My visual image of the Jacob/Esau story had always been of two teenagers. However, Alfred Ederscheim points out that the chronology is much different. Jacob was 130 years old when he moved to Egypt. Joseph was 39 years old at the time (30 when he entered Pharoah's service plus the years of plenty and 2 years of famine). This means that Jacob was 91 when Joseph was born. Since he worked for Laban for 20 years, he was 71 when he fled from Esau after the deception of his father. It is clear from the birth order that Joseph and Dinah were approximately the same age. Dinah must have been sexually mature at the time of the Shechem incident, perhaps a minimum of 14. Benjamin's birth is associated with that, so Benjamin must have been a baby or toddler when Joseph, at age 17 was sold into Egypt.

Is there anything wrong with this logic? If this is right, then Jacob was very late in coming into a relationship with God. Throughout his life, God is spoken of as the God of his fathers Abraham and Isaac, not his God. It's only at the end of his life that he looks back and realizes that God was working behind the scenes in his life the whole time, though this was not abundantly obvious to his consciousness.

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Mary Vanderkooi
Kale Heywott Church (KHC)
Soddo, Ethiopia

The point of Jacob and Esau is definitely NOT that the one (Jacob) was "better" than his brother. If anything, he behaves WORSE, way worse than his brother, in his manipulation, in his deceit.

Esau, from the world's standpoint, is everything you'd expect in a self-made man. He even goes out, finds a people (of Seir) and gets to be a prince among them before the end of his life. He doesn't come and cut Jacob up into pieces, despite what Jacob did to him 20 years earlier, despite what Jacob fears from him by way of retribution. Even if God softened his heart toward his brother, Esau looks good throughout, from the world's view.

But God loves Jacob, the liar and thief. And Esau is not loved. God gives grace to the undeserving. I believe Jacob had a real conversion after he fled home, the night God met him at Bethel. I believe Jacob really understood God's love for him the night God made him admit he was a "Jacob", the night of wrestling and of begging for a blessing he knew he did not deserve.

Praying With Boldness

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Rev. Bruce G. Buchanan
ChainOLakes Presbyterian Church, CentralLake, MI


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