Genesis 33 Study Notes

33:12-15 To compensate Jacob for his generous gift, Esau offered to provide companionship (“let us go”; let’s move on), leadership (I’ll go ahead), and—with the assistance of his four hundred men—protection to Jacob’s group for the remainder of the journey. Jacob, who had just escaped from twenty years of oppression from a troublesome relative, respectfully declined the offer, calling his brother my lord, but suggesting that he needed to travel alone. Jacob’s mention of following Esau to Seir might have been a mere social convention or another example of Jacob’s intentional obfuscation. Jacob may have eventually traveled to Seir on his way to Shechem. In any event, the brothers agreed not to live in the same region (36:6-7).

33:16-17 Esau went south to Seir, a forested mountainous region east of the Dead Sea, while Jacob’s group traveled a few miles north to settle at Succoth (Hb for “Temporary Shelters”), named for the temporary facilities Jacob constructed for his livestock. The Bible does not indicate that Jacob and Esau met again until they buried their father many years later (35:29).

33:18-20 Jacob’s journey ended when he arrived safely at Shechem, where his grandfather Abraham had first lived when he entered Canaan (12:6). Jacob intended to live permanently in the land promised to him by God (28:13), so he purchased a section of land in front of Shechem from the sons of Hamor, including his son Shechem, whose name matched the city’s name. The price of a hundred pieces of silver represents an unknown quantity; one suggestion is that the Hebrew word here, qesitah, represented the value of one lamb. True to the seminomadic heritage of his grandfather and father (12:8; 26:25), Jacob lived in a tent. Like Abraham and Isaac before him (12:8; 13:18; 22:9; 26:25), Jacob also set up an altar, naming it El-Elohe-Israel, God, the God of Israel.