Jacob had finally broken free. After twenty grueling years under Lavan’s thumb, after being lied to, cheated, and manipulated by his own father-in-law, Jacob was finally heading home. But just as he breathes the air of freedom, word reaches him: his brother Esau is coming. And he’s bringing four hundred men with him.
“Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed” (Genesis 32:8).
This wasn’t just fear. It was dread and panic. The Sages say Jacob’s body “became like wax.” The same Jacob who had survived Lavan’s treachery and built a family in exile now trembles before his twin. Why? Why would the chosen patriarch, who had received a direct promise from God—”Behold, I am with you and will guard you wherever you go” (Genesis 28:15)—react with such terror? Is Jacob’s fear a betrayal of faith?
Even more troubling is how Jacob humbled himself before Esau. He bowed seven times. He called Esau “my lord” eight times. The Sages do not take this lightly: “Because you called Esau ‘my lord’ eight times, I will establish eight kings from his descendants before any king rises from yours.” Jacob lowered himself before a wicked man – an eternal shame to his descendants.
What is going on here? If Jacob believed God’s promise, what was he so afraid of?
A classic explanation offered by the Sages is that Jacob was afraid not because he doubted God, but because he doubted himself. “Jacob said: Perhaps after the promise I sinned, and sin causes the promise not to be fulfilled.” The righteous are never confident in their own merit. They know that God’s judgment is exacting. No promise is immune from being revoked if the person falls short.
But there is a deeper reason for Jacob’s fear. It seems that Esau possessed a merit that he himself lacked: “Jacob said: All these years Esau has been dwelling in the Land of Israel – perhaps he comes against me by virtue of the merit of dwelling in the Land?”
Jacob, the righteous man, the man of truth, is afraid of Esau – not because Esau is righteous, but because he may have drawn spiritual strength from a source Jacob lacked: living in the Land of Israel.
Think about that. Jacob, who toiled for twenty years in exile, keeping God’s commandments in the spiritual wasteland of Haran, now trembles before a man he knows is wicked. Why? Because Esau has been living in the Land of Israel.
The Sages say that the very air of the Land of Israel purifies and elevates. “Anyone who dwells in the Land of Israel, the merit of the Land atones for him, as it is said: ‘And He will atone for His land and His people'” (Deuteronomy 32:43). Elsewhere they teach: “Even a Canaanite maidservant in the Land of Israel is assured that she is a daughter of the World to Come.”
Jacob understood what we too often forget: The land of Israel is not just geography. It refines and empowers. And yes, it can even lift up a man as evil as Esau.
And so Jacob feared. But once Esau announced his intention to leave the Holy Land for the land of Seir, Jacob’s fear began to melt away. He knew that Esau had not been transformed by the land after all.
Jacob’s next steps tell us everything. He travels to Sukkot, near Shechem, and refuses to accompany Esau to Seir. Though Jacob promised to join Esau in Seir – “Until I come to my lord to Seir” (Genesis 33:14) – he never goes there. As the Sages say: “We have searched all of Scripture and have not found that Jacob went to Esau at Mount Seir in all his days. Rather, when does he come to him? In the future to come, as it is written: ‘And saviors shall go up to Mount Zion to judge Mount Esau'” (Obadiah 1:21).
There is a lesson here, and it is not a gentle one. The Land of Israel is not a tourist destination. It is not a nice idea. It is power. And if we, the children of Jacob, do not live in that land, if we cede it to those who desecrate it, then we surrender not just territory but our own spiritual standing.
Jacob was not afraid of Esau’s army. He was afraid of losing the one thing that matters most: his connection to God’s land, and through it, to God Himself.
May we have the merit to follow Jacob home. May we open our eyes to the power of the land of Israel – and begin to see how the land itself uplifts, strengthens, and transforms. Let us stop treating it as a dream for the distant future and start treating it as the calling it is. The longer we wait, the more we forfeit. The time has come to come home.
Rabbi Elie Mischel’s powerful course on Jacob’s struggles dives deep into the patriarch’s most defining moments—this is just a taste of what awaits you in our Bible Plus library. Learn more about Bible Plus today.
