JACOB (ante), as to his natural character, was significantly named." a supplanter." In his bargain with Esau he was unbrotherly and selfish in that, instead of gladly succor ing his famished brother, he set a price on the nourishment which he hail ready at hand. and that price extortionate—the birthright for a morsel of meat. He was guilty also in consenting to his mother's device for deceiving his father. Even his temporary opposi tion to it was not made on the right ground. Instead of refusing to do what was pro posed becauserit,Was Wrong, he objected to doing it only through fear or discovery, say ing not, "I shall be a deceiver," but, " peradventure I shall seem to be." His execution of the plan involed him in many falsehoods. He said to his father, " I am Esau," though he was not; " I have done as thou badest me," though his father had not bidden him do anything, and he had not done what he said he had. He falsely claimed the help of God in what he said he had done. He aggravated the deception in adhering to it by presenting the skin of a kid as his own skin, mud giving counterfeit venison as the true. He consummated the fraud by repeating to his still doubting father the declara tion, " I am Esau," and by taking the blessing from him as if he were the older sou. .1 its subsequent dealings with Laban also were marred by crafty selfishness, even though be supposed himself driven to it in contending against equal selfishness on Laban's part.
The providential discipline by which Jacob's character was transformed was painful, varied, long continued, and quite in the line of his sins. His brother's anger compelled him to flee from his father's house; the exile which his mother hoped would continue only a few days was prolonged to 20 years; and when at length he Was returning home, fear of his brother again filled him with distress. Having imposed himself on his father as the older son, he had an older (laughter imposed on him for a wife instead of the younger whom -he loved. Having been extortionate in his dealings with his brother and
regardless of his exhaustion by the toils of the chase, he found his own wages changed ten times during a course of toil in which, as he said, by day the drought consumed him and the frost by night; and his sleep departed from his eyes. He was greatly afflicted by Rachel's death, wag dishonored by the misconduct of his children, and endured years of anguish because of the absence and supposed death of his best-beloved son. During this course of discipline the care of God over bum was manifested by the vision at Bethel when he went out from home, by the mysterious wrestling with him at the brook Jabbok on his return, and by the promise to be with him in the final journey of his life down into Egypt to see his long-lost son. After the darkness which had obscured so much of his career, caused chiefly by his persistent efforts to work out his promised destiny for himself, at evening-time with him it was light. The 17 years spent by him in the land of Goshen seem to have been irradiated with the graces of a. humble and devout spirit, with an honored old age, and a prophetic insight into the glories of the future for man kind, his children, and himself. flaying been chastened in the world, he was not finally, condemned with the world. 'With all Iris disadvantages of nature and faults of diame ter, rendering him far less attractive socially than his impulsive, careless, generous brother, he had a nature more capable of development on the spiritual side, less con trolled by appetite and by the present things of the senses, therefore more capable of being schooled into faith, and of being brought through painful discipline into a true manhood at last.