JACOB’S STRUGGLE AT THE JABBOK.
Having thus disposed of his family and his flocks, Jacob remains behind to pray. It was the great struggle of his life. And the burden of that midnight cry was, “Deliver me, I pray Thee, from the hand of my brother, from thehand of Esau; for I fear him, lest he will come and smite me, and the mother with the children.” At length the angel of the Lord said, “Let me go, for the day breaketh!” But Jacob, as if his life hung on the issue, which it doubtless did, replied, “I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless me!”
God heard his prayer and delivered him out of the hands of his brother, Esau.
As Jacob passed over the Jabbok “the sun rose upon him,” and he set forward on his journey a changed man.
In due time Jacob reached the Jordan at Succoth, thence to Shechem, and then to Bethel. At each of these places he halted.
It seems that for a considerable time after the return to Palestine, the images, or household Penates, which Rachel had stolen from her father, remained in the family, perhaps connived at by Jacob, till, on being reminded by the Lord of the vow which he had made at Bethel when he fled from the face of Esau, and being bidden of Him to erect an altar to the God who appeared to him there, Jacob felt the glaring impiety of thus solemnly appearing before God with the taint of idolatry cleaving to his beloved Rachel, said, “Put away the strange gods from among you.” After thus casting out the polluting things from his house, Jacob, at Bethel, amidst its sacred associations, received from God an emphatic promise and blessing.
After his spirit had been purified and strengthened by communion with God, by the assurance of the divine love and favor, by the consciousness of evil put away and duties performed, it was, as he journeyed away from Bethel, that the chastening blow fell and Rachel died. Doubtless the blessings that came as a result of the cleansing and purging from idolatry at Bethel had their effect in bringing Rachel to a higher sense of her relation to that Jehovah in whom her husband, with all his faults of character, so firmly believed.
Five miles south of Jerusalem, and a mile and a half from Bethlehem, in the way to Hebron, is a beautiful chapel, sacred to the memory of Rachel. This is the place wherebeautiful Rachel surrendered her own life for the life of her second son, whom she named Ben-oni (son of my pain). The wish she had uttered at Joseph’s birth, that God would give her another son, now, after a long period, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years, is at last realized.
Rachel held Jacob’s love to the last, and even down to his old age he mourned her loss. The stone pillar which he set up at her grave is the first recorded instance of the setting up of a sepulchral monument; caves having been up to this time spoken of as the usual places of burial. The tomb of Rachel is one of the shrines which Mohammedans, Jews and Christians unite in honoring, and concerning which their traditions are identical. At the time of our visit, it happened to be the time of new moon, when the chapel was open and all lighted up with olive oil lamps, and the chapel and crypt filled with weeping women. The lamentations were real and sincere, and, had we remained very long, we should have wept out of very sympathy for the grief-stricken mourners of this princess of Israel. The thought that here this lovely woman in White Raiment sacrificed her own life for another was in itself depressing. This first mortuary monument, sacred to the memory of a great love and a great sorrow, has come down to us through more than three thousand years. One may see it “but a little to come to Ephrath.”
“Tell me, ye winged winds,That round my pathway roar,Do ye not know some spotWhere mortals weep no more?Some lone and pleasant dell,Some valley in the west,Where, free from toil and pain,The weary soul may rest?The loud wind dwindled to a whisper low,And sighed for pity as it answered, ‘No!’”
“Tell me, ye winged winds,That round my pathway roar,Do ye not know some spotWhere mortals weep no more?Some lone and pleasant dell,Some valley in the west,Where, free from toil and pain,The weary soul may rest?The loud wind dwindled to a whisper low,And sighed for pity as it answered, ‘No!’”
“Tell me, ye winged winds,
That round my pathway roar,
Do ye not know some spot
Where mortals weep no more?
Some lone and pleasant dell,
Some valley in the west,
Where, free from toil and pain,
The weary soul may rest?
The loud wind dwindled to a whisper low,
And sighed for pity as it answered, ‘No!’”
Leah probably lived for some years after Jacob reached Hebron. Whether she ever found grace in his sight is not stated. However, in Jacob’s differences with Laban bothLeah and Rachel appeared to be attached to him with equal fidelity, while later, in the critical moment, when he expected an attack from Esau, his discriminate regard for the several members of his family was again shown by his placing Rachel and her child hindermost, in the least exposed situation, Leah and her children next, and the two hand-maids, with their children, in front. Of her death nothing is said. From the expression, “There I buried Leah,” (Gen. xlix, 31), we are led to believe that she died at Hebron before Jacob went down into Egypt. She was buried in the family sepulchre, “in the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre.” Since Hebron is only twenty-five miles from Rachel’s tomb, near Bethlehem, it is quite strange that Jacob did not bury his beloved Rachel in the family sepulchre, along with Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and Leah, and where he was himself finally buried.