What could exceed this? And, in patriarchal days, this was seen at this altar or temple at Bethel. The glory was there. The Lord appeared there, and spoke there to Jacob, as afterwards to Solomon. Luz was as Ornan's threshing-floor, and each of them had become God's house. And Jacob called the place, a second time, Bethel, but without any of the misgivings that had soiled his spirit when he was there at the first. He is now there in the spirit of Solomon before the glory in the Temple, knowing God's return to him, and His nearness and presence with him.
Then, in the freedom and strength of all this, our patriarch resumes his journey. He goes from Bethel to Bethlehem, and from thence, by the tower of Edar, to Mamre, in the south country, where his father Isaac was dwelling. But in none of these places do we read of house or land again. It is the tent and the altar and the pillar, the journeying onward still, the burial of his aged father, and at last, as one with his fathers, dwelling in the land where they had dwelt before him. See chap. xxxvii. 1.
This was indeed a different journey, in its moral character, from the one which he had before taken from Padan to Mount Gilead, and from thence onward to Shechem through Mahanaim and Succoth. Jacob is unrebuked now. We have no wrestling as at Peniel, no peremptory voice summoning away as from Shechem. No fears are awakened in our hearts respecting him, lest the tent may be deserted again, or the call of God be forgotten. The word "Bethel," on the lips of the Lord and on the ear of Jacob, had done wonders. "A word spoken in due season, how good is it!" surely we may again remember. "Behold, God exalteth by His power: who teacheth like Him?" And He might surely have challenged His erring but convicted child, after this second scene at Bethel, and said to him in the words of Isaiah, "Thus saith the Lord thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, I am the Lord thy God which teacheth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldest go."
It is not that all is perfected as yet. Reuben's iniquity may tell us this too painfully. But the rising up from the place of nature, and the moral extrication of his heart from the spirit of the world, have taken place. Nor is it that he is as yet beyond the place of discipline. That is not so. He does not find Rebecca with Isaac at Mamre. He never sees his mother again, the mother who had so preserved him and cherished him. His mother's nurse he buries; and more than that, his beloved Rachel he loses. He has indeed the pledge of strength in "the son of his right hand," but that same son told of sorrow touching Rachel. And thus he is under discipline still. But-he is in God's way, as well as under God's hand. That is the new thing. Discipline is telling upon him, and reaching its end. The path is shining, and its latest hour will soon be found to be its brightest.
Part IV.-When we enter upon chapter xxxvii. we find Joseph to be principal in the action, and principal in the thoughts of the Spirit of God. This is evident from the second verse: "These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph being seventeen years old," &c. But we get detached notices of Jacob from this chapter to the end of the book, and which give us the last portion of his history.
He was now, as I may call him, a widower. He appears before us as a lonely, retired man, with more of recollections than of present activities about him. He was indeed the patriarch, the common head and father of all the households of his children, and so recognized by them. But the business of the family was rather in their hands; and he was passing his widowerhood without seeking to be again the stirring, energetic man he had once been.
His retirement, however, was not like that of his father Isaac. Isaac, for the last forty years of his life, is not seen. He appears to have been laid aside, as a vessel unfit for use, as I have observed of him, not wearing out, as the word is, but rusting out. See "Isaac," p. 185. But this was not Jacob's closing years. He was no longer a man of business, but his retirement was not inactive. The richest, happiest, and purest exercises of his soul seem to be now, and they enlarge and deepen as they advance; chastened and disciplined as we have seen, his soul is now rendering the fruit of divine husbandry. We cannot fully say that Jacob ever reached the high dignity of being a servant of God; but we may say, when we have reached the end of his story, that he was fruitful to Him.
For there is a difference between service and fruitfulness. Service is more manifested and active, fruitfulness may be hidden. The hand or the foot may serve, and so they should. Tipped with the blood and with the oil, they are to be instruments in the hands of the Master of the house; but it is in the deep, secret places of the heart that the husbandry of the saint, in the power of the Spirit through the truth, is to be yielding fruit to God. Fruitfulness is known in the cultivation of those graces and virtues which give real and intrinsic character to the people of God-those habits and tempers and properties of the inner man which, with God, are of great price. It is within, or "out of the heart," that those herbs, meet for Him by whom the soul is dressed, grow fragrant and beautiful, such as bespeak the virtue of that rain from heaven which has fallen upon it.
It is this fruitfulness, as I judge, which will be found in our Jacob, in this last scene of his pilgrimage. We have had some fainter notice of this, while yet he remained in Canaan, and ere he took his journey to Egypt. But the richer harvest of this husbandry is gathered during the seventeen years that he spent in that land, ere he himself was gathered to his fathers. For this participation of God's holiness, this fruit of the discipline of the Father of spirits, is commonly gradual-and we shall find it to be so in Jacob-the light shining more and more unto the perfect day; the last hour being the brightest.
In the course of chapter xxxvii., which I have now reached, we are told that the brethren of Joseph were gone to feed their flocks at Shechem. But why was this recurrence to Shechem? Was it that the purchased land, the family estate, was there?20 It was a dangerous place to be connected with. It had proved a snare to the whole family, and the Lord had called them from it. Had Jacob been as watchful as he should have been, we might not now have heard again of Shechem and of the flocks and the brethren there. But still, it is happy to see that there were symptoms of uneasiness in his mind about it; for he sends Joseph to find out how the flocks and the brethren were faring there, as though there were some misgiving in his heart about them in so suspected a place. And this may be received as the pulse of a quickened state of soul in our patriarch, though that pulse be but weak.
So afterwards in chapter xliii., when he is sending away his sons, the second time, into Egypt to buy food, he commits them into the hand of the Lord as "God Almighty." "God Almighty," says he, "give you mercy before the man, that he may send away your other brother and Benjamin." This also tells happily of Jacob's condition of soul-that in some measure at least he had recovered the power of that name which he had once lost, and which, as we saw, all the exercise through which he had passed at Peniel had not given back to him.
From these testimonies we may say that Jacob was under godly exercise, by the hand of the Father of his spirit, in those early days. Beyond this I need not notice him, till we see him preparing to go down to see his son in Egypt before he die. But that moment was a very important moment indeed in the progress of his soul-and we must meditate on it.
On his hearing that Joseph was yet alive, and governor over all the land of Egypt, we read that his heart fainted, for he believed it not. It was the Lord's doing-for so the fact was-but it was marvellous in Jacob's eyes. He "believed not for joy, and wondered;" for this was receiving Joseph alive from the dead. At first this was too much for him; but when he saw the waggons which king Pharaoh had sent to bear him, and all that belonged to him, down to Egypt, his spirit revived, and he said, without further delay, "It is enough, Joseph my son is yet alive; I will go and see him before I die."
Nature thus spake at once in Jacob, as soon as the report was believed; and without further challenge he begins his journey to Egypt. But a calmer moment, as we shall now see, succeeds this outburst or ebullition of nature, and then the way of nature is challenged.
"And Israel took his journey with all that he had, and came to Beersheba, and offered sacrifice to the God of his father Isaac."
This is remarkable. Why these sacrifices at Beersheba? There had been none at Mamre, ere Jacob set out. Why, then, this halt at Beersheba, and this service to the God of Isaac?
This may at first be wondered at; but it will be found to be common enough (I had almost said, necessary) in the ways of the people of God.
Nature had acted in Jacob at Mamre, as soon as he believed the report about Joseph, and set him at once on the road to Egypt. But now the spiritual sensibilitieshave waked up, and are challenging the conclusions and ways of nature. Very common this is. The saint is now feeling reserve, where the father had felt none. Jacob had not dealt with the Lord about this journey, as he was beginning it; but the mind of Christ in him, his conscience in the Holy Ghost, so to speak, is now taking the lead, and the judgment of nature is reviewed, and reviewed in the light of the Lord.
Many years before this the Lord had said to Isaac, Go not down into Egypt (xxvi. 2); and this had been said to Isaac in a day of famine, like the present. And this is remembered by Jacob as soon as he reaches Beersheba, the last spot in the southern quarters of the land, which lay in the way to Egypt, and in the view of which was stretched out that country to which Isaac had thus been warned not to go.
All this accounts to me for Jacob's sacrifices at Beersheba to the God of his father Isaac. And all this has great moral meaning in it. It was a mighty stir in Jacob's soul, and it was very acceptable to the Lord. As we find in the day of the siege of Samaria. The poor lepers outside the city immediately feed themselves and gather for themselves among the tents of the Syrians. It was natural, almost necessary, that they should do so. But soon afterwards another mind begins to stir in them, as here in our patriarch, and they say, We do not well: this day is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace: if we tarry till the morning light, some mischief will come upon us: now therefore come, that we may go and tell the king's household. 2 Kings vii. This was the action of a better mind, like this present stir in Jacob's spirit. And this awakening in Jacob is so acceptable with the Lord, that He comes at once to him with these words of consolation, "I am God, the God of thy father: fear not to go down into Egypt; for I will there make of thee a great nation: I will go down with thee into Egypt; and I will also surely bring thee up again: and Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes."
When we consider this for a moment, we may well say, What a communication this was! How thoroughly did it let Jacob know that the Lord had read all his heart, his present fears and his earlier affections, the mind of the father and the mind of the saint, the desires of nature and the sensibilities of the spirit. "Fear not to go down into Egypt" calmed the present uneasiness of his renewed mind; "Joseph shall surely put his hand upon thy eyes," gratified the earlier desire of his heart over his long-lost child. How full all this was! How perfectly did it prove the reality of the sympathy of Christ with all that was stirring in His elect one! Jacob found pity in Him, and grace for seasonable help. "When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, thou knewest my path," was said by David, and is here surely understood by Jacob. The groan that was not uttered by him in man's ear, had, in allits meaning, entered the ear of Him who searcheth the heart. And after this, Jacob can no longer halt at Beersheba, or question his further journey to Egypt.
He accomplishes it; and his first sight of Joseph, as we might have expected, and as the Lord would have fully warranted it to be, was the occasion of fullest joy to his long-bereaved heart. And I would here observe, that I have felt, as to Jacob in these his last years, that he had become a very affectionate old man; and this is a happy impression, another witness of an improved state of heart. For a calculating man, such as he had been in the habits and activities of his life, is commonly, and somewhat of moral necessity, wanting in thoughtfulness and desire respecting others. He is too much, of course, his own object. But now it is not thus with Jacob. His grief at the loss of Joseph was intense. He bewails Simeon bitterly as well, and seems ready to brave the horrors of famine, rather than hazard the loss of any more of the children. And then, at the close of these years, his adoption of the sons of Joseph, his sympathy with Joseph in his sorrow over the preference of the younger, his reference to Rachel and her burial at Ephrath, and his mention of Leah, and of his fathers and their wives in connection with Machpelah, all is from a loving heart. And the general grief which his death occasioned would tell us that he had been, in the midst of the people, a loved, affectionate old man. It is delightful to mark all this.
But with all this we find him, in his own person and ways, very much the same widowed, solitary man in Egypt as we saw him to have been for years in Canaan ere he came out. Only it was thus under very strong temptation to be otherwise; for he maintained his strangership, though he now had opportunity to make the earth again the scene of his efforts and expectations. For we like reflected dignity. We know the charms of it full well. If nature were given its way, we would be making the most of our parentage, and connections, and set off before others our alliance with that which is honourable in our generation. Jacob, in Egypt, had some of the very best opportunities for indulging his heart in that way. His son was then the pride of that land. Joseph was the second man in the kingdom, and Joseph was Jacob's son. Here was a temptation to Jacob to come forth and show himself to the world. Joseph's father would have been an object. Would not all eyes be upon him? Would not place be given to him and way made for him, whenever or wherever he appeared? Nature would have said, If Jacob had such opportunities, let him show himself to the world. The spirit of the world must have suggested that; as long afterwards to a greater than Jacob, who had no reflectedglories to exhibit, but all personal glories. "If thou do these things, shew thyself to the world." See John vii. 4. But, in the spirit of one who, in his way, had overcome the world, Jacob continues a retired man through all his life of seventeen years in Egypt. He was a stranger, where every human attraction joined in tempting him to be a citizen.
To me, I own, this is exquisite fruit of a chastened mind, fruit of divine discipline, the witness of a large participation of the holiness of God, the holiness that suited the calling of God, the calling that made Jacob a stranger and pilgrim on the earth. At Shechem he reminded us of Lot in Sodom, but here he reminds us of Abraham in his victory over all the offers of the king of Sodom.
But with this separation from the world there is nothing of false humility. In the midst of all this practical strangership he knows and exercises his dignity under God. As he enters, and as he leaves the presence of king Pharaoh (chap. xlvii.), he blesses him. This is to be observed. As he stood there in the royal presence, he owned himself a pilgrim on the earth, somewhat poor and weary too; but at his introduction and on his exit he blesses him, as one who knew what he was in the election and grace of God; for "without all contradiction the less is blessed of the better." This is not what old Simeon did when he had the infant of Bethlehem in his arms, but this is what old Jacob now does, when he has the greatest man on the earth before him. He made no requests of the king, though he might reasonably have expected whatever he asked. He was silent as to all that Pharaoh or Egypt would do for him, but he speaks as the better one blessing the less again and again. This was like the chained prisoner of Rome before the dignitaries and officers of Rome. Paul let Agrippa know-he let the Roman governor know-that he, their prisoner, carried and owned the good thing, and that he could wish no better wish for them all, than that they were as he was. And this is faith that glorifies grace-the proper business of faith-precious faith indeed, whether in a prisoner-apostle, or in an exile stranger-patriarch. Rome and Egypt have the wealth and power of the world, such as men will envy and praise, but Paul and Jacob carry a secret with them that makes them speak another language.
This is all full of meaning in our Jacob. The glory is hidden in an earthen vessel, but it is there, and the vessel knows it to be there. Jacob does nothing in those Egypt-years of his, to make history for the world. He takes no part in its changes; its interests and progress are lost upon him; he is at the disposal of others, taking what they may give him, and being what they may make him; but he knows a secret that takes his spirit above them. Others may flourish in Egypt, he only spends the remnant of his days there. See xlvii. 27, 28.
I own indeed that I stand in admiration of this way of the Lord, of the Spirit of God, with Jacob. To such a life as his had been, most suited was such an end as this now is. It is a poor thing that we should need such a pause as this, at the end of the journey; but, if needed, it is beautiful to see it fruitful, after this manner. During that long husbandry of his soul under "the Father of spirits," that seventeen years in Egypt, how commonly, I dare to suppose, did Jacob sit before the Lord, meditating the past years, with some confusion of face; and the fire would kindle then, and the refiner's work go on.
But when these silent and retired years are about to close, we find him, somewhat abruptly, stirring and earnest. It is with Joseph respecting his burial. He will have Joseph not only promise, but swear, that he will bury him in the land of his fathers. xlvii. 30. This is also very beautiful. We never find him urgent about the conditions of his life in Egypt; he seems willing, as I said, to take what they give him and to be what they make him; but as to his burial, he is, now, all urgency and decision. He will have it confirmed to him by an oath, that his son will take his dead body to that land which witnessed the promise of God to him. He is earnest and peremptory now, as he was indifferent before. For faith likes to read its title clear, full, and indefeasible. Abraham would have the inheritance by covenant, as well as by word. Chap. xv. Jacob now will have the burial, such a burial as is worthy of the hopes of a child of Abraham, by oath, as well as by promise.
All this shows us another Jacob than what we once knew him to be. He is now partaker of God's holiness; his mind and character are in consistency with the call of God. He is a stranger with God in the earth, but in sure and certain hope of promised inheritance. This is fruitfulness; I say not that it is service; but it is beautiful fruitfulness in the inner man.
In chapter xlviii. which follows, we get that one act in his life which is signalized by the Spirit as the act of faith. See Heb. xi. 21. But the whole chapter is beautiful. All is grace on God's part, and all is faith in the heart of Jacob. For it is the proper business and duty of faith to accept the decisions of grace, and that is just what grace is doing here. Grace adopts the sons of Joseph, who had no title in the flesh, and takes them into the family of Abraham. Grace gives the place and portion of the firstborn, the double portion, as though they were Reuben and Simeon. Grace sets the younger of them above the elder. And grace gives Joseph, or the adopted firstborn, an earnest of his coming inheritance. To all this Jacob bows and is obedient. In faith he accepts the decisions of grace. Nature may resent this; but Jacob is true to the word of grace committed to him. Joseph was moved when Jacob was setting Ephraim above Manasseh. Jacob feels for him; but he fulfils the word of God committed to him, let nature be surprised or wounded as it may. He does not listen to nature in his son Joseph, as he had listened to it on a like occasion, years and years ago, in his mother Rebecca.21
Surely this is beautiful: faith thus accepting the decisions of grace. But in this, Jacob was also God's oracle. He was not only in faith obedient to the purpose or counsel of grace, but he was used of God as a vessel of His house, used to declare His mind, to represent and act His purposes in these mysteries of grace, the adoption, and the inheritance, and the earnest.
And as this vessel was thus so fully approving itself fit for the Master's use, it is still used. We still see him and hear him as God's oracle, as we enter chapter xlix. He calls his twelve sons, and blesses them. He delivers, under the Spirit, the words and judgments of God touching them. But this was a very trying moment to him. It exceeds all in what it cost him. In preferring Ephraim to Manasseh, he suffered something. But he, who did not then attend to nature in his son, will not now attend to it in himself. He goes through this sorrowful, humbling scene, feeling it bitterly at certain stages of it; but he still goes on with it and through it. He had now to retrace, under the Spirit, and as the oracle of God, and in their presence, the ways of his sons in past days, and the fruit of these ways in days still to come. He had to do much of this with a wounded heart, and with recollections that might well be deeply humbling. For these words upon his sons were a kind of judgment upon himself for his past carelessness about his children. But still he does go on and finishes his service, as the oracle of God, and that too with such sympathies and affections as give us some further beautiful witnesses of his purified state of soul.
Levi's and Simeon's iniquity has to come before him. But he resents this now in a way, no trace of which we find in him in the day when that iniquity was perpetrated. It troubled him then because of the mischief which it might work for him among his neighbours. "Ye have troubled me," said he, "to make me stink among the inhabitants of the land, among the Canaanites and the Perizzites: and I being few in number, they shall gather themselves together against me, and slay me; and I shall be destroyed, I and my house." Chap. xxxiv. 30. This was the mind he was in when he was a citizen in Shechem. But now it is on other ground altogether, higher and purer ground, that his soul refuses this iniquity. It was iniquity; that is enough; and he will not let his honour be united with it. Then he opens his eyes on the uncleanness of Reuben, just to be shocked by it. And then, as the backsliding of Dan is summoned up before him, his whole soul is moved, and he is cast on the hope of God's salvation, his only escape, the only escape which he would own, from all that was around him, behind him, or before him. "Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse's heels, so that his rider shall fall backward. I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord."
What affections and energies are here! How finely this vessel did its service in the house of God! Poor David knew more than sorrow for the loss of Absalom in the day of Absalom's fall. That slaying of his son brought sin to remembrance. And here Jacob entered, with full personal sympathies, into the counsels of God, and had his own part and share in recollections that must have stirred the conscience.
He not only announced these judgments of God, but felt them. He was not a mere vessel, but a livingvessel. And he was faithful to Him that appointed him, though the service was, after this manner, full of humbling and bitterness.
We saw Jacob "dumb for a season." This we noticed as the character of many years of our Patriarch's closing life. But his mouth had now been opened by faith; and once opened, God uses him abundantly as His oracle. This is like Zacharias, the Zacharias of Luke i. He also, as we know, had been dumb for a season; but in faith he wrote his child's name upon a writing-table, and then the Lord used him as His prophet.
Here the story ends; but I believe we have gathered the moral of it. The Lord's hand with Jacob tells us how unwearied He is with His foolish and wayward ones. It is variety, too, as well as patience, that we see in this constant moral culture. Jacob had to learn different lessons; and He, with whom he had to do, set Himself in patient grace to teach them all to him. Bethel, Peniel, Bethel again, and Beersheba, witness this, as we have seen. And then, throughout a changeful course, at home and abroad, in youth and in manhood, among strangers or at the side of his father and his mother, Jacob betrayed much that needed chastening, and the lesson was taught him again and again.
He reminds us of the disciples in the days of the Lord. In how many ways had the Lord to correct and instruct them! And it was the same to the end; and the patience of their divine Teacher was the same to the end. The ignorance, the selfishness, the constant moral mistakes they made and betrayed, the different ways in which they crossed the mind of their Master, all glorify the goodness that waited on them. And it may remind us also of Him who bore with Israel's manners in the wilderness for forty years. And it may be also a remembrancer to ourselves of much of that patience and grace which we are daily experiencing at the same hand.
Discipline, the discipline of a child, is illustrated in Jacob, as we observed at the beginning, ere we began to consider his story, and as we now have seen it to be. And discipline is healthful, and does good like a medicine. If we need it, it is the only thing for us. When in the days of Samuel, Israel asked for a king, would it have been well for them, if the Lord had given them David? The Lord had David in reserve for them; but would it have been seasonable, would it have been healthful for them, if David had been given to them at once, when with a rebellious will they were asking for a king? Surely, they must first be made to know the bitterness of their own way. A Saul must be given when Israel asks a king. This was discipline, and this was the only thing that would have been healthful for them. But when they have tasted the bitterness of their own way, in pity of their misery, the Lord will bring out that which He has in reserve for them, the man after His own heart that shall fulfil all His pleasure.
How perfect was all this! Had David been given to Israel in the day of 1 Sam. xi. the whole moral of the story would have been lost to us. But the love is the same, whether it be discipline or consolation, medicine or food.
This is the characteristic lesson we learn from the story of our patriarch.
With Machpelah and his burial, Jacob then endsthese dying intercourses with his sons, as he had begunthem. xlvii. 29, xlix. 29. He had Joseph's word and oath already on this matter, and now he must put all of them under the same engagements to him about it. Death was more important to him than life. Life kept him in Egypt, death would restore him to Canaan. Death linked him with the God and the promise of his fathers. The hopes of faith lay beyond life, and outside Egypt. In spirit he was saying, Absent from the body, present with the Lord; "Confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord." As far as patriarchal faith could utter this, Jacob was uttering it. And at the very last we read, "When Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet into the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people."
It was surely no barren or unfruitful time he had spent in Egypt. Though to him and to his hands the business of life was all over, he was not rustingout, as we had to say of Isaac. Jacob's silence was husbandry. We rejoice in these last days as his best days. We rejoice still more in the grace which provided this pause for him at the end of his journey, that, in the language of the Psalmist, he might recover strength before he went hence, and was no more seen.
Gracious indeed is it towards all of us His elect ones, to have such a sight as this, such a specimen (may I so call it?) of divine patience, wisdom, and goodness, as this. It is peculiar indeed, having its own place amid the infinite forms and characters which grace assumes in relation to the need of the saints. Jacob's last days were his golden days. To others, to their flocks and herds, Egypt was a land of Goshen; but it was not to Jacob's flocks and herds, for we do not read that he had any; but it was to Jacob's soulthat Egypt was a Goshen, the very richest, fairest, best-watered land his spirit had ever enjoyed. It was more really the gate of heaven to him than Bethel had been. It was more the face of God to him than Peniel had been. He had the Lord in secret and in silence with him there, but in real, living power. With all that would naturally have kept him at home on the earth he was a stranger. In Egypt Jacob was a delivered, extricated man, as from the beginning and all through he had been a chosen and a called one.