Jacob Sat Down in Canaan and Misfortune Came Through the Door

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The Chiefs of Edom Went Past in a Column

Jacob stood over the roll of his brother's descendants and counted. Chief Lotan. Chief Timna. Chief Magdiel. Chief after chief after chief, a whole administration of them, every one descended from Esau, every one with land and men and a title that meant he gave orders.

Jacob had wrestled a stranger at a ford and walked away limping, but he had still come out ahead. He had gotten past Laban. He had gotten past Esau himself, out on the road with four hundred men, by bowing seven times and sending droves of goats ahead of him.

He looked at the list and could not do it again.

"Who is going to stand up against all of these," he said.

One Spark Out of His Own Forge

The answer he got was a story about a blacksmith.

Camels came into a town loaded with flax. More camels behind them, and more after that, until the bales were stacked past the roofs and a smith standing in his doorway looked at the whole shining mountain of it and said, "Where is anyone going to put all that?"

A man beside him laughed. "You are worried about storage. One spark out of that forge behind you and there is nothing left to store."

That was the answer. All those chiefs and all that flax, and out of Jacob's own house would come the spark. The house of Jacob would be fire and the house of Joseph would be the flame, and the house of Esau would be stubble in front of it.

So Jacob stopped watching the road from Edom. He settled in Canaan where his father had lived as a stranger, and he sat down.

What Happens Right After Anyone Sits Down

Sitting is the most dangerous verb in the book, because every time a man sits down in Scripture, misfortune is already standing in his doorway.

Israel sat down in Egypt, in the good pasture of Goshen, and the next thing recorded is that the days drew near for Jacob to die. The people at the mountain sat down to eat and drink, and got up to dance in front of a calf, and three thousand of them were dead by evening. Israel settled at Shittim and began going after the daughters of Moab. Judah and Israel sat in safety, every man under his own vine, and God raised up an adversary against Solomon. The adversary was Hadad, of the royal seed of Edom. The chiefs Jacob had been afraid of took two hundred years and came anyway.

And Jacob sat in the land of Canaan, and the very next line in the account is Joseph bringing his father a bad report about his brothers.

The worst of them is the one nobody notices. The brothers threw Joseph into a dry pit and then sat down to eat bread. They were passing the loaf around when they lifted their eyes and saw the caravan coming up from Gilead, camels carrying spice and balm and myrrh down to Egypt, and Judah said what he said, and the boy went into the traders' hands with his brothers' crumbs still on the ground.

Everything That Happened to the Father Happened to the Son

Jacob's brother envied him. Joseph's brothers envied him.

Jacob ran for his life to Haran and worked fourteen years for a wife. Joseph went down to Egypt in a rope and worked his way up from a cell.

Jacob told Laban he had covered every loss himself, whether the animal was stolen by day or stolen by night. Years later, in a prison, Joseph told a royal cupbearer the same word about himself. I was stolen. Stolen out of the land of the Hebrews.

So the spark that was supposed to burn Edom spent thirteen years underground, and the father who had been promised that spark tore his clothes and refused to be comforted and said he would go down to his son in mourning.

The Last Time They Sat Down

Years later Benjamin walked to Egypt with his brothers, the youngest and the one their father had sworn would never leave the house. They put him in the middle and kept him there the whole road, because their father had sworn the boy would never leave the house, the wolf of the family walking under guard by the sheep, and Joseph lifted his eyes in his own hall and saw his mother's other son standing in the crowd of them.

Then the steward seated the eleven of them at the table.

He put them in order. Firstborn first, then the next, then the next, straight down to the youngest, and the brothers stared at each other because nobody in Egypt could have known the order they were born in. The portions came around from Joseph's own table. The lion of the family ate quietly beside the ox.

They sat down, all of them, and for once nothing fell.