Genesis 33:11 – “…Please accept my blessing that is brought to you, because God has dealt graciously with me, and because I have enough.” Thus he urged him, and he took it.
Around 20 years after Jacob had first left home after tricking his brother Esau out of both his birthright and blessing, Jacob returns home unsure of what he’ll find, assuming his brother will still be angry and warring against him, as they had their entire lives. However, he finds a completely different story that I pray gives you hope.
In this scene, we see the beginning of reconciliation between what had been a broken family and two brothers that had been at war for their entire lives. This scene should give us hope that it is possible to see a broken family healed, even if it has been decades of pain and distance.
Jacob then worshiped God by building an altar at Shechem, which made sense as it was the first place that his grandfather Abraham had been visited by God and where Abraham built his own altar in Genesis 12:6-7.
Genesis 33 closes with the wondrous portrait of the transformed Jacob worshiping the God not only of Abraham, and Isaac, but also now the God of Jacob. And much like the literary flow of the story of his grandfather Abraham, the story of Jacob/Israel appears to have climaxed, as he is now an older man blessed by God and ready to relax in peace.
However, his presence in Shechem is an ominous hint at what awaits in the following chapter because he was supposed to continue on to Bethel.
How does this reconciliation point to a bigger relationship reconciled between us and God according to 2 Corinthians 5:19-21?
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