Jacob Used the Atonement Word for His Gift to Esau (Genesis 32:13–21)

I will cover his face

In Genesis 32:20 appease translates kaphar (H3722), to cover, and Jacob's words were akapperah panav, I will cover his face. "I will appease Esau with the gift that is going before me" (Genesis 32:20). Genesis had used the verb once before, on the ark, where Noah was to "coat it with pitch inside and out" (Genesis 6:14): the pitch is kopher and the coating is kaphar. After Genesis, the same verb fills the law of Moses, where it means making atonement.

So the second time Scripture uses the atonement verb, a man was trying to cover his own past. Jacob had taken Esau's blessing in disguise, and Esau had said, "then I will kill my brother Jacob" (Genesis 27:41). Twenty years later Jacob tried to cover that wrong with herds of animals. A Hebrew listener heard the weight in that one verb: Jacob was trying to make atonement with his brother, and he had to supply the covering himself.

Five faces in two verses

The Hebrew word for face, panim (H6440), appears five times in Genesis 32:20–21, because Jacob's whole plan was about whose face he would see and how it would look at him. Read woodenly, verse 20 says: I will cover his face with the gift that goes before my face, and afterward I will see his face; perhaps he will lift up my face. Then verse 21: "So Jacob’s gifts went on before him" (Genesis 32:21), literally, the gift passed over before his face.

That same night Jacob met a different face. After wrestling until dawn, Jacob named the place Peniel and said, "Indeed, I have seen God face to face, and yet my life was spared" (Genesis 32:30). Peniel (H6439) means the face of God. Jacob had prepared all night for Esau's face, and before he saw it he saw God's. When the brothers finally met, Jacob said it out loud: "I have seen your face, and it is like seeing the face of God, since you have received me favorably" (Genesis 33:10).

A minchah for my lord

Jacob's gift was a minchah (H4503), the word for tribute a lesser man paid to a greater, and also for an offering brought to God. In Jacob's world, a weaker party paid a stronger one in goods and livestock. When Israel served Moab, "they sent him with tribute to Eglon king of Moab" (Judges 3:15), and later Mesha king of Moab "would render to the king of Israel a hundred thousand lambs and the wool of a hundred thousand rams" (2 Kings 3:4). Jacob's droves were that kind of payment, the tribute of a man who expected to stand before his brother as the weaker party.

The first minchah in the Bible was brought by two other brothers. "Cain brought some of the fruit of the soil as an offering to the LORD" (Genesis 4:3), and Abel brought his. When Cain was rejected, "his countenance fell" (Genesis 4:5), and God asked him, "If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?" (Genesis 4:7). Countenance is panim, and accepted comes from nasa (H5375), to lift. Jacob's hope, perhaps he will lift up my face, used the same pair of words. The Bible's first story of brothers ended in murder. Here a brother came toward his brother with a gift and a prayer.

Lift up His countenance

The first hearers of Genesis were Israel, gathered around a tabernacle where minchah and kaphar were daily words, and they heard Jacob's plan against what God had taught them. The law of the grain offering opened, "When anyone brings a grain offering to the LORD" (Leviticus 2:1), and the grain offering is minchah. Once a year they heard, "on this day atonement will be made for you to cleanse you, and you will be clean from all your sins before the LORD" (Leviticus 16:30).

They also knew where their covering came from. God had said of the blood, "I have given it to you to make atonement for your souls upon the altar" (Leviticus 17:11). Jacob chose his covering from his own flocks; Israel's covering was a gift from God's hand. And the priests blessed them with the very words Jacob had hoped to hear from Esau: "may the LORD lift up His countenance toward you and give you peace" (Numbers 6:26). In Hebrew it is yissa YHWH panav, the LORD lift His face. Israel heard Jacob's "perhaps" and knew that God had already promised to turn His face toward them.

The face turned toward us

The face Jacob hoped would turn toward him, God has turned toward us in His Son. Christ "entered heaven itself, now to appear on our behalf in the presence of God" (Hebrews 9:24). In the presence is prosopon (G4383), the face. Jesus stands before the face of God for us. John called Him the hilasmos (G2434) for our sins, the word the Greek Old Testament used for atonement, and he said God Himself sent Him (1 John 4:10).

Jacob had a promise from God and a plan of his own, and that night God taught him which one would carry him. Knowing God means learning to rest on what He has said and given. When God speaks to you through Scripture, or through an encouragement someone shares, record it in the Doxa app with the date, weigh it against Scripture, and read it back before you start building your own covering. The LORD has lifted up His face toward His people in Christ, and He keeps every word He has spoken.

This goes with today's Doxa Daily Lift: Jacob Sent Esau 550 Animals Ahead of Him (Genesis 32:13–21)