Jacob knows that Esau is coming near with 400 men. We’re never told, but let’s not be naïve. Esau isn’t coming with 400 men to throw a welcoming party. He almost certainly intends to fulfill the vow he made many years before to kill his twin brother.

Yet, Jacob continues to walk Esau’s direction, trusting the Lord, with whom he wrestled the night before, to be his protection. Jacob knows that an army of the Lord’s angels, led by the Lord Himself, surrounds him and will be his defense.

Jacob sees Esau coming in the distance and lines his family up, having spaced them out some should an attack arise. He personally approaches Esau. As the brothers come closer together, Jacob—the younger brother of whom it was said by the Lord that the older will serve the younger—instead bows before Esau, stands up, takes a couple of steps, bows again, stands up, takes a couple of steps and bows again. He does this seven times as a sign of respect to Esau. Jacob’s faith in the Lord is evidenced by his actions. He’s not worried about getting what he wants out of Esau. He meets his brother humbly as the servant, while exalting his brother Esau by calling him master.

Esau runs up to Jacob, gives him a hug and kiss, and both brothers cry together. The bitterness is over. The hatred has been quieted. The thirst for revenge is gone. The brothers are reconciled. Psalm 133:1 says, “Behold, how good and pleasant is it when brothers dwell in unity!”

It is such a beautiful thing when siblings, parents and children, friends, neighbors, spouses reconcile after a difficult time of bitterness and strife. It is a picture of the grace and mercy of the Lord at work—for we can only love and forgive one another as the Lord has loved and forgiven us through His cleansing blood. “We love because He first loved us.”

We can see the hand of the Lord at work. He melted Jacob’s fear of Esau, and He melted Esau’s hatred of Jacob. Remember in last week’s reading, Jacob had sent animal gifts ahead of him. I posed the question on whether Jacob had fallen into his old ways and was trying to buy his brother’s forgiveness. That wasn’t it at all. Jacob trusted the Lord to see him through this challenging time. And the Lord was using the animal gifts Jacob gave to Esau and the Lord was using Jacob’s genuine humility when meeting Esau as a means through which Esau’s heart was softened. The Lord, who reconciles sinners to Himself, reconciled these brothers, and they lived out that brotherly unity the rest of their lives.

The world was a dangerous place then as it often is now. Jacob and his young family would be vulnerable targets as the traveled across the land. So, Esau generously offered to be a protector of Jacob and his family on their journey. However, Jacob turned the nice offer down. Remember—an army of angels surrounded Jacob and they provided Jacob’s needed protection.

Jacob had intended to go to Esau’s neck of the woods, but apparently changed his mind at some point. The brothers would see each other again one day, but for now they parted. Jacob settled in the area of what would become the town of Succoth on the east side of the Jordan River. After some time, what I’ve read may have been a decade or so, Jacob went across the Jordan River into the land of Canaan and that’s where he bought land from the family of Hamor.

Do you remember what Abraham did after Sarah’s death? He bought a piece of land—a cemetery. It was a sign that he trusted God’s promise and he expected his family to inherit Canaan one day. Jacob’s purchase of land was along the same line. It is said that, “Jacob’s descendants were to know he believed God’s promise that the Israelites would one day own this land.”

Having bought the piece of property, Jacob built an altar, naming it “El-Elohe-Israel” which means “God, the God of Israel.” Through his new name, Jacob confessed his faith in the one true God, amid a people—the Canaanites—who rejected any notion of a “one true God.” As a side note, this is the area where Jesus would later have a conversation with the Samaritan woman by Jacob’s well.

As Jacob and his family—soon to be the Israelites—dwelt in a land full of pagan worship and sinful indulgence, they began to encounter sufferings. Jacob and Leah’s daughter, Dinah, “went out to see the women of the land.” The teenaged girl was hanging out with the Canaanite women by herself. To help with context, this is like today if a teenaged daughter went to a party where there would likely be all kinds of bad stuff and danger and if her parents find out, she’s going to be grounded for life. It’s that type thing. Pretty serious. Dinah shouldn’t have gone. It was unsafe. Remember what the Canaanite cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were like.

But she goes. An evil man takes her and forcibly violates her. It’s not love when someone despicably humiliates someone else; it’s lust. Nevertheless, the man—who turns out to be Shechem, the son of the guy Jacob bought the land from—Shechem confuses his lust for love and now wants to force Dinah into marriage. He commands his dad to get her for him.

This is where things can kind of become a struggle. How are we to understand Jacob’s reaction—or seeming lack thereof? How are we to understand the brothers’ misuse of God’s gift and serious overreaction in carrying out justice when many of us would be tempted toward the same?

As I’ve been reading through this text this week, I can’t shake the nagging thought that Jacob behaves here in weakness. He doesn’t show himself to be the godly patriarch that God has established him to be. He doesn’t handle it as the leader of the family, he waits for his sons, and then he allows his sons to carry out their plan. I could tell you what I’d be tempted to do if I were Dinah’s father, and I know many of you would be tempted to the same. Jacob should protect his daughter and seek justice. I think he fails here, which helps set up his sons for their sins.

Jacob’s sons are a bit more commendable when they first hear the news. A horrible wrong has been done to their sister and now the perpetrator wants to marry her. They’re understandably angry. Shechem’s offer to pay anything in order to marry Dinah would surely have only riled them up more. Whether he thought so or not, his offer of any price gave the appearance that he thought he could make everything go away with just the right amount of money.

Jacob’s sons definitely learned from their master of deception father. They knew all along that they were going to do what they ended up doing, but they pretended to go along with the marriage idea so that they could get their revenge.

Unfortunately, they profane God’s gift in their rage. God gave the gift of circumcision to be a physical sign of the promises God had made to Abraham and his descendants—promises of a great nation, the land, and the world’s Savior. It was basically an Old Testament Sacrament. Now, Jacob’s sons were carelessly using God’s gift of grace as the means by which they could get revenge for Dinah’s defilement—and then some. It would be like if we were to use Baptism or the Lord’s Supper as a means by which we could commit some sinful desire.

Shechem and Hamor readily agreed. Shechem wanted to marry Dinah, but there was more to it. They were also deceptively scheming against Jacob’s family. They saw this as an opportunity to integrate Jacob’s family into the city of Shechem and obtain their property through marriages. Ironically, they hoped to do to Jacob what God had caused to happen to Jacob’s father-in-law Laban.

Hamor and Shechem never got the opportunity. They never saw coming what happened. When the men of the city were in the throes of pain from their circumcisions, Simeon and Levi, avenged their sister. I cheered on Liam Neeson’s character in the movie Taken, and if you’re like me you’d be tempted to cheer on Simeon and Levi, had they dispatched Hamor and Shechem and left it at that. Is that my sinful nature? Is it justice? Honestly, I’m not sure. The Old Testament Law commands the “punishment” that Shechem suggested, but at the same time that Law applied to Israelites. But this was a pagan defiling an Israelite. Either way, God has never taken kindly to the innocent and helpless being abused and mistreated.

The deception the brothers used, in making the sacramental gift of Old Testament circumcision central to their ploy, and then murdering all the men of the entire town, stealing every valuable thing in the town, and carrying off the women and children is as horrific and even more so. It was well beyond the “eye for an eye” adage. Using Jesus’ theme in the Gospel, it’s like they took the log out of their own eye in order to bash the town of Shechem with it.

After they carried out the act, Jacob only seemed concerned about how it would affect him and his reputation. And I do think the brothers’ response that their sister was treated like a prostitute is a rebuke of their father for his failure to take the defiling of Dinah more seriously.

We can tell that Jacob reflected later in life on the evil of his sons actions—not just how it affect his reputation—but the moral wickedness, because on his deathbed he sharply rebukes Simeon and Levi, saying in part: “Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce, and their wrath, for it is cruel!”

After Jacob’s display of faith in regard to Esau, we see faithlessness in his interaction with Hamor and Shechem. He should have defended his daughter. He should have made sure Shechem received his just rewards. He should have led his home and not let his sons carry the burden.

I think this is a difficult chapter—not as far as understanding what happened—but as far as where lines are crossed. I don’t think Jacob was angry enough over what happened to his daughter. And I think his sons took it way, way, way too far in terms of profaning the sacred gift of God and mass murder.

I said a few weeks ago, that Jacob and his family were a sinful, dysfunctional mess. Some of us don’t like to hear it, but it’s true for all of our families. They’re all sinful messes, because we’re all sinful. I don’t say that to excuse it and give an Eeyore “oh, well.” I say it because it’s true. As God’s people, we have moments of great faith and moments of faithlessness. Yet, the Lord who promised to be with Jacob continued to be with Jacob and his family—rebuking sin through His Law and comforting them with His grace, mercy, and forgiveness. In Christ Jesus, He does the same for you and me. Christ died for their messiness and He died for ours. His blood cleanses His people of sin and leads us in holiness. Amen.