An Embrace and a Cautious Reunion

The children are divided by mother, “unto Leah, and unto Rachel, and unto the two handmaids”, so that each woman stands with her own. Jacob has spent the night preparing for this sight, and when it comes it is exactly what the messengers reported: Esau, and four hundred men.

Only one child is named, Joseph, the eleventh son, placed with his mother at the very back. “Hindermost” is acharonim, the last. The protection shown him here is the favour that later turns his brothers against him (37:3–4).

Letters from Canaanite vassals to Pharaoh, found at Amarna, open “at the feet of my lord seven times and seven times I fall”. Jacob’s seven bows use the court etiquette of a subject before a king, the reverse of Isaac’s blessing. Joseph’s brothers will bow to him in 42:6.

“Fell on his neck” is how Joseph greets Benjamin (45:14) and Jacob (46:29). In Hebrew Bibles the word “and kissed him” carries dots over its letters, one of fifteen places in the Hebrew Bible marked with such dots. Some rabbis took the dots as doubt about Esau’s sincerity; others read them as marking that this once he kissed with his whole heart.

“Who are those with thee?” is literally “who are these to thee?” “Graciously given” is chanan, from the same root as chen, the grace Jacob keeps asking to find. He speaks of God to Esau as Elohim, God, and not by the covenant name.

The handmaidens come near and bow, “they and their children”. Bilhah and Zilpah are not named in the whole scene, but they lead the household in the gesture of submission.

Everyone in the family bows to Esau, the scene Jacob will protest when Joseph dreams of it: “Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee?” (37:10). Joseph comes near before Rachel, the reverse of verse 2, and Rashi pictured him stepping in front to shield his mother.

Esau calls the droves “all this camp”, machaneh, the word for Jacob’s two companies, which had been sent as a present, minchah. He asks what it means, and Jacob answers as plainly as he ever has: to buy favour.

“I have enough” is yesh li rav, I have much. Rav is the word of the oracle before their birth, “the elder, rav, shall serve the younger” (25:23). The elder brother says that he has plenty and wants nothing of his younger brother’s.

“Thou wast pleased with me” is ratsah, the verb used when God accepts an offering, “it shall be accepted for him” (Leviticus 1:4). Jacob has made the gift in the language of sacrifice, and he speaks of Esau’s reception as an offering accepted.

Esau said “I have much”; Jacob says “I have all”, yesh li kol. “Urged him” is patsar, to press, the verb used when Lot “pressed upon them greatly” to make the angels stay (19:3). Esau takes what his brother calls “my blessing” only after being pressed.

“Before thee” is lenegdekha, which can mean in front of or alongside. Esau may be offering to travel next to Jacob, matching his pace, which makes Jacob’s reply about the pace of children and livestock more pointed.

“Tender” is rakkim, the word for Leah’s “tender” eyes in 29:17. “With young” is aloth, nursing ewes and cows, the word of Isaiah 40:11: “and shall gently lead those that are with young.” Overdriving them for a single day would kill them; the shepherd knows the cost.

“Lead on softly” is le-itti, at my own gentle pace; David uses the same root when he pleads “Deal gently for my sake with the young man, even with Absalom” (2 Samuel 18:5). Jacob promises to come to Seir. Genesis never records that he went.

“What needeth it?” is lammah zeh, “why this?”, the words Rebekah used when the twins struggled inside her: “why am I thus?” (25:22). The sons who fought in her womb now part with a polite refusal of an escort.

Esau goes back “that day”, and Genesis does not show him again until 35:29, when he and Jacob bury Isaac together, as Isaac and Ishmael buried Abraham. The four hundred men never draw a weapon.

Succoth means booths, the rough shelters of branches built for cattle. It lay east of the Jordan, and Gideon later punished its elders with thorns (Judges 8:16). Jacob “built him an house”, the first time a patriarch is said to build a house instead of pitching a tent, which suggests a stay of some length.

Shechem was Abram’s first stopping place in Canaan, where the LORD first appeared to him and he built his first altar (12:6–7). Jacob’s first camp inside the land is at the same place. “Before the city” means facing it, outside its walls.

“Pieces of money” is qesitah, a unit of unknown weight found only here, in Joshua 24:32 and in Job 42:11; the Greek translates it “a hundred lambs”. Joseph’s bones are buried in this very plot (Joshua 24:32), and John 4:5 places Jacob’s well beside it.

“Erected” is natsav, the verb for setting up a pillar, not usually used for building an altar, and some scholars think the original object was a pillar. El-elohe-Israel means “God, the God of Israel”. It is the first time Jacob uses his new name, and he puts it in the name of God.