting.
You noticed all of the titles within the text.
Jacob calls Esau Lord over and over again.
He calls him his servant.
There’s this clear reversal of what was explicitly named
in the covenantal promise language all the way back
when Jacob and Esau’s father gave the blessing
to Jacob, there’s this whole language of the older
would serve the younger and all these.
That’s being reversed here in the language,
though clearly that’s exactly what has happened
as we see the story progressing.
And then of course we see here at the very end of verse 20, this altar here,
it means the God of Israel.
And this story, it sort of shows the progression
of the people of Israel’s understanding
of even their awareness of God.
We had this stuff about Melchizedek
and we had God calling Abraham both out of his original land
and then God calling him to the binding of Isaac.
These stories have a progressive kind of nature.
And what’s really interesting is we’re beginning to see
that identity as God’s children continue to grow.
We’ve seen that in Jacob’s story with the moments
where he sees the latter and then he has this wrestling
and we talked about how that may be with God.
And so the reality is this awareness of God
and who God is and who God will continue to be
for the people of Israel,
it’s only becoming more clear.
It’ll only become more clear in Exodus as well
as Moses comes into the story and all these things.
So this is carefully constructed to show us
not just the story of the human people
who bear the promise,
Clint, is actually showing us
their awareness and the discovery of who this God
who’s leading them is.
I mean, there’s a fullness that we see happening here as well.
Yeah, and I think the scripture really helps us here
at the end though.
You’d have to be paying pretty close attention.
But if you could remember back to the Abraham journey,
where does he go?
He travels through Shechem and what does he do there?
He builds an altar.
And so Jacob in some sense is repeating that journey
or at least paralleling that journey.
And again, that’s the scriptures way of telling us
that foundation that Abraham set is still in place,
is being renewed with Jacob and Jacob now stands
as the one who bears that promise into the future,
having navigated Laban,
having navigated Esau and now stands ready to move ahead.
And it’s a wonderful part of the story.
I wish in many ways that that’s how it stayed.
Unfortunately,
as we sometimes have in scripture,
we have a whiplash transition tomorrow,
a hard story, a painful story,
but we end in a good place today.
Yeah,
we’re not gonna talk about tomorrow,
but the reality is scripture rarely lets characters
live on the mountain for very long.
So whatever mountain experience there is here,
there’s no hidden reality that life has its valleys
and they come upon us very quickly.
So it’s not a text
that you’re gonna look forward to, it’s important,
but it’ll be something very different tomorrow.
Yeah, yeah, it’ll be not an easy day.
We’ll see you then.