Page:A Jewish Interpretation of the Book of Genesis (Morgenstern, 1919, jewishinterpreta00morg).pdf/282

Rh The Book of Genesis

264

XIX

Lesson

JACOB AND ESAU (Genesis

XXXII,

4— XXXIII,

XXXV,

17;

16-20, 27-29)

Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel for thon hast God and with men, and hast prevailed. (Genesis XXXII,

striven with 29.)

sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise. (Psalm LI, 19.)

The

A

Read Psalm XLVI,

2,

3,

12.

4,

Laban had departed.

He had

kissed his daughters and

and had

his grand-children farewell,

set

out upon his return

Haran. Now, at last Jacob could breathe freely. The danger from Laban was past they had parted in peace, as Had it been otherwise, had alone befitted close relatives. leave his uncle Laban, just as he been compelled to Jacob had left his brother Esau twenty years before, with anger to



and enmity between them as the result of his deception, he might well have felt that these twenty years of trial and suffering in a foreign land had been all in vain, and that he was returning home but little changed from what he had been on setting out. His prayer then had been to return in

He

peace to his father's house.

Laban had deceived him,

he,

realized

too,

now

that although

had not been altogether

blameless in his dealings with Laban during these last six years.

But

their dififerences

had been smoothed away,

their

now

there

quarrels settled, their misunderstandings adjusted;

was peace between them,

the peace which Jacob

had learned \n