Compassionate Brother (part 1)

…Esau ran to meet him, embraced him, hugged his neck, and kissed him. Then they both wept. – Genesis 33:4  (NET)

Jacob and Esau, the twin sons of Isaac and Rebekah, were estranged brothers.  Owing to the events recorded in the twenty-seventh chapter of Genesis, in which Jacob (at his mother’s insistence) presented himself before his father, in place of his brother, in order to receive his father’s blessing, Jacob feared Esau.  There, we hear Esau exclaim “He has tripped me up two times!  He took away my birthright,” referring to Esau’s “selling” of his birthright to Jacob as recorded in chapter twenty-five, “and now, look, he has taken away my blessing!” (27:36b)  We go on to find out that “Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing his father had given to his brother.  Esau said privately, ‘The time of mourning for my father is near; then I will kill my brother Jacob!” (27:41)  Clearly, hostility ran high.  For this reason, having effectively taken everything from his father that was supposed to fall to his brother---or at least all that was truly important (the birthright and the blessing), Jacob left the house of his father and mother, with instructions to do so until his “brother’s rage subsides” (27:44b). 

Of course, we know the story well.  Jacob went to live with his uncle, a man named Laban.  Before, during, and after arriving there, we admit that Jacob’s story is vivid and entertaining.  Needless to say, he lives quite the interesting life.  On the way to Laban’s place, Jacob has a dream of a “stairway erected on the earth with its top reaching to the heavens” (28:12b).  Undoubtedly, the alert reader (or hearer) will hear in this an echo of the story of the tower of Babel, as recorded in the eleventh chapter of Genesis.  There, following the great flood (which must have served as a motivating factor in their plans), we learn that “The whole earth had a common language and a common vocabulary” (11:1).  Thus, with this unifying factor, they said “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens so that we may make a name for ourselves.  Otherwise we will be scattered across the face of the entire earth” (11:4).  Though we shall return to it, we here skip over the well-known result of this desire, to find that, after a short digression into the genealogy of Shem (11:10-26), we are introduced to Abram and to the first pronouncement (in a series of pronouncements) that would come to be referred to as the Abrahamic covenant. 

As these words that mark the beginning of the people of God on earth (Israel and the church), informing us as to God’s desires and purposes for His people, we do well to hear them often.  The Lord speaks to Abram and says “Go out from your country, your relatives, and your father’s household to the land that I will show you.  Then I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great, so that you will exemplify divine blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, but the one who treats you lightly I must curse, and all the families of the earth will bless one another by your name” (12:1-3).  More will be appended to this declaration. 

In the thirteenth chapter, the Lord, after instructing Abram to “Look from the place where you stand to the north, south, east, and west” (13:14b), He informs Abram that “I will give all the land that you see to you and your descendants forever.  And I will make your descendants like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone is able to count the dust of the earth, then your descendants also can be counted” (13:15-16).  In chapter fifteen, Abram is told to “Gaze into the sky and count the stars---if you are able to count them… So will your descendants be” (15:5b).  In chapter eighteen, allusion is made to the covenant, and we hear that “Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all the nations on the earth will pronounce blessings on one another using his name” (18:18).  Finally, in the twenty-second chapter, the Lord reiterates His covenantal promise to Abraham in the wake of his willingness to sacrifice his son (in light of the promises related to his son and therefore demonstrating Abraham’s hope in a resurrection), saying “I will indeed bless you, and I will greatly multiply your descendants so that they will be as countless as the stars in the sky or the grains of sand on the seashore.  Your descendants will take possession of the strongholds of their enemies.  Because you have obeyed Me, all the nations of the earth will pronounce blessings on one another using the name of your descendants” (22:17-18).

Why make mention of the tower of Babel, and why rehearse the compilation of statements related to the Abrahamic covenant?  Well, apart from the obvious connection between the words of the story about the tower that would reach to the heavens (followed by the introduction of Abram and God’s covenant) and the stairway “with its top reaching to the heavens,” what we find immediately following this vision of the stairway (or ladder), while bearing in mind that Genesis is presented in a narratival format, is quite interesting.  In chapter eleven we find that “the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the people had started building” (11:5), and that the story ends with “So the Lord scattered them from there across the face of the entire earth… and from there the Lord scattered them across the face of the entire earth” (11:8a,9b)---the very thing against which the tower was meant to guard. 

The contrast could not be more stark, as with Jacob’s stairway we read that “the Lord stood at its top.  He said, “I am the Lord, the God of your grandfather Abraham and the God of your father Isaac” (28:13).  Echoing the breadth of the Abrahamic covenant, the Lord goes on to say, “I will give you and your descendants the ground you are lying on.  Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west, east, north, and south.  All the families of the earth will pronounce blessings on one another using your name and that of your descendants” (28:14).  Whereas the builders of the tower that was intended to reach into the heaven were scattered, the Lord, from the top of the stairway that did indeed reach into heaven, informs Jacob that “I am with you!  I will protect you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land.  I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you!” (28:15)