Religion
Jacob and Esau
Martin Sullivan
--Last week I promised a glance at another incident from the Old Testament and here it is. The story to which I am about to refer is part of the patriarch ial saga recorded in Genesis. It centres round the man Jacob whose character seems to be a strange compound of spirituality. and worldliness. He is both mystic and schemer, sensualist and supplanter, and yet a deeply religious man. Long before he came to terms with his betrayal of his brother, he took his first step in the redemptive process; more accurately he just stumbled forward. He was forced to spend a night in a wilderness of boulders, an amphitheatre bounded by a range of undistinguished mountains.
In this barren and desolate hollow, he had an unforgettable vision. He saw a ladder from earth to , heaven and angels were ascending and descending upon it, and he heard a voice saying, "I am the Lord God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. This land on which you are lying I will give to you and your descendants. I will be with you and protect you wherever you go". He woke with a start. "This fearsome place is the House of God" he exclaimed. "I will call it Bethel [God's house] from this day." Jacob had known a moment of glory but like the rest of us he wrecked it. "If God will be with me, if he will protect me, give me food to eat and raiment to put on, He will be my God." It is always hard to keep the vision. Most of us think it can only be secured like a mortgage. Even so, Jacob had caught a glimpse of the light and nothing would ever put it out.
Twenty years had passed. He is now a middle-aged man; he has known life, the rough and the smooth of it, at many points. And now he has, at last, to come to grips with his old deception. He had cheated Esau, lied to his father about him and received an inheritance to which he was not entitled. When the clever young man in Beyond the Fringe used the text, "Esau was an hairy man, but I (Jacob) am a smooth man," he spoke more wisely than he knew. He did not 'send up' religion, he revealed it in its weakness. Jacob is about to face the consequences of his earlier deceit. He has to meet Esau, the brother whom he has wronged and supplanted. Esau is no match for him intellectually, but he could pay his score with violence because he is the stronger. This encounter could be the last day of Jacob's life. It is now that he sees another vision, very unlike the former one. The earlier vision was a transformation into glory, populous with the bright messengers of God. The latter is a grim and solitary wrestle with a mysterious and nameless adversary.
The scene is. singularly impressive and unlike anything else in the Old Testament. It is a lonely struggle in the darkness with a mysterious assailant who will neither conquer nor yield, a wrestler who will neither throw nor be thrown, an opponent who cati-be touched but not seen, and who refuses to give his name. In_ that ancient story modern man can find himself.
The language and the setting may be remote, but the reality hidden behind them is contemporary. The ancients believed that the first streaks of dawn would make the adversary depart. With us a bad dream is dispersed as we wake. But Jacob wants to wrest something from this encounter before the reality of it fades. "I will not let thee go," he says to his opponent, "until thou blessme. I do not want to know who you are, but as I have contended with three through the night, before we part, give me a portion of your strength." The prayer is not refused. The blessing is bestowed, and Jacob (which means 'supplanter') becomes Israel .(which means `Soldier of God'). The fight has not been against God, but against his own worse self and victory has been won. The shifty and insincere element in his nature is conquered and discarded. When he met his brother Esau, the next day, all was well.
Martin Sullivan is Dean of St Paul's
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