What was it, then, which pressed so heavily upon this man’s mind? It was
the remembrance of an old sin. He feared that God would leave him now to Esau’s wrath, because he knew that Esau’s wrath was God’s punishment of his sin. He feared that Esau’s hand would slay his children, as God’s chastisement for the sins of his childhood. He remembered that he had lied to Isaac his father, and mocked the dimness of his aged eyes by a false appearance; now he trembled lest his father’s God should leave the deceiver and the mocker to eat the bitter fruit of his old sin. It was not so much Esau’s wrath, and Esau’s company, and Esau’s arms, which he feared—though all these were very terrible to this peaceful man,—as it was his own sin in days long past, which now met him again, and seemed to frown upon him from the darkness before him. In vain did he strive to look on and see whether God would guide him there, for his sin clouded over the light of God’s countenance. It was as when
he strained his eyes into the great sand-drifts of the desert through which he had passed: they danced and whirled fearfully before him, and baffled all the strivings of his earnest gaze.
But the time of trial was drawing very near. And how did it end? Instead of falling upon him and slaying him and his; instead of making a spoil of the oxen, and the asses, and the camels, and giving the young children to the sword, Esau’s heart melted as soon as they met; he fell upon his brother’s neck and kissed him; he looked lovingly upon the children who had been born to him in the far land; he spake kindly of the old days of their remembered childhood, of the grey-haired man at home; and he would not take even the present which his brother had set apart for him.
Jacob knew who it was that had turned his brother’s heart, and he felt more than ever what a strong and blessed thing prayer
and supplication was. Nor did he forget his childhood’s sin against his God. It had looked out again upon him in manhood, and reminded him of God’s holiness, of his many past misdeeds, and made him pray more earnestly not to be made to “possess the iniquities of his youth.”
* * * * *
Father. What should we learn from this account of Jacob’s meeting Esau?
Child. That God remembers and often visits long afterwards the sins of our childhood.
F. Does not God, then, forgive the sins of children?