The midnight wrestle by the brook Jabbok made an epoch in Jacob's life. It was the moment in which he stepped up to a new level in his experience-the level of Israel the Prince. But, let us remember, it is one thing to step up to a level like that; it is quite another to keep it. Jacob's after-life was strong in comparison with the infirmities of the years before, and pure in comparison with the sins that had stained his earlier years, but it was not without flaw and foible.
As the morning broke, “Jacob lifted up his eyes, and looked, and, behold, Esau came, and with him four hundred men.” Each moment brought him nearer. Jacob, still timid, rearranged the company that was with him, placing his secondary wives and their children in front, next to them Leah with her children, last of all his most dearly beloved Rachel and Joseph. Then he himself went on before them all, and, as his brother approached, “bowed himself to the ground seven times,” an act of extreme humility. Jacob had the birthright and was the superior according to the customs of that age. But he “bowed himself to the ground seven times, until he came near to his brother.” Esau, at the sight, forgot his wrongs, if he had hitherto cherished a remembrance of them, and running forward to meet Jacob, “embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him: and they wept.” The past was forgotten, or at any rate forgiven. The brothers were at one again.
Esau then offered to escort his brother to his own country of Seir, or else to leave with him a number of his spearmen as protectors; but Jacob declined both offers as unnecessary, and indeed, as inconvenient, since it would hurry his cattle and his children too much if they had to move as fast as Esau's soldiers. With characteristic reticence, he did not tell his brother whither he was bent on going, but spoke as if he was about to visit him in Seir shortly. His attitude towards Esau was extremely politic, and not very heroic.
And so the dreaded meeting with Esau has passed; the two brothers retain their characters throughout 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. Throughout the whole course of the interview that which we most wonder at and admire is the generosity of Esau.
It has been said that the Celt never forgives; now the injunction to forgive seventy times seven was to Signor the supreme commandment. He told me that it had once happened to him to be very angry with some one person, and to feel so for some time; and then, thinking over it one day, he had come to see that it would be better to put away all the angry feelings, and to try to believe that circumstances had been too strong; and with that he made a great effort to conquer himself, and after doing so he felt a strange influence like something celestial passing over him, as if a higher power had laid his hand upon his head. It was something he had never known before or since-a glimpse of the Divine.1 [Note: M. S. Watts, George Frederic Watts, ii. 280.]
