The Patriarchs Part 14

Jacob had been but a little while under the trials and sorrows of his sojourn with Laban, ere he was visited after the very pattern of his own offence at home. He had deceived his father touching his brother and the blessing. Laban now deceives him touching Rachel and the marriage. But in much of his behaviour during the twenty years he spent with Laban, we see what was excellent in him. For the force and influence of knowing _that we are under the hand of G.o.d for correction_, is necessarily felt by a mind that has anything right towards G.o.d in it. It is not that nature will be changed or broken under such a pressure, but it must, in measure, more or less, be controlled. David when under rebuke, sore and humbling as ever saint had exposed himself to, carries himself beautifully. His words to Ittai, to Zadok, and to Hushai, his resentment of the motion of the sons of Zeruiah, his humiliations, his lamentations over Absalom, and his using his victory as if it had been a defeat, all this and more than this of the same kind, show us a blessed work of the Spirit in his soul. In Jacob at Padan-aram we get nothing so fine as this, I know; but, if I mistake not, we get a saint under discipline conscious of the discipline, well understanding the character of the moment under G.o.d's hand, and the righteousness of the rebuke of the Lord, carrying himself meekly and watchfully. He submits to the wrongs of an injurious master in silence. He serves patiently, and suffers without complaint. His wages were changed ten times, but he answers not again. In all this he is humbled under the mighty hand of G.o.d, as one who would fain remember his own past ways. And at the end of twenty years' hard drudgery and ill usage, he is able to testify of his fidelity, and G.o.d Himself seems to seal the testimony. By the providences of His hand, and the revelations in visitations of His Spirit, and also by direct interferences with Laban himself, the Lord shelters and blesses and vindicates Jacob.

There is beauty in this. I say not that nature was mortified, that the root of bitterness was judged. We shall find, I know, that after this, Jacob is old Jacob still, sadly betrayed by the same leaven that had been working in him from the beginning. But, while in the house of the Syrian, Jacob was as one who knew himself to be under the mighty hand of G.o.d as for correction, and carried himself accordingly, neither justifying himself against reproaches, nor contending for his rights in the face of wrongs and injustice.

Such a one I judge Jacob to have been in the house of Laban. As to Laban, he was a thorough man of the world when Jacob entered his house, and so he was when Jacob left it. In all his dealings, from first to last, he eyes his own advantage. He is constrained to own that the hand of G.o.d was with Jacob; but he would make that hand, through Jacob, minister to himself, and turn Jacob's interest in G.o.d to his own account. For twenty years he had the witness of the hand of the Lord, and the operation of His grace and power, under his eye and in his house, and that daily; but he continued a man of the world still. G.o.d came near to him, as afterwards to Bethsaida and Chorazin in the doing of His mighty works; but there was no repentance. And Jacob's departure from his house at the last, was like an escape out of the enemy's hand, or from the snare of the fowler. It was a kind of exodus. In a family way it was what was afterwards known by Israel in a national way. Laban was as Pharaoh, and Padan-aram as Egypt to our patriarch. He would fain have kept Jacob a drudge still, or at best have sent him away as a beggar; but the Lord pleaded for Jacob with Laban, as He afterwards pleaded for Israel with Pharaoh. Laban and Pharaoh had each in his day _witnessed_ the operation of G.o.d, but neither of them became the _subject_ of it.

A thorough lover of the world he surely was, and never anything better; a crafty one, and a hypocritical one too--common companions. At the end, when all his devices are broken to pieces, and no enchantment is allowed to prosper, as against Israel, he does what he can, according to the miserable, disgusting style of a crafty heart, to cover the purpose which had now failed, and to give himself a fair character. He pretends that Jacob's leaving him was mere fondness for home, while his conscience must have told him many a very different reason. He affects grief and indignation at not having an opportunity of kissing his daughters and grandchildren, and of sending them away honourably, while his conscience must have reminded him how he had sold them again and again. He seems to be concerned for them, now about to be in Jacob's hand, as if his own hand had been that of a father to them. He pretends to spare Jacob through religious fear of G.o.d's words, while he must have felt himself to be completely restrained by G.o.d, willing or unwilling, religious or profane; as Balaam afterwards. And he gives a serious air to the last bargain between him and Jacob, introducing the name of the G.o.d of Abraham, though he had just been searching for his idols, and was preparing to return to that land out of which G.o.d had called Abraham, and to continue there a thorough, heartless man of the world still, a worshipper of his own G.o.d.

Miserable man! pointing a holy, serious lesson for us.

But we have the women and the children of Padan-aram, as well as Laban the Syrian. The women and the children of the Book of Genesis are all mysteries. We see this in Eve and her three children--in Abraham's Sarah, and Abraham's Hagar, and Abraham's Keturah, and the seed of each of them. And we noticed in Isaac (see page 152) the same mystic character in Rebecca his wife, and Esau and Jacob his children. Each and all tell out parts and parcels of the purpose of G.o.d, as in figures. And now, in the women which become connected with Jacob in Padan, whether it be his wife the elder sister, or his wife the younger sister, or the handmaids given to them, and in the children of each of them, there are mysteries again.

In the children of Israel, that is, the nation, the seed of Abraham, we find three cla.s.ses. 1. There has already been Israel _after the flesh_, set in the land under t.i.tle of their fleshly alliance with Abraham. 2.

There is now, at this time, the nation _in bondage_, made to know the service of the Gentiles. 3. There will be, by-and-by, the nation _set in grace_, Israel redeemed and accepted, established in the promises made to the fathers.

These are three generations in the nation of Israel, as that nation either has been, now is, or is to be hereafter. And the shadowing of this, I judge, we see in the families of Jacob in Padan; that is, in the children of Leah, who had her t.i.tle in the flesh; in the children of the handmaids; and in the children of Rachel the beloved, who had no strength in nature, but whose seed was all of promise or of G.o.d.

The way of the wisdom of G.o.d is thus learnt in the women and children here, in chapters xxix.-x.x.xi., as it had been in the earlier family scenes of this wondrous book.

As soon as Joseph, the child of promise, the son of Rachel the beloved, is given to him, Jacob speaks of leaving Padan, the place of his exile and bondage. See x.x.x. 25, 26. And this, simple as it seems to be, has character in it. The condition of an alien and servant did not suit him, as soon as he got the seed that witnessed to him the power of G.o.d in his behalf. He may have felt somewhat instinctively, that it became him now to a.s.sert his freedom, and to bethink himself of his home and his inheritance. I say not whether Jacob really entered into this, or whether it was something of an inspiration that he breathed, and which, in its full meaning, was beyond him. But so it was that he said to Laban, immediately upon the birth of Joseph, "Send me away, that I may go to my own place and to my country."

It had been very much after this manner with Abraham in an earlier day.

As soon as Isaac was weaned, the scene around Abraham immediately changed. The child of the bondwoman has to leave the house, and Abraham takes precedence of the Gentile. See chap. xxi. The weaning of Isaac was the turning-point in Abraham's condition. In spirit, for a moment, he enters the kingdom, raising a new altar, an altar to the "everlasting G.o.d," and planting a grove. This was very fine, and the character of it I have considered in its place. See "Abraham," page 126. But so was it now with Jacob, as then with Abraham. As soon as Joseph, the child of promise, that witnessed the grace and strength of G.o.d, is given to him, he conceives the thought of freedom and of home.

This was a fine, striking instance of the intelligence of a new mind in Jacob. The way of faith, I may add, is seen in Rachel on the same occasion, for she calls her son "Joseph," that is, "adding;" a.s.sured that the Lord, who had now _begun_ His mercies towards her, would _go on_ with them and _perfect_ them. As faith now in our hearts and on our lips, in like spirit, says, "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?" From His gifts, Rachel not only "drew a plea to _ask_ Him still for more," but in still bolder, happier faith, drew a conclusion to _trust_ Him still for more.

But though this was so, the connection between Laban and Jacob is continued for a while after Joseph's birth, till the separation takes place under force of other circ.u.mstances altogether, leaving Laban, still more than before, a kind of pillar of salt, or a solemn remembrance to us of what our wretched hearts are capable.

_Part III._--The time of his servitude closes in chap. x.x.xi. He is then on his way back from Padan-aram to Canaan; the princ.i.p.al scenes of his journey being at _Mount Gilead_, shortly after his setting out, and _Mahanaim_, near the brook Jabbok, a little before he entered the land.

It was at Mount Gilead that the parting between him and Laban took place, for Laban had pursued him so far. But there they make a covenant, offering sacrifice, and then eating together as upon the sacrifice.

Such a scene, in mystery, exhibits our blessing. For we enjoy a covenant of peace, secured by a sacrifice, and witnessed by a feast. So, in the night of redemption from Egypt, the altar and the table, that is, the sacrifice and the feast, are there again. The blood is upon the door-post, and the household, thus ransomed and sheltered, are within, feeding on the lamb, whose blood was protecting and delivering them.

But there is another thing on this occasion to be noticed--_it is Jacob who offers the sacrifice_.

This has a great character in it. It tells us that Jacob knew his place and dignity under G.o.d. Laban had all the claims which nature or the flesh or relationship could confer, but Jacob acts in spite of them.

Laban was the elder; he was the master and the father-in-law. But still Jacob takes the place of the "better," and offers the sacrifice, in the like spirit of faith as Abraham when entering into covenant with the king of Gerar (chapter xxi.); or like Jethro at h.o.r.eb, in the midst of the Israel of G.o.d, and in the presence of Aaron. Ex. xviii.

Such cases are among the triumphs of faith; and they are no mean triumphs either. To know our high t.i.tle in Christ, and by no means to surrender it, even when circ.u.mstances may humble us, this is no easy thing. Jacob was under discipline in Padan-aram. He had no altar there.

Before G.o.d he was rather a penitent than a worshipper. But before Laban he knows himself as a saint, and here, at the Mount Gilead, he has his pillar, his sacrifice, and his feast, and he exercises that faith which emboldens him to act according to his dignity as a saint and priest of G.o.d, in the presence of all the claims of flesh and blood. Elihu, in the book of Job, though renouncing _himself_ before his elders, a.s.serts the t.i.tle of _the Spirit in him_, in the face of the highest claims of nature.

It is very encouraging to witness such fragments of the mind of Christ in the saints. Jacob never suspected his t.i.tle in Christ, from first to last, though under discipline all his days. And this is blessed--blessed to take the place that grace, in its riches, in its exceeding riches, in its glory and in its aboundings, gives us. I do not believe, if Peter in John xxi. had purposed to reach the Lord as a _penitent_, he would have _hurried_ towards him as he did. A penitent would have approached with a more measured step. But Peter was not thinking of his late denial of his Lord, but of his Lord Himself. His step was therefore hurried and earnest. He had sinned against his Master, it is indeed true, and might have been backward and ashamed. But, wondrous to say it, as Peter _the penitent_ would not have taken so ready and so earnest a journey, so Peter the penitent would not, at the end of it, have been so welcome to his Master, as the confiding though erring Peter. In this is the grace and heart of Him "with whom is _all_ our business now."

These are but fragments however, broken pillars in the temples of G.o.d.

Nature is nature still; and Jacob, quickly after all this, betrays himself as _old_ Jacob still.

One has said, that had the Lord slacked His hand with Job, when the _first_ trial was over, Job would have come short of the blessing. There was respite; and it might have been thought that all had ended. But G.o.d's end in grace was not yet reached; and we may be sure that Satan's malice was not yet satisfied. The unweary adversary begins afresh, the Lord gives him place again, and Job is visited a _second_ time.

And nature is just as unwearied as Satan. Expel it and it will return.

We have just had this little respite from the way of nature, in Jacob at Mount Gilead, and seen for a moment the better mind in him, and some expressions of the glory, but we are quickly, too quickly indeed, to see the old man again.

Jacob goes on his way from Mount Gilead, and as he approaches the borders of the land, the angels of G.o.d meet him. Jacob at once recognizes them. "This is G.o.d's host," says he, and he called the place Mahanaim.

This was holy ground. The undertakings of chapter xxviii. had been fulfilled--the pledges of Bethel had been redeemed. Accordingly, we have no ladder here. Providential, angelic guardianship had fulfilled its ministry; Jacob had been kept in the distant land, and brought home to his own land. The ladder may, therefore, be taken down, and instead of angels ascending and descending as between heaven and the patriarch, angels _meet_ him. They are standing before him, just to salute him, or to welcome him on his return. The Lord G.o.d of his fathers and of the promises was welcoming our patriarch home, and ministers of the heavenly courts were sent to express the mind of their King towards him.

This was "piping" to Jacob, and Jacob ought to have "danced." He should have breathed an exulting spirit. He should have been already in triumph, ere the battle was fought, or even the armies were arrayed. He should have entered the field with songs, like Jehoshaphat. If the hosts of heaven thus waited on him, what had he to fear from the hosts of Esau? "If G.o.d be for us, who can be against us?" But this was not so with him. He "laments," rather than dances, at this piping. He trembles, and prays, and calculates. He marshals his force, as though the battle were his. This is all _religious_, but it is all _unbelief_ too; and all this the Lord resents. Surely He does. It was all out of harmony in His ear. He had welcomed Jacob home with every token of an earnest, honourable welcome, but Jacob was out of spirits.

The Lord seeks to be _one_ with us, and that we be one with Him; so that discordance of soul can never suit Him. He withstands Jacob. "There wrestled a man with him," as we read, "till the breaking of the day."

This was G.o.d's answer to his prayer. And this is all very significant, and it has lessons for us.

It is found by us much easier to trust the Lord in all questions that arise between Him and ourselves, than it is to bring Him in, and use Him, and trust Him, in questions that arise between us and others--easier to trust Him for eternity than for to-morrow; because eternity is entirely in His hand. To-morrow, as we judge, is more or less divided between Him and others--in the power of circ.u.mstances as well as of G.o.d. Abraham, in his day, betrayed this. He came forth at the bidding of the G.o.d of glory, leaving country, kindred, and father's house; but as soon as a famine came, his faith failed, and instead of trusting the Lord in the face of circ.u.mstances, he goes down to Egypt.

Jacob, at Mahanaim, betrays the same easy, common way of nature. He is unable to trust G.o.d in the face of Esau. Esau's 400 men frighten him, and he will interpose, first, his messengers with words of peace and friendliness, and then, his presents, that by one or the other he may allay the heat of his brother's anger. He has no faith in G.o.d, so as to bring Him in between himself and Esau. He trembles, and prays, and calculates, and marshals his household. Circ.u.mstances have proved too much for him. But immediately afterwards, when the Lord Himself withstands him, when it becomes a question between him and G.o.d, then he is bold and prevails. He faints not, though rebuked, and rebuked sharply, by the Lord. He behaves himself like a champion of faith, and obtains a good report. He carries himself like a prince, and gains new honours. This is a common experience, and this moment in Jacob's history at the brook Jabbok expresses it.

There is not, however, necessarily, in such a victory as this, a cure for that faint-heartedness that had occasioned the previous conflict.

And Jacob is now about to ill.u.s.trate this for our further admonition. In the very next chapter (x.x.xiii.), which is but the continuance of the same action, or a further stage in it, we find him the same timid, unbelieving, calculating man, in the presence of Esau, as he had been, ere he had prevailed with the wrestler at Jabbok.

This is admonition for us. There may be exercise of spirit before G.o.d, and yet not much advance in the strength of the soul in carrying on its conflict with the world. In no stage of his history does Jacob appear morally lower than in that which immediately follows Peniel. He is not in anywise purified from himself. He calculates, he prevaricates, he affects amiability and confidence, he lies, he flatters. He stood against the stranger at Jabbok. He was strong in faith, glorifying the grace of G.o.d, even when the way of G.o.d had a controversy with him. But before Esau he practises and acts the old man to shameful perfection. He rids himself of his brother by a grossly false pretence. He is nothing better than a mean flatterer, a servile courtier, shamelessly speaking of the face of Esau as of the face of G.o.d. It is all miserable--a humbling picture of the moral condition to which a saint may come, for a time, if nature be allowed.

There are moments of exhilaration of spirit, and we may be thankful for them; as when Jacob had so lately, in the preceding chapter, said, "This is G.o.d's host;" and again, "I have seen G.o.d face to face, and my life is preserved." These are moments of exhilaration of spirit. But then, they may be only _refreshments_, and not solid edification. And sad indeed it is to see a saint after them returning so quickly to himself. "Where is then the blessedness ye spake of?"

And who will trust his own heart, when we thus see that Jacob's was so untrue? Jacob had lost the knowledge of G.o.d's name. He had to inquire after it, instead of using it and enjoying it. That name was "Almighty,"

the name that told him of all-sufficiency for all his need. But Jacob had lost it in chap. x.x.xii., and he is not as one who had recovered it in chap. x.x.xiii. He is contriving for himself. And we may, in like manner, lose the name that has been revealed to us. That name is "Father"--a name that may give abiding calmness and strength and liberty to the soul. It prepares a home for the heart. "He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in G.o.d." This home is enough to make our joy full, as John speaks. And though we may be under His hand for discipline, as Jacob was, still we are to know the power of that name, the full, secret, unchanging love of a father. Like Jacob in these two chapters, we have lost the name of G.o.d, if it be not thus with our souls. "Ye have forgotten the exhortation that speaketh unto you as unto children," says the apostle to us. And Jacob, therefore, may be no longer such a wonder to us, but we may the rather at times be a wonder to ourselves.

After this, in his journey onward from the place where he and Esau parted, he reaches Succoth, and then Shechem, and we may say, he had then returned to Canaan. But it is only still worse and worse with him.

He seems for a while to have entirely forgotten himself and the call of G.o.d. And mischief must follow this. Consistency with our calling is looked for. We are all, it may be in a thousand ways, untrue to it; but if it be willingly disregarded by an easy, relaxing conscience, the commonest moral defences may soon give way. Truth and integrity may be forced to yield, and such pollutions may at last be found, that would not, as the apostle speaks, be named among the Gentiles.

At Succoth, where our patriarch first arrived, he builds a house; and then at Shalem, in Shechem, he buys a field--what Abraham and Isaac, truer to the call of G.o.d, never did, and never would have done. How could he count on moral security under such circ.u.mstances? The tent had been exchanged for a house, and the pilgrim stranger had become a citizen and a freeholder. Was not all this a forgetting of himself under the call of G.o.d? The Lord, long after this, lets David know, by His servant Nathan, that there was a difference between a _house_ and a _tent_, and that He would have that difference maintained. 1 Chron.

xvii. But here at Succoth, Jacob violates this. So also it is the divine memorial of the patriarchs in their purity, that they dwelt in tents (Heb. xi. 9); but here at Succoth, Jacob willingly forfeits that memorial. And again, the Lord did not give Abraham so much land as to set his foot on (Acts vii. 5); but here at Shalem in Shechem, Jacob, in spite of this, will have a parcel of ground, and buy it for an inheritance.

The altar, which comes next, in the catalogue, to the house and the field, may appear at first to be a relief and a sanctifier, the one good thing in the midst of corruption. But it is, perhaps, the worst of all.

It was not raised to Him who had appeared to him. There had been no communion between the Lord and Jacob, at either Succoth or Shechem.

Shechem was not Bethel, and this parcel of ground, where El-elohe-Israel was raised, was not the place of stones and dest.i.tution, where abounding grace had shone from an open heaven on the unfriended head of the patriarch, but the parcel of a field which Jacob had bought of the children of Hamor, the father of Shechem. It was raised, not by a heavenly stranger to the G.o.d who visited him, but in the midst of the uncirc.u.mcised. It looks like an attempt to get the Lord's sanction of Jacob's loss of his separated, pilgrim, Nazarite character; to link His name and His worship with that on which His judgment was resting, and toward which His long-suffering was shown till iniquity was full.

Surely it is rather an uncirc.u.mcised Jacob we see here, and not circ.u.mcised Shechemites. It is all miserable. Is this a son of Abraham?

Is this a saint of G.o.d? Is this one of G.o.d's strangers in a world that has revolted from Him? This is like the religious energy of Christendom, which has put the name of Christ in company with the world that is under His judgment, and only borne with in His long-suffering. It is as if Israel had consented to Pharaoh, and undertaken to give Jehovah an altar in Egypt. But such altars are no altars--as another gospel is not another. Such religion is vain, whether practised in these earliest days at Shechem, or now in these days of Christendom, among the nations of a judged, condemned world, from which separation is the call of G.o.d. But this will not do. A fair trade with the world will be followed, and the course of it pursued greedily, without watchfulness or conviction, but religious family services, and religious national ordinances, the modern order at Shechem, will all the while be waited on.

It was of the fruit of all this that Jacob had afterwards to say, "O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their a.s.sembly, mine honour, be not thou united." For it is to the action in chapter x.x.xiv. that Jacob thus refers, when he was about to die, in chapter xlix. He finds out, at the end, the real character of all this, the fruit of his dwelling at Shechem. In self-will a man had been killed there, and a fence thrown down. But surely Jacob himself had digged down G.o.d's fence before. The part.i.tion-wall which the call of G.o.d had raised between the clean and the unclean, between the circ.u.mcision and the Gentile, he himself, in spirit, had broken down, when he settled as a citizen or freeholder on his purchased estate at Shechem. And Simeon and Levi may perfect this, as soon afterwards as they please.

"And Dinah, the daughter of Leah, which she bare unto Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land." x.x.xiv. 1. Was this the way of the house of Abraham? Was this the family of the separated patriarch keeping the way of the Lord? Had Abraham been thus slack? What intercourse had he had for his children with either the sons or the daughters of the land?

It is all sad, and proclaims its own shame. Shechem is next door to Sodom. But it is not Sodom, I grant. Jacob is not Lot. We can distinguish; and we have to distinguish, though it is sad to be put to the work of distinguishing. Nature prevails, in some more, in some less, in all the recorded saints of G.o.d. But there is _moral variety_, as well as the _prevalency of nature_, and "things that differ" among the saints are to be distinguished by us. There is a _soiled_ garment, and there is a _mixed_ garment. Our way, under the Spirit, is to keep the garment both unsoiled and unmixed. Surely it is to keep ourselves "unspotted from the world." But still, a _soiled_ garment is not a _mixed_ garment, a garment, as Scripture speaks, "of divers sorts, of woollen and of linen." Nor is a garment with a thread of "another sort" now and again in it, to be mistaken for a mixed garment, the texture of which is wrought on the very principle of woollen and linen. Scripture, ever fruitful and perfect, exhibits characters formed by what are called "mixed principles," and also characters which occasionally betray the mixture, but which are not formed throughout by them. The life of Lot was formed throughout by mixed principles. As soon as temptation addressed him, he entered into connection with evil. Though a.s.sociated with the call of G.o.d, he had to be saved so as by fire. The garment which Lot wore was of divers sorts, of woollen and of linen. Abraham, at times, wore a soiled garment, but never a mixed one. Lot was untrue to the call of G.o.d from the outset of his career to the close of it. He became a citizen where he should have been a stranger, taking a house in the city of Sodom, while Abraham was traversing the face of the country from tent to tent. And Lot's life of false principles leads him into _sorrows that are his shame_--and that is the real misery of sorrow. He had no comfort in his sorrow. His righteous soul was vexed: this is told of him; but there was no joy, no brightness, no triumph in his spirit.

The angels maintained much reserve towards him. He had to escape with his life as a prey, and under the loss of all beside.

Our Jacob was not of this generation. We dare not say he was a man of mixed principles, or one who wore a garment of divers sorts, of woollen and linen. But he had a soiled garment on him pretty commonly, and here at Succoth and at Shechem, a garment with threads of another sort woven in it. His schemes and calculations disfigure him, and are the soiled garment; his building a house at Succoth, and purchasing a field at Shechem, untrue to the call of G.o.d, and to the tent-life of his fathers, look very like a garment with threads of another sort in it.