God Recited Jacob's Vow Back Line by Line
Twenty years earlier a frightened boy had asked for bread, a coat, and a road home. Now he was back, and four hundred men were riding toward him.
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The Sun Went Down on Him at That Place
The sun went down and Jacob stopped where he stood, out in open country with a stone for a pillow and his brother's promise to kill him still fresh behind him.
He ran into the place. That is the verb the verse uses, and it is the verb the prophets use for what happens when a man runs into God. Jeremiah uses it of the true prophets, let them entreat the Lord. So the Holy Spirit came down on Jacob in the dirt, and Jacob prophesied.
What he got was not only a ladder with angels going up and down it. He saw his children, generations out, sinning. He saw the Spirit lift off them and go. The sun setting over his head was the sun Micah would later watch go down over the prophets, the day turning black above them and the word shutting in their mouths.
He woke and made a vow out of pure fear, and the terms were small. "If God will be with me, and will keep me on this road I am walking, and will give me bread to eat and a garment to wear, and I come back to my father's house in peace, then the Lord will be my God."
Every Clause Paid
Twenty years later he was on the road home with four hundred men riding toward him, and he heard the vow read back.
"You testified about Me yourself," the Holy One said. "You told your wives, the God of my father has been with me. That was the first thing you asked for.
"You asked Me to keep you. I kept you from Laban.
"You asked for bread to eat. I took your father-in-law's livestock off him and put it in your hands.
"You asked for a garment to wear. Think about the day the streaked goats were separated out of the flock.
"You asked to come home in peace. You came whole into the city of Shechem."
Not one clause dropped in twenty years. A frightened boy's list, kept and returned with the items ticked off in the order he had said them.
My Lord Esau
With all of that still in his ears, Jacob sent his messengers ahead and told them exactly what to say. "Thus shall you say to my lord, to Esau."
My lord. He handed his brother the title with his own mouth.
And then this. "Your servant Jacob says: I stayed with Laban as a stranger and nothing more. Not one of the blessings your father gave me has ever reached my hand. He blessed me with the dew of heaven and the fat of the earth, and what I have is an ox, an ass, and a flock, and those are not heaven and they are not earth. If you hate me, you hate me over blessings I never got."
Jeremiah had a line for a man who does that. What will you say when He calls you to account, since you yourself taught them to be captains over you.
One Ox, One Ass
Rabbi Judah heard nothing in the inventory but an ordinary man talking the ordinary way, the way anyone says the dog barked when he owns four dogs. Rabbi Nehemiah counted the animals one at a time and heard something else.
The ox is Joseph, the firstborn bull with the horns, and it is carried down as a tradition that Esau falls to nobody except the sons of Rachel. The ass is the King Messiah, poor and riding on an ass. The flock is Israel. The manservant and the maidservant are Israel too, with their eyes going up to their master's hand and staying there.
So Jacob sent his brother a careful list of everything he did not own, and the list was the roster of everyone who would eventually finish him.
Your Servant Judah
Centuries later the same sentence was still being written out by hand. Antoninus could not do enough for Rabbi Judah the Prince. Rabbi Pinchas remembered the honors as past counting. And every time Rabbi Judah sent a letter back, he signed it the same way: your servant Judah asks after your welfare.
It grated. Antoninus finally told him to stop. Do not write to me like that again.
Rabbi Judah wrote back and kept the signature. "I write to you this way because I am no better than Jacob my father. When he sent word to Esau, what did he say? Thus says your servant Jacob. I never made myself anyone's master."
The ox and the ass are still on the list. The man holding it still calls the other one my lord.
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