(Genesis 49:28-33; 50:15-20)
Jacob was a man who wrestled throughout his life. From the very beginning of his story—even before the beginning of his story—while still in his mother’s womb, Jacob was tussling with his brother Esau (Genesis 25). That in utero conflict was a foreshadowing of most of Jacob’s relationships with others. He was a man of conflict. His ambition and assertiveness drove him forward and alienated him from those closest to him. However, by the end of the book of Genesis, near the end of Jacob’s life, something is quite different. The Jacob we encounter in Genesis 49 is a changed man in many ways from the Jacob of earlier chapters. The dreams of Jacob’s youth have been tempered by the reality of his life. The ambition and assertiveness of his early life have been transformed into Jacob’s utter reliance upon his sons, especially Joseph. Rather than rushing forward to make things happen as was so characteristic of his early years, in his later life Jacob had to learn the discipline of waiting for things to happen. The dynamic of his life had changed in fundamental ways.
Perhaps Jacob simply was a more mature man, the product of his many years. Perhaps the realization that the tormented family relationships of his early life had been passed on to his children gave him pause. His two dramatic encounters with God—one at Bethel (Genesis 28) and one at the Jabbok (Genesis 32)—may have had a deeper impact upon him that one might first imagine. Regardless of what led to the change, the change itself is quite remarkable.
Throughout the biblical narrative, Jacob was a fully enfleshed, complex human being—perhaps the first such character portrayed in the Bible. He was at the same time a schemer ready to take every advantage of anyone in his way and yet also someone who would be a victim of his father-in-law, Laban. Jacob has wrestled with almost everyone with whom he has come into contact—and especially with God.
Overarching all of Jacob’s life has been the prenatal pronouncement by God that Jacob would be the master of his older brother (Genesis 25:23). His life has been characterized by the interplay between Jacob’s own cussedness and the repeated blessing by God. All of this has been woven together into the quilt that is Jacob’s life in these final years. In Jacob’s life we see hints of that inscrutable back-and-forth between the purposes and determination of God to make something of this family on the one hand, and the willfulness and self-reliance of a lively human partner on the other.
We are tempted to ask, what role did Jacob play in the making of the man he became by the time we reach Genesis 49? Was his life simply a spinning out of the divine oracle that announced his destiny to rule over his brother prior to his birth? Or was it a product of Jacob’s own propensity to manipulate circumstances and people to his own purposes? I don’t think it is easy to sort this out this dynamic of life—either in Jacob’s story or in our own lives.
On one level, like Jacob’s life, our lives are the product of our decisions; and sometimes of the decisions of those around us. A lifetime is comprised of small, daily decisions and occasional momentous ones. In the moment of choice, the decisions we make actually do make a difference as they ripple forward into our future. Change one decision and the whole story of our lives might read differently.
In the biblical story we might ask, what if Jacob had chosen not to purchase the birthright from Esau? What if he had not stolen the blessing from Isaac through his grand deception? What if Jacob had not fled for his life when he learned of Esau’s plan to kill him? What if Jacob had been a little less devious and a little more honest? What if…? And the list could go on.
But the Jacob story teaches us that we are not simply the product of our own decisions. We are not entirely autonomous, independent, free agents—no matter what our culture teaches us. True to our Christian faith, the Genesis narratives perceive another dynamic at work. It is the promise of God; it is the divine purpose toward which God is at work.
Jacob appears to rebel often against this other dynamic. He wrestles with God (Genesis 32:22-32). He wants to seize and master his destiny. Jacob acts as though everything depends upon him. This claim to autonomy was the delusion under which Jacob lived until his wrestling with God in Genesis 32. In that night-time encounter he learned that his own freedom had bumped up against Another; One who would not be manipulated easily to Jacob’s purposes. Jacob had to learn that submission to Another is key to a life lived in full. That lesson was not learned in one night; it took Jacob a lifetime. There is no doubt that submission was hard for Jacob; it did not come naturally. He was by his very nature grasping; but over his lifetime he had to learn to release his grip and to receive rather than take.
It is in the context of the overarching dynamic of God’s purposes and God’s promise that we can come to understand submission. Submission to another is an idea that runs counter to the spirit of our time. For the delusion of our day is that we can live autonomous lives. We can live without constraints upon our decisions; we can be free to choose whatever serves our own purposes and achieves our own goals. Along this path, others become significant only to the extent that they promote or hinder our purposes—and rather than people, others become pawns to be played when they are helpful to us and discarded when they are no longer useful. At the altar of autonomy, obedience to another is viewed as an escape from freedom, a refusal to be responsible for our own lives, and a denial of our fundamental human dignity. But Jacob’s story teaches us a quite different lesson.
Many years ago, Eugene Peterson wrote a book entitled A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. I think it’s an outstanding title. It reminds us that submission to another (or obedience) is not a one-time event. It is an act of trust that is renewed every day. It is a long obedience; in our impatient world, anything long is a challenge. But it is also obedience along a trajectory, along a path, on a journey, in the same direction. The destination may not be of our own choosing. That’s why it’s obedience. But with our decisions to submit or not submit, we navigate our way through life.
In Jacob’s case, he had left behind him a trail of broken relationships. Attempts at reconciliation, such as that between Jacob and his estranged brother Esau, simply patched over the deeper wounds. Jacob even bequeathed his fraternal alienation from Esau to his own sons through his favoritism of Joseph. It was only after years of separation and multiple trials that reconciliation came to this strife-torn family. Near the end of the Book of Genesis, after all of the strife within the family of Jacob and Joseph, Joseph’s brothers were deeply concerned about what Joseph would do to them after their father Jacob died. Had the reconciliation with Joseph been real or was it just a front which would dissolve away at the death of Jacob? Would Joseph then take his revenge upon them? This anxiety threatened to destroy the recently established reconciliation between Joseph and his brothers and within the family of Jacob.
Joseph, having learned of this concern, addressed his brothers to reassure them. “Do not worry about the past and what you have done; you meant it for evil (to harm me), but God intended it for good.” (Genesis 50:19-21)
There it is; in that short sentence Joseph summed up the dynamic of not only his own life, but the life of his father—and indeed, the dynamic at work in the world of human experience as we know it. Jacob frequently had lived his life without regard for others and especially without regard for the God of his ancestors; he assumed that he could make decisions that would stick. He thought that he could play all the cards on the table.
What Joseph articulated and what Jacob had had to learn was that there is Another who holds some of the cards; whose purposes trump even the most ambitious and effective autonomies. Jacob—and then his son Joseph—came to realize that obedience to Another is simply letting God play his cards and discerning when to lay down our cards in submission. It is this dynamic interaction which permits us to weave together lives of substance, purpose and joy. This realization is a life-transforming experience for us, just as it was for Jacob.