The family reunion won’t last long, but long enough for reconciliation and a new beginning!
After the joyful meeting between the once adversarial brothers, Jacob convinces Esau to accept his peace offering. Esau continues his gracious ways, inviting Jacob’s family to travel with them back to his settlement in “the land of Seir” (Gen 32:3). Don’t get the idea that Esau was a pushover because of the way he treated his brother. Seir is the name for a shaggy he-goat, and the territory Esau settled in was rough country. South and east of the Dead Sea and extending down to present-day Saudi Arabia, it had been inhabited by the Horites (see ch 14:6). But of Esau it was predicted, “By your sword you shall live” (27:40), and the Lord had aided them in settling in these mountain fastnesses. We read that this “He had done for the descendants of Esau, who dwelt in Seir, when He destroyed the Horites from before them. They dispossessed them and dwelt in their place” (Deut 2:22). Jacob did not think a detour to Mount Seir was God’s plan, and he demurred: “My lord knows that the children are weak, and the flocks and herds which are nursing are with me…Please let my lord go on ahead before his servant. I will lead on slowly at a pace which the livestock that go before me, and the children, are able to endure, until I come to my lord in Seir” (Gen 33:13-14). The fact was, Jacob had a different route in mind, heading straight west into Canaan, and as far as we know, he never made it to Seir. In the centuries following, the descendants of Esau, known as the Edomites, were no friends of the Israelites, to say the least. But Jacob’s family eventually, in the closing days of the world’s history, will go to hide themselves in Edom, where the “Angel of the Presence” will again come to deliver them (see Isa 63:1ff). Lord, hasten the day!