Jacob Told Esau the Blessing Had Cost Him Everything

The Message He Sent Ahead

Jacob had heard the news about Esau's four hundred men and wept bitterly. Then he composed himself and wrote a message.

It was not the message of a man trying to project power, or of a diplomat managing a dangerous reunion with the careful language of advantage preserved. It was a confession. He told Esau: think not that the blessing your father gave me profited me. For twenty years I served your uncle Laban, and he deceived me, and changed my wages ten times. I labored in cold and heat. I was robbed of what I earned and then earned it again. What I have now is not from the blessing Isaac spoke. What I have is from the work of my hands in a foreign land and from God's mercy at the end of it.

He wanted Esau to understand that the inheritance of Abraham was not a prize that the thief of the blessing got to enjoy while the rightful heir went without. The blessing was words. What became of the words was twenty years of hard use in a country that did not care about his grandfather's covenant.

What He Was Actually Saying

He was telling his brother: you did not miss what you think you missed.

The birthright Esau had sold and the blessing Esau had lost were not the same as the inheritance of Abraham, not the part that manifested as comfort and ease and material reward. They were the calling, the burden, the obligation to carry a covenant through twenty years of Laban's deceptions and produce something worth giving to the next generation. Esau had sold his portion of that work for a bowl of lentils and had gotten, in exchange, twenty years of the life he actually wanted: the sword, the hunt, the freedom from his father's God.

Jacob was not falsely modest. He was making a theological argument under extreme pressure, trying to convince his brother that the robbery had not been what Esau thought it was.

The Gifts That Followed the Words

Then he sent the gifts. He did not only send words. He sent goats and rams and camels and cattle and donkeys, wave after wave of animals with servants between them, each wave arriving before Esau as a separate tribute, each servant instructed to say: these are from your servant Jacob, a gift to my lord Esau. Jacob is coming behind us.

The strategy of spacing out the gifts was Jacob's own invention, preserved in the tradition as a piece of practical psychology. Each wave would soften Esau's anger a little more before the next wave arrived. By the time Jacob himself appeared, Esau would have received so many gifts that the anger might have been drained before the two men faced each other.

Buying Down the Danger

Jacob was not only reasoning with his brother. He was paying for time, buying down the danger with animals, trusting that Esau's resentment could be managed if he received enough of what he had always wanted: recognition, material tribute, his brother on his knees calling him lord.