'of the raiment' of those ancient chiefs, and we bless them, and we feel that it is 'as the smell of a field which the Lord 'hath blessed,' full of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the virgin earth.

"Then Jacob "lifted up his feet" and came into the land "of "the children" of the East. And he looked, and behold 'a well in the field; and lo! three flocks of sheep lying by it, ' and a great stone was on the well's mouth.' The shepherds were there; they had advanced far away from the city of 'Nahor.' It was not the well outside the walls, with the hewn staircase down which Rebekah descended with the pitcher on her head. Rachel1 comes, guiding her father's flocks, like the daughters of the Bedouin chiefs at the present day; and Jacob claims the Bedouin right of cousinship: 'And it came to pass 'when Jacob saw Rachel, the daughter of Laban his mother's 'brother, and the sheep of Laban his mother's brother' [observe the simplicity of the juxtaposition], 'that Jacob went near and 'rolled the stone from the well's mouth, and watered the flock 'of Laban his mother's brother; and Jacob kissed Rachel, and 'lifted up his voice and wept.' Everything which follows is of the same colour. Bethuel, the aged head of the family in Rebekah's time, is dead; and Laban has succeeded, the true type of the hard-hearted, grasping Sheykh of an Arabian tribe; Laban, the ordinary likeness of one side of the Arabian character, as Esau is of the other. Then begins the long contest

of cunning and perseverance, in which true love wins the game at last against selfish gain. Seven years, the service of a slave, thrice over, did Jacob pay. He is the faithful Eastern 'good 'shepherd;' 'that which was torn of beasts he brought not 'unto his master; he bare the loss of it; of his hand' did his hard taskmaster 'require it, whether stolen by day or stolen by 'night; in the day the drought' of the desert 'consumed him, 'and the frost' in the cold Eastern nights; and his sleep de'parted from him.' In Edessa, as we have seen, was laid up for

'The spring at Orfa was pointed out by Jews, Turks, and Armenians as Jacob's well, where 'for twice seven years he

served his uncle Laban for fair and 'beautiful Rachel.'-Travels, in Harleian Coll. i. 716.

Gilead.

2

many centuries what professed to be the tent in which he had guarded his master's flocks. And at last his fortunes were Jacob at built up; the slave became a prince; and the second migration took place from Mesopotamia into Palestine, 'with much cattle, "with male and female slaves," with camels 'and with asses.' 1 The hour was come. As in the earlier flight of Abraham from the same region, the double motive is put before us: 'and Jacob beheld the countenance of Laban, ' and behold it was not towards him as before.' 'And the 'Lord said unto Jacob, Return unto the land of thy fathers and 'to thy kindred, and I will be with thee.' 'He rose up,' and once again high upon the backs of camels he set his sons and his wives, and he fled with all that he had; and Rachel stole the teraphim, the household gods of her family; and he rose 'up and passed over the' great 'river, and set his face '—not, as Abraham, towards Damascus, but right away to the southwest, to the long range of Gilead, the line of heights on the east of the Jordan which stand as outposts between Palestine and the Assyrian desert. On the seventh day the pursuers overtook the fugitives. On the undulating downs of Gilead the two lines of tents were pitched; and in the midst of the encampment of Jacob rose the five tents of himself and of his wives, the camels and the cattle moored around, the seats and furniture of the camels stowed within the covering of the tents. As in later times the fortress on these heights of Gilead became the frontier post of Israel against the Aramaic tribe that occupied Damascus, so now the same line of heights became the frontier between the nation in its youth and the older Aramaic family of Mesopotamia. As now the confines of two Arab tribes are marked by the rude cairn or pile of stones erected at the boundary of their respective territories, so the pile of stones and the tower or pillar erected by the two tribes of Jacob3 and Laban, marked that the natural limit of the range of Gilead should be their actual limit also. 'The God of Abraham and 'the God of Nahor '-here for the first and last time mentioned together was to judge betwixt them.' The variation of the

1 Gen. xxx. 43.

2 Gen. xxxi. 2, 3.

3 Gen. xxxi. 47, 48, 49.

dialects of the two tribes appears also for the first and last time in the two names of the memorial. The sacrificial feast of the covenant was made on the mountain-top: 'And early in the 'morning Laban rose up and kissed his sons and his daughters, 'and blessed them; and Laban departed, and returned to his 'place;' and in him and his tribe, as they sweep out of sight into the Eastern desert, we lose the last trace of the connexion of Israel with the Chaldæan Ur or the Mesopotamian Haran.

Jacob at Mahamaim.

3. It was the termination also of the dark and uncertain prelude of Jacob's life. The original sin, the exile, the transgression in which the founder of the Israelites was born and bred, was held up always before their eyes, a mixed ground of warning and thanksgiving. 'Thy 'first father hath sinned.'' 'Thou wast called a transgressor 'from the womb.'2 Thou shalt say, A Syrian ready to perish was my father.' 3 But this is now over. Every incident and expression in the Sacred narrative tends to fix our attention on this point of the Patriarch's story, as the crisis and turn of the whole. He is the exile returning home after years of wandering. He is the chief, raised by his own efforts and God's providence to a high place amongst the tribes of the earth. He stands like Abraham on the heights of Bethel; like Moses on the heights of Pisgah; overlooking from the watch-tower, 'the 'Mizpeh' of Gilead, the whole extent of the land, which is to be called after his name. The deep valley of the Jordan, stretched below, recalls the mighty change of fortune. 'With 'my staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I am become two 'bands.' The wide descent of the valley southward towards the distant mountains of Seir, reminds him of the contest which may be in store for him from the advancing tribe of his brother of Edom. But the story sets before us a deeper than any mere external change or struggle. It is as though the twenty years of exile and servitude had wrought their work. Every incident and word is fraught with a double meaning; in every instance earthly and spiritual images are put one over against the other, hardly to be seen in the English version, but in the original * Deut. xxvi. 5.

1 Isa. xliii. 27.

2 Isa. xlviii. 8.

clearly intended. Other forms than his own company are surrounding him; another Face than that of his brother Esau1 is to welcome his return to the land of his birth and kindred. He was become two 'bands' or 'hosts;' he had divided his people, his flocks and herds and camels into two 'hosts;' he had sent 'messengers" before to announce his approach. But as Jacob went on his way the " messengers of GOD met 'him ;' as when he had seen them ascending and descending the stair of Heaven at Bethel; and 'when Jacob saw them, he 'said, This is God's host: and he called the name of that Jacob at 'place Mahanaim;' that is, 'The Two Hosts.' The Peniel. name was handed on to after ages, and the place became the sanctuary of the Transjordanic tribes. He was still on the heights of the Transjordanic hills, beyond the deep defile where the Jabbok, as its name implies, 'wrestles' with the mountains through which it descends to the Jordan. In the dead of night he sent his wives and sons, and all that he had, across the defile, and he was left alone; and in the darkness and stillness, in the crisis of his life, in the agony of his fear for the issue of the morrow, there 'wrestled' with him One whose name he knew not until the dawn rose over the hills of Gilead. They' wrestled,' and he prevailed; yet not without bearing away the marks of the conflict.2 He is saved, as elsewhere, in his whole career, so here; 'saved, yet so as by fire.' In that struggle, in that seal and crown of his life, he wins his new name. 'Thy name shall be called no more Jacob (“The 'Supplanter "), but Israel ("The Prince of God"), for as a 'prince hast thou power with God and with man, and hast pre'vailed.' The dark crafty character of the youth, though never wholly lost-for 'Jacob' he still is called even to the end of his days has been by trial and affliction changed into the princelike, godlike character of his manhood. And what was

3

1 'Afterwards I will see his (Esau's) face.' -Gen. xxxii. 20. 'Jacob called the name of the place the Face of God: for I have " seen God face to face.'-xxxii. 30. 'I 'have seen thy face (Esau's) as though I had seen the face of God.'-xxxiii 10.

2 Like the thorn in the flesh, 2 Cor. xii. 7 (Ewald, i. 461, note).

3'Israel' seems to be a double play on the word sarah, ' to be a prince,' and also 'to fight' (Gesenius, Thes. 1338).

He with whom he had wrestled in the visions of the night, and who vanished from his grasp as the day was breaking? 'Tell 'me, I pray thee, thy name. And He said, "Wherefore is it 'that thou dost ask after My name?" And He blessed him 'there. And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel (that ❝is, “The Face of God");—for I have seen God face to face, 'and my life is preserved. And as he passed over Penuel, the 'sun," of which the dawn had been already breaking, ""burst 'upon him; and he halted upon his thigh.''

Many memorials, outward and inward, remain of that vision. 'The children of Israel,' and the children of Abyssinia also, eat not of the sinew which shrank 2 unto this day.' This was one remembrance traced back to the old ancestral victory. Another was the watch-tower of Penuel, which years afterwards guarded the passes of the Jordan, when Gideon 3 pursued the Midianites, who were retreating back into their eastern haunts, by the same approach through which the tribe of Jacob was now advancing. But a more enduring memorial is the application, almost without an allegory, into which that mysterious encounter shapes itself, as an image of the like struggles and wrestlings, in all ages of the Church, on the eve of some dreadful crisis, in the solitude and darkness of some overhanging trial. It was already so understood in part by the Prophets, He had power over the angel and prevailed; he 'wept and made supplication unto him.'4 And in modern times this aspect of the story finds its best expression in the noble hymn of Charles Wesley :