From Brigham Young University's Maxwell Institute, this is the Maxwell Institute podcast, Faith Illuminating Scholarship.

In 2026, we are releasing a series called Old Testament Reflections. Each week, a scholar offers a short reflection on the Come Follow Me reading. Today's piece, Liming Into the Dawn, Reflections on Genesis 32, is written and read by Kimberly

Matheson.

Jacob is exactly the kind of morally ambiguous, smart aleck that audiences love to cheer for.

He's a fast thinker who knows when his

brother will be most susceptible to aromas from the kitchen, Genesis 25. He's a shrewd impersonator

who hoodwinks his aging father just as the estate is being settled, Genesis 27. And he hatches

a get-rich quick scheme that wasn't a lie, per se, but also wasn't a forthright

explanation of what exactly he was doing out in those fields with his father-in-law's cattle,

Genesis 30. It's not for nothing that Jacob is sometimes nicknamed the trickster.

But my favorite story in the Jacob cycle, and my favorite story in Scripture, is the moment

when Jacob comes clean, when all the scheming comes to an end and Jacob confronts

the one person he can't trick or hoodwink or dodge or outwit.

In Genesis 32, Jacob comes face to face with God when he least expects it.

At this point in the story, we readers are

hardly expecting to find God either. When the chapter opens, we're preparing for a very

different confrontation. We find Jacob on the borders of his brother's territory, about to see

Esau for the first time in over a decade, and he's clearly worried that the intervening years have done

little to cool Esau's rage. See, Genesis 2742. Most of the chapter is occupied with precautions

and bribes and carefully worded messages, a whole pageantry of conciliation. Jacob's opening

bid is a letter about how much has changed and how much might now be water under

the bridge, Genesis 32, 4 through 5, only to learn in return that Esau is coming to meet him with

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