Jacob and Esau are very like men that we meet every day commonplace, ordinary men, neither of them distinguished in character or ability. They were children of a weak father and of a crafty mother. Neither of them has any special religiousness. In the case of Esau the sensuous half of the man is all that could be desired, the spiritual half is altogether wanting. The natural half of Jacob's character is far less noble than that of Esau, but there were also in him certain religious susceptibilities a religious imagination and sentiment and personal purity which constituted the possibility of religious development. The difference between them is the difference between the good things in a bad man and the bad things in a good man, with their contrasted issues. Both of these youths began with the somewhat feeble religiousness of Isaac's tent. It took no hold upon Esau the profane, and he became Edom. It did take some hold upon Jacob the crafty, and he became Israel.
I. The night at Bethel was clearly a crisis in Jacob's religious character. He lay down a desolate, smitten, remorseful lad; the swift retribution of his sin had overtaken him. His vision was a revelation of the spiritual world and a teaching of the vital connection of God's providence with our human life. A wanderer of whom no human eye took cognisance, he was still under the eye of God; an exile for whom no one cared, God's angels ministered to him. Like Peter, his fall had been the means of his rising to a new spiritual life.
II. And then Jacob vowed his vow. It sounds somewhat carnal and bargain-making, but I do not think it was. Jacob simply takes up the words which God had spoken to him. They were the ideas of his day: he would be devout and benevolent, serve God and man according to his opportunity. He would offer to God all that he could offer. His history is a great parabolic lesson for young men not in its details of wrong-doing and remorse, but in its departure from home, in the loneliness of a new life, and in its new sense of God and consecration to Him.
H. ALLON, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxv., p. 60.
Reference: Genesis 28:20-22. W. Bull, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxii., p. 100.