Jacob Gave Back the Blessing He Stole (Genesis 33:1–11)

Please take my blessing

In Genesis 33:11 Jacob asked Esau to take his berakah (H1293), his blessing, the same word for the blessing he had taken from Esau in Genesis 27. English Bibles rightly translate it as gift here, because Jacob meant the flocks and herds he had sent ahead. A Hebrew listener heard more. On the day of the theft Esau cried, "He took my birthright, and now he has taken my blessing" (Genesis 27:36), laqach birkati, he has taken my blessing. On the road Jacob said, "Please accept my gift that was brought to you" (Genesis 33:11), qach-na et birkati, please take my blessing. The verb is laqach (H3947) both times, and the noun is the same.

One verse earlier Jacob had called the present a minchah (H4503): "receive this gift from my hand" (Genesis 33:10). When Esau refused, Jacob changed the word. He asked his brother to take his blessing, and "Jacob pressed him until he accepted" (Genesis 33:11). The man who had once grabbed a blessing now pressed one into his brother's hands.

The night before, the man at the Jabbok had blessed him. Jacob had the blessing of God, so he could give away the one he had stolen.

Tribute for a lord

The minchah Jacob sent was tribute, the present a lesser ruler brought to a greater one to ask for peace, and he bowed seven times for the same reason. When Israel served the king of Moab, they "sent him with tribute to Eglon king of Moab" (Judges 3:15), and that tribute is minchah too. The same word later named the grain offering brought to God: "When anyone brings a grain offering to the LORD" (Leviticus 2:1). Abel's and Cain's offerings in Genesis 4 carry the same name.

The bowing had a shape the first hearers knew. Letters from city rulers in Canaan to Pharaoh, written in the 1300s BC and found at Amarna in Egypt, open again and again with a vassal saying he falls at the feet of the king, his lord, seven times and seven times. "But Jacob himself went on ahead and bowed to the ground seven times as he approached his brother" (Genesis 33:3). The word for bowed is shachah (H7812), the word Scripture later uses for worship. Jacob came to his brother with the offering word and the worship word, the gift and the bow a person brings before God, and in verse 10 he said Esau's face was "like seeing the face of God" (Genesis 33:10). He came to Esau as a servant comes to a king. Esau answered as a brother: "I already have plenty, my brother" (Genesis 33:9).

Favor from a brother, grace from God

In Genesis 33 favor is what Jacob asked of Esau, and grace is what he said God had already given him; the Hebrew uses one root for both. The noun is chen (H2580), favor, the kind welcome of someone with the power to refuse you. Jacob's messengers had told Esau he came "so that I may find favor in your sight" (Genesis 32:5), and on the road he asked for it three more times. The verb from the same root is chanan (H2603), to be gracious, and in this chapter Jacob used it only with God as the subject: "the children God has graciously given your servant" (Genesis 33:5) and "God has been gracious to me" (Genesis 33:11).

The word for face carries the rest of the picture, and English hides it. Before the river Jacob had planned, "I will appease Esau with the gift that is going before me. After that I can face him, and perhaps he will accept me" (Genesis 32:20). The Hebrew says akhapperah fanav, I will cover his face, with kaphar (H3722), the covering verb Genesis 6:14 used for the pitch on the ark, and then panim (H6440), face, three more times: before my face, I will see his face, perhaps he will lift up my face. Jacob meant to cover his brother's anger with a gift, the way a guilty man pays to make peace. On the road the face he had planned to cover ran toward him, and Jacob found grace in it before Esau had accepted a single animal.

Do not despise an Edomite

Israel was commanded to treat Edom as a brother, even after Edom refused them passage, and Genesis 33 is where the first readers heard why. Esau "settled in the area of Mount Seir" (Genesis 36:8), and his children became Edom. Centuries later Moses sent messengers from Kadesh: "This is what your brother Israel says" (Numbers 20:14). Edom answered, "You may not travel through our land, or we will come out and confront you with the sword" (Numbers 20:18), and "Israel turned away from them" (Numbers 20:21).

Those were the people who first heard Genesis read to them, a nation that had just been turned back at Edom's border. Moses then gave them this command: "Do not despise an Edomite, for he is your brother" (Deuteronomy 23:7). When they heard of their father Jacob bowing in the dust and of Esau running to kiss him, they heard where that command came from. The brothers had wept on each other's necks, and their children were to remember it, even when the brotherhood was hard to keep.

Known by the God who gives

To know God in this chapter is to know Him as the One who gives, and that knowledge opened Jacob's hand. In Genesis 33 the grace word chanan had only one subject, God, and everything Jacob said to Esau rested on it. Once he could say God had been gracious to him, he no longer needed the blessing he had taken, so he pressed it on the brother he had taken it from. Jacob knew God, and God knew him by his new name, Israel.

We are the people who remember what God has given. Before you go to meet someone you have wronged, write down in the Doxa app the grace God has already shown you, with the date, and carry it with you the way Jacob carried his answer to Esau. Read it back in ten years and in thirty, and keep your heart burning for the God who was gracious to Jacob on the road from Peniel and is gracious to His people still.

This goes with today's Doxa Daily Lift: Jacob Bowed Seven Times, and Esau Ran to Embrace Him (Genesis 33:1–11)