discordance of soul can never suit Him. He withstands Jacob. "There
wrestled a man with him," as we read, "till the breaking of the day."
This was God's answer to his prayer. And this is all very significant,
and it has lessons for us.
It is found by us much easier to trust the Lord in all questions that
arise between Him and ourselves, than it is to bring Him in, and use
Him, and trust Him, in questions that arise between us and
others--easier to trust Him for eternity than for to-morrow; because
eternity is entirely in His hand. To-morrow, as we judge, is more or
less divided between Him and others--in the power of circumstances as
well as of God. Abraham, in his day, betrayed this. He came forth at the
bidding of the God of glory, leaving country, kindred, and father's
house; but as soon as a famine came, his faith failed, and instead of
trusting the Lord in the face of circumstances, he goes down to Egypt.
Jacob, at Mahanaim, betrays the same easy, common way of nature. He is
unable to trust God in the face of Esau. Esau's 400 men frighten him,
and he will interpose, first, his messengers with words of peace and
friendliness, and then, his presents, that by one or the other he may
allay the heat of his brother's anger. He has no faith in God, so as to
bring Him in between himself and Esau. He trembles, and prays, and
calculates, and marshals his household. Circumstances have proved too
much for him. But immediately afterwards, when the Lord Himself
withstands him, when it becomes a question between him and God, then he
is bold and prevails. He faints not, though rebuked, and rebuked
sharply, by the Lord. He behaves himself like a champion of faith, and
obtains a good report. He carries himself like a prince, and gains new
honours. This is a common experience, and this moment in Jacob's history
at the brook Jabbok expresses it.
There is not, however, necessarily, in such a victory as this, a cure
for that faint-heartedness that had occasioned the previous conflict.
And Jacob is now about to illustrate this for our further admonition. In
the very next chapter (xxxiii.), which is but the continuance of the
same action, or a further stage in it, we find him the same timid,
unbelieving, calculating man, in the presence of Esau, as he had been,
ere he had prevailed with the wrestler at Jabbok.
This is admonition for us. There may be exercise of spirit before God,
and yet not much advance in the strength of the soul in carrying on its
conflict with the world. In no stage of his history does Jacob appear
morally lower than in that which immediately follows Peniel. He is not
in anywise purified from himself. He calculates, he prevaricates, he
affects amiability and confidence, he lies, he flatters. He stood
against the stranger at Jabbok. He was strong in faith, glorifying the
grace of God, even when the way of God had a controversy with him. But
before Esau he practises and acts the old man to shameful perfection. He
rids himself of his brother by a grossly false pretence. He is nothing
better than a mean flatterer, a servile courtier, shamelessly speaking
of the face of Esau as of the face of God. It is all miserable--a
humbling picture of the moral condition to which a saint may come, for a
time, if nature be allowed.
There are moments of exhilaration of spirit, and we may be thankful for
them; as when Jacob had so lately, in the preceding chapter, said, "This
is God's host;" and again, "I have seen God face to face, and my life is
preserved." These are moments of exhilaration of spirit. But then, they
may be only _refreshments_, and not solid edification. And sad indeed it
is to see a saint after them returning so quickly to himself. "Where is
then the blessedness ye spake of?"
And who will trust his own heart, when we thus see that Jacob's was so
untrue? Jacob had lost the knowledge of God's name. He had to inquire
after it, instead of using it and enjoying it. That name was "Almighty,"
the name that told him of all-sufficiency for all his need. But Jacob
had lost it in chap. xxxii., and he is not as one who had recovered it
in chap. xxxiii. He is contriving for himself. And we may, in like
manner, lose the name that has been revealed to us. That name is
"Father"--a name that may give abiding calmness and strength and liberty
to the soul. It prepares a home for the heart. "He that dwelleth in love
dwelleth in God." This home is enough to make our joy full, as John
speaks. And though we may be under His hand for discipline, as Jacob
was, still we are to know the power of that name, the full, secret,
unchanging love of a father. Like Jacob in these two chapters, we have
lost the name of God, if it be not thus with our souls. "Ye have
forgotten the exhortation that speaketh unto you as unto children," says
the apostle to us. And Jacob, therefore, may be no longer such a wonder
to us, but we may the rather at times be a wonder to ourselves.
After this, in his journey onward from the place where he and Esau
parted, he reaches Succoth, and then Shechem, and we may say, he had
then returned to Canaan. But it is only still worse and worse with him.
He seems for a while to have entirely forgotten himself and the call of
God. And mischief must follow this. Consistency with our calling is
looked for. We are all, it may be in a thousand ways, untrue to it; but
if it be willingly disregarded by an easy, relaxing conscience, the
commonest moral defences may soon give way. Truth and integrity may be
forced to yield, and such pollutions may at last be found, that would
not, as the apostle speaks, be named among the Gentiles.
At Succoth, where our patriarch first arrived, he builds a house; and
then at Shalem, in Shechem, he buys a field--what Abraham and Isaac,
truer to the call of God, never did, and never would have done. How
could he count on moral security under such circumstances? The tent had
been exchanged for a house, and the pilgrim stranger had become a
citizen and a freeholder. Was not all this a forgetting of himself under
the call of God? The Lord, long after this, lets David know, by His
servant Nathan, that there was a difference between a _house_ and a
_tent_, and that He would have that difference maintained. 1 Chron.
xvii. But here at Succoth, Jacob violates this. So also it is the divine
memorial of the patriarchs in their purity, that they dwelt in tents
(Heb. xi. 9); but here at Succoth, Jacob willingly forfeits that
memorial. And again, the Lord did not give Abraham so much land as to
set his foot on (Acts vii. 5); but here at Shalem in Shechem, Jacob, in
spite of this, will have a parcel of ground, and buy it for an
inheritance.
The altar, which comes next, in the catalogue, to the house and the
field, may appear at first to be a relief and a sanctifier, the one good
thing in the midst of corruption. But it is, perhaps, the worst of all.
It was not raised to Him who had appeared to him. There had been no
communion between the Lord and Jacob, at either Succoth or Shechem.
Shechem was not Bethel, and this parcel of ground, where El-elohe-Israel
was raised, was not the place of stones and destitution, where abounding
grace had shone from an open heaven on the unfriended head of the
patriarch, but the parcel of a field which Jacob had bought of the
children of Hamor, the father of Shechem. It was raised, not by a
heavenly stranger to the God who visited him, but in the midst of the
uncircumcised. It looks like an attempt to get the Lord's sanction of
Jacob's loss of his separated, pilgrim, Nazarite character; to link His
name and His worship with that on which His judgment was resting, and
toward which His long-suffering was shown till iniquity was full.
Surely it is rather an uncircumcised Jacob we see here, and not
circumcised Shechemites. It is all miserable. Is this a son of Abraham?
Is this a saint of God? Is this one of God's strangers in a world that
has revolted from Him? This is like the religious energy of Christendom,
which has put the name of Christ in company with the world that is under
His judgment, and only borne with in His long-suffering. It is as if
Israel had consented to Pharaoh, and undertaken to give Jehovah an altar
in Egypt. But such altars are no altars--as another gospel is not
another. Such religion is vain, whether practised in these earliest days
at Shechem, or now in these days of Christendom, among the nations of a
judged, condemned world, from which separation is the call of God. But
this will not do. A fair trade with the world will be followed, and the
course of it pursued greedily, without watchfulness or conviction, but
religious family services, and religious national ordinances, the modern
order at Shechem, will all the while be waited on.
It was of the fruit of all this that Jacob had afterwards to say, "O my
soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly, mine honour,
be not thou united." For it is to the action in chapter xxxiv. that
Jacob thus refers, when he was about to die, in chapter xlix. He finds
out, at the end, the real character of all this, the fruit of his
dwelling at Shechem. In self-will a man had been killed there, and a
fence thrown down. But surely Jacob himself had digged down God's fence
before. The partition-wall which the call of God had raised between the
clean and the unclean, between the circumcision and the Gentile, he
himself, in spirit, had broken down, when he settled as a citizen or
freeholder on his purchased estate at Shechem. And Simeon and Levi may
perfect this, as soon afterwards as they please.
"And Dinah, the daughter of Leah, which she bare unto Jacob, went out to
see the daughters of the land." xxxiv. 1. Was this the way of the house
of Abraham? Was this the family of the separated patriarch keeping the
way of the Lord? Had Abraham been thus slack? What intercourse had he
had for his children with either the sons or the daughters of the land?
It is all sad, and proclaims its own shame. Shechem is next door to
Sodom. But it is not Sodom, I grant. Jacob is not Lot. We can
distinguish; and we have to distinguish, though it is sad to be put to
the work of distinguishing. Nature prevails, in some more, in some less,
in all the recorded saints of God. But there is _moral variety_, as well
as the _prevalency of nature_, and "things that differ" among the saints
are to be distinguished by us. There is a _soiled_ garment, and there is
a _mixed_ garment. Our way, under the Spirit, is to keep the garment
both unsoiled and unmixed. Surely it is to keep ourselves "unspotted
from the world." But still, a _soiled_ garment is not a _mixed_ garment,
a garment, as Scripture speaks, "of divers sorts, of woollen and of
linen." Nor is a garment with a thread of "another sort" now and again
in it, to be mistaken for a mixed garment, the texture of which is
wrought on the very principle of woollen and linen. Scripture, ever
fruitful and perfect, exhibits characters formed by what are called
"mixed principles," and also characters which occasionally betray the
mixture, but which are not formed throughout by them. The life of Lot
was formed throughout by mixed principles. As soon as temptation
addressed him, he entered into connection with evil. Though associated
with the call of God, he had to be saved so as by fire. The garment
which Lot wore was of divers sorts, of woollen and of linen. Abraham, at
times, wore a soiled garment, but never a mixed one. Lot was untrue to
the call of God from the outset of his career to the close of it. He
became a citizen where he should have been a stranger, taking a house in
the city of Sodom, while Abraham was traversing the face of the country
from tent to tent. And Lot's life of false principles leads him into
_sorrows that are his shame_--and that is the real misery of sorrow. He
had no comfort in his sorrow. His righteous soul was vexed: this is told
of him; but there was no joy, no brightness, no triumph in his spirit.
The angels maintained much reserve towards him. He had to escape with
his life as a prey, and under the loss of all beside.
Our Jacob was not of this generation. We dare not say he was a man of
mixed principles, or one who wore a garment of divers sorts, of woollen
and linen. But he had a soiled garment on him pretty commonly, and here
at Succoth and at Shechem, a garment with threads of another sort woven
in it. His schemes and calculations disfigure him, and are the soiled
garment; his building a house at Succoth, and purchasing a field at
Shechem, untrue to the call of God, and to the tent-life of his fathers,
look very like a garment with threads of another sort in it.
Still Jacob is not to be put with Lot. His life was not _formed_ of
mixed principles. He was indeed a stranger with God in the earth. But,
like Lot, he had been in the place of the uncircumcised willingly; and
he was now to feel the bitterness of his own way; and very much what
Sodom had been to Lot, Shechem is now to Jacob. He is saved (may I not
say?) yet so as by fire. The iniquity of Simeon and Levi, with the
instruments of cruelty that were in their habitations, bring poor Jacob
very low. He is at his wits' end in the midst of that people, of whom he
had purchased his estate, and in the neighbourhood of whom, he had,
Lot-like, consented to settle.
Things, however, are now at the worst. We are about to make, through the
grace of God, a happy escape with Jacob out of all this, to find a good
riddance of Shechem and all its pollutions.
"A word spoken in due season, how good is it!" We often prove this
ourselves. A word will do more for us at times than long and careful
discourses. For "power belongeth unto God." "Follow me," from the lips
of Christ, had power to detach Levi from the receipt of custom; while,
in the same chapter, a discourse was heard by Peter without effect,
being left by it, as he had been before it, the easy, kind-hearted,
amiable, and obliging Peter. See Luke v. "Thy people shall be willing in
the day of thy power," even that very people, of whom it had been said
before, "All day long have I stretched out my hands unto a disobedient
and gainsaying people."
An instance of this power is found in the history of Jacob, just at this
time, in chapter xxxv. 1.
"Arise, go up to Bethel," said the Lord to him, "and dwell there; and
make there an altar unto God, that appeared unto thee when thou fleddest
from the face of Esau thy brother."
These few words were with power. They formed, I believe, the great era
in the life of Jacob, or rather, in the history of his soul. They were
few and simple, unaccompanied by anything strange or startling, no
vision or miracle attending them; but they were a day of power. He had
already come forth from the vision of the ladder at Bethel, from the
magnificent sight of the angelic host at Mahanaim, and from the
wrestling of the divine Stranger at Peniel, scarcely helped or advanced
at all in the real energy of his soul. But now, power visits him; and
power with God may use as weak an instrument as it pleases; it matters
not. The hand of God can do the business of God, though it have but a
sling and a stone, or the jaw-bone of an ass, or lamps and pitchers; and
the Spirit of God can do the business of God with souls, though He use
but a word, or a look, or a groan.
These few words which open chapter xxxv. prevail over Jacob. "Arise, go
up to Bethel." Bethel is rewritten on his heart and conscience as by the
finger of God. He falls before it, as Abraham, in chap. xvii., had
fallen before the name of "God Almighty," or as Peter, long after, in
Luke xii., fell before the look of Jesus.
Power is always its own witness, as light is. These words, carrying the
power of God with them, are everything now to the soul of our patriarch.
They manifest their virtue at once, just as the one touch of the woman
in the crowd did. As soon as Jacob heard them, without fuller
commandment to do so, he cleanses his household, and will have his tents
purified of all the abominations which they had brought with them out of
Padan. In spirit he was already at Bethel, the place where God had met
him in the riches of His grace, in the day of his degradation and
misery. Bethel had been reintroduced to his heart--yea, manifested to
his soul in greater vividness than ever. He now read the story of grace
clearer than ever; and _grace pleads for holiness_. The feast of
unleavened bread waits on the Passover. The grace of God that bringeth
salvation teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts. For grace,
again I say it, pleads for holiness. And so, Jacob, now hearing of
Bethel in the power of the Spirit, without further ordinance, or
requirement, or command, will have his house and his household clean.
This is full of beauty and meaning. Pollution cannot be allowed by one
who is in the sense and joy of abounding grace. Gods and earrings, idols
and vanities, are together buried under an oak at Shechem, and Shechem
is left behind. The patriarch rises up with all that was his, and is
quickly on the road to Bethel. He had kept the feast of unleavened bread
in company with the Passover, as Israel afterwards did in Egypt; but,
like Israel too, he is at once, with staff in hand and shoe on foot,
leaving his Egypt behind him. And the Lord accompanies him, as He did
Israel in the day of their Exodus afterwards; and accompanies in
_strength_ too; for, as the rod of Moses opened the way of Israel in the
face of enemies, and He that was in the cloud looked out and troubled
the host of Pharaoh, so now, we read of Jacob and his household, "they
journeyed, and the terror of God was upon the cities that were round
about them, and they did not pursue after the sons of Jacob."
This is surely full of beauty and meaning, I may again say. There is
mercy and blessing here, but there is humbling also. Israel had lost the
power of God's name, and Jacob must now learn that he had lost also the
honour of his own name. But all shall be given back to him. "God
Almighty," and "Israel," and "Bethel" are revealed afresh, at this
moment of revival.
God must be worshipped as the God of salvation. To be sure He must, in
such a world as this. Such worship is the only worship "in truth." John
iv. 23. In Lev. xvii. and in Deut. xii. the divine jealousy touching
this is strongly expressed. It is as "Saviour," He records His name in a
scene of sin and death. As He says by His prophet, "There is no God else
beside; a _just God and a Saviour_; there is none beside me." Isa. xlv.
21. This is revelation of Him; and on this all worship is grounded. In
this He records His name, and there is His house of praise. At Bethel,
God has thus recorded His name, and there was His house, and there Jacob
now brings his sacrifices. He raises his altar, and calls it El-Bethel.
With Jacob, that was the Tabernacle of the wilderness, or the Temple on
Mount Moriah, the Temple on Ornan's threshing-floor. And this was
infinitely acceptable, and God gave fervent and immediate witness of
such acceptableness; for He appeared to him at once at the altar there,
and blessed him, and said, "Thy name shall not be called any more Jacob,
but Israel shall be thy name: and He called his name Israel. And God
said unto him, I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and
a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy
loins; and the land which I gave Abraham and Isaac, to thee will I give
it, and to thy seed after thee will I give the land. And God went up
from him in the place where He talked with him."
This was the expression of divine acceptance, and delight in Jacob's
altar at Bethel. This was like the glory filling the Tabernacle in
Exodus xl., and again filling the Temple in 2 Chron. v. This was the God
of grace and salvation with desire occupying the house and accepting the
worship which a poor sinner, who had tasted abounding grace, had raised
and rendered to Him. Nothing can exceed the interest of such a moment.
Solomon felt the power of such a moment; for on seeing the glory fill
the house which he had built, he utters his heart in these admirable
words: "The Lord hath said that He would dwell in the thick darkness.
But I have built a house of habitation for Thee, and a place for Thy
dwelling for ever." The Temple, where mercy was seen to rejoice against
judgment, had power to draw the Lord God from the thick darkness, the
retreat of righteousness, into the midst of His worshipping people.
What could exceed this? And, in patriarchal days, this was seen at this
altar or temple at Bethel. The glory was there. The Lord appeared there,
and spoke there to Jacob, as afterwards to Solomon. Luz was as Ornan's
threshing-floor, and each of them had become God's house. And Jacob
called the place, a second time, Bethel, but without any of the
misgivings that had soiled his spirit when he was there at the first. He
is now there in the spirit of Solomon before the glory in the Temple,
knowing God's return to him, and His nearness and presence with him.
Then, in the freedom and strength of all this, our patriarch resumes his
journey. He goes from Bethel to Bethlehem, and from thence, by the tower
of Edar, to Mamre, in the south country, where his father Isaac was
dwelling. But in none of these places do we read of house or land again.
It is the tent and the altar and the pillar, the journeying onward
still, the burial of his aged father, and at last, as one with his
fathers, dwelling in the land where they had dwelt before him. See chap.
xxxvii. 1.
This was indeed a different journey, in its moral character, from the
one which he had before taken from Padan to Mount Gilead, and from
thence onward to Shechem through Mahanaim and Succoth. Jacob is
unrebuked now. We have no wrestling as at Peniel, no peremptory voice
summoning away as from Shechem. No fears are awakened in our hearts
respecting him, lest the tent may be deserted again, or the call of God
be forgotten. The word "Bethel," on the lips of the Lord and on the ear
of Jacob, had done wonders. "A word spoken in due season, how good is
it!" surely we may again remember. "Behold, God exalteth by His power:
who teacheth like Him?" And He might surely have challenged His erring
but convicted child, after this second scene at Bethel, and said to him
in the words of Isaiah, "Thus saith the Lord thy Redeemer, the Holy One
of Israel, I am the Lord thy God which teacheth thee to profit, which
leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldest go."
It is not that all is perfected as yet. Reuben's iniquity may tell us
this too painfully. But the rising up from the place of nature, and the
moral extrication of his heart from the spirit of the world, have taken
place. Nor is it that he is as yet beyond the place of discipline. That
is not so. He does not find Rebecca with Isaac at Mamre. He never sees
his mother again, the mother who had so preserved him and cherished him.
His mother's nurse he buries; and more than that, his beloved Rachel he
loses. He has indeed the pledge of strength in "the son of his right
hand," but that same son told of sorrow touching Rachel. And thus he is
under discipline still. But--he is in God's _way_, as well as under
God's _hand_. That is the new thing. Discipline is telling upon him, and
reaching its end. The path is shining, and its latest hour will soon be
found to be its brightest.
_Part IV._--When we enter upon chapter xxxvii. we find _Joseph_ to be
principal in the action, and principal in the thoughts of the Spirit of
God. This is evident from the second verse: "These are the generations
of Jacob. Joseph being seventeen years old," &c. But we get detached
notices of Jacob from this chapter to the end of the book, and which
give us the last portion of his history.
He was now, as I may call him, a widower. He appears before us as a
lonely, retired man, with more of recollections than of present
activities about him. He was indeed the patriarch, the common head and
father of all the households of his children, and so recognized by them.
But the _business_ of the family was rather in their hands; and he was
passing his widowerhood without seeking to be again the stirring,
energetic man he had once been.