3/24/2021 0 Comments Genesis Chapter 32 Commentary
First, I am impressed with the fact that Esau was a very gracious man.He was able to make a small raft of some of the ships cargo and eventually drift to a desert island.There he constructed a make-shift shelter and lived on what little food he had been able to salvage from the wreckage.
![]() To his dismay, the ship passed by and was quickly fading from sight. Accidentally, sparks from the signal fire set the thatched roof of his shelter in flames, and the man watched hopelessly and helplessly as all of his provision burned to ashes. Suddenly he noticed that the ship which had passed him by was turning around and approaching the island more closely than before. Once on board, the grateful survivor went to the captain of the ship to express his thanks. But what caused you to turn around after you had already passed by me he queried. Why, we saw the signal fire you made by setting your shelter on fire, the captain responded. What seemed to spell disaster for him became an instrument of his salvation. That is precisely the case with Joseph and Jacob in Genesis 37. ![]() Life was hardly worth living, he reasoned, because he had lost the one thing which meant the most to him. But in the end, the loss of Joseph for a period of years was the means God employed to save the nation from starvation and, worse yet, from a loss of purity by being absorbed into the culture and religion of the Canaanites. We come to this 37th chapter of Genesis in much the same way as we would watch the video replay of a week-old football game. We know that Jacob was in error when he later cried out, all these things are against me (Genesis 42:36). Only in the throes of crisis or tragedy can we fully appreciate what Jacob is experiencing in this chapter. You see, the first readers of this chapter were the Israelites who were about to cross over the River Jordan to possess the land of Canaan and to annihilate the Canaanites (cf. There were, however, some people who were not to be attacked or annihilated, among whom were the Edomites, the descendants of Esau. Now turn north, and command the people, saying, You will pass through the territory of your brothers the sons of Esau who live in Seir; and they will be afraid of you. So be very careful; do not provoke them, for I will not give you any of their land, even as little as a footstep because I have given Mount Seir to Esau as a possession (Deuteronomy 2:2-5). As you can see, this has no direct bearing upon Christians in our age, while it was indispensable for the first readers of this account. I would like to suggest two avenues of consideration for us today.
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