Genesis 33-36

Chapters 33 and 34 provide a poignant contrast between forgiveness and revenge. In chapter 33, Jacob is anxious about meeting his brother Esau again because Esau had wanted to kill Jacob before he left for Laban’s house. However, the anger of Esau turns into forgiveness and welcome. This passage reminds us that many of the things we worry about in life never happen in the end. How much better it is to follow the advice of Jesus in Matthew 6 and Paul in Philippians 4:6-7…

“Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

The C. S. Lewis quote at the end of chapter 33 is a meaningful one. Referring to his forgiveness of a cruel headmaster whom Lewis had as a boy, he writes…

“Last week, while at prayer, I suddenly discovered—or felt as if I did—that I had really forgiven someone I have been trying to forgive for over thirty years. Trying and praying that I might. When the thing actually happened—sudden as the longed-for cessation of one’s neighbor’s radio—my feeling was ‘But this is so easy. Why didn’t you do it ages ago?” (Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer)

Forgiveness is both easy and hard. It is easy when it comes as a gift from God, but hard in the sense that we sometimes have to work at it over a lifetime, praying for God’s help in the endeavor all the while.

Chapter 34 contains one of those Bible stories one does not hear in Sunday school. Here, we see one of the opposites of forgiveness in action: namely revenge. This story gives a whole new meaning to “Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah”. When Dinah is raped by Shechem, her brothers, the sons of Jacob/Israel, take revenge by killing Shechem and all the males of his tribe. The sons of Israel resort to a ruse to accomplish this: they get the Shechemites to agree to circumcision in return for Dinah’s hand in marriage. While the Shechemites are still disabled due to the mass circumcision, Simeon and Levi attack. Again, we see the family trait of deceitfulness being handed down from one generation to the next.

By contrast, Jacob seems to have learned his lesson. Fearful of the response of the surrounding tribes to his sons’ attack on the Shechemites, Jacob follows the word of the Lord and goes up to Bethel where he makes an altar to the Lord. As Jacob seeks the Lord, he also enjoys the Lord’s protection: a terror from God falls on all the cities around so that they decide to leave Jacob and his tribe alone.

Each place where Jacob worships the Lord he marks with a pillar. I wonder: what are the pillars, where are the special altars of worship, in each of our lives? Can we look back over the past year or years and see times and places where the Lord intervened for good in our lives? How have we marked or remembered these special occasions? How might we mark such special occasions of God’s communication with us in the future?

In the rest of chapter 35, we have the poignant story of Rachel’s death and the birth of Benjamin, a child who is especially prized by Jacob for obvious reasons. This is followed by a simple sentence that relates that Reuben lay with his father’s concubine. (We are getting a clear picture that the sons of Israel are not a particularly righteous people.) Then there is a listing of the twelve sons of Jacob. (As we shall see in our journey through the Bible, the twelve tribes of Israel are counted in various ways.)

Chapter 36 provides a genealogy of Esau’s descendants (the Edomites) and the sons of Seir. Such information was apparently important to the first readers of this account but, understandably, this chapter is not of much interest to us today. This just goes to show that there are some parts of the Bible that are more valuable than others. It would be no loss to me if this chapter were not even in the Bible. However, to lose a chapter like 1 Corinthians 13 would be severe indeed.

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Will Vaus

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