J.J. Blunt's Undesigned Scriptural Coincidences
AN ARGUMENT FOR THE VERACITY OF THE HOLY BIBLE
Introduction
Part One:
The Books of Moses
Part Two:
The Historical Scriptures
Part Three:
The Prophetical Scripture
Part Four:
The Gospels and Acts
Appendix:
The Gospels, Acts
and Josephus

VIII. THE INDIVIDUALITY OF JACOB

In the character of Jacob I see an individuality which marks it to belong to real life: and this is my next argument for the veracity of the writings of Moses. The particulars we read of him are consistent with each other, and with the lot to which he was born; for this more or less models the character of every man. The lot of Jacob had not fallen upon the fairest of grounds. Life, especially the former part of it, did not run so smoothly with him as with his father Isaac—so that he might be tempted to say to Pharaoh towards the close of it naturally enough, that “the days of the years of it had been evil.” The faults of his youth had been visited upon his manhood with a retributive justice not unfrequent in God’s moral government of the world, where the very sin by which a man offends is made the rod by which he is corrected. Rebekah’s undue partiality for her younger son, which leads her to deal cunningly for his promotion unto honour, works for her the loss of that son for the remainder of her days—his own unjust attempts at gaining the superiority over his elder brother entail upon him twenty years’ slavery in a foreign land—and the arts by which he had made Esau to suffer are precisely those by which he suffers himself at the hands of Laban. Of this man, the first thing we hear is, his entertainment of Abraham’s servant when he came on his errand to Rebekah. Hospitality was the virtue of his age and country; in his case, however, it seems to have been no little stimulated by the sight of “the ear-ring and the bracelets on his sister’s hands,” which the servant had already given her [Gen. 24:30.] —so he speedily made room for the camels. He next is presented to us as beguiling that sister’s son, who had sought a shelter in his house, and whose circumstances placed him at his mercy, of fourteen years’ service, when he had covenanted with him for seven only—endeavouring to retain his labour when he would not pay him his labour’s worth—himself devouring the portion which he should have given to his daughters, counting them but as strangers [Gen. 31:15.] . Compelled at length to pay Jacob wages, he changes them ten times, and in the spirit of a crafty griping worldling makes him account for whatever of the flock was torn of beasts or stolen, whether by day or night. When Jacob flies from this iniquitious service with his family and cattle, Laban still pursues and persecutes him, intending, if his intentions had not been overruled by a mightier hand, to send him away empty, even after he had been making, for so long a period, so usurious a profit of him.

I think it was to be expected that one who had been disciplined in such a school as this, and for such a season, would not come out of it without bearing about him its marks; and that oppressed first by the just fury of his brother, which put his life in hazard, and drove him into exile, and then still more by the continued tyranny of a father-in-law, such as we have seen, Jacob should have learned, like maltreated animals, to have the fear of man habitually before his eyes. Now that it was so is evident from all the latter part of his history.

He is afraid that Laban will not let him go, and therefore takes the precaution to steal from him unawares, when he is gone to a distance to shear his sheep. He approaches the borders of Edom, but here the ancient dread of his brother revives, and he takes the precaution to propitiate him or to escape him by measures which breathe the spirit of the man in a singular manner. He sends him a message—it is from “Jacob thy servant” to “Esau my lord.” Esau advances, and he at once fears the worst. Then does he divide his people and substance into two bands, that if the one be smitten, the other may escape—he provides a present of many cattle for his brother—he commands his servants to put a space between each drove, apparently to add effect to the splendour of his present—he charges them to deliver severally their own portion, with the tidings that he was behind who sent it—he appoints their places to the women and children with the same prudential considerations that mark his whole conduct; first the handmaids and their children; then Leah and her children; and in the hindermost and least-exposed place, his favourite Rachel and Joseph. Such are his precautions. They are all, however, needless—Esau owes him no wrong—he even proposes to escort him home in peace, or to leave him a guard out of the four hundred men that were with him. But Jacob evades both proposals; apprehending, most likely, more danger from his friends than from his foes; and dismisses his brother with a word about “following my lord to Seir;” an intention which, as far as we know, he was in more haste to express than accomplish. All this ended, the honour of his house is violated by Shechem, a son of a prince of that country. Even this insult does not throw him off his guard. He heard it, “but he held his peace” till his sons, who were with the cattle in the field, should come home. They soon proceed to take summary vengeance on the Shechemites. The fear of man, however, which had restrained the wrath of Jacob at the first, besets him still, and he now says to his sons—“Ye have troubled me to make me to stink among the inhabitants of the land; and I being few in number, they shall gather themselves together against me and slay me; and I shall be destroyed, I and my house.” [Gen. 34:30.] Jacob would have been better pleased with more compromise and less cruelty—he was not prepared to give utterance to that feeling of turbulent indignation, reckless of all consequences, which spake in the words of Simeon and Levi, “Shall he deal with our sister as with an harlot?” Here again, however, his fears proved groundless. Many years now pass away, but when we meet him once more he is still the same—the same leading feature in his character continues to the last. His sons go down into Egypt for corn in the famine—they return with an injunction from Joseph to take back with them Benjamin, or else to see his face no more. This is urged upon Jacob, and the reply it extorts from him is in strict keeping with all that has gone before:—“Wherefore dealt ye so ill with me, as to tell the man whether ye had yet a brother?” [Gen. 43:6.] Still we see one whom suffering had rendered distrustful—who would lend many his ear, but few his tongue. The famine presses so sore that there is no alternative but to yield up his son. Still he is the same individual. Judah is in haste to be gone—he will be surety for the lad—he will bring him again, or bear the blame for ever. But Jacob gives little heed to these vapouring promises of a sanguine adviser, and, as stooping before a necessity which was too strong for him, he prudently sets himself to devise means to disarm the danger; and “if it must be so now,” says he, “do this, take of the best fruits of the land in your vessels, and carry down the man a present, a little balm and a little honey, spices and myrrh, nuts and almonds—and take double money in your hand; and the money that was brought again in the mouth of your sacks, carry it again in your hand; peradventure it was an oversight.” [Gen. 43:12.]

I cannot persuade myself that these are not marks of a real character—especially when I consider that this identity is found in incidents spread over a period of a hundred years or more—that they are mere hints, as it were, out of which we are left to construct the man; hints interrupted by a multitude of other matters; the genealogy and adventures of Esau and his Arab tribes; the household affairs of Potiphar; the dreams of Pharaoh; the polity of Egypt—that the facts thus dispersed and broken are to be brought together by ourselves, and the general induction to be drawn from them by ourselves, nothing being more remote from the mind of Moses than to present us with a portrait of Jacob; nay, that of Isaac, who happens to be less involved in the circumstances of his history, he scarcely gives us a single feature. Surely, with all this before us, it is impossible to entertain the idea for a moment of any studied uniformity. Yet an uniformity there is; casual, therefore, on the part of Moses, who was thinking nothing about it; but complete, because, without thinking about it, he was by some means or other drawing from the life.

And now am I thought to disparage the character of this holy man of old? God forbid! I think that in the incidents I have named his conduct may be excused, if not justified. But were it otherwise, I am not aware that any of the Patriarchs has been set up, or can be set up, as a genuine pattern of Christian morals. They saw the Promise, (and the more questionable parts of Jacob’s conduct are to be accounted for by his impatience to obtain the Promise, and by his consequently using unlawful means to obtain it,) but “they s aw it afar off”—“they beheld it, but not nigh.” They lived under a code of laws that were not absolutely good, perhaps not so good as the Levitical; for as this was but a preparation for the more perfect Law of Christ, so possibly was the Patriarchal but a preparation for the more perfect Law of Moses. Indeed I have already observed, that many scattered hints may be gathered from this latter Law, which show that it was but the Law under which the Patriarchs had lived reconstructed, augmented, and improved; and I apprehend that such a scheme of progressive advancement, first the dawn, then the day, then the perfect day, is analogous to God’s dealings in general. But the broad light in which the Fathers of Israel are to be viewed is this, that they were exclusive worshippers of the One True Everlasting God, in the world of idolaters—that they were living depositaries of the great doctrine of the Unity of the Godhead, when the nations around were resorting to every green tree—that they were “faithful found among the faithless.” And so incalculably important was the preservation of this Great Article of the Creed of man, at a time when it rested in the keeping of so few, that the language of the Almighty in the Law seems ever to have a respect unto it: fury, anger, indignation, jealousy, hatred, being expressions rarely, if ever, attributed to him, except in reference to idolatry; and, on the other hand, enemies of God, adversaries of God, haters of God, being there—chiefly and above all, idolaters. But in this sense God was emphatically the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, none of them, not even the last (for the only passage which savours of the contrary admits, as we have seen, of easy explanation), having ever forfeited their claim to this high and glorious title; however, such title may not be thought to imply that their moral characters and conduct were faultless, and worthy of all acceptation.