Thus Jacob had lived a busy, clever, varied life — a keen, competitive, skilful, successful life ; and, with the fruits of it now reaped and gathered, he would return to rest in the home of his fathers. It is sweet to dream in a foreign land of the place of one's childhood. Imagination gilds even the sordid hovel of one's birth. We remember but the good ; we forget the evil, or change it into good. And so Jacob was using the necromancer's art. The sunshine and shower of his early years he remembered but as sunshine. All the good stood out bright before him, and all the evil had disappeared. His own evil too was forgotten ; or, if remembered, it was excused and forbidden to intrude itself. Our imagination of the past retains only the good ; but God and conscience keep in reserve the evil. Jacob had not calculated on finding the beginnings of his life so visibly unaltered. Twenty years had passed since he did the evil. Surely the evil must have worked itself out of things long ere now. But it had not. It stood before him now, just as it stood when he fled from it twenty years before — only more formidable, grown in bulk and terror, with greater power to do him hurt, in proportion as he was now more susceptible of hurt. Then it was Esau, seeking Jacob's life ; now it is Esau, with four hundred men, seeking, not Jacob's life merely, but all those other lives into which his has been par- titioned, and which are dearer to him than his own.
^ It is a great spiritual crisis in Jacob's life. That life might well be called, with no injustice to Jacob, the History of a Sin- Perhaps it is this very fact that invests it with its enduring
GENESIS XXXII. 24 233
charm. A life like Abraham's, though far from perfect, is yet in many respects so august in its moral greatness, that, while we admire, we are liable to be somewhat discouraged; for, in the contemplation of so serene an altitude of faith, we are ready to say, " It is high, I cannot attain unto it." But Jacob, so full of infirmities, and yet so desirous of better things ; now overborne by temptation, and now strenuously contending — such a man is very near to us, and we are encouraged to believe that, if he conquered, we may conquer too. "But with equal truth might Jacob's life be called the History of a Ketribution. Almost from first to last we see retribution following and smiting him, as it winds itself into all the sinuosities of his career. " Be sure your sin will find you out" (Num. xxxii. 23) — with what relentless severity did this law fulfil itself ! And now at the last, when he has escaped from danger after danger, although suffering, withal, BO many and sore woes thuc might not be escaped ; and when, perhaps, he had thought the sufferings all ended and the dangers past — now, once more, and more fearfully than ever, his old sin rises up to confront and condemn him, smiting him with all its terrors, as he cries out, *' Hast thou found me, O mine enemy ? " It is one of those crises in which a whole eternity is compressed into an hour.^
I sent back memory, in heedful guise. To search the records of preceding years;
Home, like the raven to the ark, she flies, Croaking bad tidings to my trembling ears.
O sun ! again that thy retreat was made,
And threw my follies back into the friendly shade!*
2. The expected meeting. — Jacob had been guilty of a great flin at the outset of his career. He had deceived his father, had resorted to treachery to obtain the birthright, and the fact that that which seemed to be Esau's was really his own by promise, though it modifies our judgment, does not alter the sin. But, however much we may understand that what he got in a wrong way was really his own, Esau did not choose so to understand it. Esau from the first had considered himself a deeply injured man, as most men would, and during all these years, Jacob might reason- ably expect that Esau had been nursing and cherishing the sense of his injury. Now they were to meet again. Jacob had just re- ceived the intelligence of Esau's approach, a meeting was inevit-
' T. F. fjockyer. ' Christopher Smart.
234 SPIRITUAL WRESTLING
able, and the thought of it was sufficiently disturbing. How did Jacob prepare for the meeting ?
(1) By prayer. — After receiving the threatening report about Esau Jacob retired to the privacy of his tent, and poured forth the acknowledgment of his trouble and perplexity in the first-recorded words of human prayer. They are words which tell the want and vibrate with the passion of a human heart. " I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which thou hast showed to thy servant. . . . Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother."
(2) By taking thought for his family. — Jacob, with a character- istic prudence that never forsook him, divided his company into two bands — ^in the first which would meet Esau he sent those for whom he least cared, so that they might bear the brunt of Esau's attack if he did attack ; and so that the second band, composed of those whom he loved most, might be able to escape.