Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 102. Jacob the Supplanter
Subjects in this Topic:
Abraham was a hero, Jacob was “a plain man, dwelling in tents.” Abraham we feel to be above ourselves, Jacob to be like ourselves. Thus the distinction between the two great patriarchs has been drawn by a celebrated theologian. “Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.” Thus the experience of Israel himself is summed up in the close of his life. Human cares, jealousies, sorrows, cast their shade over the scene,-the golden dawn of the patriarchal age is overcast; there is no longer the same unwavering faith; we are no longer in communion with the “High Father,” the “Friend of God”; we at times almost doubt whether we are not with His enemy. But for this very reason the interest attaching to Jacob, though of a less lofty and universal kind, is more touching, more penetrating, more attractive. Nothing but the perverse attempt to demand perfection of what is held before us as imperfect could blind us to the exquisite truthfulness which marks the delineation of the patriarch's character.
The Jews called themselves by the name of Jacob; and surnamed themselves by the name of Israel (Isa_44:5). God calls them children of Israel. We call them Israelites. We speak of Jacob, rather than Abraham, as the founder of the people to which he gave his name; because, though Abraham was their ancestor, yet he was not so exclusively. He is the founder of a yet richer, mightier line. The wild son of the desert claims him as father equally with the bargain-loving Jew. But Jacob is the typical Jew. His life is the epitome of that wonderful people, who are found in every country and belong to none; who supply us with our loftiest religious literature, and are yet a byword for their craft, their scheming, and their love of money.
If we can understand the life of Jacob, we can understand the history of his people. The extremes which startle us in them are all in him. Like them, he is the most successful schemer of his times; and, like them, he has that deep spirituality and that far-seeing faith, which are the grandest of all qualities, and make a man capable of the highest culture that a human spirit can receive. Like them, he spends the greatest part of his life in exile, and amid trying conditions of toil and sorrow; and, like them, he is inalienably attached to that dear land, his only hold on which was by the promise of God and the graves of the heroic dead.