Genesis 32:28

Genesis 32:28

Some surprise may be felt at first at the term prince being applied to the patriarch Jacob; for whatever good qualities distinguish his character, we hardly regard him as possessing princely ones. He has the quiet virtues of resignation, meekness and caution, but we hardly attribute to him that spirit and mettle, that vigorous temper and fire, which belong to the princely character. Yet when we consider Jacob we find that he had virtues which lie at the foundation of the royal and grand form of human character.

I. His patience was a princely virtue. How patiently he bore the long delays in Laban's service! the plots of his sons Simeon and Levi! We sometimes think of patience as the virtue of the weak, the sufferer, the inferior. Yet a great prime minister of England, when asked what was the most important virtue for a prime minister, gave this answer: "Patience is the first, patience is the second, patience is the third."

II. Hopefulness was another of Jacob's regal virtues. He looked forward with trust and confidence to the future; he believed firmly in God's promises. His was a religious spirit; the religious mind is sustained by hope. "I have waited for Thy salvation, O Lord," he says in his last address, when he summed up the purpose of his life. He had waited, but never ceased to hope; the Divine reward had always been before him.

III. But it was in prayer specially that Jacob showed his princely character. What a nobility is attributed to prayer in this episode of Jacob's life! What a description the text gives us of the royal attributes of prayer that it sets in motion the sovereign agency which settles all human events! Jacob had in the midst of all his worldly sorrows and depressions a religious greatness. While to human eyes he was a dejected man, in the presence of God he was a prince, and prevailed.

J. B. Mozley, Sermons Parochial and Occasional, p. 347.

I. The very twofold name of Jacob and of Israel is but the symbol of the blending of contradictions in Jacob's character. The life of Jacob comes before us as a strange paradox, shot with the most marvellous diversities. He is the hero of faith, and the quick, sharp-witted schemer. To him the heavens are opened, and his wisdom passes into the cunning which is of the earth earthy.

II. The character of Jacob is a form which is to be found among the Gentiles no less than among the Jews. There are in our own day prudential vices, marring what would otherwise be worthy of all praise. And that which makes them most formidable is that they are the cleaving, besetting temptations of the religious temperament. The religious man who begins to look on worldlings with the feeling of one who gives God thanks that he is not like them is in the way to fall short even of their excellences. (1) Untruthfulness, the want of perfect sincerity and frankness, is, it must be owned with shame and sorrow, the besetting sin of the religious temperament. (2) It is part of the same form of character that it thinks much of ease and comfort, and shrinks from hardship and from danger. Cowardice and untruthfulness are near of kin and commonly go together, and that which makes the union so perilous is that they mask themselves as virtues.

III. The religious temperament, with all its faults, may pass into the matured holiness of him who is not religious only, but godly. How the work is to be done "thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter," when thou too hast wrestled with the angel and hast become a prince with God.

E. H. Plumptre, Theology and Life, p. 296.

References: Genesis 32:28 . G. Litting, Thirty Children's Sermons, p. 154; Weekly Pulpit, vol. i. (1887), p. 271; Homiletic Quarterly, vol. iii., p. 551; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. x., p. 339. Genesis 32:28 , Genesis 32:20 . F. W. Robertson, Sermons, 1st series, p. 36; Spurgeon, My Sermon Notes (1884), pp. 13, 16.