Jacob and Esau Embrace With Their Familiesby KandD
33:4Genesis 33:4
And Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him: and they wept.
Esau ran to meet Jacob and embraced him and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept together, showing affection and reconciliation rather than the expected violence. The meeting followed Jacob's humble and fearful approach in which he bowed to the ground seven times before Esau. Afterward Jacob urged Esau until he accepted his gift as a peace offering.
At the meeting Jacob was pale and disabled and walking painfully after his night of conflict, yet his face showed joy and peace because God's blessing shone in it, so that his weakness had become strength. The reconciliation followed Jacob's desperate appeal to God and his prevailing with God to receive a blessing, sustained by God's promise to pardon and accept the repentant sinner. Although Esau had been marching against Jacob with an army and with a band of soldiers intending to kill him, God changed his heart and mind overnight and moved him to meet Jacob in harmony, impressing Esau that Jacob was with the angel of God.
While Jacob wrestled, God sent another angel to influence Esau in sleep, showing him in a dream that Jacob had been an exile from his father's house for twenty years for fear of his life. The dream showed him Jacob's sorrow at finding his mother dead, Jacob's humility, angels of God around him, and himself meeting Jacob with no desire to harm him. When Esau awoke he told his four hundred men the dream and commanded that none harm Jacob because the God of his father was with him.
Esau's armed bands were stilled before Jacob when Jacob was halted upon his thigh, for only when Jacob fell crippled and helpless upon the breast of the covenant angel did he learn the victory of conquering faith and receive the standing of a prince with God, and it was in that lameness and weakness that Esau's hostility was quieted. Surrender of the will to God is profitable even though it is bitter and painful to the willful heart, as a sacrifice of the lower for the higher, the earthly for the spiritual, and the perishable for the eternal, in which the will is yielded to receive it back purified and refined and linked in sympathy with the divine, so that the weak become strong and conquer. The embrace shows reconciliation after confession of wrong, in which prayer leads to embracing and weeping on each other's necks with childlike tenderness.
Esau ran to meet Jacob and embraced him and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept together, showing affection and reconciliation rather than the expected violence. The meeting followed Jacob's humble and fearful approach in which he bowed to the ground seven times before Esau. Afterward Jacob urged Esau until he accepted his gift as a peace offering.
At the meeting Jacob was pale and disabled and walking painfully after his night of conflict, yet his face showed joy and peace because God's blessing shone in it, so that his weakness had become strength. The reconciliation followed Jacob's desperate appeal to God and his prevailing with God to receive a blessing, sustained by God's promise to pardon and accept the repentant sinner. Although Esau had been marching against Jacob with an army and with a band of soldiers intending to kill him, God changed his heart and mind overnight and moved him to meet Jacob in harmony, impressing Esau that Jacob was with the angel of God.
While Jacob wrestled, God sent another angel to influence Esau in sleep, showing him in a dream that Jacob had been an exile from his father's house for twenty years for fear of his life. The dream showed him Jacob's sorrow at finding his mother dead, Jacob's humility, angels of God around him, and himself meeting Jacob with no desire to harm him. When Esau awoke he told his four hundred men the dream and commanded that none harm Jacob because the God of his father was with him.
Esau's armed bands were stilled before Jacob when Jacob was halted upon his thigh, for only when Jacob fell crippled and helpless upon the breast of the covenant angel did he learn the victory of conquering faith and receive the standing of a prince with God, and it was in that lameness and weakness that Esau's hostility was quieted. Surrender of the will to God is profitable even though it is bitter and painful to the willful heart, as a sacrifice of the lower for the higher, the earthly for the spiritual, and the perishable for the eternal, in which the will is yielded to receive it back purified and refined and linked in sympathy with the divine, so that the weak become strong and conquer. The embrace shows reconciliation after confession of wrong, in which prayer leads to embracing and weeping on each other's necks with childlike tenderness.