6.4 ESAU AND JACOB

words: “The days of the years of my pilgrimage are ‘an hundred and thirty years ; few
and evil have the days of the years of my life been.” ;
But among his long travels there were some bright days, like the wells and palm-trees
which grow in the bleak, barren desert.
It was a very bright day when, twenty years after he had been obliged to run
away from home to escape from the anger of his brother, and had gone forth a
wanderer with only his staff in his hand, sleeping on the ground, the stones his pillow,
he returned home with his wives and children, and sheep and cattle, and the
brothers were reconciled and became friends again. At first when Jacob was on his
way back to Beersheba, where his old father still lived, he dreaded meeting Esau. He
remembered how they had parted in anger, and when he heard his brother was coming
to meet him with four hundred armed men he was afraid, for he and the people with
him were all unarmed. There was only one thing he could do. His troubles had
brought good out of evil. Just as gold is put over the hot fire until all the dross comes
away and only the bright shining gold remains, so it had been with Jacob. He no

 

longer trusted in his own cleverness, but in God’s goodness, and in his distress he prayed
to God to help him and turn Esau’s heart from anger to kindness. And God heard his
prayer and answered it, for “Esau, as soon as he saw him, ran to meet him and embraced
him, and fell on his neck and kissed him.” It must have been one of the happiest days
in his life when the heart of Esau his brother was changed toward him in spite of the
falsehood and deceit with which he stole away his blessing. . :

Soon after this the brothers separated again. They were so different in habits and
character that it was wiser for them not to try and live together in the same place. -But
they parted as friends, and some years after that they met again at the tomb of Isaac their
father, for when he died both Esau and Jacob came to bury him.

How pleased the old dying man must have been to know they had made up their
quarrel. He looked back to that day nearly fifty years before when he thought he was dying
and the brothers fought and hated one another because each wanted the blessing. And
now he was really dying, and as they stood as ffiends.at his bedside he blessed them both
with a father’s blessing. ; os