1 Now as Jacob went on his way, the angels of God met him. 2 Jacob said when he saw them,"This is God's camp." So he named that place Mahanaim.
Turns out that by this time, visits from/with angels are so common that, while they're still worth mentioning, they're really not that interesting any more...
True enough, he does give the place a name based on his encounter, and one that does sound pretty cool, but what does it mean, anyway? Oh. Two Camps. Really, Jacob? So bored by the whole "communing with God's messengers" thing that you'll give a place a name for it, but only barely. Nice memorial, that.
Anyway, for someone who was so - let's face it - unlikable at the beginning of his bit in the narrative, it does seem like decades of living with an(other) expert swindler in the form of Laban has wisened him up some to the fact that being cheated can be irritating, and can make a guy rather irate. So when he hears that Esau is coming out to meet him with a company of 400 men, he fears (I think, justifiably) the worst.
But he's no longer quite as self-serving as he once was. It'd be easy to pass off his "everyone split up so Esau can only get half of all" tactic as just another way to ensure that he only loses half his considerable wealth, except that there's no indication that he would do anything other than meet Esau, so his chances of escape if everything went south would be nil anyway.
Then, it really looks like he's pulling an "operation human shield" thing when we hear that, after the vanguard of staggered gifts, the order of meeting would be the two pinch-hitting-baby-war maids, along with their kids, then Leah and her kids and then finally Rachel and Joseph. Granted, it is still pretty clearly Jacob's intent that everyone else dies/is taken prisoner before Esau would have a chance to get at the favourite wife/son, but at least the order doesn't end with him at the back, but he goes out ahead. Good for him. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing "wearing goats to fool your blind father into screwing your older brother out of his inheritance and role in the Abrahamic covenant" Jacob would have done, so it seems that the time with Laban did him some good.
I'm not sure I'm the only one who thinks so, either, since - in one of the strangest seemingly tangential stories so far - the blessing that he gets after wrestling some dude all night is definitely reflective of some (possibly outwardly imposed) humility on Jacob's part. Another name change, this time with Heel Holder being swapped out for God Prevails. The shift from Jacob to Israel smacks of the same kind of focal shift as was seen in the Abram-Abraham and Sarai-Sarah swaps, but even more direct. It marks a turning point in the story of Jacob, where things aren't really about him anymore.
It also foreshadows nicely the fact that when Esau and Jacob do eventually meet, there's no bloodletting at all, and Esau is all Baron von Hugs-n-stuff, welcoming his brother back with open arms. The "Supplanter" part of Jacob's life is behind him, and his work as Israel can begin.
Sort of.
Unlike with Abraham and Sarah, Jacob's still Jacob in the story. That strikes me as strange. With the other two, there was no going back - it was a name change, not the giving of a second name, which is almost what this seems like. The fact that we still use the phrase "Abraham, Isaac and Jacob" recognizes the permanence of Abram's transformation, but not that of Jacob. Which is weird to me. I don't quite get it. Hopefully I'll notice if/when the change becomes reflected in the text, but I seem to remember him being referred to as Jacob throughout his part in it. Hopefully someone will ring a bell or something if I miss a turning point where the narrative starts referring to him as Israel more regularly. For now, though, it's just not sticking.
There's no indication if any part of the story happens in a kitchen, but Dinah's ordeal with the new neighbours is interesting, and seems to have some pretty strong parallels to how society views rape, even today.
As a brief recap, Dinah goes to hang out with some local ladies, and ends up being raped by Shechem, a local prince. Then, the text tells us that Shechem is "deeply attracted to Dinah, and loved the girl and spoke tenderly to her..." and petitions his father to get her to be his wife. Jacob hears about the rape, and - in the text - has little to no response, and indeed seems to continue that blase reaction throughout, but when Dinah's brothers catch wind of this, things start unfolding with a little more Old Testament Justice - the kind it's hard to have much trouble with, to be honest.
It's a good scheme, in a way, and a daft one in another. If Levi and Simeon can only convince every single male in the area to be circumsized, it'll work. But what are the odds of that happening? It's not exactly asking for them to have a different haircut or something. Someone is going to have a problem with this.
As an example of the expected reaction to anyone hearing this proposal, I present, an excerpt from a Mel Brooks' masterpiece:
However, the response from Shechem and his dad is as follows:
18 Now their words seemed reasonable to Hamor and Shechem, Hamor's son.
Reasonable? Really?
Anyway, so they go through with it, and somehow convince all the other guys to go along with it, too. Then, two days after this happens, "when they were in pain" (34:25 - love the Bible's ability at monumental understatement here...) Levi and Simeon stroll into town and kill every last one of them.
I'll come out now and say that murdering them all was probably overkill (nyuk, nyuk), but you've got to admit, it's delightfully poetic justice. Someone needs to give this episode to Quentin Tarantino to do up all nice, with Danny Trejo and Michael Madsen as Levi and Simeon and a sountrack by the Black Keys. I'd go see it.
Maybe it's because I've got two sisters, but tricking a rapist into circumsizing himself and then slaughtering him whilst he's hobbled and incapacitated seems like it'd entail an awful lot of morally mitigating elements when it comes down to casting judgment on Dinah's two brothers.
Seems Jacob, for all his dithering on the subject, doesn't necessarily disagree, considering his only objection to the mass execution is that he'll probably be less popular in the neighbourhood now. Granted, his concern that they all may gang up and kill him and his whole family is a valid one, but as Simeon and Levi point out, they really just shouldn't have raped their sister.
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