Jacob and Esau’s birthplace is not obvious in the story. Context suggests Beersheba or its vicinity. Following Jacob’s ruse that fooled Isaac into giving the younger Jacob the firstborn blessing, which moved Esau to threaten to kill Jacob, his mother Rebekah advises him to flee to Haran, the city where her brother Laban lives. His father Isaac tells him to flee to the region of Paddan Aram. A city named Harran exists there today, presumably in roughly the same location.
Jacob leaves Beersheba for Haran and rests in a place called Luz. While traveling toward the land between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, he sees in Canaan a dream vision reminiscent of the story of Babel, another city between the Euphrates and Tigris, where the people attempted to build to heaven. After seeing God at the top of a stairway to heaven, he renames the place Bethel.
Jacob arrives in the “land of the eastern people” and finds men from Haran, who tell him of his relatives. Soon his cousin Rachel and then her father Laban arrive. Laban deceives Jacob the deceiver into marrying his two daughters. Although not exactly geography, it is worth nothing the role the dark tent plays in Jacob’s story. Jacob deceives his blind father there, Laban and his daughters later deceive Jacob in one, and Rebekah deceives Laban regarding his idols in her tent. Like Abraham and Isaac before him, God blesses Jacob in another’s land despite his deception.
Jacob apparently lives in the vicinity of Haran, though we find he moves his herds and flocks to keep them separate from Laban’s and, presumably, as needed to find food, water, and shelter. After working seven years each for his wives and agreeing to manage Laban’s flocks for a time for a cut of their offspring, Jacob learns from God that he should “Return to the land of [his] fathers and to [his] relatives.” Realizing that Laban does not want him to leave, Jacob resorts to deception and flees toward Canaan. “He left with all he owned. He quickly crossed the Euphrates River and headed for the hill country of Gilead.”
“Three days later Laban discovered Jacob had left. So he took his relatives with him and pursued Jacob for seven days. He caught up with him in the hill country of Gilead.” (Genesis 31:21-22, NET)
Jacob and Laban negotiate an agreement and build stone pillars to memorialize it at a place Jacob calls Galeed, meaning something like “witness pile” and Mizpah, meaning “watchtower.” Laban names it Jegar Sahadutha, “witness stones” in Aramaic. The pile of stones is apparently on the top of a mountain, where it can be seen and function as a watchtower.
“So Jacob went on his way and the angels of God met him. When Jacob saw them, he exclaimed, “This is the camp of God!” So he named that place Mahanaim.” (Genesis 32:1-2, NET) Jacob is on his way to Bethel where God met him at the top of a stairway to heaven, with angels traveling up and down. Here, he discovers angels encamped on the ground. This is quite a statement to let pass without further comment, yet the author does, creating narrative tension – What is the significance of angels living in a particular place here on earth? What is their intent? What event will they participate in?
Yet the story moves on – Jacob sends messengers to contact his brother about meeting for the first time in decades in the hope of reconciliation. Fearing Esau’s response, Jacob divides his family and sends them ahead of him across the Jabbok River, a tributary of the Jordan. He is alone on the far side of the river from Esau’s approaching men when he encounters a “man.” They wrestle, the man wounds his hip, but Jacob prevails and demands a blessing. The man’s response suggests his divinity. Jacob apparently has wrestled with God. Jacob names the place Peniel, meaning “face of God,” then crosses the Jabbok at Penuel. The slight difference in the names has unknown significance, though at least one commentator assesses the latter to mean “He turns to God” as a resolution to the conflict between Jacob and the God-man.
John Sailhamer, in his book Genesis Unbound, proposes the land between four rivers as a geographic approximation of future Israel and uses this incident along with Joshua’s encounter with an angel as he enters the Promised Land in Joshua 5 as support for his theory: when the people of God approach the land of promise from the east, they are met by an angel, just as angels were posted east of Eden to keep Adam and Eve from returning. Archaeologist Adam Zertal in his book A Nation Born proposes that structures he found in the vicinity of Jacob’s crossing of the Jabbok and Jordan into the land correlated with locations and purpose of the conquest-era Israelite Gigals, meaning that both Jacob and Joshua would have met an angel and crossed into the land at roughly the same location.
The Genesis description and the limits placed on a traveler by the geography help us to make a well-informed guess about the hills on which Jacob and his family’s actions took place. In the below images, we can see a narrow route through the mountains carved by the Jabbok River. Jacob apparently stayed on the north side of the river until he neared the Jordan, split his family into two camps, possibly on two hills across the river from each other in defensible positions with good visibility.
Jacob finally meets Esau, who is coming up from Edom in the south. Esau’s territory, Edom, will return to prominence in the biblical narrative during the Conquest and later in the Prophets. Once reconciled, Esau invites (pressures?) Jacob to travel with him to Edom. Jacob defers, dishonestly telling Esau he will meet him there in time, then travels northwest toward Shechem rather than south toward Edom.
While there are later references to a Sukkoth in this area in Gideon’s story and some scholars have engaged in informed speculation about its location – on a hill north of the Jabbok, east of the Jordan – a precise location for Jacob’s Sukkoth is unlikely to be found because the temporary shelters its name refers to would likely leave no trace distinguishable from uncountable nomadic herders over the intervening millennia.
“After he left Paddan Aram, Jacob came safely to the city of Shechem in the land of Canaan, and he camped near the city. Then he purchased the portion of the field where he had pitched his tent; he bought it from the sons of Hamor, Shechem’s father, for 100 pieces of money. There he set up an altar and called it ‘The God of Israel is God.’” (Genesis 33:18-20, NET)
This short passage contains significant hooks connecting it to stories past and future.
A careful reader will notice the city is named Shechem and so is the son of its ruler. We have seen this before in the narrative, first with Cain in Genesis 4:17. It’s an indicator of a worldly ruler attempting to make a name for himself and his family, a thread that runs from Cain through Lamech, Nimrod, and Babel. This is a place in rebellion against God.
Jacob purchases land near Shechem for 100 pieces of money, an event recalled in Joshua 24:32, when Joseph’s bones, having been disinterred from Egypt during the Exodus, are finally laid to rest on his father’s land during the Conquest. Jacob will send Joseph to find his brothers near Shechem, presumably on this land he owns. The young Joseph will be forcibly removed from this land, then returned here long after his death. In contrast to the pagan ruler, Jacob builds an altar and names it “The God of Israel is God.” Although he includes himself in the name (he too is apparently at least a little vain) his focus is on God; he is claiming pagan territory in God’s name. The one previous story of land purchase in Canaan was Abraham’s purchase of land near Hebron on which he would bury Sarah and later be buried himself.
The textual hints about the nature of Shechem pan out, and we find that Shechem, like Lamech and the sons of God before him, is a sexual abuser. Abraham rescued Lot when he was kidnapped, so also do Jacob’s sons rescue their sister Dinah. Unlike Abraham who refused to benefit materially from the rescue and was blessed by Melchizedek as approved by God, Jacob’s sons pillage and destroy Shechem and were cursed by Jacob and apparently the surrounding peoples so that Jacob’s family must flee in fear of retribution. God supernaturally protects them as they travel toward Bethel, where Jacob first saw God as he fled his own consequences of theft as a young man. At Bethel, Jacob builds an altar and names it El Bethel, reaffirming his commitment to God and claim of the land for God.
Rachel, the favored wife whose life is marked by weeping and the threat of death, goes into labor and, after bearing a son Benjamin, dies near Ephrath, later known as Bethlehem. After burying her, Jacob moves on to a place called Migdal Eder, likely a high place in the vicinity of Bethlehem with a watchtower for guarding flocks of sheep. Its location is not known. Here, his son Reuben betrays him by sleeping with his concubine/wife Bilhah.
Jacob then moves on to Mamre near Kiriath Arba, also known as Hebron, where his father Isaac dies. Jacob and Esau bury him in the cave containing Abraham, Sarah, and his wife Rebekah’s remains.
Here, the text makes a departure from Jacob’s narrative as it did with Isaac’s to focus on the other son not in the line of promise. By giving us the geography of Esau and his descendants, it prepares us to receive future narratives throughout the Hebrew Bible. Esau and his descendants marry into the surrounding cultures – Hittites, Hivites, Ishmaelites, and apparently Horites. They live in Seir, a mountainous region southeast of the modern Dead Sea, which became known as Edom, another name for Esau. Esau’s apparent descendants the Amalekites later live to the west near the border of Egypt, perhaps ranging across Sinai and Seir as raiders.
Jacob’s further movements correlate well with those of some of his sons, so we will consider the end of his life in the next post, The Geography of Jacob’s Sons.