1. When, having left his idols behind, Jacob had got back to Bethel, and had built again the altar of renewed consecration, we are told significantly that “God appeared unto him again, and blessed him.” It was a great blessing, indeed, that God vouchsafed to Jacob. “God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob; thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name.” The angel had said as much as this at Peniel; and, for a brief moment, Jacob had shone in the transfiguring gleam of royalty. But the gleam was transient enough, like that which sometimes breaks for a moment far out upon a stormy sea, and is instantly veiled again. But there had been wrought on him a deep spiritual change since then; and his experience had been brought into more constant conformity with the level of Israel, the Prince-which was now re-affirmed as his perpetual designation. And forthwith he was plunged into a fiery furnace of trial, which made both name and character permanent.
But while this inward change, or the deepened and confirmed sense of that change, is the chief blessing of this new covenant at Bethel, the outward inheritance of the Prince with God is not forgotten. The goodly land, promised to Abraham and to Isaac, is now “given” to Jacob, and to his seed after him. God Almighty, who bids him “be fruitful and multiply,” promises that a multitude of nations shall spring from him, and that kings shall call him father. There is a blessing for his children in the new covenant, as well as for him, down to his remotest posterity.
2. One would say now that his happiness was secured. God has come close to him, has blest him, and a happy life awaits him. It is just the contrary; which seems strange enough to those who do not realize that it is not happiness, but perfection, that God wishes for us-to those who do not know that it is in adversity and not in prosperity that the sons of God are moulded for their work and for the life to come. From the moment of the revelation at Peniel and the second covenant at Bethel, Jacob's life becomes a life of trial, loss, sorrow, and difficulty. He had his glad beginning, during which his weak religion grew strong. He was now to have the storms which should root it deeply and give it the inward strength it needed. First he had lost Rachel's nurse, and wept for her. Now Rachel followed, and the man buried with her the romance of life, the memories of youth. Some of his sons then turned out ill, one insulting him shamefully; of the child of Rachel, the child that linked him to the passion of his life, he was bereaved, and bitter was that bereavement, for he suspected his sons of the deed. More and more lonely was his life; and when famine came upon the land, and Benjamin was asked for in Egypt, it seemed that the last blow was given.
This is the culmination of Jacob's time of sorrow. No doubt he had richly deserved sorrow by his conduct to his brother and his father; and sorrow had pursued him from the time of his deception of Isaac to the present. He had been tried and tested in the furnace of severe affliction and had borne the trial, had been cleansed, purified, strengthened by it; now, after one more short period of suspense, he was to receive his reward. A time of joy was before him; the misfortunes that had so severely taxed his endurance during his later years were to turn out blessings in disguise-Joseph, Simeon, Benjamin, were to be restored to him; he was to “taste and see how gracious the Lord is,” and to feel in his inmost heart that “blessed is the man that trusteth in him.” But for the present he had still during a brief space to suffer. All his sons quitted him. He was left alone-left in suspense for many weeks-a prey to fears, suspicions, surmises. Sick with hope deferred, the solitary patriarch waited day after day, longing for the return of his sons, or some of them, yet dreading what news they might bring.
Nervous he naturally was-how could it be otherwise with such an organization? The spirit in him might well be compared to the flame of a candle consuming the material (a symbol an Eastern visitor once gave to him, and which he liked). The condition so well known to brain-workers induced at times an anxiety which was without reason. He made himself positively ill, and for many days-once when my train, shunted to allow numberless excursion trains to pass, delayed my return by some hours, and there was no possibility of telegraphing to explain what had happened. I remember that Sir Edward Burne-Jones told me that he himself never saw his dearest ones go out of the house without seeing them mentally carried back on a stretcher!1 [Note: George Frederic Watts, ii. 205.]
