The Patriarchs / Being Meditations upon Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Job; The Canticles, Heaven and Earth.

by J. G. Bellett

Part I.--This earliest portion of Jacob's history, his birth, and his life in the house of his father in the land of Canaan till he was about seventy years of age,[¹⁹] I have generally anticipated in the preceding paper, entitled "Isaac." And I may be allowed to say, necessarily so; because it is involved in those chapters of the Book of Genesis, where Isaac is principal. I must therefore refer to it.

Part II.--Jacob begins to be seen under discipline in chap. xxviii., and there it is where this second part of his history opens, and where also, in the Book of Genesis, he becomes the chief or leading character.

In his journey out towards Padan, but ere he left the borders of Canaan, at the place called Luz, the Lord meets him. This was not his father's bed-side, where he was sinning, but a lonely, dreary, distant spot where his sin had cast him, and where the discipline of his heavenly Father was dealing with him. In such a place God can meet us. He cannot appear to us in the scene of our iniquities, but He can in the place of His correction. And such was Luz to Jacob. It was a comfortless spot. The stones of the place were his pillow, and the sky over his head his covering; and he had no friend but his staff to accompany and cheer him. But the God of his fathers comes there to him. He does not alter his present circumstances or reverse the chastening. He lets him still pursue his way unfriended, to find, at the end of it, twenty years' hard service at the hand of a stranger, with many a wrong and injury. But he gives him heavenly pledges, that hosts on high should watch and wait around him.

The Lord had made, as we know, great promises to Abraham: the same were repeated to Isaac, and are now, at Bethel, given to Jacob. But, to Jacob, something very distinct from these common promises is added: "And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of." v. 15. This was a new promise, an added mercy; just because Jacob needed it, as Abraham and Isaac had not. Jacob was the only one of the three who needed that the Lord would be with him wherever he went, and bring him home again. Jacob, by his own naughtiness, had made this additional mercy necessary to himself, and, in abounding grace, he gets it; and the vision of the ladder pledges it. The promises to Abraham and to Isaac had not included this providential, angelic care. They had remained in the land; but Jacob had made himself an exile, that needed the care and watching of a special oversight from heaven, and he gets it. And it is to this, I believe, that Jacob alludes, when he says to Joseph, The blessings of thy father have prevailed above the blessings of my progenitors. Chap. xlix. 26. This angelic care, that watched over him, under direct commission from heaven, in his days of exile and drudgery, which his own error had incurred, distinguished him as an object of mercy, and gave him "blessings" above those of his "progenitors." And in this character he reached "the bounds of the everlasting hills." He was heir of the kingdom as a debtor to special mercy, through that abounding grace that had helped him and kept him amid the bitter fruits of his own naughtiness. As David, in his day, triumphed in "the everlasting covenant" made with him, though for the present his house was in ruins through his own sin. 2 Samuel xxiii.

This is God's way, excellent and perfect in the combination of grace and holiness. And upon this, let me observe, that in all circumstances there are two objects, and that nature eyes the one, and faith the other. Thus, in divine discipline, such as Jacob was now experiencing, there is the rod, and also the hand that is using it. Nature regards the first, faith recognizes the second. Job, in his day, broke down under the rod, because he concerned himself with it alone. Had he eyed the counsel, the heart, or the hand that was appointing it (as we are exhorted to do, Micah vi. 9), he would have stood. But nature prevailed in him, and he kept his eye upon the rod, and it was too much for him.

So in failures, as well as in circumstances, there are two objects. Conscience has its object, and faith again has its object. But conscience is not to be allowed to rob faith of its treasures, the treasures of restoring, pardoning grace, which the love of God in Christ has stored up for it.

There is great comfort in this. Nature is not to be over-busy with circumstances, nor conscience with failures. Nature is to feel that no affliction is for the present joyous, and conscience or heart may be broken; but in either case, faith is to be at its post and do its duty; and much of the gracious energy of the Spirit in the epistles is engaged in putting faith at its post, and encouraging it to do its duty. The Apostles, under the Holy Ghost, take knowledge of the danger and temptation we are under by nature; and while it is abundantly enforced, that conscience is to be quick and jealous, yet it is required that faith shall maintain itself in the very face of it.

To know God in grace is His praise and our joy. We naturally, or according to the instincts of a tainted nature, think of Him as one that exacts obedience and looks for service. But faith knows Him as one that communicates, that speaks to us of privileges, of the liberty and the blessing of our relationship to Him.

But Jacob's soul was not quite up to this way of grace. He found the place where the ladder and the angels were seen, and where the God of his fathers spoke to him, to be "dreadful." In some sense it was too much for him. As it was long afterwards with Peter on the holy hill. God is true to the aboundings of His grace. Jacob may say, "How dreadful is this place!" Peter and his companions may have their fear; but the ladder, nevertheless, reaches to heaven, and angels are up and down upon it in the sight of the patriarch; and the glory on the Mount still shines. For the grace of God is richer than the apprehensions of the soul about it. God shines in Himself above our experiences. And it is in Himself He is to be known, and not in the reflections of our experience.

Still, like Peter on the hill, Jacob, in some sense, found it good to be at Luz, and he called the place Bethel. It was the house of God to him, for God had there been with him, and spoken to him; it was the gate of heaven in his eye, for there the angels had appeared, as descending from their own place on high. "This is none other but the house of God," says he, "and this is the gate of heaven."