Genesis 33:10 “No, please!” said Jacob. “If I have found favor in your eyes, accept this gift from me. For to see your face is like seeing the face of God, now that you have received me favorably.
So many people walk through life wondering if they matter to anyone. They don’t feel like they have anyone who understands them or would miss them if they were gone. Their inner experience of life is that they are alone. They might have lots of people around them, but they just don’t have anyone “in their corner.”
For me, this seems like such a foreign thing. I know there are people who are in my corner. They have my back, as we say in the Army and law enforcement. They have my “six” when things get tough.
And I try to be there for other people as well. This isn’t just about having an emotional connection to someone else. This connection gets worked out in very practical ways in everyday life. We do things that let the other know that they matter, we don’t just talk about it.
In our text, Jacob, out of fear of returning to meet the brother from whom he bought the birthright inheritance from years before under somewhat forced circumstances, has set up a large bribe in order to win his favor. Will Jacob never learn? Is this repentance or just self-preservation?
On the way to meet Esau, Jacob has had both a time of personal repentance and a wrestle with God. In the process God changed his name from Advantage Taker to One Who Struggles With God. Now that is quite a name change. But does it work out in Jacob’s life? He has prayed with a repentant heart, but does it change his actions?
We see from the context that Jacob still tries to take advantage of his brother, trying to pacify and anger, hatred or bitterness that Esau might have carried for these twenty years. He sends the bribes of cattle and produce ahead of himself in hopes it will soften the reception. Does this sound like repentance?
But there is this face to face encounter he has had with “a man” who wrestled with him and wounded him on his hip, the one who changed his name. This name-changing being has shown up before in our narrative and will show up again. It is the LORD Himself who makes these name changes, but curiously Jacob doesn’t say it is the LORD who showed up.
He instead states that “I saw God fact to face, and yet my life was spared.” No personal relationship yet, just the generic term for a divine beings. The name LORD is curiously absent from Jacob’s life. From the moment the LORD shows up and tells Jacob to return to the land of his father, he is not mentioned by name, that is 32:10-38:6. And even then, it isn’t the Jacob who is mentioning or calling out to the LORD.
Even though he is in a position of blessing, he isn’t blessed, truly blessed. There is still a fracture in relationship. He calls out, he builds altars, he prays. But he still doesn’t address the LORD by His personal name.
Do we erect barriers so others have to stay at a distance so we don’t have to get to know them? Do we hold them away so they won’t see who we really are? I just wonder what it would be like if we could both let people in and receive the invitation of others to enter.
Jacob had a problem being seen for who he was and for seeing others for who they are. Even after acceptance by Esau after all those years, Jacob still held him at bay. They did come together to bury their father, but Esau is written out of the narrative from that point on, with only an occasional cameo appearance.
The Arnold Journey 