Genesis 33: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Jacob sees Esau approaching with four hundred men, arranges his wives and children in order, and goes ahead of them, bowing seven times as he comes near. Esau runs to meet him, and after they weep together Esau asks about the family and the company he met, and finally accepts Jacob's gift. Esau offers to travel with Jacob or leave men with him; Jacob asks to follow slowly and Esau returns to Seir. Jacob stops at Succoth, then camps outside the city of Shechem, buys the ground he camps on, and sets up an altar there.

Claim by Claim

1. 33:1
   • Jacob lifted up his eyes and looked.
   • Jacob saw Esau coming.
   • Four hundred men were with Esau.
   • Jacob divided the children among Leah, Rachel, and the two maidservants.
2. 33:2
   • Jacob placed the maidservants and their children first.
   • Jacob placed Leah and her children after them.
   • Jacob placed Rachel and Joseph last.
3. 33:3
   • Jacob himself went on ahead of them.
   • Jacob bowed to the ground seven times.
   • Jacob kept bowing until he came near to his brother.
4. 33:4
   • Esau ran to meet Jacob.
   • Esau embraced him.
   • Esau fell on his neck.
   • Esau kissed him.
   • They wept.
5. 33:5
   • Esau lifted up his eyes.
   • Esau saw the women and the children.
   • Esau asked who these were to Jacob.
   • Jacob said they were the children God had graciously given his servant.
6. 33:6
   • The maidservants came near, they and their children.
   • The maidservants and their children bowed down.
7. 33:7
   • Leah also came near with her children.
   • Leah and her children bowed down.
   • Afterward Joseph and Rachel came near.
   • Joseph and Rachel bowed down.
8. 33:8
   • Esau asked what Jacob meant by all this company that he had met.
   • Jacob said it was to find favor in the eyes of his lord.
9. 33:9
   • Esau said he had plenty.
   • Esau called Jacob his brother.
   • Esau told Jacob to keep what was his.
10. 33:10
    • Jacob said no.
    • Jacob asked Esau, if he had found favor in his eyes, to take the gift from his hand.
    • Jacob said that he had seen Esau's face as one sees the face of God.
    • Jacob said Esau had received him favorably.
11. 33:11
    • Jacob asked Esau to take the blessing-gift that was brought to him.
    • Jacob said God had dealt graciously with him.
    • Jacob said he had everything.
    • Jacob urged Esau.
    • Esau took it.
12. 33:12
    • Esau said they should set out and go.
    • Esau said he would go alongside Jacob, the word meaning either in front of him or over against him.
13. 33:13
    • Jacob said his lord knew the children were tender.
    • Jacob said the nursing flocks and herds were his charge.
    • Jacob said that if they were driven hard for one day, all the flock would die.
14. 33:14
    • Jacob asked his lord to pass on ahead of his servant.
    • Jacob said he would lead on slowly.
    • Jacob said he would go at the pace of the livestock before him and at the pace of the children.
    • Jacob said he would come to his lord at Seir.
15. 33:15
    • Esau offered to leave with Jacob some of the people who were with him.
    • Jacob asked why that was needed.
    • Jacob said, let him find favor in the eyes of his lord.
16. 33:16
    • Esau returned that day on his way to Seir.
17. 33:17
    • Jacob journeyed to Succoth.
    • Jacob built himself a house there.
    • Jacob made booths for his livestock.
    • For that reason the place is named Succoth.
18. 33:18
    • Jacob came to the city of Shechem, the accompanying word meaning either that he arrived safe and whole or naming a place called Shalem.
    • The city is in the land of Canaan.
    • Jacob came there from Paddan-aram.
    • Jacob camped in front of the city.
19. 33:19
    • Jacob bought the plot of field where he had pitched his tent.
    • He bought it from the sons of Hamor.
    • Hamor was the father of Shechem.
    • The price was a hundred kesitah, a unit of money.
20. 33:20
    • Jacob set up an altar there.
    • Jacob called the altar El-Elohe-Israel.
    • The name he gave declares God to be the God of Israel.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

33:1

Four hundred men is a fighting force, not a traveling party; Jacob had been told in the previous chapter that Esau was coming with them, and he had good reason to fear his brother, whose birthright and blessing he had taken years earlier.

33:2

The two servant women are Bilhah and Zilpah, given to Jacob as secondary wives by Rachel and Leah; between them they are the mothers of four of his sons. Placing Rachel and Joseph last puts the wife and child he loves most at the greatest distance from Esau.

33:3

Bowing to the ground seven times was the formal approach of a subject to a king. Letters from Canaanite rulers of this era to the Egyptian court use the same gesture as a set phrase of submission. Jacob is treating his brother as a sovereign.

33:5

Calling Esau "my lord" and himself "your servant" is the courtesy language an inferior used to a superior throughout the ancient Near East; it does not mean Jacob has become Esau's property. He keeps it up through the whole conversation.

33:8

The company Esau met was the large gift of goats, sheep, camels, cattle and donkeys that Jacob had sent ahead in separate droves in the previous chapter, hoping to soften Esau before they met.

33:9

Refusing a gift once was expected politeness, and the giver was expected to insist. Esau's "I have enough" says he is rich in his own right and owes Jacob nothing, which is why Jacob has to press him in the next verse.

33:10

"Seeing the face" of someone is the idiom for being admitted to the presence of a king and received favorably. There is also a play on the previous chapter, where Jacob wrestled at a place he named Peniel, "the face of God," saying he had seen God face to face and lived.

33:11

The word translated "gift" here is the Hebrew word for a blessing, which could be used of a present given as a token of goodwill. It is the same word used of the blessing Jacob took from Esau by deceit, and Jacob is now pressing a "blessing" back into his hands.

33:13

Newborn lambs and calves and the mothers feeding them can only travel a few miles a day. Push a flock like that at a man's pace and the young animals collapse and die, which is a genuine reason to travel separately as well as a convenient one.

33:14

Seir is the hill country south-east of the Dead Sea, the territory later known as Edom, where Esau had settled. Jacob promises to follow him there, though the narrative never records him going.

33:15

Esau is offering an armed escort. Jacob turns it down without giving a reason, using the same polite formula he has used all along; men left with him would have been protection and also a set of eyes reporting back.

33:17

Succoth is Hebrew for "shelters" or "booths", the name records what Jacob built there. It lay east of the Jordan, so he has not yet crossed into Canaan proper. Ancient place names were often explained this way, by the sound of a word in the story.

33:18

The Hebrew word rendered "Shalem" also means "safe" or "in one piece," so the line can be read either as a place name, as the King James takes it, or as "Jacob came safely to the city of Shechem", the reading most modern translations prefer. Padan-aram is the region around Haran in upper Mesopotamia, where Laban lived and where Jacob had spent twenty years.

33:19

Shechem is both the name of the city and the name of Hamor's son, who appears in the next chapter. "Sons of Hamor" here means his clan or family, the group holding title to the land. The unit translated "pieces of money" is the Hebrew qesitah, a weight or value that occurs only three times in the whole Hebrew Bible; its size is unknown. Buying land outright mattered: it gave Jacob a legal foothold in Canaan rather than mere grazing rights, and this plot is one of only two pieces of ground the patriarchs are said to have purchased.

33:20

El-elohe-Israel means "God, the God of Israel." Israel is the new name Jacob was given in the previous chapter, so he is naming the altar after the God who is his own God. Naming an altar, rather than simply building one, marks a claim about whose worship the site belongs to.