Explore the intense reconciliation journey between Jacob and his brother Esau, a tale of fear, bravery, and meticulously planned diplomacy. As we dig into Jacob’s dramatic encounter with God, we unveil not only a physical struggle but a symbolic one, reflecting the enduring power dynamic between humanity and the divine. Finally, we conclude with a shocking narrative about Dinah, revealing cultural clashes and their brutal aftermath.
00:00:01 Introduction and Overview of Biblical Patriarchs
00:03:15 Jacob’s Journey and Encounter with Angels
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
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I think I can guarantee that most perceptions of the patriarchs of the Bible are all wrong. I don’t know what you think about Abraham and Isaac and Jacob or what you visualize when you think about them, but I know what’s portrayed in most Christian art. They show them as solitary figures, robed, shepherds, tent dwellers, certainly. But in point of fact, they represent one of the most formidable dynasties that ever existed in the ancient world. Abraham and Isaac were powers in the region. They were respected in all quarters and feared in some. They had so many people working for them, they could field a private army when they were called on to do so, which Abraham did and defeated a combined armies of two or three other kings. And Jacob might have been the most formidable of the three. This man went into the homeland, back to the homeland where his family came from, looking for a wife, looking for a bride, without a penny in his pocket, his staff in his hand. That’s all he had. And he returned from there with his own self-built empire and dynasty. He had two wives, two concubines, 11 sons, and a herd of cattle that stretched out of sight. And not only that, he was also the legitimate heir of his father Isaac’s huge dynasty. Funny, Jacob tends to fade out of popular memory because his name was changed to Israel. And the nation of Israel bears that name into history, which tends to eclipse the patriarch of the clan. But just for a moment, let’s pause and look at this man. He’s a towering figure in his own right. In that time, agribusiness was business. But in this time, compared to our own time, this man would be a Donald Trump. No, no, he would be the Bill Gates of the ancient world. He’s a very shrewd dealer. He bargained his brother Esau out of a birthright that Esau didn’t really want very much, not understanding what it was, I think. And then he conned him out of his blessing as well. His father-in-law later conned Jacob into taking two wives when he only wanted one. But Jacob, well, Jacob got paid in the end. He made his father-in-law a rich man. But he made himself much, much richer and much more powerful. Now, now he’s on his way home with an irate father-in-law behind him and an angry brother in front of him who wants his head on a platter. Well, Jacob went on his way back toward home. And the scripture tells us in Genesis 32 that the angels of God met him. And Jacob saw them, and he said, This is God’s host. And he called the name of that place Mahanaim. Now this is a stunning thing to consider. What was it about this man that set God’s attention on him? When he’s on his way down to find a wife, he sleeps in a spot and sees a ladder going up and down to heaven with angels going up and down. He thinks he’s at the gateway of heaven, and God speaks to him from the top of the ladder and tells him where to go and what to do. Now he’s on his way back home, and who meets him? A band of angels. What is it about this man that sets God’s attention on him? But Jacob, well, Jacob still had his brother to think about. He wanted to know, how am I going to manage this with Esau? He didn’t want to go home and have to fight him. He didn’t want to either be killed by Esau or have to kill Esau, either one. And so he sent messengers ahead of him to Esau, his brother. He sent him all the way down to Edom, and he commanded him, saying, You say this to my lord Esau. Your servant Jacob says this. I have sojourned with Laban and I stayed there until now. I have oxen and asses and flocks and men’s servants and women’s servants. And I have sent to tell my Lord I’m coming home because I want to find grace in his sight. Fair enough. In a way, he’s telling him, look, I don’t need anything you’ve got. I’ve got my own fortune. I have my own family. I just want to come home. I want grace in your sight. I’d like to have peace. Well, the messengers he sent out returned to him and saying, Well, we came to your brother Esau. He’s on his way to meet you. He’s got 400 men with him. Now that could only mean one thing. Esau was coming with a small army and with blood in his eye because there’s no earthly reason why he would need 400 men to come out and meet his brother coming home with his family. Jacob, rightly, was afraid and distressed. So he looked at his people and he divided them up into two major bands, all split up. And he said this way, if Esau comes to the one company and smites it, then the other one which is left will escape. You know, when you think about that, his whole entourage was so huge that in splitting it into two, if Esau came to the one, he would think he had gotten them all. It would have been so big. And Jacob said, he prayed, O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, the Lord which said to me, return to your country and to your kindred and I’ll deal well with you. When he’s reminding God right up front, you told me to come back here. I am not worthy of the least of all your mercies and of all the truth which you have showed to your servant. For with my staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I am so big I can split into two bands and still look like a dynasty in each case. I pray, God, deliver me from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, because I’m afraid of him. I’m afraid he’ll come and smite me and the mother with the children. I’m afraid he’ll kill us all. He stayed there that night. And he took of what came into his hands, whatever he could bring in, a present for his brother Esau. Now, what he did, he took 200 she goats, 20 he goats, 200 ewes, 20 rams, 30 milk camels with their colts, 40 kine, 10 bulls, 20 she asses, 10 foals. He took a lot of livestock here. And he put them in the hands of his servants. He put separate droves in there. And he says, now I want you to pass over ahead of me and put a space between drove and drove. So first of all, what was going to happen here was that the first drove would come to him with 200 she goats. And then another one would come along with 20 he goats. Then came another drove with 200 ewes. And he said, When Esau, my brother, meets each of you, and he says, What are you? Who are you? Where are you going? What’s all this you’ve got here? You shall say, They belong to your servant Jacob. It’s a present sent to my lord Esau. And behold, Jacob is behind us. Now, this is really interesting because, A, this is a big gift he’s giving to his brother. But secondly, he splits it up so that it comes into his brother in waves. And I can visualize Esau and his men coming along pretty hot, breathing fire from the nostrils. And the first group of this gift arrives. And he takes it and moves forward. Now, this could have taken really in the process a few days, you realize, because these people weren’t driving tanks or cars or trucks. They were on foot, on camels, on asses. So it took a while to make some progress over the ground. They were camping along the way. So these animals could have arrived over one day, two days, three days, maybe more. And so he would sleep on it, get up the next morning, and here arrives a whole bunch of animals again arriving. Well, finally, after all this happened, Esau could have been worn down. So the present went ahead, and Jacob himself lodged that night with the company. And he rose up in that night and took his wives and his two women servants and his eleven sons, and he passed over the four Jabbok. He took them and sent them over the brook. Everything he had he sent across, and Jacob was left alone behind. And something happened to him on that night which is truly astonishing.
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I’ll tell you about it when I come back after this important message. or call toll-free 1-888-BIBLE-44 and tell us the call letters of this radio station.
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So Jacob was left alone on the other side of the brook, and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of day. We don’t know where this man came from. He calls him a man, and you’re going to find he was not. Not a mere man. We don’t know where he came from. We don’t know where he went. And we don’t know how this wrestling match even got started. But they wrestled all night. And when the man where he was that was wrestling with Jacob saw that he wasn’t really prevailing against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh. And the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint as he wrestled with the man. He pulled his leg out of joint. And the wrestling match went on. Jacob is some kind of guy. He didn’t give up. And finally, the one wrestling with him said, let me go for the day breaks. And he says, I will not let you go except you bless me. bless him then Jacob knew that this person he had a hammer lock on was God really and God said to him what’s your name Jacob he said your name is not going to be Jacob anymore but Israel for as a prince you have power with God and with men and you have won now what in the world is going on here Well, Jacob says to him, tell me your name. He still hasn’t really let him go. He says, what are you asking my name for? And he blessed him. And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, for I have seen God face to face, and my life has been preserved. And you still have to wonder, why on earth did God wrestle with Jacob all night long? Because if he’s God, he could have stomped Jacob. He could have just disappeared out of his grasp. He could have whacked him down and walked away. Why didn’t he? I can only conclude from this that for reasons of his own, God appeared to Jacob as a man without all of his powers, or at least with all of his powers in check. It is as though it is similar really to the occasion where God appeared to Abraham. And the scriptures tell us he came to him as a man. Not only did he come to him as a man, but he sat down and allowed Abraham to feed him and two angels with him a meal, and they ate it and apparently enjoyed it. Well, is it possible that God enjoyed this little tussle in the dirt with Jacob? You know, men are funny that way. I was dean of students of a college for some time, and I noticed a lot of the guys, they like to kind of express their manhood. They like to get around there and wrestle with one another and see who was the strongest and arm wrestle and leg wrestle, whatever it may be. They were all very competitive. Do you suppose it’s possible that God, coming in the flesh as a man, might enjoy a little contest with Jacob? And, of course, one of the big question marks we’re dealing with here, one of the things we’re going to establish with Jacob on this occasion, and God wants to know, is he a loser or is he a winner? And you see, by keeping him at the challenge all night long, with plenty of opportunities for Jacob to give up, plenty of excuses for him to give up, having his thigh out of joint, which is a good excuse to give up, is you can say, okay, calf rope, I’m sorry, you win, it’s your game. not Jacob. Jacob was a winner. And that, I think, as much as anything else, was what’s going on here. Let’s find out what he is made of. But you know, it’s very apparent that God loved Abraham, loved Isaac, and loved Jacob. He just loved these men. Well, as Jacob passed on over the brook, the sun rose on him, and as he walked in the sight of his people, he was limping on his thigh. And therefore, the children of Israel don’t eat the sinew which shrank in an animal, which is upon the hollow of the thigh to this day. They just don’t eat that part of the animal because of the history of God touching the hollow of Jacob’s thigh. and causing it to shrink, and apparently giving Jacob a permanent limp. But now the moment of truth had come for Jacob, because he looked off into the distance, and he saw Esau coming with four hundred men. And he quickly divided the children unto Leah, Rachel, and the two handmaids. And he put the handmaids and their children foremost, and then Leah and her children afterward, and Rachel and Joseph hindermost. That shows you who he thought was important. And he passed over before them and bowed himself to the ground seven times until he came near to his brother. And they met at last. So how did it all come out? Well, Esau had been softened up. He ran to meet him, embraced him, and in his old biblical expression, he fell on his neck and kissed him, and they both wept. Hard to imagine, isn’t it? The reconciliation between brothers alienated. And sometimes I think maybe the degree of the alienation, the degree of the hostility is a direct factor in the joy and the weeping that takes place at the reconciliation because it has been so bitter and the estrangement so long that one wondered if they could ever be brothers again. And Esau looked and he saw the women and the children and said, who are all of these? And Jacob said, they’re the children which God has graciously given your servant. And the handmaids came near, they and their children, they bowed themselves. Then Leah came with her children and bowed themselves. And finally came Joseph and Rachel, and they bowed themselves, all doing obeisance to their uncle. And then he says, what do you mean by all this drove of animals I met? What’s the point of that? And Jacob said, well, I wanted to find grace in your sight. I wanted to make peace with you. And Esau said, look, I got enough, my brother. You keep all this stuff to yourself. And Jacob said, no, no, I pray. If I found grace in your sight, please receive this because I have seen your face as though I had seen the face of God and you were pleased with me. I can’t tell you what that means. So please take my blessing that is brought to you because God has dealt graciously with me and because I have enough. And he urged him, and Esau took the gift. You know, I really love the courtliness of the way in which these ancients did their negotiations. Everything was generosity and gifts. It’s Middle Eastern hospitality and Middle Eastern generosity. It seems in that part of the world you either have anger and war on the one hand or you have complete amity and generosity and giving on the other. So they made the deal. They got everything settled between them and says, let’s go, and I’ll go before you, Esau said. And Jacob replied, look, my Lord knows the children are tender, and the flocks and the herds with young are with me. I don’t want to overdrive them, and there’s no point in holding you up. You go on ahead. I will lead on softly as the cattle that go before me and the children are able to endure until I get to my place with you down in your country. And Esau said, Well, let me leave some of the folk with you for protection. And he said, I don’t need it. Let me find grace in the sight of my Lord. So Esau returned on that way home to Seir. And Jacob journeyed to Succoth and built him a house, made booths for his cattle, made some sheds. And therefore the name of that place is called Succoth or sheds or booths. And that’s where the name of the Feast of Tabernacles or Succoth comes from. So Jacob bought himself a parcel of a field where he had spread his tent. He bought them from the hand of Hamor Shechem’s father for a hundred pieces of money, and he erected there an altar and called it El Eloi Israel. And so what could have been a tragic, tragic war was averted by a lot of humility and a few gifts carefully sent. I’ve thought about that. I’ve never had occasion to do it quite that way, but I’ve thought about it before. What a good example this is of the way to soften somebody up. Don’t just give them one big thing. Break it up into pieces and give them a gift and another gift and another gift. And sooner or later, all that giving can break down some of the worst animosities. But our story is set in the Middle East, and all peace is tenuous. Remember that all the major marriages in this family were made from the homeland. They didn’t want to make marriages with the people of that land. They didn’t want to make alliances with them. They didn’t want to get involved with them. Now, none of the patriarchs wanted their children to marry into the families of Canaan. This seems highly unlikely to have been a racial issue. It was tribal. It was cultural. And above all, it was religious. But the people of that land had a very different view. And that very different view led to tragic consequences. And we’ll talk about that after this message.
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As far as we know, Jacob only had one daughter. At least that’s all that’s recorded in all the list of all the births of his kids. One daughter named Dinah. Now, if you can visualize a situation where a man’s only got one daughter, and she’s got 11, count them, brothers. All of them big strapping fellows, agricultural types, men of the land. Well, Dinah, the daughter of Leah, which she bore to Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land. This story is told in Genesis 34. Girls enjoy the company of other girls, it seems, and since he didn’t have any sisters at home, it was natural, I guess, for Dinah to want to go fraternize with the other girls around the towns. Well, the ruler of this particular area was a man named Hamor. He was a Hivite. His son’s name was Shechem. He was a prince of the country. He took one look at Dinah and thought, wow. Then he took her and slept with her and defiled her. And the result of this was that his soul claimed to die. Now, he fell head over heels in love with her, and he loved the damsel and spoke kindly to her. But what he did here was totally unacceptable in any civilization or time. He just took this woman and took her to bed. We have no idea whether she liked it, didn’t want to do it, whether she was seduced, whether she was raped. It just doesn’t tell us. He just took her into his house and defiled her. All that should have come on the heels of long negotiation with her father. They should have all been worked out. There should have been dowry discussions. There should have been a marriage contract. All that should have taken place. None of it did. It was a very arrogant and presumptuous thing for Shechem to do, even if the girl was consenting. Well, he spoke to his daddy and said, “‘Get me this damsel to wife.’ And Jacob heard that he had defiled Dinah his daughter.” And about this time his sons were coming this way, so he kept quiet until the boys were all home. And Hamor, the father of Shechem, went out to Jacob to meet with him. And the sons of Jacob came out of the field when they heard it, and they were furious. Well, wouldn’t you be? You got one little sister, sweet gal, beautiful, and you all dote on her, and this guy just takes her? Well, they were furious. They said this ought not to have been done, which is an understatement. Well, Hamor said, the soul of my son Shechem longs for your daughter. I pray you give him to her to wife and make marriages with us. Give your daughters to us and take our daughters to you and you shall dwell with us and the land shall be before you. Dwell and trade therein and get possessions and get wealthy. And Shechem said to her father and her brethren, Let me find grace in your eyes. And what shall you say to me that I will give? Ask me never so much dowry and gift, and I’ll give what you say to me, but give me the damsel to wife. Hey! The boys would have thought to themselves, What are you talking about? We should have had this conversation before you bedded our sister. You creep! Well… They were subtle about this. I guess they had their father’s genes. And the sons of Jacob answered Shechem and Hamor, his father, deceitfully because he had defiled Dinah, their sister. And they said to them, we can’t do this thing. We can’t give our sister somebody that’s uncircumcised. That would be a reproach to us. But in this, we will consent to you. If you want to be like us, that every male of you be circumcised, then we’ll give our daughters to you. We’ll take your daughters to us. We’ll dwell with you. We’ll become one people. Now, this is something that Abraham and Isaac had tried their best to stay away from all this period of time. Even though they lived in the land, they had tried not to become one people with the land. They didn’t want to go that way. They didn’t want their culture. They didn’t want their religion in particular. He says, if you will not listen to us to be circumcised, we’re going to take our daughter and we’ll be gone. Well… The words pleased Hamor and Shechem, Hamor’s son, and I can’t figure out really why it did. Because the very idea of someone saying, well, fine, we’ll cut this deal with you, all right, but we’ve got to cut one other part of the deal. We’ve got to cut you in the process. You’ve got to submit to circumcision as adults. Well, the young man deferred not to do the thing because he had the light in Jacob’s daughter, and he said he’d do it. And the Scripture tells us he was more honorable than all the house of his father. Well, Hamor and his son came back to the gate of the city, and they got all their guys together, had a meeting with the men of the city, and they said this. These men are peaceable with us. Therefore, let them dwell in the land and trade here. For the land is big enough for them. Let’s take their daughters to be our wives. Let’s give them our daughters. In other words, let’s make marriages with these people. Because if we don’t do this, if we don’t do this one thing, they won’t do it. If every male among us is circumcised like they are circumcised. Now, this probably was not as foreign an idea to them as it seems to us, because circumcision was not strictly an Israelite custom. It was known in the ancient world. And then he said this. Why don’t we do this, fellas? Because their cattle and their substance and every beast of theirs will ultimately be ours. Let’s consent to them and let them dwell here with us, and we’ll eventually own everything they’ve got. Well, they all listened to this, much to my amazement. Every male was circumcised, all of them that came out there. It came to pass on the third day when they were sore. And by the way, sore is an understatement, as anyone who has been circumcised as an adult can tell you. that two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, just two, two out of the eleven, Dinah’s brothers, took each man his sword and came upon the city boldly and killed every man in the place. Now you may think that that’s a bit unlikely because, you know, just because you, you know, cut off a little skin here, that shouldn’t mean you aren’t able to handle a sword and stand up and defend yourself, at least all of them, against two of them. Well, I don’t know. I have to conclude Simeon and Levi were pretty tough hombres. But apart from that, when you’ve been circumcised, there are nerves, I guess, that go from that place all the way down through your legs and everything else. And they tell me a man circumcised can barely walk. They were helpless. So they killed them all and took Dinah out of Shechem’s house and went home. The sons of Jacob came on the slain, spoiled the city, because they had defiled their sister. They took their sheep, their oxen, their asses, everything in the city, everything in the field, all their wealth, all their children, all their wives. They took captive and spoiled even everything that was in the house. And Jacob said, You have made me stink among the inhabitants of the land. And thus is laid one more brick in the foundation of the wars that go on in the Middle East all the way down till today. Until next time, I’m Ronald Dart, and you were born to win.
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The Born to Win radio program with Ronald L. Dart is sponsored by Christian Educational Ministries and made possible by donations from listeners like you. If you can help, please send your donation to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. You may call us at…
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