We left off with Jacob still with Laban and flush with children (11 boys and 1 girl) to four different wives. Jacob is serving out his second set of 7 years with Uncle Laban to pay off the debt for marrying Rachel. In this time, Jacob continues to be blessed by God, as promised, and Laban is reaping the benefits.
As the 14 years of service come to a close, Laban is concerned about losing his cash cow (and assuming he's not completely heartless, he also doesn't want to lose his daughters and grandchildren). He and Jacob strike a deal. Jacob will continue managing Laban's flocks, and as payment, he'll get to keep the brown and speckled sheep, while Laban will have the white sheep.
In a detail that seems bizarre to our modern understanding, Jacob attempts to influence what kind of lambs are born (whether spotted or white) by carving up some sticks and placing them where the sheep will mate over them. Whether this seemingly superstitious act achieves his goal or it's simply a matter of genetics and heredity, the Bible isn't actually clear, but the result is that Jacob's flock of "imperfect" sheep thrives while Laban's diminishes.
Laban and his men start grumbling against Jacob, and the LORD appears to Jacob and tells him it's time to go back home. So without saying goodbye to Laban, Jacob picks up and leaves. Unbeknownst to him, Rachel, in a last dig at her father, steals his household idols. Laban quickly realizes both his household idols and his daughters are gone, and he takes up the chase. Armed men can move faster than a caravan full of women, children, and animals, so it doesn't take long for him to catch up. When he accuses Jacob of stealing the idols, Jacob rashly promises that if anyone is found possessing them, his life is forfeit. Laban searches every tent, but when he comes to Rachel's tent, he finds her sitting down (obviously on the idols). She tells him she cannot rise because "Aunt Flo" is visiting. He does what every man would do and leaves her be.
Laban and Jacob make a covenant. They set up a marker at that spot and promise neither will cross that line to harm the other. Laban also makes Jacob vow to treat Rachel and Leah and the children right. Laban kisses his daughters and grandchildren, blesses them, and returns home.
Jacob continues on his way and encounters some angels. He gives the place a new name, calling it God's camp. He knows he is approaching Esau, and he is scared. He sends out messengers to greet Esau, and when they return, their only report is that Esau is coming to meet him with four hundred men. Jacob divides his people into two camps, hoping that if one is attacked the other can escape. In a moment of reflection, Jacob prays to God, remarking that he had left, he had crossed the Jordan River (the boundary of the land of promise) carrying only his staff, and now he was returning twenty years later in numbers so great that he was now two camps. God indeed had blessed him on his way.
In a last ditch effort, Jacob sends three separate herds ahead as gifts of appeasement to Esau. He then camps for the night.
As Genesis describes it, in the night a man appears and starts wrestling with Jacob. They struggle together the entire night until morning is about to break. At that point, the man seeing he could not defeat Jacob, reached out and dislocated Jacob's hip. He then tells Jacob to let him go, but Jacob refuses to let go until the man blesses him. The man asks Jacob his name, but when Jacob replies, the man tells him his name will no longer be Jacob but Israel "because you have struggled with God and with men and have prevailed." Jacob/Israel asks the man's name, but he responded, "why do you ask my name?" And he blessed him. Israel calls the place Peniel, "for I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been spared."
Oceans of ink have been spilled over this account. It's so strange. Clearly, the man Jacob wrestles with is identified as being synonymous with God. We're again probably looking at another Christophany. But Jacob wins....maybe? Jacob is injured, but he secures the blessing he demanded. And he is now Israel. So significant is this moment, that there is still a country in our modern world, 4000 years later, named Israel for this nomadic sheepherder who had his hip dislocated in hand to hand combat with the Almighty.
An aside here. If ever there was evidence of the existence of the God of the Bible, isn't it in the continued existence of ethnic Israel? No other people group has maintained this kind of identity for so long.
Israel limps onward, and that day he meets his brother Esau. And it is not what he expected. Esau embraces him and refuses all the gifts Israel had sent ahead. He marvels at his brother's family and want so lead them back with him. Israel declines and rather than following Esau back, he turns his family aside and settles in Canaan.
Tragedy befalls. While in Canaan, a local young man named Shechem (the son of the local chieftan) sees the beautiful Dinah and rapes her. He then tells his dad about Israel's daughter and asks him to arrange a marriage. They approach Israel and his sons. In addition to the marriage, they promise friendship and trade and further intermarriage. Israel is saddened by the whole affair and says nothing. Apparently independently of Israel, his sons Simeon and Levi (Dinah's full brothers through Leah) Shechem and his father that they can't give their sister to an uncircumcised man and that they cannot do business with them unless they become circumcised. Shechem is smitten with Dinah and has no problem with this. He and his father are persuasive and important and convince the rest of the men in their town to get circumcised as well. Once all the men are circumcised and still in pain, Simeon and Levi take up swords and slaughter all the men and plundered the women and valuables. Israel is furious because they made him "odious to the inhabitants of the land." He's afraid the Canaanites will band together and attack them.
The LORD speaks to Jacob again and tells him to return to Bethel, the place where he had seen the stairway to Heaven. Jacob seems to remember the promise he made at Bethel 20 years earlier to serve God should God see him through, and he orders his family to gather up all "foreign gods" from among them. He buries these idols and orders the worship of the God "who answered me in the day of my distress. He has been with me everywhere I have gone." He then sets up an altar at Bethel.
Another aside. Looking back at Jacob from the perspective of someone with a knowledge of the full Bible and things like the 10 Commandments, it's easy to forget the position Jacob is in. God has appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, but he has never had a name. Moses is still hundreds of years from being born. There is no Mosaic Law. The only prohibition on "graven images" comes from the manifest absurdity of praying to a hunk of wood you carved rather than a clearly divine being who has manifested himself to you and has a history of making promises which keep coming true.
God appears to Jacob again and reiterates that he is now Israel. He promises that not just a nation but an assembly of nations will come from him. Kings will descend from him. Israel sets up an altar and pours out on offering.
Israel and company set out again from Bethel toward Ephrath (what will later be called Bethlehem). Rachel goes into labor with the last of Israel's children, but it is a difficult birth. And after giving her son the name Ben-oni, she dies. Israel calls his youngest son Benjamin and sets up a marker for Rachel's grave.
Yet another aside. Jacob/Israel sets up a lot of altars/markers. The text notes concerning the marker for Rachel "it is the marker at Rachel's grave still today." I don't take this to mean that in the year A.D. 2023 there is an identifiable marker at Rachel's grave, but it was there 400 years later when Moses wrote the Pentateuch. The point is that with each of these markers Jacob placed (and this happens elsewhere in the OT) a lasting physical reminder was set as evidence of what had happened there. Israel returning to the Promised Land under Joshua could find those markers and see that these things had happened just as they had been told. In the same way that a person can go visit the history sites of Pearl Harbor or Gettysburg or Normandy, ancient Israel could visit those connections to their past.
Israel makes it home to see his father Isaac at Mamre (Hebron) where Abraham had also stayed. Isaac dies at 180 years of age, and Jacob and Esau come together to bury their father.
Israel is now back in the land of promise with his 12 sons. Esau is living to the south with his people (the Edomites). Genesis gives a rundown of Esau's descendants. It's easy to skip over these genealogies, but if you read them, you start recognizing the names from the peoples that cause problems for Israel in the future.
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