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Jacob
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The predestination of Jacob and Jeremiah have noteworthy parallels. The Lord foreknew Jeremiah in parallel terms which substantiate unconditional election in Romans chapter 9. God chose Jacob by election before he was born (Rom. 9:11) and therefore irrelevant to what he has done; likewise God said to Jeremiah, “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations” (Jer. 1:5). This foreknowledge is a foreknowing of a person before their birth, and that foreknowing is a foreordaining, a foreloving, and therefore fore-electing. This foreknowing substantiates a determining election as taught in Romans chapter 9, and is the same teaching referenced in Romans 8:28-30. "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom He did predestinate, them He also called: and whom He called, them He also justified: and whom He justified, them He also glorified" (Romans 8:28-30). The certain meaning of the word “foreknow” must be clarified.
“The foreknowledge of God here does not intend His prescience of all things future; by which He foreknows and foretells things to come, and which distinguishes him from all other gods; and is so called, not with respect to himself, with whom all things are present, but with respect to us, and which is eternal, universal, certain, and infallible; for in this sense He foreknows all men, and if this was the meaning here, then all men would be predestinated, conformed to the image of Christ, called by grace, justified and glorified; whereas they are a special people, whom God has foreknown: nor is this foreknowledge to be understood of any provision or foresight of the good works, holiness, faith, and perseverance of men therein, upon which God predestinates them to happiness; since this would make something out of God, and not His good pleasure, the cause of predestination; which was done before, and without any consideration of good or evil, and is entirely owing to the free grace of God, and is the ground and foundation of good works, faith, holiness, and perseverance in them: but this regards the everlasting love of God to His own people, His delight in them, and approbation of them; in this sense He knew them, He foreknew them from everlasting, affectionately loved them, and took infinite delight and pleasure in them; and this is the foundation of their predestination and election, of their conformity to Christ, of their calling, justification, and glorification: for these He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son.” – John Gill Commentary on Romans 8:29
Though God foreknew Jeremiah by election – even still – his election was not made sure within time except by persevering faith and repentance. Likewise it is for us: "Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall" (2 Peter 1:10). We must understand what we must do (through faith) so that we do not fall. These two different senses and appropriations of “election” are among those “things” that Paul wrote of that are “hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction” (2 Pet. 3:16). Under the inspiration of God, Paul was the chiefest defender and explainer of the sovereignty of God. With the sovereignty of God in view alongside those workings and relationships of God that are contradictory and inconsistent with the higher plane of God’s existence (God in the ways of God), things can become confusing. Consequentially, the system of theology known as Calvinism has wrested the doctrines of sovereignty and election so as to make void the salvation, will, election, and relationship of God’s condescension (God in the ways of man). These different senses are confusing indeed, but if we remember the two distinct ways in which God has revealed and related to us throughout biblical history (God in the ways of God & God in the ways of man), and remember that these ways are consistently present throughout scripture, then these interpretations are not strange but soundly amazing. God’s word is not simple, but hard and complex, yet when it is not wrested, and rather explained, we can escape the terrifying judgment written of old: “I have written to him the great things of My law, but they were counted as a strange thing” (Hos. 8:12). Let me attempt to steward these mysteries to you that we might also cry, when need be, the words and fears of David which were deeply in the heart of the beloved and elect saint, the apostle Paul: “Cast me not away from Thy presence” (Ps. 51:10). It is good to know what I must do as a regenerated saint, “lest I be a castaway” (1 Cor. 9:27)!
Remember Abraham? God foreknew him and had a foreknowledge of what he would do: "For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment; that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which He hath spoken of him" (Genesis 18:19). This foreknowing was a sign of his eternal election (Rom. 9:11), and yet God tried him as if He did not already know him by eternal election. After Abraham was tried by deed, God was satisfied to continue his salvation, because his deeds were evidences of his faith. God said, “Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from Me” (Gen. 22:12). Abraham was known by trial as if he was not already known by omniscient, eternal election (Known by trial – 2 Chron. 32:21, Hos. 8:1-5, Jer. 12:3). Abraham was sought out, tried, that God might know him in a different sense – by DEED – so that Abraham’s salvation was made sure and immutable (Gen. 22:16-18, Heb. 6:11-18). A salvation made sure and immutable is a confirmation that their election is of the eternal, everlasting, and immutable counsel of God in the ways of God (as taught in Romans chapter 9). In the same manner, we are taught of a foreknowing which is an unconditional election (Rom. 9:11), and yet we are commanded to make our “calling and election sure” by our deeds (2 Peter 1:10). We are taught of a final judgment where our eternity will be unalterably determined and fixed, and this judgment is according to our DEEDS (2 Cor. 5:10-11). We are taught of a condescending will and relationship of God where the focal point of our present progressive favor, present progressive love, and present progressive salvation is according to our DEEDS. Remember why God saved Moses, Jonah, Nineveh (temporarily), Hezekiah, and Ahab (temporarily) according to God in the ways of man?
The focal point of their salvation with God was based upon the manifestation of their faith, evidenced by deeds. God saved Moses because He saw the bloody circumcision, and God saved Jonah because of his repentant crying and vowing (Jon. 2:9). In Nineveh, “God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way”, and God turned from His word and intent to damn them. God saved Hezekiah, saying, “I have seen thy tears” (Isa. 38:5). God saved Ahab (temporarily) saying, “Seest thou how Ahab humbleth himself before Me? Because he humbleth himself before Me,” God said, therefore He gave him mercy. Likewise in God’s condescension (God in the ways of man), the Lord saved Jeremiah when He saw his repentance (Jeremiah 15). God saved Joshua when he sanctified Israel by the death of Achan and his family (Joshua 7).
God can know your election, foreknow your soul from everlasting, determine your predestination, and yet, simultaneously, He can relate to you as if He knew you not (responding to your disobedience with a mind of wrathful condemnation), trying you so as to know you by your deeds (as if He does not know them already by foreknowledge, as if He does not already know the depths of your heart, and as if He does not already know you by regeneration), and hang your eternal salvation upon your obedient success in faith which is evidenced through works, so that His eternal election is vindicated by a final judgment that is according to your works (as if election did not determine works) as the sense of God’s comprehensible justice that the wicked (by deed) are damned and the righteous (by deed) are saved. Because God reacts to DEEDS in a relationship, will, and word of salvation which is in the ways of man, that salvific purpose and will to save you can be changed into a will to damn you.
Jacob, above all, is the chief example of an elect individual, but had he misappropriated the doctrine of election as Calvinism does, he would be in hell. Needless to say, he was loved by an everlasting love, for God said of him: “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated” (Rom. 9:13, Mal. 1:2-3). Jacob had received the blessing of his father Isaac’s inheritance and “the blessing of Abraham” (Gen. 28:4). Jacob went out at the command of his father Isaac to take a wife of Laban’s house; unlike Esau, he obeyed his father. God promised to Jacob while asleep, robbed, humbled, broken, stripped of pride and hope, and alone in the wilderness, “Behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of” (Gen. 28:15). At this time Jacob made the LORD his God according to what was spoken to him. He was resting himself on the words of God that He would keep him and bring him again, promising to be with him. These words Jacob believed and accepted by a vow of devotion, that he would follow God if the Lord kept him and brought him again (see Gen. 28:15, 20-21). Jacob built the House of God (Gen. 28:22), and from this point onward he became a worshiper of God. He walked with God as in a secret friendship, in a life which demonstrated righteousness, purity, lowliness, suffering, hope, and faith.
Throughout the 20 years of mock slavery to Laban, Jacob was faithful, honest, and patient. Jacob said that “with all my power I have served” (Gen. 31:6). God blessed Laban for Jacob’s sake (Gen. 30:27), and He was ever with Jacob (Gen. 31:5). Since Jacob was righteous, God rewarded him according to his righteousness (Gen. 30:33), “thus God hath taken away the cattle of your father [Laban], and given them to me,” he confessed (Gen. 31:9). Jacob was greatly humbled and tried in the service of Laban, and yet he remained faithful (Gen. 31:38-42). Jacob knew that God was with him (Gen. 31:42), and he swore by God alone (Gen. 31:53); he had utterly forsaken the idolatrous gods of the house of Laban. All of this clearly represents the mind of God toward Jacob, His servant, that Jacob was obedient and in mutual cooperation with his LORD. In a life-threatening situation for Jacob, God defended him from Laban, yet as this trial came to an end, the purity of Jacob’s camp was left defiled without his knowledge – there were idols in the camp!
Jacob was intent to meet with God, the same God that met with him at Bethel (Gen. 31:13). Returning to the land of his kindred meant a revisiting of Esau, and he had been left to boil in his bloodthirsty rage throughout the years of their separation. As never before, Jacob needed the blessing and protection of his God, but since the days of his friendship with God he had never had a defiled camp with secret idolatry dwelling in the midst. Now, the secrecy of friendship between Jacob and God was severely interrupted, and it was by a secret fellowship with idolatry. Jacob knew that a meeting with his LORD ought to be free from foolishness, disobedience, and idolatry, like as the command he gave to his people when returning to Bethel later in his life – “Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean, and change your garments: and let us arise, and go up to Beth-el; and I will make there an altar unto God, Who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went. And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hand, and all their earrings which were in their ears; and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem” (Gen. 35:2-4). Jacob hated idolatry and thievery, and he declared it punishable by death, yet he didn’t know that Rachel had stolen Laban’s idols (Gen. 31:32).
After the encounter with Laban was past and “Jacob went on his way,” then “the angels of God met him” (Gen. 32:1-2). An encounter with God’s angels is of no small significance! God’s angels encamp around the righteous for delivering protection and salvation (Ps. 34:17, 2 Kings 6:17), they do visit and commune with the righteous at pivotal times of salvation (Gen. 18:2-5, 19:2-3), and their presence can also denote some act of judgment of God’s wrath, or, some discovery of sin so as to reckon its measure and report it back to God (Gen. 19:20-22). They could be vessels of God to administer a plague (1 Chron. 21:15-16, Gen. 19:22), or they could be the judges of the city, people, or nation at hand, whether it is worthy of a plague by the measure of iniquity. They would visit a city (as if God is not omniscient) so as to find out what the measure of their sin was that they might proportionately recompense it. Surely Jacob’s encounter in Genesis 32:1-2 was not without significance. God’s friendly face and willingness to bless, save, confirm, and be with Jacob had never changed…until there were idols in his camp! I do believe that Jacob was disconnected from God’s host of salvation when they beheld the idolatry that he knew nothing of, and on account of this, God refused to, was intent against, and unwilling to bless Jacob, and thereby, God meant to leave him in the hands of his brother Esau to undergo a violent annihilation.
Some may consider this interpretation to be farfetched or unbiblical, but I would remind you of God’s dealings toward His choice servant Joshua, that, when there were cursed objects in the midst of the camp of Israel in his day, God was ready to forsake him and all of Israel. Do you remember the words of the men of Israel who drank deeply of the knowledge of the Holy? They unforgettably and frightfully understood that “wrath fell on all the congregation of Israel…and that man perished not alone in his iniquity” (Josh. 22:20). Some would refuse to consider that God would be so offended and incited because of Rachel’s idolatry that He would refuse to save Jacob, but you are underestimating the holiness of God, and you are judging based upon your own considerations. It does not matter that Rachel – alone – did sin. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever! He has consistently demonstrated a willingness to condemn others, and at times, all people, on account of just one, a few, or many men’s sins. As for Jacob, what did he do? What did Jacob do to deserve this? That was a similar cry of David when God killed 70,000 Israelites on account of David’s own sin (1 Chron. 21:14). He cried, “Is it not I that commanded the people to be numbered? Even I it is that have sinned and done evil indeed; but as for these sheep, what have they done” (1 Chron. 21:17)?
Jacob’s encounter with the anger of God was as the secret wrestling of Moses against the mind of God to annihilate. Four different times God said He would destroy Israel completely (Ex. 32:10, Num. 14:11-12, 16:21-22, 41) and more times than this He did begin to destroy them, had not some intercessor prevailed by Holy Spirit-inspired wrestling. The wrestling of Moses against God during “The Great Pause” was not over until 4 separate intercessions by prayer and 2 intercessions by judgment had been completed, and then Moses, finally, wrestled God in intercession for forty days and nights, then the Covenant of God which had already been spoken of, which God had been intent on doing with Israel after their salvation from Egyptian bondage, the Passover Lamb, and the Red Sea crossing, was reestablished. This instance with Jacob is very similar…Jacob wrestled with God after his salvation from the wilderness of humiliation and horizontal abandonment, after the long and rigorous slavery of Laban’s household, and then, after God had taken him thus far, bringing him all the way to this point that He might establish Jacob in the Covenant which was before spoken to him, which promised that the Lord would be with him to take him back to his own land safely (Gen. 28:12-22).
God came to dwell in the midst of Jacob and his camp, but He beheld an idol there! He was minded to leave them to their destruction, because He disdained being in their midst because of their idolatry, similar to God’s mind in “The Great Pause” in Exodus 33:5. Jacob wrestled against the wrath of God all night long, even to the breaking of day (Gen. 32:24). Why did God refuse to bless Jacob in the Covenant and promise which He had been faithful to perform up to that day? So fierce was this wrestling that God sought to prevail against Jacob, and yet could not. “And when He saw that He prevailed not against [Jacob], He touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with Him” (Gen. 32:25). God’s command to Jacob was, “let Me go, for the day breaketh,” that He might leave Jacob to the sword of his bloodthirsty brother. Jacob, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, would not relent, but said, “I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless me” (Gen. 32:26). Jacob prevailed against the wrathful, unwilling mind of God (Gen. 32:28), and the Covenant was securely established with him henceforth. As God said to Jacob, “let Me go,” so God said to Moses, “let Me alone” (Ex. 32:10), “separate yourselves from among this congregation” (Num. 16:21-22), and “get you up from among this congregation” (Num. 16:41), but by the grace of God, through the uprising, emboldening, interceding Holy Spirit, Moses and Jacob refused and stood against these commands given by their angry God! Salvation prevailed by scarcity because God found a man! Had not God found a man, an intercessor, it would have been as the time later spoken of: “And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before Me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none. Therefore have I poured out Mine indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of My wrath: their own way have I recompensed upon their heads, saith the Lord GOD” (Ezek. 22:30-31).
“The foreknowledge of God here does not intend His prescience of all things future; by which He foreknows and foretells things to come, and which distinguishes him from all other gods; and is so called, not with respect to himself, with whom all things are present, but with respect to us, and which is eternal, universal, certain, and infallible; for in this sense He foreknows all men, and if this was the meaning here, then all men would be predestinated, conformed to the image of Christ, called by grace, justified and glorified; whereas they are a special people, whom God has foreknown: nor is this foreknowledge to be understood of any provision or foresight of the good works, holiness, faith, and perseverance of men therein, upon which God predestinates them to happiness; since this would make something out of God, and not His good pleasure, the cause of predestination; which was done before, and without any consideration of good or evil, and is entirely owing to the free grace of God, and is the ground and foundation of good works, faith, holiness, and perseverance in them: but this regards the everlasting love of God to His own people, His delight in them, and approbation of them; in this sense He knew them, He foreknew them from everlasting, affectionately loved them, and took infinite delight and pleasure in them; and this is the foundation of their predestination and election, of their conformity to Christ, of their calling, justification, and glorification: for these He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son.” – John Gill Commentary on Romans 8:29
Though God foreknew Jeremiah by election – even still – his election was not made sure within time except by persevering faith and repentance. Likewise it is for us: "Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall" (2 Peter 1:10). We must understand what we must do (through faith) so that we do not fall. These two different senses and appropriations of “election” are among those “things” that Paul wrote of that are “hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction” (2 Pet. 3:16). Under the inspiration of God, Paul was the chiefest defender and explainer of the sovereignty of God. With the sovereignty of God in view alongside those workings and relationships of God that are contradictory and inconsistent with the higher plane of God’s existence (God in the ways of God), things can become confusing. Consequentially, the system of theology known as Calvinism has wrested the doctrines of sovereignty and election so as to make void the salvation, will, election, and relationship of God’s condescension (God in the ways of man). These different senses are confusing indeed, but if we remember the two distinct ways in which God has revealed and related to us throughout biblical history (God in the ways of God & God in the ways of man), and remember that these ways are consistently present throughout scripture, then these interpretations are not strange but soundly amazing. God’s word is not simple, but hard and complex, yet when it is not wrested, and rather explained, we can escape the terrifying judgment written of old: “I have written to him the great things of My law, but they were counted as a strange thing” (Hos. 8:12). Let me attempt to steward these mysteries to you that we might also cry, when need be, the words and fears of David which were deeply in the heart of the beloved and elect saint, the apostle Paul: “Cast me not away from Thy presence” (Ps. 51:10). It is good to know what I must do as a regenerated saint, “lest I be a castaway” (1 Cor. 9:27)!
Remember Abraham? God foreknew him and had a foreknowledge of what he would do: "For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment; that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which He hath spoken of him" (Genesis 18:19). This foreknowing was a sign of his eternal election (Rom. 9:11), and yet God tried him as if He did not already know him by eternal election. After Abraham was tried by deed, God was satisfied to continue his salvation, because his deeds were evidences of his faith. God said, “Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from Me” (Gen. 22:12). Abraham was known by trial as if he was not already known by omniscient, eternal election (Known by trial – 2 Chron. 32:21, Hos. 8:1-5, Jer. 12:3). Abraham was sought out, tried, that God might know him in a different sense – by DEED – so that Abraham’s salvation was made sure and immutable (Gen. 22:16-18, Heb. 6:11-18). A salvation made sure and immutable is a confirmation that their election is of the eternal, everlasting, and immutable counsel of God in the ways of God (as taught in Romans chapter 9). In the same manner, we are taught of a foreknowing which is an unconditional election (Rom. 9:11), and yet we are commanded to make our “calling and election sure” by our deeds (2 Peter 1:10). We are taught of a final judgment where our eternity will be unalterably determined and fixed, and this judgment is according to our DEEDS (2 Cor. 5:10-11). We are taught of a condescending will and relationship of God where the focal point of our present progressive favor, present progressive love, and present progressive salvation is according to our DEEDS. Remember why God saved Moses, Jonah, Nineveh (temporarily), Hezekiah, and Ahab (temporarily) according to God in the ways of man?
The focal point of their salvation with God was based upon the manifestation of their faith, evidenced by deeds. God saved Moses because He saw the bloody circumcision, and God saved Jonah because of his repentant crying and vowing (Jon. 2:9). In Nineveh, “God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way”, and God turned from His word and intent to damn them. God saved Hezekiah, saying, “I have seen thy tears” (Isa. 38:5). God saved Ahab (temporarily) saying, “Seest thou how Ahab humbleth himself before Me? Because he humbleth himself before Me,” God said, therefore He gave him mercy. Likewise in God’s condescension (God in the ways of man), the Lord saved Jeremiah when He saw his repentance (Jeremiah 15). God saved Joshua when he sanctified Israel by the death of Achan and his family (Joshua 7).
God can know your election, foreknow your soul from everlasting, determine your predestination, and yet, simultaneously, He can relate to you as if He knew you not (responding to your disobedience with a mind of wrathful condemnation), trying you so as to know you by your deeds (as if He does not know them already by foreknowledge, as if He does not already know the depths of your heart, and as if He does not already know you by regeneration), and hang your eternal salvation upon your obedient success in faith which is evidenced through works, so that His eternal election is vindicated by a final judgment that is according to your works (as if election did not determine works) as the sense of God’s comprehensible justice that the wicked (by deed) are damned and the righteous (by deed) are saved. Because God reacts to DEEDS in a relationship, will, and word of salvation which is in the ways of man, that salvific purpose and will to save you can be changed into a will to damn you.
Jacob, above all, is the chief example of an elect individual, but had he misappropriated the doctrine of election as Calvinism does, he would be in hell. Needless to say, he was loved by an everlasting love, for God said of him: “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated” (Rom. 9:13, Mal. 1:2-3). Jacob had received the blessing of his father Isaac’s inheritance and “the blessing of Abraham” (Gen. 28:4). Jacob went out at the command of his father Isaac to take a wife of Laban’s house; unlike Esau, he obeyed his father. God promised to Jacob while asleep, robbed, humbled, broken, stripped of pride and hope, and alone in the wilderness, “Behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of” (Gen. 28:15). At this time Jacob made the LORD his God according to what was spoken to him. He was resting himself on the words of God that He would keep him and bring him again, promising to be with him. These words Jacob believed and accepted by a vow of devotion, that he would follow God if the Lord kept him and brought him again (see Gen. 28:15, 20-21). Jacob built the House of God (Gen. 28:22), and from this point onward he became a worshiper of God. He walked with God as in a secret friendship, in a life which demonstrated righteousness, purity, lowliness, suffering, hope, and faith.
Throughout the 20 years of mock slavery to Laban, Jacob was faithful, honest, and patient. Jacob said that “with all my power I have served” (Gen. 31:6). God blessed Laban for Jacob’s sake (Gen. 30:27), and He was ever with Jacob (Gen. 31:5). Since Jacob was righteous, God rewarded him according to his righteousness (Gen. 30:33), “thus God hath taken away the cattle of your father [Laban], and given them to me,” he confessed (Gen. 31:9). Jacob was greatly humbled and tried in the service of Laban, and yet he remained faithful (Gen. 31:38-42). Jacob knew that God was with him (Gen. 31:42), and he swore by God alone (Gen. 31:53); he had utterly forsaken the idolatrous gods of the house of Laban. All of this clearly represents the mind of God toward Jacob, His servant, that Jacob was obedient and in mutual cooperation with his LORD. In a life-threatening situation for Jacob, God defended him from Laban, yet as this trial came to an end, the purity of Jacob’s camp was left defiled without his knowledge – there were idols in the camp!
Jacob was intent to meet with God, the same God that met with him at Bethel (Gen. 31:13). Returning to the land of his kindred meant a revisiting of Esau, and he had been left to boil in his bloodthirsty rage throughout the years of their separation. As never before, Jacob needed the blessing and protection of his God, but since the days of his friendship with God he had never had a defiled camp with secret idolatry dwelling in the midst. Now, the secrecy of friendship between Jacob and God was severely interrupted, and it was by a secret fellowship with idolatry. Jacob knew that a meeting with his LORD ought to be free from foolishness, disobedience, and idolatry, like as the command he gave to his people when returning to Bethel later in his life – “Put away the strange gods that are among you, and be clean, and change your garments: and let us arise, and go up to Beth-el; and I will make there an altar unto God, Who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went. And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hand, and all their earrings which were in their ears; and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem” (Gen. 35:2-4). Jacob hated idolatry and thievery, and he declared it punishable by death, yet he didn’t know that Rachel had stolen Laban’s idols (Gen. 31:32).
After the encounter with Laban was past and “Jacob went on his way,” then “the angels of God met him” (Gen. 32:1-2). An encounter with God’s angels is of no small significance! God’s angels encamp around the righteous for delivering protection and salvation (Ps. 34:17, 2 Kings 6:17), they do visit and commune with the righteous at pivotal times of salvation (Gen. 18:2-5, 19:2-3), and their presence can also denote some act of judgment of God’s wrath, or, some discovery of sin so as to reckon its measure and report it back to God (Gen. 19:20-22). They could be vessels of God to administer a plague (1 Chron. 21:15-16, Gen. 19:22), or they could be the judges of the city, people, or nation at hand, whether it is worthy of a plague by the measure of iniquity. They would visit a city (as if God is not omniscient) so as to find out what the measure of their sin was that they might proportionately recompense it. Surely Jacob’s encounter in Genesis 32:1-2 was not without significance. God’s friendly face and willingness to bless, save, confirm, and be with Jacob had never changed…until there were idols in his camp! I do believe that Jacob was disconnected from God’s host of salvation when they beheld the idolatry that he knew nothing of, and on account of this, God refused to, was intent against, and unwilling to bless Jacob, and thereby, God meant to leave him in the hands of his brother Esau to undergo a violent annihilation.
Some may consider this interpretation to be farfetched or unbiblical, but I would remind you of God’s dealings toward His choice servant Joshua, that, when there were cursed objects in the midst of the camp of Israel in his day, God was ready to forsake him and all of Israel. Do you remember the words of the men of Israel who drank deeply of the knowledge of the Holy? They unforgettably and frightfully understood that “wrath fell on all the congregation of Israel…and that man perished not alone in his iniquity” (Josh. 22:20). Some would refuse to consider that God would be so offended and incited because of Rachel’s idolatry that He would refuse to save Jacob, but you are underestimating the holiness of God, and you are judging based upon your own considerations. It does not matter that Rachel – alone – did sin. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever! He has consistently demonstrated a willingness to condemn others, and at times, all people, on account of just one, a few, or many men’s sins. As for Jacob, what did he do? What did Jacob do to deserve this? That was a similar cry of David when God killed 70,000 Israelites on account of David’s own sin (1 Chron. 21:14). He cried, “Is it not I that commanded the people to be numbered? Even I it is that have sinned and done evil indeed; but as for these sheep, what have they done” (1 Chron. 21:17)?
Jacob’s encounter with the anger of God was as the secret wrestling of Moses against the mind of God to annihilate. Four different times God said He would destroy Israel completely (Ex. 32:10, Num. 14:11-12, 16:21-22, 41) and more times than this He did begin to destroy them, had not some intercessor prevailed by Holy Spirit-inspired wrestling. The wrestling of Moses against God during “The Great Pause” was not over until 4 separate intercessions by prayer and 2 intercessions by judgment had been completed, and then Moses, finally, wrestled God in intercession for forty days and nights, then the Covenant of God which had already been spoken of, which God had been intent on doing with Israel after their salvation from Egyptian bondage, the Passover Lamb, and the Red Sea crossing, was reestablished. This instance with Jacob is very similar…Jacob wrestled with God after his salvation from the wilderness of humiliation and horizontal abandonment, after the long and rigorous slavery of Laban’s household, and then, after God had taken him thus far, bringing him all the way to this point that He might establish Jacob in the Covenant which was before spoken to him, which promised that the Lord would be with him to take him back to his own land safely (Gen. 28:12-22).
God came to dwell in the midst of Jacob and his camp, but He beheld an idol there! He was minded to leave them to their destruction, because He disdained being in their midst because of their idolatry, similar to God’s mind in “The Great Pause” in Exodus 33:5. Jacob wrestled against the wrath of God all night long, even to the breaking of day (Gen. 32:24). Why did God refuse to bless Jacob in the Covenant and promise which He had been faithful to perform up to that day? So fierce was this wrestling that God sought to prevail against Jacob, and yet could not. “And when He saw that He prevailed not against [Jacob], He touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with Him” (Gen. 32:25). God’s command to Jacob was, “let Me go, for the day breaketh,” that He might leave Jacob to the sword of his bloodthirsty brother. Jacob, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, would not relent, but said, “I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless me” (Gen. 32:26). Jacob prevailed against the wrathful, unwilling mind of God (Gen. 32:28), and the Covenant was securely established with him henceforth. As God said to Jacob, “let Me go,” so God said to Moses, “let Me alone” (Ex. 32:10), “separate yourselves from among this congregation” (Num. 16:21-22), and “get you up from among this congregation” (Num. 16:41), but by the grace of God, through the uprising, emboldening, interceding Holy Spirit, Moses and Jacob refused and stood against these commands given by their angry God! Salvation prevailed by scarcity because God found a man! Had not God found a man, an intercessor, it would have been as the time later spoken of: “And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before Me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none. Therefore have I poured out Mine indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of My wrath: their own way have I recompensed upon their heads, saith the Lord GOD” (Ezek. 22:30-31).