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Jacob (Israel)
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ja'-kub (that supplants, supplanter)
RELATED: Benjamin, Bilhah, Dan, Dinah, Esau, Isaac, Issachar, Joseph, Kingdom of Israel, Laban, Leah, Machpelah, Naphtali, Rachel, Rebekah, Reuben, Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, Zebulun |
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Easton's Bible Dictionary
One who follows on another's heels; supplanter, ( Genesis
25:26 ; 27:36 ; Hosea 12:2 - 4 ), The second born of the twin sons of Isaac by
Rebekah. He was born probably at Lahai-roi, when his father was fifty-nine and
Abraham one hundred and fifty-nine years old. Like his father, he was of a quiet
and gentle disposition, and when he grew up followed the life of a shepherd, while
his brother Esau became an enterprising hunter. His dealing with Esau, however,
showed much mean selfishness and cunning ( Genesis 25:29 - 34 ).
When Isaac was about 160 years of age, Jacob and his mother conspired to deceive
the aged patriarch ( Genesis 27 ), with the view of procuring the transfer of
the birthright to himself. The birthright secured to him who possessed it
(1) superior rank in his family
( Genesis 49:3 );
(2) a double portion of the paternal inheritance ( Deuteronomy 21:17 );
(3) the priestly office in the family ( Numbers 8:17-19 ); and
(4) the promise of the Seed in which all nations of the earth were to be blessed
( Genesis 22:18 ). |
Soon after his acquisition of his father's blessing (
Genesis 27 ), Jacob became conscious of his guilt; and afraid of the anger of
Esau, at the suggestion of Rebekah Isaac sent him away to Haran, 400 miles or
more, to find a wife among his cousins, the family of Laban, the Syrian (Genesis
28). There he met with Rachel (Genesis 29). Laban would not consent to give him
his daughter in marriage till he had served seven years; but to Jacob these years
"seemed but a few days, for the love he had to her." But when the seven years
were expired, Laban craftily deceived Jacob, and gave him his daughter Leah. Other
seven years of service had to be completed probably before he obtained the beloved
Rachel. But "life-long sorrow, disgrace, and trials, in the retributive providence
of God, followed as a consequence of this double union."
At the close of the fourteen years of service, Jacob desired to return to his
parents, but at the entreaty of Laban he tarried yet six years with him, tending
his flocks ( Genesis 31:41 ). He then set out with his family and property "to
go to Isaac his father in the land of Canaan" ( Genesis 31 ). Laban was angry
when he heard that Jacob had set out on his journey, and pursued after him, overtaking
him in seven days. The meeting was of a painful kind. After much recrimination
and reproach directed against Jacob, Laban is at length pacified, and taking an
affectionate farewell of his daughters, returns to his home in Padanaram. And
now all connection of the Israelites with Mesopotamia is at an end.
Soon after parting with Laban he is met by a company of angels, as if to greet
him on his return and welcome him back to the Land of Promise ( Genesis 32:1 ,
32:2 ). He called the name of the place Mahanaim, i.e., "the double camp," probably
his own camp and that of the angels. The vision of angels was the counterpart
of that he had formerly seen at Bethel, when, twenty years before, the weary,
solitary traveller, on his way to Padan-aram, saw the angels of God ascending
and descending on the ladder whose top reached to heaven ( Genesis 28:12 ).
He now hears with dismay of the approach of his brother Esau with a band of 400
men to meet him. In great agony of mind he prepares for the worst. He feels that
he must now depend only on God, and he betakes himself to him in earnest prayer,
and sends on before him a munificent present to Esau, "a present to my lord Esau
from thy servant Jacob." Jacob's family were then transported across the Jabbok;
but he himself remained behind, spending the night in communion with God. While
thus engaged, there appeared one in the form of a man who wrestled with him. In
this mysterious contest Jacob prevailed, and as a memorial of it his name was
changed to Israel
(wrestler with God); and the place where this occured he called Peniel, "for",
said he, "I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved" ( Genesis 32:25
- 31 ).
After this anxious night, Jacob went on his way, halting, mysteriously weakened
by the conflict, but strong in the assurance of the divine favour. Esau came forth
and met him; but his spirit of revenge was appeased, and the brothers met as friends,
and during the remainder of their lives they maintained friendly relations. After
a brief sojourn at Succoth, Jacob moved forward and pitched his tent near Shechem
(q.v.), Genesis 33:18 ; but at length, under divine directions, he moved to Bethel,
where he made an altar unto God ( Genesis 35:6 , 35:7 ), and where God appeared
to him and renewed the Abrahamic covenant. While journeying from Bethel to Ephrath
(the Canaanitish name of Bethlehem), Rachel died in giving birth to her second
son Benjamin ( Genesis 35:16 - 20 ), fifteen or sixteen years after the birth
of Joseph. He then reached the old family residence at Mamre, to wait on the dying
bed of his father Isaac. The complete reconciliation between Esau and Jacob was
shown by their uniting in the burial of the patriarch ( Genesis 35:27 - 29 ).
Jacob was soon after this deeply grieved by the loss of his beloved son Joseph
through the jealousy of his brothers ( Genesis 37:33 ). Then follows the story
of the famine, and the successive goings down into Egypt to buy corn (Genesis
42), which led to the discovery of the long-lost Joseph, and the patriarch's going
down with all his household, numbering about seventy souls ( Exodus 1:5 ; Deuteronomy
10:22 ; Acts 7:14 ), to sojourn in the land of Goshen. Here Jacob, "after being
strangely tossed about on a very rough ocean, found at last a tranquil harbour,
where all the best affections of his nature were gently exercised and largely
unfolded" ( Genesis 48 ). At length the end of his checkered course draws nigh,
and he summons his sons to his bedside that he may bless them. Among his last
words he repeats the story of Rachel's death, although forty years had passed
away since that event took place, as tenderly as if it had happened only yesterday;
and when "he had made an end of charging his sons, he gathered up his feet into
the bed, and yielded up the ghost" (Genesis 49:33 ). His body was embalmed and
carried with great pomp into the land of Canaan, and buried beside his wife Leah
in the cave of Machpelah, according to his dying charge. There, probably, his
embalmed body remains to this day ( Genesis 50:1 - 13 ). (See HEBRON .)
The history of Jacob is referred to by the prophets ( Hosea 12:3 , 12:4 , 12:12
) and ( Malachi 1:2 ). In Micah 1:5 the name is a poetic synonym for Israel, the
kingdom of the ten tribes. There are, besides the mention of his name along with
those of the other patriarchs, distinct references to events of his life in Paul's
epistles ( Romans 9:11 - 13 ; Hebrews 12:16 ; 11:21 ). See references to his vision
at Bethel and his possession of land at Shechem in John 1:51 ; 4:5 , 4:12 ; also
to the famine which was the occasion of his going down into Egypt in Acts 7:12
(See LUZ; BETHEL .)
Hitchcock's Dictionary of Bible Names
that supplants
Smith's Bible Dictionary
(supplanter)
The second son of Isaac and Rebekah. He was born with Esau, probably at the well
of Lahai-roi, about B.C. 1837. His history is related in the latter half of the
book of Genesis. He bought the birthright from his brother Esau, and afterward
acquired the blessing intended for Esau, by practicing a well-known deceit on
Isaac. (Jacob did not obtain the blessing because of his deceit, but in spite
of it. That which was promised he would have received in some good way; but Jacob
and his mother, distrusting Gods promise, sought the promised blessing in a wrong
way, and received with it trouble and sorrow. --ED.) Jacob, in his 78th year,
was sent from the family home to avoid his brother, and to seek a wife among his
kindred in Padan-aram. As he passed through Bethel, God appeared to him. After
the lapse of twenty-one years he returned from Padan-aram with two wives, two
concubines, eleven sons and a daughter, and large property. He escaped from the
angry pursuit of Laban, from a meeting with Esau, and from the vengeance of the
Canaanites provoked by the murder of Shechem; and in each of these three emergencies
he was aided and strengthened by the interposition of God, and in sign of the
grace won by a night of wrestling with God his name was changed at Jabbok into
Israel.
Deborah and Rachel died before he reached Hebron; Joseph, the favorite son of
Jacob, was sold into Egypt eleven years before the death of Isaac; and Jacob had
probably exceeded his 130th year when he went tither. He was presented to Pharaoh,
and dwelt for seventeen years in Rameses and Goshen, and died in his 147th year.
His body was embalmed, carried with great care and pomp into the land of Canaan,
and deposited with his fathers, and his wife Leah, in the cave of Machpelah. The
example of Jacob is quoted by the first and the last of the minor prophets. Besides
the frequent mention of his name in conjunction with the names of the other two
patriarchs, there are distinct references to the events in the life of Jacob in
four books of the New Testament - ( John 1:51 ; 4:5 , 4:12 ; Acts 7:12 , 7:16
; Romans 9:11 - 13 ; Hebrews 11:21 ; 12:16 )
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
(1) ja'-kub:
I. NAME
1. Form and Distribution:
ya'aqobh (5 times ya`aqowbh); Iakob, is in form a verb in the Qal imperfect, 3rd
masculine singular. Like some 50 other Hebrew names of this same form, it has
no subject for the verb expressed. But there are a number of independent indications
that Jacob belongs to that large class of names consisting of a verb with some
Divine name or title (in this case 'El) as the subject, from which the common
abbreviated form is derived by omitting the subject.
(a) In Babylonian documents of the period of the Patriarchs, there occur
such personal names as Ja-ku-bi, Ja-ku-ub-ilu (the former doubtless an abbreviation
of the latter), and Aq-bu-u (compare Aq-bi-a-hu), according to Hilprecht a syncopated
form for A-qu(?)-bu(-u), like Aq-bi-ili alongside of A-qa-bi-ili; all of which
may be associated with the same root `aqabh, as appears in Jacob (see H. Ranke,
Early Babylonian Personal Names, 1905, with annotations by Professor Hilprecht
as editor, especially pp. 67, 113, 98 and 4).
(b) In the list of places in Palestine conquered by the Pharaoh Thutmose III appears
a certain J'qb'r, which in Egyptian characters represents the Semitic letters
ya`aqobh-'el, and which therefore seems to show that in the earlier half of the
15th century BC (so Petrie, Breasted) there was a place (not a tribe; see W. M.
Muller, Asien und Europa, 162) in Central Palestine that bore a name in some way
connected with "Jacob." Moreover, a Pharaoh of the Hyksos period bears a name
that looks like ya`aqobh-'el (Spiegelberg, Orientalische Literaturzeitung, VII,
130).
(c) In the Jewish tractate Pirqe Abhoth, iii.l, we read of a Jew named 'Aqabhyah,
which is a name composed of the same verbal root as that in Jacob, together with
the Divine name Yahu (i.e. Yahweh) in its common abbreviated form. It should be
noted that the personal names 'Aqqubh and Ya`aqobhah (accent on the penult) also
occur in the Old Testament, the former borne by no less than 4 different persons;
also that in the Palmyrene inscriptions we find a person named 'ath'aqobh, a name
in which this same verb 'aqabh is preceded by the name of the god `Ate, just as
in `Aqabhyah it is followed by the name Yahu. |
2. Etymology and Associations:
Such being the form and distribution of the name, it remains to inquire: What
do we know of its etymology and what were the associations it conveyed to the
Hebrew ear?
The verb in all its usages is capable of deduction, by simple association of ideas,
from the noun "heel." "To heel" might mean:
(a) "to take hold of by the heel" (so probably Hosea 12:3; compare Genesis
27:36);
(b) "to follow with evil intent," "to supplant" or in general "to deceive" (so
Genesis 27:36; Jeremiah 9:4, where the parallel, "go about with slanders," is
interesting because the word so translated is akin to the noun "foot," as "supplant"
is to "heel");
(c) "to follow with good intent," whether as a slave (compare our English "to
heel," of a dog) for service, or as a guard for protection, hence, "to guard"
(so in Ethiopic), "to keep guard over", and thus "to restrain" (so Job 37:4);
(d) "to follow," "to succeed," "to take the place of another" (so Arabic, and
the Hebrew noun 'eqebh, "consequence," "recompense," whether of reward or punishment).
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Among these four significations, which most commends itself as the original intent
in the use of this verb to form a proper name? The answer to this question depends
upon the degree of strength with which the Divine name was felt to be the subject
of the verb As Jacob-el, the simplest interpretation of the name is undoubtedly,
as Baethgen urges (Beitrage zur sem. Religionsgeschichte, 158), "God rewardeth"
((d) above), like Nathanael, "God hath given," etc. But we have already seen that
centuries before the time when Jacob is said to have been born, this name was
shortened by dropping the Divine subject; and in this shortened form it would
be more likely to call up in the minds of all Semites who used it, associations
with the primary, physical notion of its root ((a) above). Hence, there is no
ground to deny that even in the patriarchal period, this familiar personal name
Jacob lay ready at hand--a name ready made, as it were--for this child, in view
of the peculiar circumstances of its birth; we may say, indeed, one could not
escape the use of it. (A parallel case, perhaps, is Genesis 38:28,30, Zerah; compare
Zerahiah.) The associations of this root in everyday use in Jacob's family to
mean "to supplant" led to the fresh realization of its appropriateness to his
character and conduct when he was grown ((b) above). This construction does not
interfere with a connection between the patriarch Jacob and the "Jacob-els" referred
to above (under 1, (b)), should that connection on other grounds appear probable.
Such a longer form was perhaps for every "Jacob" an alternative form of his name,
and under certain circumstances may have been used by or of even the patriarch
Jacob. |
II. HIS PLACE IN THE PATRIARCHAL SUCCESSION
1. As the Son of Isaac and Rebekah:
In the dynasty of the "heirs of the promise," Jacob takes his place, first, as
the successor of Isaac. In Isaac's life the most significant single fact had been
his marriage with Rebekah instead of with a woman of Canaan. Jacob therefore represents
the first generation of those who are determinately separate from their environment.
Abraham and his household were immigrants in Canaan; Jacob and Esau were natives
of Canaan in the second generation, yet had not a drop of Canaanitish blood in
their veins. Their birth was delayed till 20 years after the marriage of their
parents. Rebekah's barrenness had certainly the same effect, and probably the
same purpose, as that of Sarah: it drove Isaac to Divine aid, demanded of him
as it had of Abraham that "faith and patience" through which they "inherited the
promises" (Hebrews 6:12), and made the children of this pair also the evident
gift of God's grace, so that Isaac was the better able "by faith" to "bless Jacob
and Esau even concerning things to come" (Hebrews 11:20).
2. As the Brother of Esau:
These twin brothers therefore share thus far the same relation to their parents
and to what their parents transmit to them. But here the likeness ceases. "Being
not yet born, neither having done anything good or bad, that the purpose of God
according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth, it was
said unto (Rebecca), The elder shall serve the younger" (Romans 9:11,12). In the
Genesis-narrative, without any doctrinal assertions either adduced to explain
it, or deduced from it, the fact is nevertheless made as clear as it is in Malachi
or Romans, that Esau is rejected, and Jacob is chosen as a link in the chain of
inheritance that receives and transmits the promise.
3. As Father of the Twelve:
With Jacob the last person is reached who, for his own generation, thus sums up
in a single individual "the seed" of promise. He becomes the father of 12 sons,
who are the progenitors of the tribes of the "peculiar people." It is for this
reason that this people bears his name, and not that of his father Isaac or that
of his grandfather Abraham. The "children of Israel," the "house of Jacob," are
the totality of the seed of the promise. The Edomites too are children of Isaac.
Ishmaelites equally with Israelites boast of descent from Abraham. But the twelve
tribes that called themselves "Israel" were all descendants of Jacob, and were
the only descendants of Jacob on the agnatic principle of family-constitution.
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III. BIOGRAPHY
The life of a wanderer (Deuteronomy 26:5 the Revised Version, margin) such as
Jacob was, may often be best divided on the geographical principle. Jacob's career
falls into the four distinct periods: that of his residence with Isaac in Canaan,
that of his residence with Laban in Aram, that of his independent life in Canaan
and that of his migration to Egypt.
1. With Isaac in Canaan:
Jacob's birth was remarkable in respect of
(a) its delay for 20 years as noted above,
(b) that condition of his mother which led to the Divine oracle concerning his
future greatness and supremacy, and
(c) the unusual phenomenon that gave him his name: "he holds by the heel" (see
above, I, 2). |
Unlike his twin brother, Jacob seems to have been free from any physical peculiarities;
his smoothness (Genesis 27:11) is only predicated of him in contrast to Esau's
hairiness. These brothers, as they developed, grew apart in tastes and habits.
Jacob, like his father in his quiet manner of life and (for that reason perhaps)
the companion and favorite of his mother, found early the opportunity to obtain
Esau's sworn renunciation of his right of primogeniture, by taking advantage of
his habits, his impulsiveness and his fundamental indifference to the higher things
of the family, the things of the future (Genesis 25:32). It was not until long
afterward that the companion scene to this first "supplanting" (Genesis 27:36)
was enacted. Both sons meanwhile are to be thought of simply as members of Isaac's
following, during all the period of his successive sojourns in Gerar, the Valley
of Gerar and Beersheba (Genesis 26). Within this period, when the brothers were
40 years of age, occurred Esau's marriage with two Hittite women. Jacob, remembering
his own mother's origin, bided his time to find the woman who should be the mother
of his children. The question whether she should be brought to him, as Rebekah
was to Isaac, or he should go to find her, was settled at last by a family feud
that only his absence could heal. This feud was occasioned by the fraud that Jacob
at Rebekah's behest practiced upon his father and brother, when these two were
minded to nullify the clearly revealed purpose of the oracle (Genesis 25:23) and
the sanctions of a solemn oath (Genesis 25:33). Isaac's partiality for Esau arose
perhaps as much from Esau's resemblance to the active, impulsive nature of his
mother, as from the sensual gratification afforded Isaac by the savory dishes
his son's hunting supplied. At any rate, this partiality defeated itself because
it overreached itself. The wife, who had learned to be eyes and ears for a husband's
failing senses, detected the secret scheme, counterplotted with as much skill
as unscrupulousness, and while she obtained the paternal blessing for her favorite
son, fell nevertheless under the painful necessity of choosing between losing
him through his brother's revenge or losing him by absence from home. She chose,
of course, the latter alternative, and herself brought about Jacob's departure,
by pleading to Isaac the necessity for obtaining a woman as Jacob's wife of a
sort different from the Canaanitish women that Esau had married. Thus ends the
first portion of Jacob's life.
2. To Aram and Back:
It is no young man that sets out thus to escape a brother's vengeance, and perhaps
to find a wife at length among his mother's kindred. It was long before this that
Esau at the age of forty had married the Hittite women (compare Genesis 26:34
with 27:46). Yet to one who had hitherto spent his life subordinate to his father,
indulged by his mother, in awe of a brother's physical superiority, and "dwelling
in tents, a quiet (domestic) man" (Genesis 25:27), this journey of 500 or 600
miles, with no one to guide, counsel or defend, was as new an experience as if
he had really been the stripling that he is sometimes represented to have been.
All the most significant chapters in life awaited him: self-determination, love,
marriage, fatherhood, domestic provision and administration, adjustment of his
relations with men, and above all a personal and independent religious experience.
Of these things, all were to come to him in the 20 years of absence from Canaan,
and the last was to come first; for the dream of Jacob at Beth-el was of course
but the opening scene in the long drama of God's direct dealing with Jacob. Yet
it was the determinative scene, for God in His latest and fullest manifestation
to Jacob was just "the God of Beth-el" (Genesis 35:7; 48:3; 49:24).
With the arrival at Haran came love at once, though not for 7 years the consummation
of that love. Its strength is naively indicated by the writer in two ways: impliedly
in the sudden output of physical power at the well-side (Genesis 29:10), and expressly
in the patient years of toil for Rachel's sake, which "seemed unto him but a few
days for the love he had to her" (Genesis 29:20). Jacob is not primarily to be
blamed for the polygamy that brought trouble into his home-life and sowed the
seeds of division and jealousy in the nation of the future. Although much of Israel's
history can be summed up in the rivalry of Leah and Rachel--Judah and Joseph--yet
it was not Jacob's choice but Laban's fraud that introduced this cause of schism.
At the end of his 7 years' labor Jacob received as wife not Rachel but Leah, on
the belated plea that to give the younger daughter before the elder was not the
custom of the country. This was the first of the "ten times" that Laban "changed
the wages" of Jacob (Genesis 31:7,41). Rachel became Jacob's wife 7 days after
Leah, and for this second wife he "served 7 other years." During these 7 years
were born most of the sons and daughters (Genesis 37:35) that formed the actual
family, the nucleus of that large caravan that Jacob took back with him to Canaan.
Dinah is the only daughter named; Genesis 30:21 is obviously in preparation for
the story of Genesis 34 (see especially 34:31). Four sons of Leah were the oldest:
Reuben, with the right of primogeniture, Simeon, Levi and Judah. Next came the
4 sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, the personal slaves of the two wives (compare ABRAHAM,
iv, 2); the two pairs of sons were probably of about the same age (compare order
in Genesis 49). Leah's 5th and 6th sons were separated by an interval of uncertain
length from her older group. And Joseph, the youngest son born in Haran, was Rachel's
first child, equally beloved by his mother, and by his father for her sake (Genesis
33:2 ; compare 44:20), as well as because he was the youngest of the eleven (Genesis
37:3).
Jacob's years of service for his wives were followed by 6 years of service rendered
for a stipulated wage. Laban's cunning in limiting the amount of this wage in
a variety of ways was matched by Jacob's cunning in devising means to overreach
his uncle, so that the penniless wanderer of 20 years before becomes the wealthy
proprietor of countless cattle and of the hosts of slaves necessary for their
care (Genesis 32:10). At the same time the apology of Jacob for his conduct during
this entire period of residence in Haran is spirited (Genesis 31:36 - 42); it
is apparently unanswerable by Laban (Genesis 31:43); and it is confirmed, both
by the evident concurrence of Leah and Rachel (Genesis 31:14 - 16), and by indications
in the narrative that the justice (not merely the partiality) of God gave to each
party his due recompense: to Jacob the rich returns of skillful, patient industry;
to Laban rebuke and warning (Genesis 31:5 - 13 , 24 , 29 , 42).
The manner of Jacob's departure from Haran was determined by the strained relations
between his uncle and himself. His motive in going, however, is represented as
being fundamentally the desire to terminate an absence from his father's country
that had already grown too long (Genesis 31:30; compare Genesis 30:25)--a desire
which in fact presented itself to him in the form of a revelation of God's own
purpose and command (Genesis 31:3). Unhappily, his clear record was stained by
the act of another than himself, who nevertheless, as a member of his family,
entailed thus upon him the burden of responsibility. Rachel, like Laban her father,
was devoted to the superstition that manifested itself in the keeping and consulting
of teraphim, a custom which, whether more nearly akin to fetishism, totemism,
or ancestor-worship, was felt to be incompatible with the worship of the one true
God. (Note that the "teraphim" of Genesis 31:19 , 34 f are the same as the "gods"
of 31:30 , 32 and, apparently, of 35:2 , 4.) This theft furnished Laban with a
pretext for pursuit. What he meant to do he probably knew but imperfectly himself.
Coercion of some sort he would doubtless have brought to bear upon Jacob and his
caravan, had he not recognized in a dream the God whom Jacob worshipped, and heard
Him utter a word of warning against the use of violence. Laban failed to find
his stolen gods, for his daughter was as crafty and ready-witted as he. The whole
adventure ended in a formal reconciliation, with the usual sacrificial and memorial
token (Genesis 31:43 - 55).
After Laban, Esau. One danger is no sooner escaped than a worse threatens. Yet
between them lies the pledge of Divine presence and protection in the vision of
God's host at Mahanaim: just a simple statement, with none of the fanciful detail
that popular story-telling loves, but the sober record of a tradition to which
the supernatural was matter of fact. Even the longer passage that preserves the
occurrence at Peniel is conceived in the same spirit. What the revelation of the
host of God had not sufficed to teach this faithless, anxious, scheming patriarch,
that God sought to teach him in the night-struggle, with its ineffaceable physical
memorial of a human impotence that can compass no more than to cling to Divine
omnipotence (Genesis 32:22 - 32). The devices of crafty Jacob to disarm an offended
and supposedly implacable brother proved as useless as that bootless wrestling
of the night before; Esau's peculiar disposition was not of Jacob's making, but
of God's, and to it alone Jacob owed his safety. The practical wisdom of Jacob
dictated his insistence upon bringing to a speedy termination the proposed association
with his changeable brother, amid the difficulties of a journey that could not
be shared by such divergent social and racial elements as Esau's armed host and
Jacob's caravan, without discontent on the one side and disaster on the other.
The brothers part, not to meet again until they meet to bury their father at Hebron
(Genesis 35:29).
3. In Canaan Again:
Before Jacob's arrival in the South of Canaan where his father yet lived and where
his own youth had been spent, he passed through a period of wandering in Central
Palestine, somewhat similar to that narrated of his grandfather Abraham. To any
such nomad, wandering slowly from Aram toward Egypt, a period of residence in
the region of Mt. Ephraim was a natural chapter in his book of travels. Jacob's
longer stops, recorded for us, were
(1) at Succoth, East of the Jordan near Peniel,
(2) at Shechem and
(3) at Beth-el. |
Nothing worthy of record occurred at Succoth, but the stay at Shechem was eventful.
Genesis 34, which tells the story of Dinah's seduction and her brother's revenge,
throws as much light upon the relations of Jacob and the Canaanites, as does Genesis
chapter 14 or chapter 23 upon Abraham's relations, or chapter 26 upon Isaac's
relations, with such settled inhabitants of the land. There is a strange blending
of moral and immoral elements in Jacob and his family as portrayed in this contretemps.
There is the persistent tradition of separateness from the Canaanites bequeathed
from Abraham's day (Genesis chapter 24), together with a growing family consciousness
and sense of superiority (Genesis 34:7 , 14 , 31). And at the same time there
is indifference to their unique moral station among the environing tribes, shown
in Dinah's social relations with them (Genesis 34:1), in the treachery and cruelty
of Simeon and Levi (Genesis 34:25 - 29), and in Jacob's greater concern for the
security of his possessions than for the preservation of his good name (Genesis
34 verse 30).
It was this concern for the safety of the family and its wealth that achieved
the end which dread of social absorption would apparently never have achieved--the
termination of a long residence where there was moral danger for all. For a second
time Jacob had fairly to be driven to Beth-el. Safety from his foes was again
a gift of God (Genesis 35:5), and in a renewal of the old forgotten ideals of
consecration (Genesis 35:2 - 8), he and all his following move from the painful
associations of Shechem to the hallowed associations of Beth-el. Here were renewed
the various phases of all God's earlier communications to this patriarch and to
his fathers before him. The new name of Israel, hitherto so ill deserved, is henceforth
to find realization in his life; his fathers' God is to be his God; his seed is
to inherit the land of promise, and is to be no mean tribe, but a group of peoples
with kings to rule over them like the nations round about (Genesis 35:9 - 12).
No wonder that Jacob here raises anew his monument of stone--emblem of the "Stone
of Israel" (Genesis 49:24)--and stamps forever, by this public act, upon ancient
Luz (Genesis 35:6), the name of Beth-el which he had privately given it years
before (Genesis 28:19).
Losses and griefs characterized the family life of the patriarch at this period.
The death of his mother's Syrian nurse at Beth-el (Genesis 35:8; compare Genesis
24:59) was followed by the death of his beloved wife Rachel at Ephrath (Genesis
35:19 ; 48:7) in bringing forth the youngest of his 12 sons, Benjamin. At about
the same time the eldest of the 12, Reuben, forfeited the honor of his station
in the family by an act that showed all too clearly the effect of recent association
with Canaanites (Genesis 35:22). Finally, death claimed Jacob's aged father, whose
latest years had been robbed of the companionship, not only of this son, but also
of the son whom his partiality had all but made a fratricide; at Isaac's grave
in Hebron the ill-matched brothers met once more, thenceforth to go their separate
ways, both in their personal careers and in their descendants' history (Genesis
35:29).
Jacob now is by right of patriarchal custom head of all the family. He too takes
up his residence at Hebron (Genesis 37:14), and the story of the family fortunes
is now pursued under the new title of "the generations of Jacob" (Genesis 37:2).
True, most of this story revolves about Joseph, the youngest of the family save
Benjamin; yet the occurrence of passages like Genesis 38, devoted exclusively
to Judah's affairs, or Genesis 46:8 - 27, the enumeration of Jacob's entire family
through its secondary ramifications, or Genesis 49, the blessing of Jacob on all
his sons--all these prove that Jacob, not Joseph, is the true center of the narrative
until his death. As long as he lives he is the real head of his house, and not
merely a superannuated veteran like Isaac. Not only Joseph, the boy of 17 (Genesis
37:2), but also the self-willed elder sons, even a score of years later, come
and go at his bidding (Genesis 42 ; 43 ; 44 ; 45). Joseph's dearest thought, as
it is his first thought, is for his aged father (Genesis 43:7 , 27 ; 44:19 ; and
especially Genesis 45:3 , 9 , 13 , 23 , and 46:29).
4. Last Years in Egypt:
It is this devotion of Joseph that results in Jacob's migration to Egypt. What
honors there Joseph can show his father he shows him: he presents him to Pharaoh,
who for Joseph's sake receives him with dignity, and assigns him a home and sustenance
for himself and all his people as honored guests of the land of Egypt (Genesis
47:7 - 12). Yet in Beersheba, while en route to Egypt, Jacob had obtained a greater
honor than this reception by Pharaoh. He had found there, as ready to respond
to his sacrifices as ever to those of his fathers, the God of his father Isaac,
and had received the gracious assurance of Divine guidance in this momentous journey,
fraught with so vast a significance for the future nation and the world (Genesis
46:1 - 4): God Himself would go with him into Egypt and give him, not merely the
gratification of once more embracing his long-lost son, but the fulfillment of
the covenant-promise (Genesis 15:13 - 16) that he and his were not turning their
backs upon Canaan forever. Though 130 years of age when he stood before Pharaoh,
Jacob felt his days to have been "few" as well as "evil,"
in comparison with those of his fathers (Genesis 47:9). And in fact he had yet
17 years to live in Goshen (Genesis 47:28).
These last days are passed over without record, save of the growth and prosperity
of the family. But at their close came the impartation of the ancestral blessings,
with the last will of the dying patriarch. After adopting Joseph's sons, Manasseh
and Ephraim, as his own, Jacob blesses them, preferring the younger to the elder
as he himself had once been preferred to Esau, and assigns to Joseph the "double
portion" of the firstborn--that "preeminence" which he denies to Reuben (Genesis
48:22 ; 49:4). In poetry that combines with the warm emotion and glowing imagery
of its style and the unsurpassed elevation of its diction, a lyrical fervor of
religious sentiment which demands for its author a personality that had passed
through just such course of tuition as Jacob had experienced, the last words of
Jacob, in Genesis 49, mark a turning-point in the history of the people of God.
This is a translation of biography into prophecy. On the assumption that it is
genuine, we may confidently aver that it was simply unforgetable by those who
heard it. Its auditors were its theme. Their descendants were its fulfillment.
Neither the one class nor the other could ever let it pass out of memory.
It was "by faith," we are well reminded, that Jacob "blessed" and "worshipped"
"when he was dying" (Hebrews 11:21). For he held to the promises of God, and even
in the hour of dissolution looked for the fulfillment of the covenant, according
to which Canaan should belong to him and to his seed after him. He therefore set
Joseph an example, by "giving commandment concerning his bones," that they might
rest in the burial-place of Abraham and Isaac near Hebron. To the accomplishment
of this mission Joseph and all his brethren addressed themselves after their father's
decease and the 70 days of official mourning. Followed by a "very great company"
of the notables of Egypt, including royal officials and representatives of the
royal family, this Hebrew tribe carried up to sepulture in the land of promise
the embalmed body of the patriarch from whom henceforth they were to take their
tribal name, lamented him according to custom for 7 days, and then returned to
their temporary home in Egypt, till their children should at length be "called"
thence to become God's son" (Hosea 11:1) and inherit His promises to their father
Jacob. |
IV. CHARACTER AND BELIEFS
In the course of this account of Jacob's career the inward as well as the outward
fortunes of the man have somewhat appeared. Yet a more comprehensive view of the
kind of man he was will not be superfluous at this point. With what disposition
was he endowed--the natural nucleus for acquired characteristics and habits? Through
what stages did he pass in the development of his beliefs and his character? In
particular, what attitude did he maintain toward the most significant thing in
his life, the promise of God to his house? And lastly, what resemblances may be
traced in Israel the man to Israel the nation, of such sort that the one may be
regarded as "typical" of the other? These matters deserve more than a passing
notice.
1. Natural Qualities:
From his father, Jacob inherited that domesticity and affectionate attachment
to his home circle which appears in his life from beginning to end. He inherited
shrewdness, initiative and resourcefulness from Rebekah--qualities which she shared
apparently with her brother Laban and all his family. The conspicuous ethical
faults of Abraham and Isaac alike are want of candor and want of courage. It is
not surprising, therefore, to find the same failings in Jacob. Deceit and cowardice
are visible again and again in the impartial record of his life. Both spring from
unbelief. They belong to the natural man. God's transformation of this man was
wrought by faith--by awakening and nourishing in him a simple trust in the truth
and power of the Divine word. For Jacob was not at any time in his career indifferent
to the things of the spirit, the things unseen and belonging to the future. Unlike
Esau, he was not callous to the touch of God. Whether through inheritance, or
as a fruit of early teaching, he had as the inestimable treasure, the true capital
of his spiritual career, a firm conviction of the value of what God had promised,
and a supreme ambition to obtain it for himself and his children. But against
the Divine plan for the attainment of this goal by faith, there worked in Jacob
constantly his natural qualities, the non-moral as well as the immoral qualities,
that urged him to save himself and his fortunes by "works"--by sagacity, cunning,
compromise, pertinacity--anything and everything that would anticipate God's accomplishing
His purpose in His own time and His own way. In short, "the end justifies the
means" is the program that, more than all others, finds illustration and rebuke
in the character of Jacob.
2. Stages of Development:
Starting with such a combination of natural endowments, social, practical, ethical,
Jacob passed through a course of Divine tuition, which, by building upon some
of them, repressing others and transfiguring the remainder, issued in the triumph
of grace over nature, in the transformation of a Jacob into an Israel. This tuition
has been well analyzed by a recent writer (Thomas, Genesis, III, 204 f) into the
school of sorrow, the school of providence and the school of grace. Under the
head of sorrow, it is not difficult to recall many experiences in the career just
reviewed: long exile; disappointment; sinful passions of greed, anger, lust and
envy in others, of which Jacob was the victim; perplexity; and, again and again,
bereavement of those he held most dear.
But besides these sorrows, God's providence dealt with him in ways most remarkable,
and perhaps more instructive for the study of such Divine dealings than in the
case of any other character in the Old Testament. By alternate giving and withholding,
by danger here and deliverance there, by good and evil report, now by failure
of "best laid schemes" and now by success with seemingly inadequate means, God
developed in him the habit--not native to him as it seems to have been in part
to Abraham and to Joseph,--of reliance on Divine power and guidance, of accepting
the Divine will, of realizing the Divine nearness and faithfulness.
And lastly, there are those admirably graded lessons in the grace of God, that
were imparted in the series of Divine appearances to the patriarch, at Beth-el,
at Haran, at Peniel, at Beth-el again and at Beersheba. For if the substance of
these Divine revelations be compared, it will be found that all are alike in the
assurance (1) that God is with him to bless; (2) that the changes of his life
are ordained of God and are for his ultimate good; and (3) that he is the heir
of the ancestral promises.
It will further be found that they may be arranged in a variety of ways, according
as one or another of the revelations be viewed as the climax. Thus
(1), agreeing with the chronological order, the appearance at Beersheba may
well be regarded as the climax of them all. Abraham had gone to Egypt to escape
a famine (Genesis 12:10), but he went without revelation, and returned with bitter
experience of his error. Isaac essayed to go to Egypt for the same cause (Genesis
26:1), and was prevented by revelation. Jacob now goes to Egypt, but he goes with
the express approval of the God of his fathers, and with the explicit assurance
that the same Divine providence which ordained this removal (Genesis 50:20) will
see that it does not frustrate any of the promises of God. This was a crisis in
the history of the "Kingdom of God" on a paragraph with events like the Exodus,
the Exile, or the Return.
(2) In its significance for his personal history, the first of these revelations
was unique. Beth-el witnessed Jacob's choice, evidently for the first time, of
his fathers' God as his God. And though we find Jacob later tolerating idolatry
in his household and compromising his religious testimony by sin, we never find
a hint of his own unfaithfulness to this first and final religious choice. This
is further confirmed by the attachment of his later revelations to this primary
one, as though this lent them the significance of continuity, and made possible
the unity of his religious experience. So at Haran it was the "God of Beth-el"
who directed his return (Genesis 31:13); at Shechem it was to Beth-el that he
was directed, in order that he might at length fulfill his Beth-el vow, by erecting
there an altar to the God who had there appeared to him (Genesis 35:1); and at
Beth-el finally the promise of former years was renewed to him who was henceforth
to be Israel (Genesis 35:9-15).
(3) Though thus punctuated with the supernatural, the only striking bit of the
marvelous in all this biography is the night scene at Peniel. And this too may
justly be claimed as a climax in Jacob's development. There he first received
his new name, and though he deserved it as little in many scenes thereafter as
he had deserved it before, yet the same could be said of many a man who has "seen
the face of God," but has yet to grasp, like Jacob, the lesson that the way to
overcome is through the helpless but clinging importunity of faith.
(4) Rather than in any of the other scenes, however, it was at Beth-el the second
time that the patriarch reached the topmost rung on the ladder of development.
As already noticed, the substance of all the earlier revelations is here renewed
and combined. It is no wonder that after this solemn theophany we find Jacob,
like Moses later, `enduring as seeing him who is invisible' (Hebrews 11:27), and
"waiting for the salvation" (Genesis 49:18) of a God `who is not ashamed of him,
to be called his God' (Hebrews 11:16), but is repeatedly called "the God of Jacob."
|
Finally, such a comparison of these revelations to Jacob reveals a variety in
the way God makes Himself known. In the first revelation, naturally, the effort
is made chiefly to impress upon its recipient the identity of the revealing God
with the God of his fathers. And it has been remarked already that in the later
revelations the same care is taken to identify the Revealer with the One who gave
that first revelation, or else to identify Him, as then, with the God of the fathers.
Yet, in addition to this, there is a richness and suitability in the Divine names
revealed, which a mechanical theory of literary sources not only leaves unexplained
but fails even to recognize. At Beth-el first it is Yahweh, the personal name
of this God, the God of his fathers, who enters into a new personal relation with
Jacob; now, of all times in his career, he needs to know God by the differential
mark that distinguishes Him absolutely from other gods, that there may never be
confusion as to Yahweh's identity. But this matter is settled for Jacob once for
all. Thenceforth one of the ordinary terms for deity, with or without an attributive
adjunct, serves to lift the patriarch's soul into communication with his Divine
Interlocutor. The most general word of all in the Semitic tongues for deity is
'El, the word used in the revelations to Jacob at Haran in Genesis (31:13), at
Shechem (Genesis 35:1), at Beth-el the second time (Genesis 35:11) and at Beersheba
(Genesis 46:3). But it is never used alone. Like Allah in the Arabic language
(= the God), so 'El with the definite article before it serves to designate in
Hebrew a particular divinity, not deity in general. Or else 'El without the article
is made definite by some genitive phrase that supplies the necessary identification:
so in Jacob's case, El-beth-el (Genesis 35:7; compare 31:13) or El-Elohe-Israel
(Genesis 33:20). Or, lastly, there is added to 'El some determining title, with
the force of an adjective, as Shaddai (translated "Almighty") in Genesis 35:11
(compare 43:3). In clear distinction from this word, 'El, with its archaic or
poetic flavor, is the common Hebrew word for God, 'Elohim. But while 'Elohim is
used regularly by the narrator of the Jacob-stories in speaking, or in letting
his actors speak, of Jacob's God, who to the monotheistic writer is of course
the God and his own God, he never puts this word thus absolutely into the mouth
of the revealing Deity. Jacob can say, when he awakes from his dream, "This is
the house of 'Elohim," but God says to him in the dream, "I am the God ('Elohim)
of thy father" (Genesis 28:17 , 13). At Mahanaim Jacob says, "This is the host
of 'Elohim" (Genesis 32:2), but at Beersheba God says to Jacob, "I am .... the
God ('Elohim) of thy father" (Genesis 46:3). Such are the distinctions maintained
in the use of these words, all of them used of the same God, yet chosen in each
case to fit the circumstances of speaker, hearer and situation.
The only passage in the story of Jacob that might appear to be an exception does
in fact but prove the rule. At Peniel the angel of God explains the new name of
Israel by saying, "Thou hast striven with God ('Elohim) and with men, and hast
prevailed." Here the contrast with "men" proves that 'Elohim without the article
is just the right expression, even on the lips of Deity: neither Deity nor humanity
has prevailed against Jacob (Genesis 32:28).
Throughout the entire story of Jacob, therefore, his relations with Yahweh his
God, after they were once established (Genesis 28:13 - 16), are narrated in terms
that emphasize the Divinity of Him who had thus entered into covenant-relationship
with him: His Divinity--that is to say, those attributes in which His Divinity manifested
itself in His dealings with Jacob.
3. Attitude toward the Promise:
From the foregoing, two things appear with respect to Jacob's attitude toward
the promise of God. First, with all his faults and vices he yet was spiritually
sensitive; he responded to the approaches of his God concerning things of a value
wholly spiritual--future good, moral and spiritual blessings. And second, he was
capable of progress in these matters; that is, his reaction to the Divine tuition
would appear, if charted, as a series of elevations, separated one from another,
to be sure, by low levels and deep declines, yet each one higher than the last,
and all taken collectively lifting the whole average up and up, till in the end
faith has triumphed over sight, the future over present good, a yet unpossessed
but Divinely promised Canaan over all the comfort and honors of Egypt, and the
aged patriarch lives only to "wait for Yahweh's salvation" (Genesis 49:18).
The contrast of Jacob with Esau furnishes perhaps the best means of grasping the
significance of these two facts for an estimate of Jacob's attitude toward the
promise. For in the first place, Esau, who possessed so much that Jacob lacked--directness,
manliness, a sort of bonhomie, that made him superficially more attractive than
his brother--Esau shows nowhere any real "sense" for things spiritual. The author
of Hebrews has caught the man in the flash of a single word, "profane" bebelos)--of
course, in the older, broader, etymological meaning of the term. Esau's desires
dwelt in the world of the non-sacred; they did not aspire to that world of nearness
to God, where one must `put off the shoes from off his feet, because the place
whereon he stands is holy ground.' And in the second place, there is no sign of
growth in Esau. What we see him in his father's encampment, that we see him to
the end--so far as appears from the laconic story. With the virtues as well as
the vices of the man who lives for the present--forgiving when strong enough to
revenge, condescending when flattered, proud of power and independent of parental
control or family tradition--Esau is as impartially depicted by the sacred historian
as if the writer had been an Edomite instead of an Israelite: the sketch is evidently
true to life, both from its objectivity and from its coherence.
Now what Esau was, Jacob was not. His fault in connection with the promises of
God, the family tradition, the ancestral blessing, lay not in despising them,
but in seeking them in immoral ways. Good was his aim; but he was ready to "do
evil that good might come." He was always tempted to be his own Providence, and
God's training was clearly directed, both by providential leadings and by gracious
disclosures, to this corresponding purpose: to enlighten Jacob as to the nature
of the promise; to assure him that it was his by grace; to awaken personal faith
in its Divine Giver; and to supplement his "faith" by that "patience" without
which none can "inherit the promises." The faith that accepts was to issue at
length in the faith that waits.
4. How Far a "Type" of Israel:
A nation was to take its name from Jacob-Israel, and there are some passages of
Scripture where it is uncertain whether the name designates the nation or its
ancestor. In their respective relations to God and to the world of men and nations,
there is a true sense in which the father was a "type" of the children. It is
probably only a play of fancy that would discover a parallel in their respective
careers, between the successive stages of life in the father's home (Canaan),
life in exile, a return, and a second exile. But it is not fanciful to note the
resemblance between Jacob's character and that of his descendants. With few exceptions
the qualities mentioned above (IV, 2) will be found, mutatis mutandis, to be equally
applicable to the nation of Israel. And even that curriculum in which the patriarch
learned of God may be viewed as a type of the school in which the Hebrew people--not
all of them, nor even the mass, but the "remnant" who approximated to the ideal
Israel of the prophets, the "servant of Yahweh"--were taught the lessons of faith
and patience, of renunciation and consecration, that appear with growing clearness
on the pages of Isaiah, of Habakkuk, of Jeremiah, of Malachi. This is apparently
Hosea's point of view in Hosea 12:2 - 4 , 12.
A word of caution, however, is needed at this point. There are limits to this
equation. Even critics who regard Jacob under his title of Israel as merely the
eponymous hero, created by legend to be the forefather of the nation (compare
below, VI, 1), must confess that Jacob as Jacob is no such neutral creature, dressed
only in the colors of his children's racial qualities. There is a large residuum
in Jacob, after all parallelisms have been traced, that refuses to fit the lines
of Hebrew national character or history, and his typical relation in fact lies
chiefly in the direction of the covenant-inheritance, after the fashion of Malachi's
allusion (Malachi 1:2), interpreted by Paul (Romans 9:10 - 13). |
V. REFERENCES OUTSIDE OF GENESIS
Under his two names this personage Jacob or Israel is more frequently mentioned
than any other in the whole of sacred history. Yet in the vast majority of cases
the nation descended from him is intended by the name, which in the form of "Jacob"
or "Israel" contains not the slightest, and in the form "children of Israel,"
"house of Jacob" and the like, only the slightest, if any, allusion to the patriarch
himself. But there still remain many passages in both Testaments where the Jacob
or Israel of Ge is clearly alluded to.
1. In the Old Testament:
There is a considerable group of passages that refer to him as the last of the
patriarchal triumvirate--Abraham, Isaac and Jacob: so particularly of Yahweh as
the "God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob," and of the covenant-oath as having been
"sworn unto Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." And naturally the nation that is known
by his name is frequently called by some phrase, equivalent to the formal bene
yisra'el, yet through its unusualness lending more significance to the idea of
their derivation from him: so "seed of Jacob" and (frequently) "house of Jacob
(Israel)." But there are a few Old Testament passages outside of Ge in which so
much of Jacob's history has been preserved, that from these allusions alone a
fair notion might have been gathered concerning the Hebrews' tradition of their
common ancestor, even if all the story in Ge had been lost. These passages are:
Joshua 24:3 , 4 , 32 ; Psalms 105:10 - 23 ; Hosea 12:2 - 4 , 12 ; Malachi 1:2
f. Besides these, there are other allusions, scattered a word here and a sentence
there, from all of which together we learn as follows. God gave to Isaac twin
sons, Esau and Jacob, the latter at birth taking the former by the heel. God elected
Jacob to be the recipient of the covenant-promise made to his father Isaac and
to his grandfather Abraham; and this choice involved the rejection of Esau. Yahweh
appeared to Jacob at Beth-el and told him the land of Canaan was to be his and
his seed's after him forever. Circumstances not explained caused Jacob to flee
from his home in Canaan to Aram, where he served as a shepherd to obtain a wife
as his wage. He became the father of 12 sons. He strove with the angel of God
and prevailed amid earnest supplication. His name was by Yahweh Himself changed
to Israel. Under Divine protection as God's chosen one and representative, his
life was that of a wanderer from place to place; once only he bought a piece of
land, for a hundred pieces, near Shechem, from Hamor, the father of Shechem. A
famine drove him down to Egypt, but not without providential preparation for the
reception there of himself and all his family, through the remarkable fortunes
of his son Joseph, sold, exiled, imprisoned, delivered, and exalted to a position
where he could dispose of rulers and nations. In Egypt the children of Jacob multiplied
rapidly, and at his death he made the sons of Joseph the heirs of the only portion
of Canaanitish soil that he had acquired.
From this it appears, first, that not much that is essential in the biography
of Jacob would have perished though Genesis had been lost; and, second, that the
sum of the incidental allusions outside Ge resemble the total impression of the
narratives in Genesis--in other words, that the Biblical tradition is self-consistent.
And it runs back to a date (Hosea, 8th century BC) little farther removed from
the events recounted than the length of time that separates our own day from the
Norman conquest, or the Fall of Constantinople from the Hegira, or Jesus Christ
from Solomon.
2. In the New Testament:
In the New Testament also there are, besides the references to Jacob simply as
the father of his nation, several passages that recall events in his life or traits
of his character. These are: John 4:5 , 6 , 12 ; Acts 7:12 , 14 - 16 ; Romans
9:10 - 13 ; Hebrews 11:9 , 20 f. In the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan
woman it appears that the Samaritans cherished the association of Jacob with the
ground he bought near Shechem, and with the well he dug while sojourning there
with his sons and his flocks; they prided themselves on its transmission to them
through Joseph, not to the hated Jews through Judah, and magnified themselves
in magnifying Jacob's "greatness" and calling him "our father." Stephen's speech,
as Luke reports it, includes in its rapid historical flight a hint or two about
Jacob beyond the bare fact of his place in the tribal genealogy. Moved by the
famine prevailing in Egypt and Canaan, Jacob twice dispatches his sons to buy
grain in Egypt, and the second time Joseph is made known to his brothers, and
his race becomes manifest to Pharaoh. At Joseph's behest, Jacob and all the family
remove to Egypt. There all remain until their death, but the "fathers" (Joseph
and his brethren; compare Jerome, Epistola cviii, edition Migne) are buried in
the family possession near Shechem. (Here emerges one of those divergences from
the Old Testament tradition that are a notable feature of Stephen's speech, and
that have furnished occasion for much speculation upon their origin, value and
implications. See commentaries on Acts.) Paul's interest in Jacob appears in connection
with his discussion of Divine election, where he calls attention to the oracle
of Genesis 25:23 and to the use already made of the passage by Malachi (1:2 f),
and reminds his readers that this choice of Jacob and rejection of Esau was made
by God even before these twin sons of Isaac and Rebecca were born. Finally, the
author of He, when charting the heroes of faith, focuses his glass for a moment
upon Jacob: first, as sharing with Abraham and Isaac the promise of God and the
life of unworldly, expectant faith (Hebrews 11:9); and second, as receiving from
Isaac, and at his death transmitting to his grandsons, blessings that had value
only for one who worships and believes a God with power over "things to come"
(Hebrews 11:20). |
VI. MODERN INTERPRETATIONS OF JACOB
For those who see in the patriarchal narratives anything--myth, legend, saga--rather
than true biography, there is, of course, a different interpretation of the characters
and events portrayed in the familiar Genesis-stories, and a different value placed
upon the stories themselves.
Apart from the allegorizing treatment accorded them by Philo the Jew and early
Christian writers of like mind (see specimen in ABRAHAM), these views belong to
modern criticism. To critics who make Hebrew history begin with the settlement
of Canaan by the nomad Israelites fresh from the desert, even the Mosaic age and
the Egyptian residence are totally unhistorical--much more so these tales of a
pre-Mosaic patriarchal age. Yet even those writers who admit the broad outlines
of a residence of the tribes in Egypt, an exodus of some sort, and a founder of
the nation named Moses, are for the most part skeptical of this cycle of family
figures and fortunes in a remote age, with its nomads wandering between Mesopotamia
and Canaan. and to and fro in Canaan, its circumstantial acquaintance with the
names and relationships of each individual through those 4 long patriarchal generations,
and its obvious foreshadowing of much that the later tribes were on this same
soil to act out centuries later. This, we are told, is not history. Whatever else
it may be, it is not a reliable account of such memorable events as compel their
own immortality in the memories and through the written records of mankind.
1. Personification of the Hebrew Nation:
The commonest view held, collectively of the entire narrative, specifically of
Jacob, is that which sees here the precipitate from a pure solution of the national
character and fortunes. Wellhausen, e.g., says (Prolegomena(6), 316): "The material
here is not mythical, but national; therefore clearer (namely, than in Genesis
1-11) and in a certain sense historical. To be sure there is no historical knowledge
to be gained here about the patriarchs, but only about the time in which the stories
concerning them arose in the people of Israel; this later time with its inward
and outward characteristics is here unintentionally projected into the gray antiquity
and mirrored therein like a glorified phantasm .... (p. 318). Jacob is more realistically
drawn than the other two (Abraham and Isaac)." In section IV, 4, above, we observed
that, while many of Jacob's personal qualities prefigured the qualities of the
later Hebrew people, there were some others that did not at all fit this equation.
Wellhausen himself remarks this, in regard to the contrast between warlike Israel
and the peaceful ancestors they invented for themselves. In his attempt to account
for this contrast, he can only urge that a nation condemned to eternal wars would
naturally look back upon, as well as forward to, a golden age of peace. (An alternative
explanation he states, only to reject.) He fails to observe that this plea does
not in the least alter the fact--his plea is indeed but a restatement of the fact--that
this phenomenon is absolutely at variance with his hypothesis of how these stories
of Jacob and the rest came to be what they are (see Meyer, Die Israeliten und
ihre Nachbarstamme, 250).
2. God and Demi-God:
This general view, which when carried to its extreme implications (as by Steuernagel,
Die Einwanderung der israelitischen Stamme in Kanaan, 1901) comes perilously near
the reductio ad absurdum that is its own refutation, has been rejected by that
whole group of critics, who, following Noldeke, see in Jacob, as in so many others
of the patriarchs, an original deity (myth), first abased to the grade of a hero
(heroic legend), and at last degraded to the level of a clown (tales of jest or
marvel). Adherents of this trend of interpretation differ widely among themselves
as to details, but Jacob is generally regarded as a Canaanitish deity, whose local
shrine was at Shechem, Beth-el or Peniel, and whose cult was taken over by the
Hebrews, their own object of worship being substituted for him, and the outstanding
features of his personality being made over into a hero that Israel appropriated
as their national ancestor, even to the extent of giving him the secondary name
of Israel. Stade attempted a combination of this "mythical" view with the "national"
view in the interest of his theory of primitive animism, by making the patriarch
a "mythological figure revered as an eponymous hero." This theory, in any form,
requires the assumption, which there is nothing to support, that Jacob (or Jacob-el)
is a name originally belonging to a deity and framed to fit his supposed character.
At first, then, it meant "'El deceives" or "'El recompenses" (so B. Luther, ZATW,
1901, 60; compare also the same writer, as well as Meyer himself, in the latter's
Israeliten, etc., 109, 271). Meyer proposes the monstrosity of a nominal sentence
with the translation, " `He deceives' is 'El." Thus, the first element of the
name Jacob came to be felt as the name itself (= "Jacob is God"), and it was launched
upon its course of evolution into the human personage that Genesis knows. It suffices
to say with regard to all this, that in addition to its being inherently improbable--not
to say, unproved--it goes directly in the face of the archaeological evidence
adduced under I, 1, above. The simple fact that Jacob(-el) was a personal name
for men, of everyday occurrence in the 2nd-3rd millenniums BC, is quite enough
to overthrow this whole hypothesis; for, as Luther himself remarks (op. cit.,
65), the above evolution of the name is essential to the "mythical" theory: "when
this alteration took place cannot be told; yet it has to be postulated, since
otherwise it remains inexplicable, how personal names could arise out of these
formations (like Jacob-el) by rejection of the 'El."
3. Character of Fiction:
The inadequacy of the two theories hitherto advanced to account for the facts
of Genesis being thus evident, Gunkel and others have explicitly rejected them
and enunciated a third theory, which may be called the saga-theory. According
to Gunkel, "to understand the persons of Genesis as nations is by no means a general
key to their interpretation"; and, "against the whole assumption that the principal
patriarchal figures are originally gods is this fact first and foremost, that
the names Jacob and Abraham are shown by the Babylonian to be customary personal
names, and furthermore that the tales about them cannot be understood at all as
echoes of original myths." In place of these discredited views Gunkel (compare
also Gressmann, ZATW, 1910, 1) makes of Jacob simply a character in the stories
(marvelous, humorous, pathetic and the like) current in ancient Israel, especially
on the lips of the professional story-teller. Whereas much of the material in
these stories came to the Hebrews from the Babylonians, Canaanites or Egyptians,
Jacob himself is declared to have belonged to the old Hebrew saga, with its flavor
of nomadic desert life and sheep-raising. "The original Jacob may be the sly shepherd
Jacob, who fools the hunter Esau; another tale, of the deceit of a father-in-law
by his son-in-law, was added to it--the more naturally because both are shepherds;
a third cycle, about an old man that loves his youngest son, was transferred to
this figure, and that youngest son received the name of Joseph at a time when
Jacob was identified with Israel's assumed ancestor `Israel.' Thus our result
is, that the most important patriarchs are creations of fiction" (Schriften des
Altes Testament, 5te Lieferung, 42).
It is so obvious that this new attitude toward the patriarchs lends itself to
a more sympathetic criticism of the narrative of Genesis, that critics who adopt
it are at pains to deny any intention on their part of rehabilitating Jacob and
others as historical figures. "Saga," we are told, "is not capable of preserving
through so many centuries a picture" of the real character or deeds of its heroes,
even supposing that persons bearing these names once actually lived; and we are
reminded of the contrast between the Etzel of saga and the Attila of history,
the Dietrich of saga and the Theodoric of history. But as against this we need
to note, first, that the long and involved course of development through which,
ex hypothesi, these stories have passed before reaching their final stage (the
Jahwist document (Jahwist), 9th century BC; Gunkel, op. cit., 8, 46) involves
a very high antiquity for the earlier stages, and thus reduces to a narrow strip
of time those "so many centuries" that are supposed to separate the actual Jacob
from the Jacob of saga (compare ABRAHAM, vii, 4); and second, that the presuppositions
as to the origin, nature and value of saga with which this school of criticism
operates are, for the most part, only an elaborate statement of the undisputed
major premise in a syllogism, of which the minor premise is: the Genesis-stories
are saga. Against this last proposition, however, there lie many weighty considerations,
that are by no means counterbalanced by those resemblances of a general sort which
any student of comparative literature can easily discern (see also Baethgen, op.
cit., 158). |
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(ya'aqobh; Iakob):
(2) The patriarch (see preceding article).
(3) The father of Joseph the husband of Mary (Matthew 1:15,16).
(4) Patronymic denoting the Israelites (Isaiah 10:21; 14:1; Jeremiah 10:16).
James Oscar Boyd
Tags:
angel, bible commentary, bible history, bible reference, bible study, bought birthright, children of israel, define, descendants of jacob, israel, jacob, jacob's ladder, joseph (son) sold to slavery by brothers, iakob, rachel (wife), son of isaac and rebekah, stole blessing from brother esau, twelve patriarchs, twelve tribes
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