Lecture III : Jacob (part 2)
by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D.
3. It was the termination also of the dark and un-
certain prelude of Jacob's life. The original
sin, the exile, the transgression in which the
founder of the Israelites was born and bred, was held
up always before their eyes, a mixed ground of warning
and thanksgiving. "Thy first father hath sinned."
"Thou wast called a transgressor from the womb."
"Thou shalt say, A Syrian ready to perish was my
father." But this is now over. Every incident and
expression in the Sacred narrative tends to fix our
attention on this point of the Patriarch's story, as the
climax and turn of the whole. He is in exile return-
ing home after years of wandering. He is the chief,
raised by his own efforts and God's providence to a
high place amongst the tribes of the earth. He stands
like Abraham on the heights of Bethel; like Moses on
the heights of Pisgah; overlooking from the watch-
tower, "the Mizpeh" of Gilead, the whole extent of
the land which was to be called after his name. The
deep valley of the Jordan, stretched below, recalls the
mighty change of fortune. "With my staff I passed
over this Jordan, and now I am become two bands."
the wide descent of the valley southward towards the
distant mountains of Seir reminds him of the contest
which may be in store for him from the advancing tribe
of his brother of Edom. But the story sets before us a
deeper than any mere external change or struggle. It
is as though the twenty years of exile and servitude
had wrought their work. Every incident and word is
fraught with a double meaning; in every instance
earthly and spiritual images put one over against
the other, hardly to be seen in the English version,
but in the original clearly intended. Other forms
than his own company are surrounding him; another
Face than that of his brother Esau is to welcome his
return to the land of his birth and kindred. He was
become two "bands" or "hosts;" he had divided his
people, his flocks and herds and camels into two
"hosts;" he had sent "messengers" before to an-
nounce his approach. But "as Jacob went on his way
the 'messengers' of GOD met him;" and when he had
seen them ascending and descending the stair of heaven
at Bethel; and "when Jacob saw them, he said, This
is God's host: and he called the name of that place
"Mahanaim;" that is, "The Two Hosts." The
name was handed on to after-ages, and the
place became a sanctuary of the Transjordanic tribes.
He was still on the heights of the transjordanic hills,
beyond the deep defile where the Jabbok, as its name
implies, "wrestles" with the mountains through which
it descends to the Jordan. In the dead of night he
sent his wives and sons and all that he had, across
the defile, and he was left alone; and in the darkness
and stillness, in the crisis of his life, in the agony of
his fear for the issue of the morrow, there "wrestled"
with him One whose name he knew not, until the
dawn rose over the hills of Gilead. They "wrestled,"
and he prevailed; yet not without bearing away the
marks of the conflict. He is saved, as elsewhere, in
his whole career, so here; "saved, yet so as by fire."
In that struggle, in that seal and crown of his life, he
wins his new name. "Thy name shall be called no
more Jacob ('The Supplanter'), but Israel ('The
Prince of God'), for as a prince hast thou power with
God and with man, and hast prevailed." The dark
crafty character of the youth, though never wholly
lost — for "Jacob" he still is called even to the end
of his days — has been by trial and affliction changed
into the prince-like, godlike character of his manhood.
And what was He with whom he had wrestled in the
vision of the night, and who vanished from his grasp
as the day was breaking? "Tell me, I pray thee,
thy name. And He said, 'Wherefore is it that thou
dost ask after My name?' And He blessed him
there. And Jacob called the name of the place
Peniel (that is, 'The Face of God'); — for I have
seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.
And as he passed over Penuel, the sun," of which
the dawn had been already breaking, " 'burst' upon
him; and he halted upon his thigh."
Many memorials, outward and inward, remain of
that vision. "The children of Israel," and the children
of Abyssinia also, "eat not of the sinew which shrank,
unto this day." This was one remembrance traced
back to the old ancestral victory. Another was the
watch-tower of Peniel, which years afterwards guarded
the passes of the Jordan, when Gideon pursued the
Midianites who were retreating back into their eastern
haunts, by the same approach through which the tribe
of Jacob was now advancing. But a more enduring
memorial is the application, almost without an alle-
gory, into which that mysterious encounter shapes
itself, as an image of the like struggles and wrest-
lings, in all ages of the Church, on the eve of some
dreadful crisis, in the solitude and darkness of some
overhanging trial. It was already so understood in
part by the Prophets, — "He had power over the
angel and prevailed; he wept and made supplication
unto him." And in modern times this aspect of the
story finds its best application in the noble hymn of
Charles Wesley:
"Come, O thou Traveller unknown,
Whom still I hold, but cannot see!
My company before is gone,
And I am left alone with Thee:
With Thee all night I mean to stay,
And wrestle till the break of day.
. . . . . .
"Yield to me now, for I am weak;
But confident in self-despair:
Speak to my heart, in blessings speak:
Be conquered by my instant prayer.
Speak! or thou never hence shall move,
And tell me if thy Name be Love.
"My prayer hath power with God: the grace
Unspeakable I now receive;
Through faith I see Thee face to face —
I see Thee face to face and live!
In vain I have not wept and strove —
Thy nature and thy Name is Love."
4. The dreaded meeting with Esau has passed; the
two brothers retain their characters through
the interview: the generosity of the one, and
the caution of the other. And for the last time
Esau retires to make room for Jacob; he leaves to
him the land of his inheritance, and disappears on his
way to the wild mountains of Seir. In those wild
mountains, in the red hills of Edom, in the caves and
excavations to which the soft sandstone rocks so
readily lend themselves, in the cliffs which afterwards
gave to the settlement the name of "Sela" or "Petra,"
lingered the ancient aboriginal tribe of the Horites
or dwellers in the holes of the rock. These "the
children of Esau succeeded, and destroyed from before
them, and dwelt in their stead." It was the rough
rocky country described in their father's blessing: a
savage dwelling, "away from the fatness of the earth
and the dew of heaven;" by the sword they were
to live; a race of hunters among the mountains; their
nearest allies, the Arabian tribe of Nebaioth. Together
dwelt the conquering Edomites and the remnant of
the Horites, each under their respective chiefs, whose
names are preserved in long lines down to the time
of David. Petra, the mysterious, secluded city, with
its thousand caves, is the lasting monument of their
local habitation.
May we not also trace their connection with a
monument still more instructive, — the name
and the scene of the book of Job? When,
where, and by whom that wonderful book was written,
we need not here pause to ask. Yet, as we take
leave of Esau and his race, we can hardly forbear to
notice the numerous traces which connect the scene
of the story with the land of Edom, with the mys-
terious rocks of Petra. Uz, Eliphaz, Teman, are all
names more or less connected with the Idumæan
chiefs. The description of the aboriginal tribes, ex-
pelled from their seats and living in the cliffs and
caves of the rocks, well suits the flight of the Horites
before the conquering Edomites. The description of
the wonders of Egypt — the war-horse, the hippo-
potamus, and the crocodile — well suits the dweller in
Idumæan Arabia. So the Septuagint translators
understood even the name of Job, as identical with
the Edomite Jobab, and fixed his exact place in the
history of the tribe. Perhaps, after all, the position
of the story is left in designed obscurity. But it
would be in strict accordance with the tenderness
which the older Scriptures exhibit towards the better
qualities of Esau, that the one book admitted into the
Sacred Canon, of which the subject is not a member
of the Chose People, should bring before us those
better qualities in their purest form, — suspected inno-
cence frankly arresting itself against false religious
pretensions; the generosity of the Patriarchal chief
without his levity. "When the ear heard him, then
it blessed him; when the eye saw him, it gave
witness to him. He chose out their way, and sat
chief, and dwelt as a king in the army, as one that
comforteth the mourners."
So we part with the house of Esau, at least for the
time, in peace, and return to the main stream of the
history, Jacob and his latter days.
5. He too moves onward. From the summit of
Mount Gerizim the eye rests on the wide opening in
the eastern hills beyond the Jordan, which marks the
issue of the Jabbok into the Jordan valley. Through
that opening straight towards Gerizim and Shechem,
Jacob descends "in peace" and triumph.
At every stage of his progress henceforward we are
reminded that it is the second, and not the
first settlement of Palestine, that is now un-
folding itself. It is no longer, as in the case of
Abraham, the purely pastoral life; it is the gradual
transition from the pastoral to the agricultural. Jacob,
on his first descent from the downs of Gilead, is no
longer a mere dweller in tents; he builds him an
house;" he makes "booths" or "huts" for his cattle,
and therefore the name of the place is called "Succoth."
He advances across the Jordan; he comes to Shechem
in the heart of Palestine, whither Abraham had come
before him. But it is no longer the uninhabited
"place" an grove; it is "the city" of Shechem, and
"before the city" his tent is pitched. And he comes
not merely as an Arabian wanderer, but as with a
fixed aim and fixed habitation in view. He sets his eye
on the rich plain which stretches eastward of the city,
now, as eighteen centuries ago, and then, as twenty
centuries yet before, "white already to the harvest"
with its waving cornfields. This, and not a mere
sepulchre like the cave of Machpelah, is the possession
which he purchases from the inhabitants of the land.
The very pieces of money with which he buys the
land are not merely weighed, as in the bargain with
Ephron; they are stamped with the earliest mark of
coinage, the figures of the lambs of the flocks. In
this vale of Shechem the Patriarch rests, as in a per-
manent home. Beersheba, Hebron, even Bethel, are
nothing to him in comparison with this one chosen
portion, which is to descend to his favorite son. Yet
it is not his altogether by the peaceful occupation
which at first seems implied. Two indications remain
to us of a more warlike character. One is the word
of the aged Patriarch to his son Joseph, as of the
expiring flash of the spirit of an ancient conqueror
"Moreover I have given to thee one portion above
thy brethren, which I took out of the hand of the
Amorite with my sword and with my bow." It
may allude to the bloody conquest of Shechem by
Simeon and Levi; but the turn of expression ("I have
given thee . . . . with my sword and my bow")
rather points to incidents of the original settlement,
not preserved in the regular narrative. The other in-
dication is omitted altogether in the Hebrew record,
but remains even unto this day. Outside the green
vale of Shechem, but in "the portion of the field east
of the city," is the ancient well, which can hardly
be doubted to be the one claimed at the Christian
era by the Samaritans as "the well of their father
Jacob, who drank thereof himself, and his children,
and his cattle." A natural question arises at the
sight of this well, why it was necessary to dig it at
all, when so close at hand in the valley which falls
into this plain are streams of living water, which might
have been thought to render it superfluous? The
answer has been made with all appearance of proba-
bility, that it could only have been so dug by one
who was unwilling to trust for his supply of water to
the stronger and hostile inhabitants of the cultivated
valley. It is, if so, an actually existing monument of
the suspicious attitude of the old Patriarch towards
his neighbors, and of his habitual prudence, — "fearful
lest, he being few in number, the inhabitants of the
land should gather themselves together and slay him
and his house."
6. It is with the latest portion of Jacob's life that
are most closely interwoven those cords of natural
and domestic affection which so bind his name round
our hearts. He revisits then his old haunts
at Bethel and Beersheba. The ancient ser-
vant of the house, Deborah, his mother's nurse, the
only link which survived between him and the face
which he should see no more, dies, and is not forgot-
ten, but is buried beneath the hill of Bethel, under
the oak well known to the many who passed that
way in later times as Allon-bachuth, "The Oak of
Tears." He advances yet a day's journey southward.
They draw near to a place then known only by its
ancient Canaanite name, and now for the first time
mentioned in history, "Ephratah, which is Bethlehem."
The village appears spread along its narrow ridge,
but they are not to reach it. "There was but a little
way to come to Ephrath, and Rachel travailed, and
she had hard labour. . . . And it came to pass, as
her soul was in departing, for she died, that she
called the name of the child Ben-oni (that is, 'the
son of sorrow'); but his father called him Ben-jamin
(that is, 'the son of my right hand'). And Rachel
died, and was buried in the way to Ephrath. And
Jacob set a pillar on her grave, that is the
pillar of Rachel's grave unto this day."
The pillar has long disappeared, but its memory has
remained. After the allotment of the country to the
several tribes, the territory of the Benjamites was ex-
tended by a long strip far into the south to include
the sepulchre of their beloved ancestress. As late
as the Christian era, when the infants of Bethlehem
were slaughtered by Herod, it seemed to the Evan-
gelist as though the voice of Rachel were heard
weeping for her children from her neighboring grave.
On the spot indicated by the sacred narrative, a
rude cupola, under the name of Rachel's tomb, still
attracts the reverence of Christians, Jews, and Mus-
sulmans.
Beside "the watch-tower of the flocks," in the same
region where centuries afterwards there were still
shepherds abiding in the fields, watching over their
flocks by night," Israel spread his desolate tent;
and onward he went yet again to Hebron, "to bury
his father in the cave of Machpelah," and
to linger awhile at the spot "in the land
wherein his father was a stranger." In the mixture
of agricultural and pastoral life which now gathers
round him is laid the train of the last and most
touching incidents of Jacob's story. It is whilst they
are feeding their father's flocks together, that the
fatal envy arises against the favorite son. It is whilst
they are binding the sheaves in the well-known corn-
field that Joseph's sheaf stands upright in his dream.
On the confines of the same field at Shechem the
brothers were feeding their flocks, when Joseph was
sent from Hebron to "see whether it was well with
his brethren, and well with the flocks, and to bring
his father word again." And from Shechem he fol-
owed them to the two wells of Dothan, in the
passes of Manasseh, when the caravan of Arabian
merchants passed by and he disappeared from his fat-
ther's eyes. His history belongs henceforth to a wider
sphere. The glimpse of Egypt, opened to us for a
moment in the life of Abraham, now spreads into a
vast and permanent prospect.
7. This shall be reserved for the consideration of
the general relations of Israel and Egypt. But
the story itself, though too familiar to be re-
peated here, too simple to need any elaborate eluci-
dation, is a fitting close to the life of Jacob. Once
more he is set forth on his pilgrimage. The
old wanderer, the Hebrew Ulysses, has still a new
call, a new migration, new trials, and new glory
before him. The feeling so beautifully described
by the modern poet is there first shadowed forth in
action:
"Something ere the end,
Some work of noble note may yet be done . . .
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world . . . .
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
He came to the frontier plain of Beersheba; he re-
ceived the assurance that beyond the frontier he was
to descend yet further into Egypt. "God spake unto
Israel in the visions of the night, and said, Jacob,
Jacob. And he said, Here am I. And He said, I am
God, the God of thy father; fear not to go down
into Egypt, for I will there make of thee a great
nation." He "went down" from the steppes of
Beersheba; he crossed the desert and met his son
on the border of the cultivated land; he was brought
into the presence of the great Pharaoh; he saw his
race established in the land of Egypt. And then the
time drew near that Israel must die; and his one
thought, oftentimes repeated, was that his bones
should not rest in that strange land; not in pyramid
or painted chamber, but in the cell that "he had
digged for himself," in the primitive sepulchre of his
fathers. "Bury me not, I pray thee, in Egypt, but I
will lie with my fathers, and thou shalt carry me out
of Egypt, and bury me in their burial-place. . . . Bury
me with my fathers, in the cave that is in the field
of Ephron the Hittite, in the cave that is in the
field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre, in the
land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the
field of Ephron the Hittite for a possession of a
burial-place. There they buried Abraham and Sarah
his wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his
wife; and there I buried Leah. The purchase of
the field and of the cave that is therein was from
the children of Heth. And when Jacob had made
an end of commanding his sons, he gathered
up his feet into the bed and yielded up the
ghost, and was gathered to his people." His body
was embalmed after the manner of the Egyptians.
A vast funeral procession bore it away; the asses
and the camels of the pastoral tribe mingled with
the chariots and horsemen characteristic of Egypt.
They came (so the narrative seems to imply) not by
the direct road which the Patriarchs had hitherto
traversed on their way to Egypt by El-Arish, but
round the long circuit by which Moses afterwards led
their descendants, till they arrived on the banks of
the Jordan. Further than this the Egyptian escort
came not. But the valley of the Jordan resounded
with the loud shrill lamentations peculiar to their
ceremonial of mourning; and with the funeral games
with which, then as now, the Arabs encircle the
tomb of a departed chief. From this double tradition
the spot was known in after-times as "the meadow,"
or "the mourning," "of the Egyptians," Abel-Mizraim;
and as Beth-hogla, "the house of the circling dance."
"And his sons carried him into the land of Canaan
and buried him in the cave of the field of Machpe-
lah. . . . And Joseph returned to Egypt, he and all
his brethren, and all that went up with him, . .
after he had buried his father."
from The History of the Jewish Church, Vol. I : Abraham to Samuel,
Lecture III: Jacob
by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D., Dean of Westminster
Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1879, pp. 69-82
Posted Jul 25, 2018, 4:12 PM UTC
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