Scripture: Genesis 32:3-8, 22-30; Luke 18:1-8

The Old Testament story of Jacob and Esau picks up many years later when both are married and heads of their own households. The brothers haven’t seen each other in years, yet they seem to have done well for themselves.

Evidently, Jacob gets to the point in his life at which he is reflective enough to have appropriate regret for some of the many ways he had taken advantage of people, and right at the top of the list is his brother, Esau. He finds out that Esau is living in the land of Seir, and he sends some of his servants ahead, asking if it might be possible to heal old wounds. Esau doesn’t answer. He simply tells the servants to inform Jacob that he and 400 of his men will be coming to meet him to talk about old times. Jacob, of course, was terrified, and rightly so. However, Jacob is tired of running. Still, he doesn’t want to lose at Esau’s hand everything he’s worked so hard to accumulate all these years, so he divides his people and his possessions into two groups so the most he can lose is half of it all.

From the part of his estate which he had kept close by, Jacob designated a generous gift for his brother and went to great effort to arrange how the gift would be presented, well before Esau could actually see Jacob.

The half of Jacob’s estate which he had kept for easy access and his family was sent across the Jabbok ford. As a precaution against meeting Esau face to face, Jacob brought up the rear and for some reason trailed behind a good bit. Alone on this side of the Jabbok, Jacob had the experience of his life. There wasn’t anything fun about the circumstance. “Then Jacob was left alone; and a Man wrestled with him until the breaking of day” (Genesis 32:24). He may have thought for a moment that Esau had come up on his blind side, but with a moment’s reflection, he became convinced otherwise. Actually, when Esau and his 400 men finally did reach Jacob, they came in peace; Esau came for reconciliation. However, that was later.

For the moment, Jacob is left alone in the wilderness; that is where he wrestled with his mysterious opponent. He was literally alone in that he was in the darkness without a single family member or servant around. To make it worse, the inescapable focus of his thoughts was his crooked pattern of relating to people; he could not stop thinking about the wrongs of his life, and that was a great crisis for Jacob. There was loneliness and despair in the face of his failings. Then, to heighten all the tension, he wasn’t sure he’d live through the night. The last he’d heard from Esau, his brother had planned to kill him. Jacob, no doubt, believed that God had brought all of this to him and that God was possibly trying to tell him something through this encounter.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.