Genesis 32

Genesis 32:1-37

Section 3. (Genesis 32:1-32; Genesis 33:1-20; Genesis 34:1-31; Genesis 35:1-29; Genesis 36:1-43; Genesis 37:1.)Israel: the prince with God, and the holiness of the house of God. We now follow Jacob on his return to his own land. This, in its application to the nation, brings us into the field of prophecy: for them, as for their father, Peniel must prepare the way to Bethel; that they may not fall into the hands of their enemies, God, whose name is yet unknown to them, must take them into His own, crippling the human strength with which they contend with Him, that in weakness they may hold Him fast for blessing. Thus broken down in repentance, and purged from idolatry, they will have their second Bethel, when God will reveal to them His name so long hidden, and confirm to them the promise to their father Abraham. Christ, Son of His Father’s right hand, will then take His place among them; and so they will come to Mamre and to Hebron -to the riches of a portion which is henceforth to be enjoyed in fellowship with God. The individual application we can trace more fully. Here it is good to note how, ere Jacob reaches the land really, the angels of God meet him; God Himself not yet, for not yet is Jacob prepared for this. “This is God’s host,” or “camp,” he says; and he calls the place “Mahanaim,” -that is, “two camps.” Here he must have taken in his own, of which he speaks directly in his message to Esau: “I have oxen and asses, flocks and men-servants and women-servants.” Yet in a little while we find him dividing this into “two camps,” saying, “If Esau come to the one camp and smite it, then the other camp which is left shall escape”! Such is our strength when built upon, although we would fain, perhaps, associate God’s power with it. But then in the time of need, our own, what is it? and God’s, where shall it be found? The dread of Esau is upon Jacob’s soul. His messengers bring him only the alarming news that his brother is on his way with four hundred men to meet him. He betakes himself to his devices, and then to God, and then once more to his planning. In solitude and in the night God meets him, -unknown, and as an antagonist, the attitude to which Jacob’s own has forced Him; and when Jacob’s stubbornness stands out against Him, He cripples his strength by dislocating his hip-joint. Then he can wrestle no more, but only cling in helplessness, and thus he prevails: when did man’s weakness ever fail to constrain the power of God? He is blest; but God cannot yet disclose His name.

He gives Jacob a new one. Crippled, he becomes Israel -a prince with God: the secret of power is disclosed to him; God is not: when the day breaks, He has disappeared. Jacob calls the place Peniel; “for,” he says, “I have seen God face to face”; but his conduct as yet shows nothing of this. He cringes before Esau, though God has disarmed him, -returns to his old deceit, telling him he will follow him to Seir, and going off in another direction, to build him a house at Succoth, which again he leaves to pitch his tent at Shechem on a piece of ground which he purchases, there to meet a deep dishonor, and to witness its bloody retribution, impotent to avert it. The power of his name it is evident he has not yet got. His altar proclaims God to be his God (El-elohe-Israel); but this, it would seem, he uses only to walk in his own ways more unblushingly than before: his house at Succoth, his purchase at Shechem, both tell the same tale. He is scarcely now the pilgrim, and losing his separateness Dinah is defiled. The slaughter of the Shechemites follows: judgment so cruel, and with such deceit in it, that it is itself pronounced accursed by the Spirit of God in Jacob afterward. And now he is shaken out of his ease and security, and plunged into distress and fear once more. God’s grace will not comfort those who will not use it holily. But now He comes in again, and discloses the remedy: “Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there, and make there an altar to God that appeared unto thee when thou fleddest from the face of Esau thy brother.” Yes, he had forgotten Bethel, God’s house, in building his own; he must get up to a higher level, and build his altar to El-Beth-el -the God of His own house. Hitherto he had known only a God that belonged to him; now he is to learn and own that he belongs to God. At once the difference is apparent: the false gods tolerated at Shechem, spite of his altar there, must now be put away, and they must be clean. Then the fear passes from their hearts to those of the nations round them, and they journey to Bethel in peace. Every thing shows that now he has really reached the goal. All his journeyings in the land are passed over in the quiet words which treat him as just come back to it: “And God appeared to Jacob again after he had come from Paddan Aram.” He had spoken to him before, wrestled with him before, blessed him before, and Jacob had spoken of having seen His face at Peniel, in the dark, where he could not see it! But now God appears to him, and, as if to show how practically ineffective Peniel had been, gives him afresh the name which he had given him there. “And God said to him, Thy name is Jacob” -still Jacob! -“thy name shall not henceforth be called Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name. And He called his name ‘Israel.’” Thus we learn that if weakness be the secret of strength (as it is,) it is only strength to walk in God’s ways. Israel must come to Bethel to be Israel. How good to remember this! And now God reveals Himself almighty, as with Abraham, and confirms to him the promise he had made to Abraham; and Jacob sets up his pillar of stone, and pours his drink-offering and oil upon it; and he too names the place afresh -Bethel, as if he had never named it before. Nor intelligently had he done so. And now we find Benjamin’s birth, and Rachel’s death at Ephrath: a notable combination of things in this place! Ephrath means “fruitfulness,” for now Israel is to be fruitful. But how? Benjamin is Christ in power upon the earth, as we have seen: Christ in us it is who is our power. That we may have it, Rachel herself passes away; for Rachel typifies, as we have seen, that subjective state we seek after, but which must, as a substantial presence with us, pass (as Abel gave place to Seth), that Christ may be alone our occupation. Once more, the “I, yet not I,” of which we need again and again to be reminded. This truth, the fall of Reuben, -“my might, the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity and the excellency of power,” says Jacob afterward, -confirms from the other side. It is a more emphatic “Enos.” But here comes in this new name of Jacob’s beautifully. All awake he is, but without a murmur bows his head at his own dishonor, -“Israel heard it.” And so this chequered history ends with Mamre and with Hebron, where now Isaac gives up his place to him as the vessel of testimony for God upon the earth. Only now is he ready to fill the place. But before the story is closed up as ended, Esau’s seed is shown us for many generations, prematurely ripening into dukes and kings. Isaac’s prophecy becomes, in one part of it, soon fulfilled. Esau leaves Canaan for Seir, and his posterity soon, as their names would seem to show, live by their sword in this barren region. Two texts for us here have special significance: first, that “Esau took his wives and his sons and his daughters, and all the persons of his house, and his cattle, and his beasts, and all his substance which he had got in the land of Canaan, and went into the country from the face of his brother Jacob;” while the section closes with one verse which, in its brevity, speaks volumes to the ear that hears, contrasting Jacob’s portion with that of his brother, -“And Jacob dwelt in the land in which his father was a stranger -in the land of Canaan.”