Seeking God's Face: Part 3

Before the "Golden Era" of David's reign as king of Israel, the people passed along their history as oral history, in stories told in tents and around nightly campfires.  When we study the Bible as Literature, we are able to see and hear a closer version of what the Israelites might have heard -- that is, the literary qualities of the text, with its repetitions, puns, assonance, alliteration, and word-play.  Like poetry, these literary elements convey as much meaning as the story itself. 

Sometimes I think that God led me into studying and explicating literature early in my life so that I could even more enjoy the Word of God in all of its richness.  Even in high school, I was gifted with a teacher that I am sure should and would have been teaching in college if she had not been a nun.  She made us explicate poetry and directed us to rich sources of explication with which she had well-stocked our high-school library.  She made us read How Does A Poem Mean? by John Ciardi, so that we would understand that meaning does not reside only in the story itself, but in the subtle choice of words placed in proximity to one another so that each meaning would enhance the other's.  She made us "hear" the bubbling of a brook in the sounds of a poem and the clanging of the bells in Poe's "The Bells."

When I began to teach The Bible as Literature in college, I invested $50.00, a great sum of money at the time in The Five Books of Moses, a translation by Everett Fox which attempts to capture in English the sounds, puns, and word-play that comes across in the original Hebrew Old Testament, or Tanack.  In that version, we can derive so much more meaning from the stories by the play on words that we miss entirely in our "good English" versions. 

In the story of Jacob, there is so much double-entrendre that we can hardly understand the meaning at all if we do not hear and see the double meanings.  Jacob's name itself means "cheater" or "grabber." When Esau returns from hunting to seek his father's blessing, Isaac says, "Your brother came with deceit and took away your blessing."  Esau says, "Is that why his name was called Ya'qob/ Heel-Sneak?  For he has now sneaked (ya'qebeni) me twice:  My first-born right (bekhorah) he took, and now he has taken my blessing (berakhah)!"  

You can see from just this sentence how much fun it would have been to listen to the story being told and "catching" the double-meanings and wordplay, and that double meaning goes throughout the entire story:  the cheater is himself cheater over and over again until he finally lets go of his ambition and seeks only the blessing of God in his life. 

One of the over-riding motifs (designs, patterns) of the Jacob story is the play on the word "face."  After Jacob has been cheated many times by his father-in-law Laban, but has learned that God only is his provider and increaser of wealth, Laban's sons become disgruntled that Jacob's wealth keeps increasing.  They go to their father and complain.  Then Jacob sees "by Lavan's face that he was no longer with him as yesterday and the day before" (Gen. 31: 2).  Jacob calls his wives and says to them, "I see by your father's face: indeed, he is no longer toward me as yesterday and the day before.  But the God of my father has been with me!"  It is now time for Jacob to return to his homeland.

As Jacob returns home, he is afraid to "face" his brother Esau whom he had cheated so many years before.  He believes that Esau will still want to kill him, as he declared he would do as soon as Isaac was dead.  As Jacob enters the land of promise, but before he encounters his brother, he sends peace offerings ahead of himself to Esau, thinking to himself:

I will wipe the anger from his face

with the gift that goes ahead of my face;

afterward, when I see his face,

perhaps he will lift up my face!

The gift crossed over ahead of his face,

but he spent the night on that night in the camp (32:20-22).

That night, before he meets his brother, Jacob has an encounter with an angel of the Lord, with whom he wrestles until the break of day:  I will not let you go until you bless me.  When the angel asks his name, Jacob is forced to confess who he is:  Jacob/ Heel-Sneak/ Cheater/ Grabber.  The angel says to him: not as Yaakov/Heel-Sneak shall your name be henceforth uttered, but rather as Yisrael/ God-fighter, for you have fought with God and men and have prevailed.

Jacob called the name of the place Peniel/Face of God, for I have seen God face-to-face, and my life has been saved.  Now, finally, Jacob is ready to "face" the one he has wronged and to make amends.  When the two brothers meet, Esau grabs his brother's neck and tells him to keep his gifts, for "I have plenty, my brother, let what is yours remain yours."  But Jacob says, "No, I pray!  take this gift from my hands.  For I have, after all, seen your face, as one sees the face of God!"

Is this not absolutely beautiful in the original?   Now we can finally "get it!"  When we show our own faces to God, admitting who we are, we see Him face to face, as did Moses, Abraham, and Jacob.  Then and only then, after we know that God has blessed us, has changed our name from "cheater" to "overcomer" and that we have nothing to fear in any realm, can we truly show our faces to our brothers, whom we have cheated.  Then and only then will their faces "be like the face of God" to us.