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Genesis 32

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1 And Jacob went on his way; and the angels of God met him.

2 And when Jacob saw them he said, This is the camp of God. And he called the name of that place Mahanaim.

3 And Jacob sent messengers before his face to Esau his brother, into the land of Seir, the fields of Edom.

4 And he commanded them, saying, Thus shall ye speak to my lord, to Esau: Thy servant Jacob speaks thus -- With Laban have I sojourned and tarried until now;

5 and I have oxen, and asses, sheep, and bondmen, and bondwomen; and I have sent to tell my lord, that I may find favour in thine eyes.

6 And the messengers returned to Jacob, saying, We came to thy brother, to Esau; and he also is coming to meet thee, and four hundred men with him.

7 Then Jacob was greatly afraid, and was distressed; and he divided the people that were with him, and the sheep and the cattle and the camels, into two troops.

8 And he said, If Esau come to the one troop and smite it, then the other troop which is left shall escape.

9 And Jacob said, God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, Jehovah, who saidst unto me: Return into thy country and to thy kindred, and I will do thee good,

10 -- I am too small for all the loving-kindness and all the faithfulness that thou hast shewn unto thy servant; for with my staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I am become two troops.

11 Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau; for I fear him, lest he come and smite me, [and] the mother with the children.

12 And thou saidst, I will certainly deal well with thee, and make thy seed as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude.

13 And he lodged there that night; and took of what came to his hand a gift for Esau his brother --

14 two hundred she-goats, and twenty he-goats; two hundred ewes, and twenty rams;

15 thirty milch camels with their colts; forty kine, and ten bulls; twenty she-asses, and ten young asses.

16 And he delivered [them] into the hand of his servants, every drove by itself; and he said to his servants, Go on before me, and put a space between drove and drove.

17 And he commanded the foremost, saying, When Esau my brother meets thee, and asks thee, saying, Whose art thou, and where goest thou, and whose are these before thee?

18 -- then thou shalt say, Thy servant Jacob's: it is a gift sent to my lord, to Esau. And behold, he also is behind us.

19 And so commanded he the second, and the third, and all that followed the droves, saying, According to this word shall ye speak to Esau when ye find him.

20 And, moreover, ye shall say, Behold, thy servant Jacob is behind us. For he said, I will propitiate him with the gift that goes before me, and afterwards I will see his face: perhaps he will accept me.

21 And the gift went over before him; and he himself lodged that night in the camp.

22 And he rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two maidservants, and his eleven sons, and passed over the ford of the Jabbok;

23 and he took them and led them over the river, and led over what he had.

24 And Jacob remained alone; and a man wrestled with him until the rising of the dawn.

25 And when he saw that he did not prevail against him, he touched the joint of his thigh; and the joint of Jacob's thigh was dislocated as he wrestled with him.

26 And he said, Let me go, for the dawn ariseth. And he said, I will not let thee go except thou bless me.

27 And he said to him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob.

28 And he said, Thy name shall not henceforth be called Jacob, but Israel; for thou hast wrestled with God, and with men, and hast prevailed.

29 And Jacob asked and said, Tell [me], I pray thee, thy name. And he said, How is it that thou askest after my name? And he blessed him there.

30 And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel -- For I have seen God face to face, and my life has been preserved.

31 And as he passed over Peniel, the sun rose upon him; and he limped upon his hip.

32 Therefore the children of Israel do not eat of the sinew that is over the joint of the thigh, to this day; because he touched the joint of Jacob's thigh -- the sinew.

   

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Genesis 33:14

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14 Let my lord, I pray thee, pass on before his servant, and I will drive on at my ease according to the pace of the cattle that is before me, and according to the pace of the children, until I come to my lord, to Seir.

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Arcana Coelestia #4013

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4013. 'Jacob took for himself fresh rods of poplar' means the power proper to natural good. This is clear from the meaning of 'a rod' as power, and from the meaning of 'poplar' as the good of the natural, dealt with below. 'A rod' is referred to in various places in the Word, and in every case it means power, for one reason because of its use by shepherds in the exercise of power over their flocks, and for another because it served to support the body, and existed so to speak for the sake of the right hand - for 'the hand' means power, 878, 3387. And because it had that meaning a rod was also used in ancient times by a king; and the royal emblem was a short rod and also a sceptre. And not only a king used a rod, but also a priest and a prophet did so, in order that he too might denote by means of his rod the power which he possessed, as Aaron and Moses did. This explains why Moses was commanded so many times to stretch out his rod, and on other occasions his hand, when miracles were performed, the reason being that 'a rod' and 'the hand' means Divine power. And it is because 'a rod' means power that the magicians of Egypt likewise used one when performing magical miracles. It is also the reason why at the present day a magician is represented with a rod in his hand.

[2] From all these considerations it may be seen that power is meant by 'rods'. But in the original language the word used for the rod that a shepherd, or else a king, or else a priest or a prophet possessed, is different from that used for the rods which Jacob took. The latter were used by wayfarers and so also by shepherds, as becomes clear from other places, such as Genesis 32:10; Exodus 12:11; 1 Samuel 17:40, 43; Zechariah 11:7, 10. In the present verse, it is true, the rod is not referred to as one supporting the hand but as a stick cut out from a tree, that is to say, from the poplar, hazel, or plane, to be placed in the troughs in front of the flock. Nevertheless the word has the same meaning, for in the internal sense it describes the power of natural good and from that the good that empowers natural truths.

[3] As regards 'the poplar' from which a rod was made, it should be recognized that trees in general mean perceptions and cognitions - perceptions when they have reference to the celestial man, but cognitions when they have reference to the spiritual man, see 103, 2163, 2682, 2722, 2972. This being so, trees specifically mean goods and truths, for it is these that are involved in perceptions and cognitions. Some kinds of trees mean the interior goods and truths which belong to the spiritual man, such as olives and vines, other kinds mean the exterior goods and truths which belong to the natural man, such as the poplar, the hazel, and the plane. And because in ancient times each tree meant some kind of good or truth, the worship which took place in groves accorded with the kinds of trees there, 2722. The poplar referred to here is the white poplar, so called from the whiteness from which it gets its name. Consequently 'poplar' means good which was a product of truth, or what amounts to the same, the good of truth, as also in Hosea 4:13, though in this instance the good has been falsified.

  
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Thanks to the Swedenborg Society for the permission to use this translation.