If you had stood near to that man, you might, perhaps, have heard him speaking to God in prayer and thanksgiving; you might have heard him saying to himself, “with my staff passed I over this Jordan, and now I am become two bands:” or you might have heard him earnestly calling upon the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac his father, to keep him safe in the great danger which now lay close before him. His mind was certainly very full of that danger; for he kept looking up from the sand on which his eyes were often fixed, and gazing as far as he could see over the hills before him, as if he expected to see some great danger suddenly meet him on his way, and as if, therefore, he wished to be quite ready for it.
If you looked into his face, you could see at once that he was not a common
man. He was not a very old man; his hair was not yet grey upon his head; and yet it seemed, at the first glance, as if he was very old. But as you looked closer, you saw that it was not so; but that many, many thoughts had passed through his mind, and left those deep marks stamped even on his face. It was not only sorrow, though there was much of that; nor care, though he was now full of care; but besides these, it seemed as if he had seen, and done, and felt great things—things in which all a man’s soul is called up, and so, which leave their impress behind them, even when they have passed away.
He had seen great things, and felt great things. He had seen God’s most holy angels going up to heaven, and coming down to earth upon their messages of mercy. He had heard the voice of the Lord of all, promising to be his Father and his Friend. And only the night before,
the Angel of the covenant had made himself known to him in the stillness of his lonely tent, and made him strong to wrestle with him for a blessing, until the breaking of the day. So that it was no wonder, that when you looked into his face, it was not like the face of a common man, but one which was full of thought, which bore almost outwardly the stamp of great mysteries.
But what was it which now filled this man with care? He was returning home from a far land where he had been staying twenty years, to the land where his father dwelt. He had gone out a poor man; he was coming home a rich man. He was bringing back with him his wives, and his children, and his servants, and his flocks, and his herds; and of what was he afraid? Surely he could trust the God who had kept him and blessed him all these twenty years, and who had led him now so far on his journey?
Why should he fear now, when he was almost at his father’s tent?
It was because he heard that his brother was coming to meet him. But why should this fill him with such fear? Surely it would be a happy meeting; brothers born of the same father and of the same mother, who had dwelt together in one tent, kneeled before one father’s knees in prayer, and joined together in the common plays of childhood,—surely their meeting must be happy, now that they have been twenty years asunder, and God has blessed them both, and they are about to see each other again in peace and safety, and to shew to each other the children whom God had given them, and who must remind them of their days of common childhood. And why then is the man afraid? Because when he left his father’s house this brother was very angry with him, and he fears that he may have remembered his anger all these twenty years, and be
ready now to revenge himself for that old quarrel.
And yet, why should this make such an one to fear? Even if his brother be still angry with him, and have cruel and evil thoughts against him, cannot God deliver him?—cannot the same God who has kept him safely all these twenty years of toil and labour, help and save him now? Why then does he fear so greatly? He has not forgotten that this God can save him—he has not for a moment forgotten it; for see how earnestly he makes his prayer unto Him: hear his vows that if God will again deliver him, he and all of his shall ever praise and serve him for this mercy. Yet still he is in fear; and he seems like a man who thought that there was some reason why the God who had heard him in other cases should not hear him in this.