Genesis 32:3-21

Hey everybody and welcome back to Bible Study.
Hey, thanks for being with us.
Kick off on Monday here.
We move into a new part
of the Genesis story,
the Jacob story, and I think for some of us when we think of the Jacob story,
we’re now into some of the parts that come to mind and
this will be an interesting week as we unpack this,
primarily chapter 32,
33 here.
It’s a fairly condensed story but there’s a lot in it
and just to set the context,
Jacob and Laban, if you were with us last week,
Jacob and Laban have parted company.
They kind of worked out things between them more or less.
At least they left
on reasonably good terms with the understanding that God was keeping an eye on them, particularly on Jacob,
and now the story moves on.
With Jacob turning his face toward home,
this means he has
to deal with what he left there,
which explicitly is Esau and the tension between he and his brother,
what he did to his brother,
the ways in which he manipulated his brother,
literally stole from him essentially,
and now this is what we focus on as we move forward here.
So let me read some of this,
start in verse 3 of chapter 32 and then we’ll go from there.
“Jacob sent messengers before him
to his brother Esau in the land of Seir,
the country of Edom.
He told them,
‘Say to the Lord, my Lord Esau,
thus says your servant Jacob.
I’ve lived with Laban as an alien and stayed until now
and I have oxen,
donkeys, flocks, male, female servants, and I have sent them to tell my Lord
in order that I might find favor in your sight.’
The messengers returned to Jacob,
saying, ‘We came to your brother Esau and he is coming to meet you and 400 men are with him.’ Then Jacob was greatly
afraid and distressed and he divided the people that were with him and the flocks and herds and
camels into two companies.
He thought if Esau comes to one company and destroys it,
then perhaps the other will escape.
And Jacob said, ‘O God of my father Abraham,
God of my father Isaac,
O Lord, who said to me,
‘Return to your country with your kindred and I will do you good.
I’m not worthy of
the least of all your steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you’ve shown to your servant,
for with only my staff I cross the Jordan and now I am two companies.
Deliver me please from the
hand of my brother,
from the hand of Esau,
for I am afraid of him.
He may come and kill us all,
the mothers with the children,
yet you have said I will do good to you and make your offspring as
the sand of the sea,
which cannot be counted because of their number.’ So as we left the story,
we saw Jacob with some confidence.
He stood up to Laban.
Here we see that that confidence is really
not transferable to this situation.
On two different occasions here it says that he was greatly afraid
and then he in a prayer says,
‘I am afraid,’ and the word here means deeply afraid.
Almost you could translate,
terrified.
But Jacob is very much in fear of the threat that his brother made to kill him
and as he now has to encounter him,
he’s worried that that is exactly what the result will be.
Yeah, so remember a way, way back,
the reason for Jacob’s leaving the family situation to start with
was for his safety.
The idea was that his brother had made this threat,
that when Isaac died that
Esau would kill Jacob.
And so it’s under that threat that Jacob leaves,
it is under that very
threat that now he’s returning.
And as we look here to this transition,
you know, I do think it
causes us to ask some questions about Jacob and his sort of bowing up to Laban a little bit there, you know,
how much fear was involved in that.
It seems reasonable to suggest that there was some
fear in that decision-making because we certainly see a lot of it here,
to the extent to which
the text goes out of its way actually multiple times here,
Clint, to tell us that he’s splitting
his group in two.
I mean, we explicitly hear he’s thinking to himself if Esau comes after
and destroys one group,
at least the other group has a chance to go.
And you know,
we’re clearly not going to evaluate the sort of military strategy here,
but that’s not a positive strategic
plan, Clint.
I mean, that’s someone who’s trying to hedge the bets,
trying to save some part,
not knowing what’s going to happen.
He has no thought here that he would win in a conflict
with Esau.
So returning here then I think puts the emphasis on this prayer and this engagement
with God.
And I think there’s a few ways to actually read this, Clint.
Yeah, and by the way,
not only Esau, but Esau and 400 men.
Yeah,
fair. This is not well-received news.
I think you’re right.
I think in a sense,
and I don’t want to
psychologize this passage too much,
but it is interesting that Jacob now has to deal with
things he did as a child, as he literally
revisits home and revisits wounded relationships and revisits his choices and his scheming,
his deceitfulness towards his brother.
He, for the first time,
I think, in the story,
expresses what we could call humility.
Verse 13 here,
“Deliver me,” I’m sorry,
verse 11, “Deliver me,
please,
from the hand of my brother,
from the hand of Esau,
for I am afraid of him.” You know,
we’ve seen Jacob bargain with God.
We’ve seen Jacob haggle with Esau.
This is begging.
This is throwing himself upon the mercy.
You have said you will be good to me.
I’m trusting you,
but I’m afraid.
Please.
I mean,
this is the closest I think we’ve
seen to a Jacob who is humbled,
who is sincere.
This reads to me at least,
and I want to be
careful with that because this is an opinion,
but I hear in this less of playing the angles
and more of truly relying on
God to rescue him.
I agree,
but
let me throw this into the table.
I’m struck here by verse 12,
yet you have said,
this is Jacob quoting to God here,
“I will surely do you good and make your offspring as the sand of the sea,
which cannot be counted because of
their number.” I find it interesting here that in the midst of this plea,
Jacob is reminding God,
“Hey, you did make this promise,” right?
God, I think there’s a sense in which Jacob does also
turn that edge against God a little bit to say,
“Hey, now I’m going back because you told me to.”
So you’re on the hook here, God.
Yeah,
and I’m going to have a hard time fulfilling the promise
if I’m dead.
Right.
There’s a little bit of a line here,
God, that we need to negotiate.
But it comes from a place of fear.
It seems to me to come less of a place of
what’s in it for me.
I mean, I think there’s a desperation in this text that I don’t think we’ve
seen from Jacob.
And I do think,
and I’m not a huge Jacob fan,
so I’m trying to give him the
benefit out.
I see a certain humility in this that seems to me more than anything we’ve seen
along those lines from Jacob yet.
You know, Clint, and I will say this,
the explicit referencing of
the mothers and the children,
I think it’s a particularly sort of poignant word there that Jacob shares.
Because fundamentally,
what’s at stake here is his entire life.
I mean, everything that he’s built up over these years.
We spent all of this time talking about Laban and the trickery
back and forth, right?
About even the infighting in his own house between his wives and how this
reflected his family of origin.
Now Jacob is on the road,
right?
He’s crossed the barrier.
There’s literally a monument between him and his father-in-law’s land,
right?
This idea of God
watch you.
And as he crosses that monument,
as he now walks into the literal space in which his
family of origin exists,
now he has to face that history.
But he does so with all of this
life and family that he’s accumulated.
And the question now that is at the front of the text is,
what happens when the one who stole the blessing returns to the one who he left behind?
And Clint, there’s some really interesting,
we’re going to see this more in their actual conversation,
but my commentary points out how even now we begin to see the reversal of the blessing that Isaac gave,
this idea that the younger would rule over the older.
And here we have this language where Jacob
is already humbling himself.
He’s calling himself servant and Esau is the greater.
We’re going to see that in more detail,
but the text is clearly set up to show us that in this moment the promise
is taking a strange turn because in Jacob’s fear,
he’s trying to very,
very, very carefully lay a
carpet of peace for his brother.
I do think to some extent,
Michael,
though I agree 100%,
I also think the text is setting us up a little bit because everything about this encounter is in Esau’s favor.
Jacob has too many people to run,
they’re in the open country,
and Jacob seems to
have completely accepted the fact that if it comes down to strength,
if it comes down to ferocity,
if it comes down to physicality,
he cannot be the winner.
He seems to accept that as a foregone conclusion.
Now,
I think the text is going to do something with that.
We won’t see it probably until tomorrow,
but I think in order to get us kind of in that mindset,
it takes us there.
Let me very quickly read this next part because I think saving it doesn’t really help us at all.
So, here we have Jacob maybe going back to what he knows.
He spent the night there and from which
he had, he took a present for his brother Esau.
He took 200 female goats, 20 male goats,
200 ewes, 20 rams,
30 milk camels, and their colts, 40 cows,
10 bulls, 20 female donkeys, 10 male donkeys,
delivered the hand of his servant every drove by itself and said to the servants,
“Pass ahead of me,
put space between each drove.” He instructed the foremost,
“When Esau my brother meets you and
asks where you going and to whom do you belong,
who are these ahead of you,
you shall then say,
they belong to your servant Jacob,
they are present sent to my Lord Esau,
and moreover he is behind us.” He likewise instructed the second and third and all who followed the droves,
“You shall say the same thing to Esau when you meet him,
and you shall say, ‘Moreover,
your servant Jacob is behind us.’ For he thought,
‘I may appease him with the present that goes
ahead of me, and afterwards I shall see his face because he will,
perhaps he will then accept me.’
So the present passed on ahead of him,
and he himself spent the night in the camp.”
So here we have Jacob being Jacob.
He’s going to send a huge gift,
and not only that,
but he’s going to do it a little bit at a time so that Esau has the experience of sort of receiving
it all day, like, “Oh, another one, another one, more,
more, more?” And he tells each one,
“Say to it, it’s from me, and then I’m coming later.
There’s more coming, and then I’ll be there
later.” And I want you to pay special attention to this verse,
late verse 20, “I shall see his face.”
In the next two days,
face is going to be very,
very important in the way that this story gets
told.
So just kind of asterisk that for now and hold on to it.
But I think, Michael,
here we have Jacob.
And I want to be fair,
his back’s against the wall,
and he’s trying to,
but
it’d be hard not to call this a bribe.
Yes.
A bribe rooted in fear.
I think,
what do you do when you don’t have the wherewithal to win a fight?
You try to buy your
way out.
And what we have here is Jacob is flaunting his wealth.
We’ve been told already
that’s because of the blessing that Jacob has wealth.
I mean, we were told that explicitly,
that it was on Jacob’s account that in Laban’s household,
you had this blessing happen through miraculous means even.
So here,
Jacob is playing his strong card.
The reality is he has done well financially.
I think if I’m going to be positive,
I think in some ways,
maybe I come with a little
bit of distrust of Jacob.
I think that’s not totally unfair related to the text of Jacob.
But I think if I’m going to read this with a whole heart,
I think Jacob is here in a really
transformative position because he’s trusted God.
I think we can take him seriously when he says to
God, “I’m going there because you told me to.” You know,
we’re really not given any other reason
why Jacob would want to leave Laban’s household.
I mean, he was blessed there.
Things were going well.
Yes, he had a strange relationship,
but not so much so that we would have any reason to
believe that he would be kicked out or that he would need to go.
Laban expressed regret at his departure.
So I think we can take Jacob seriously when he says,
“I’m following what you
called me to do,
God.” And that’s fundamentally the story of promise that we see in Genesis.
We’ve seen it over and over again.
It began, of course,
with Abram being called to go.
And when he responds in faith,
God carries him forward.
Then we know that those chapters are often marked
with trouble.
You know,
Abraham later with his son,
the binding of Isaac,
the offering up of
Isaac.
Yeah, this is a hard chapter of that story.
And here we see another hard chapter,
or I agree with you,
we’re being set up for the fact it might be a hard chapter.
And I think if we’re going to give Jacob credit,
it is going to be hard or it’s going to be blessed,
however it pans out,
because of his faithfulness.
I mean, God calls him to do a thing and he does it.
And so to Jacob’s credit,
he’s doing this thing in faith.
Yeah, it’s interesting that I think neither from Jacob nor the text do we have any sense of
Jacob being sorry for what he’s…
I think there’s no sense of apology here.
I don’t think Jacob is…
We’re not told that he looks back on the Esau moments and regrets them.
In fact, they are the gateway to his success.
I don’t think there’s anything in the text that God harbors any
feelings about those moments one way or another.
It’s simply time to face the reality and he has to do that.
I don’t want to be sexist here,
but he has to do that as a man.
He has to do that as
the head of his household.
He has to do that as the one who owns these things.
He is in charge
of his part of this moment.
And as he tries to navigate it,
he does so very generously.
But I mean, clearly, he’s trying to buy some security here.
He’s trying to essentially pay
off Esau and hope to avoid a conflict.
Now, where that goes is very interesting.
And I think tomorrow, one of the more interesting stories in the Jacob tale.
Hope you can be with us.
If not, catch that one later because I do think that one and the next one.
So by Wednesday, probably, we have this story kind of wrapped up.
But the next two days,
I think are fascinating parts of
the scripture.
I think there is a lot in there.
Very, very interesting stuff.
And I hope you can
be with us to kind of finish this story that we began today.
Yeah. And my last word there,
Clint, is I think the bridge.
You said this earlier,
but I think it needs emphasized here.
Esau is bringing 400 men.
That’s not a welcome party, right?
Nobody needs 400 people for a
celebration like, hey, my brother’s home.
So the bridge, I think the text is making to your
previous point.
The thing that we’re going to talk about tomorrow is that fundamentally,
this is a fraught situation.
This is like one country sending its jets into another country’s airspace.
Everybody’s on edge here because why are we responding in the way we’re responding?
And so it’s that rising tension that sets up the really amazing kind of character terms that we
see as the story goes on.
So you said, I just think that’s an important bridge for what’s to come.
Yeah. Yeah.
I think there’s good stuff.
I hope you’ll, I think you’ll enjoy it.
If you can join us,
please do.
See you tomorrow.