VAYISHLACH

“’Please accept the present that was brought to you, for God has been gracious to me and I have all I need.’ And because Jacob insisted, Esau accepted it.”
Genesis 33:11

The day had finally come when the two camps would reunite. Jacob was moments away from seeing his brother again after an estimated twenty years. But the deceitful man that Esau may have remembered was no more. God had worked in Jacob to change him. In some places the change had had time to set in, but in others the change was recent. In fact, it was only hours before that Jacob wrestled with the man. So moving forward, he stepped with a limp. “Ya’akov raised his eyes and looked out; and there was Esav coming, and four hundred men with him. So Ya’akov divided the children between Le’ah, Rachel and the two slave girls” (Gen 33:1).
It is in this humility and change of character that Jacob marched out to meet his brother Esau, but not before sending a number of gifts to him first.. Following all the presents of livestock, and the parade of wives and children, Jacob approached and prostrated himself on the ground seven times before his brother. A meeting that could have been set in anger seemed to subside with compassion as the brothers embraced one another. Then, Jacob formally introduced his children and himself as ‘your servant’ (Gen 33:5). It is noted by scholars that in addressing himself as ‘your servant’, Jacob made a plea to show a heart of humility.
Jacob told Esau that the livestock that had gone before him was now his, and encouraged his brother to accept. “’Please accept the present that was brought to you, for God has been gracious to me and I have all I need.’ And because Jacob insisted, Esau accepted it.” Yet within this verse is found a nugget of missed information. The word present, or gift, here in this text is the Hebrew word BERAKAH. The translation goes beyond just the word gift. It translates as ‘blessing’. It was in this act of giving these gifts to Esau that Jacob was in some form trying to give Esau back the blessing that he had once stolen. Unable to change the past, he was able to at least share a portion of the blessing God had given him.
As the meeting lingered, Esau felt the move to continue with his brother on to Seir. However, after an already long trip, a night spent wrestling, and perhaps the emotional and physical toils of the stress of meeting his brother now being relaxed, Jacob and his caravan needed a rest. Watching Esau in the distance headed for Seir, Jacob headed toward Sukkot. It was here that he pitched tents and made shelters for his animals. It is here that we see the first use of Sukkot, which is where we derive the background for what we now understand is wrapped up in one of the High Holy days.
Still moving forward, Jacob landed at Padan-Aram before finally settling within sight of Shechem. It was at Shechem that Jacob put up an altar and named it El-Elohei-Yisra’el. The translation of this is “God, the God of Israel” or” mighty is the God of Israel”. In questioning as to why he may have named it this, I think on what all he had been through. Maybe the obvious is his recent name change. Just a few nights back he had wrestled and been renamed Israel. But this man had also truly seen God’s might. He had been protected by God’s hand from his angry brother. He had been blessed by God’s hand in the brown, spotted, and speckled livestock he possessed. And he had been kept in God’s hand despite the trickery that once defined him. Jacob had lived to know God’s might, and for that God was the God of Jacob.