Jacob said to Pharaoh, “The years of my pilgrimage are one hundred thirty years. The days of the years of my life have been few and evil. They have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.”
Parallel Translations
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Jacob said to Pharaoh, “The years of my pilgrimage are one hundred thirty years. The days of the years of my life have been few and evil. They have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.”
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And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.
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And Jacob said unto Pharaoh: 'The days of the years of my sojournings are a hundred and thirty years; few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their sojournings.'
Cross-references (27)
Passages linked to Genesis 47:9 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Job 14:1 “Man, who is born of a woman, is of few days, and full of trouble.
- Psalms 39:12 “Hear my prayer, Yahweh, and give ear to my cry. Don’t be silent at my tears. For I am a stranger with you, a foreigner, as all my fathers were.
- Genesis 35:28 The days of Isaac were one hundred eighty years.
- Psalms 39:5 Behold, you have made my days hand widths. My lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely every man stands as a breath.”
- Genesis 50:26 So Joseph died, being one hundred ten years old, and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.
- Exodus 6:4 I have also established my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their travels, in which they lived as aliens.
- Exodus 7:7 Moses was eighty years old, and Aaron eighty-three years old, when they spoke to Pharaoh.
- Deuteronomy 34:7 Moses was one hundred twenty years old when he died. His eye was not dim, nor his strength gone.
- Joshua 24:29 After these things, Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of Yahweh, died, being one hundred ten years old.
- James 4:14 Whereas you don’t know what your life will be like tomorrow. For what is your life? For you are a vapor that appears for a little time, and then vanishes away.
- 1 Peter 2:11 Beloved, I beg you as foreigners and pilgrims, to abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul;
- Genesis 11:11 Shem lived five hundred years after he became the father of Arpachshad, and became the father of more sons and daughters.
- Genesis 11:24-25 Nahor lived twenty-nine years, and became the father of Terah. Nahor lived one hundred nineteen years after he became the father of Terah, and became the father of more sons and daughters.
- Genesis 25:7-8 These are the days of the years of Abraham’s life which he lived: one hundred seventy-five years. Abraham gave up his spirit, and died at a good old age, an old man, and full of years, and was gathered to his people.
- Genesis 47:28 Jacob lived in the land of Egypt seventeen years. So the days of Jacob, the years of his life, were one hundred forty-seven years.
- Job 8:8-9 “Please inquire of past generations. Find out about the learning of their fathers. (For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, because our days on earth are a shadow.)
- Job 42:16-17 After this Job lived one hundred forty years, and saw his sons, and his sons’ sons, to four generations. So Job died, being old and full of days.
- Psalms 119:19 I am a stranger on the earth. Don’t hide your commandments from me.
- Psalms 119:54 Your statutes have been my songs in the house where I live.
- Hebrews 11:9-16 By faith, he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a land not his own, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked for the city which has the foundations, whose builder and maker is God. By faith, even Sarah herself received power to conceive, and she bore a child when she was past age, since she counted him faithful who had promised. Therefore as many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as innumerable as the sand which is by the sea shore, were fathered by one man, and him as good as dead. These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them and embraced them from afar, and having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own. If indeed they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had enough time to return. But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed of them, to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.
- Genesis 5:27 All the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty-nine years, then he died.
- 2 Samuel 19:32-35 Now Barzillai was a very aged man, even eighty years old. He had provided the king with sustenance while he stayed at Mahanaim; for he was a very great man. The king said to Barzillai, “Come over with me, and I will sustain you with me in Jerusalem.” Barzillai said to the king, “How many are the days of the years of my life, that I should go up with the king to Jerusalem? I am eighty years old, today. Can I discern between good and bad? Can your servant taste what I eat or what I drink? Can I hear the voice of singing men and singing women any more? Why then should your servant be a burden to my lord the king?
- 1 Chronicles 29:15 For we are strangers before you, and foreigners, as all our fathers were. Our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is no remaining.
- Psalms 89:47-48 Remember how short my time is, for what vanity you have created all the children of men! What man is he who shall live and not see death, who shall deliver his soul from the power of Sheol?
- Psalms 90:3-12 You turn man to destruction, saying, “Return, you children of men.” For a thousand years in your sight are just like yesterday when it is past, like a watch in the night. You sweep them away as they sleep. In the morning they sprout like new grass. In the morning it sprouts and springs up. By evening, it is withered and dry. For we are consumed in your anger. We are troubled in your wrath. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. For all our days have passed away in your wrath. We bring our years to an end as a sigh. The days of our years are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty years; yet their pride is but labor and sorrow, for it passes quickly, and we fly away. Who knows the power of your anger, your wrath according to the fear that is due to you? So teach us to count our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
- Hebrews 13:14 For we don’t have here an enduring city, but we seek that which is to come.
- 2 Corinthians 5:6 Therefore we are always confident and know that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord;
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain 9. Few and evil have the days of the…
9. Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been. Jacob may here seem to complain that he had lived but a little while, and that, in this short space of time, he had endured many and grievous afflictions. Why does he not rather recount the great and manifold favors of God which formed an abundant compensation for every kind of evil? Besides, his complaint respecting the shortness of life seems unworthy of him; for why did he not deem a whole century and a third part of another sufficient for him? But if any one will rightly weigh his words, he rather expresses his own gratitude, in celebrating the goodness of God towards his fathers. For he does not so much deplore his own decrepitude, as he extols the vigor divinely afforded to his fathers. Certainly it was no new and unwonted thing to see a man, at his age, broken down and failing, and already near to the grave. Wherefore, this comparison (as I have said) was only intended to ascribe glory to God, whose blessing towards Abraham and Isaac had been greater than to himself. But he does not compare himself with his fathers in sufferings, as if they had been treated with greater indulgence; for we know that they had been tried to the utmost with all kinds of temptations: he merely states that he had not attained their age; as if he had said, “I, indeed, have arrived at those years which, by others, is deemed a mature old age, and which complete the proper term of life; but the Lord so prolonged the life of my fathers, that they far exceeded this limit.” He makes mention of evil days, in order to show that he was not so much broken down and consumed by years, as by labors and troubles; as if he had said, “My senses might yet have flourished in their vigor, if my strength had not been exhausted by continual labors, by excessive cares, and by most grievous sufferings.” We now see that nothing was less in the mind of the holy man than to expostulate with God. Yet it may seem absurd that he speaks of his life as being shorter than that of his fathers. For, whence does he conjecture that so little time should still remain for him, as to prevent him from attaining their age? Should any one answer, that he formed this conjecture from the weakness of his body, which was half dead; the solution will not prove satisfactory. For Isaac had dimness of sight and trembling limbs thirty years before his death. But it is not absurd to suppose that Jacob was every moment giving himself over to death, as if the sepulcher were before his eyes. He was, however, uncertain what length of time was decreed for him in the secret counsel of God. Wherefore, being unconcerned about the remainder of his life, he speaks just as if he were about to die on the next day.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Gen 47:9 And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days…
Gen 47:9 And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage [are] an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.
Ver. 9. The days of the years of my pilgrimage.] All saints here are sojourners, all good people "pilgrims and strangers." {1Pe 2:11 Heb 11:13-14} Far they are from home, and meet with hard measure; as Israel did in Egypt; as those three worthies in Babylon. {Dan 3:23} Their manners are of another manner: hence the world owns them not. {Joh 15:19} But God both owns and honours them; he knows their whole way; {Psa 1:6} "leads them in his hand"; {Isa 63:13} "guides them with his eye"; {Psa 32:8} "bears them in his bosom," {Isa 40:11} when ways are rough and rugged; provides "mansions" {Joh 14:2-3} for them, where they shall "rest in their beds," {Isa 57:2} feast "with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," {Mat 8:11} walk arm in arm with angels, {Zec 3:7} be "gathered to their people," {Gen 25:8 Heb 12:23} to their God, to their Christ," &c. - Provided that, in the meanwhile, they "set their faces towards Sion, inquiring the way"; {Jer 50:4-5} that they walk therein "from strength to strength"; {Psa 84:7} that they take in good part any kindness, as Ruth did; {Rth 2:10} that they put up any unkindness, as Paul did; {Gal 4:12} that they make much of any company; {Psa 119:63} send home by any hand; {Neh 2:5} "abstain from fleshly lusts"; {1Pe 2:11} and have "their conversation in heaven"; {Php 3:20} eating, drinking, and sleeping eternal life; so wishing to be at home, yet waiting the Father’s call; sighing out, when moved to be merry, - as the French king did, when prisoner here in England, in the days of King Edward III, - "How can we sing songs in a strange land?" {Psa 137:4}
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain My pilgrimage, i.e. my unstable or unsettled life, in…
My pilgrimage, i.e. my unstable or unsettled life, in which I have been flitting from place to place. See Gen 17:8; Psa 119:19; Heb 11:9,13. And though I seem old in comparison of thy people, yet I fall much short of my progenitors, Isaac, and Abraham, and Terah.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain Jacob said unto Pharaoh, the days of the years…
Jacob said unto Pharaoh, the days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years,.... He calls his life a "pilgrimage"; as every good man's is; they are not at home in their own country, they are seeking a better, even an heavenly one: Jacob's life was very emphatically and literally a pilgrimage; he first dwelt in Canaan, from thence he removed to Padanaram, and sojourned there awhile, and then came to Canaan again; for some time he dwelt at Succoth, and then at Shechem, and after that at Hebron, and now he was come down to Egypt, and he had spent one hundred and thirty years of his life in this way: and with this perfectly agrees the account of Polyhistor from Demetrius (n), an Heathen writer, who makes the age of Jacob when he came into Egypt one hundred and thirty, and that year to be the third year of the famine, agreeably to Gen 45:6,
few and evil have the days of the years of my life been; see Job 14:1; he calls his days but "few", in comparison of the long lives of the patriarchs in former times, and especially in comparison of the days of eternity: and "evil", because of the many afflictions he had met with; as from Esau, from whose face he was obliged to flee lest he should kill him, Gen 27:41; and in Laban's house, where he served for a wife fourteen years, and endured great hardships, Gen 31:41; and at Shechem, where his daughter was ravished, Gen 34:2, and his sons made that slaughter of the Shechemites, Gen 34:25, which he feared would cause his name to stink, Gen 34:30; and at Ephrath, where he buried his beloved Rachel, Gen 35:16; and at Hebron, where his sons brought him such an account as if they believed his beloved son Joseph was destroyed by a wild beast, Gen 37:32,
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and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage; his grandfather Abraham lived to be one hundred amnd seventy five years of age, Gen 25:7, and his father Isaac lived to the age of one hundred and eighty, Gen 35:28.
(n) Apud Euseb. Praepar. Evangel. l. 9. c. p. 21. p. 425.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain 1. Jacob calls his life a pilgrimage, looking upon…
Observe
1. Jacob calls his life a pilgrimage, looking upon himself as a stranger in this world, and a traveler towards another. He reckoned himself not only a pilgrim now he was in Egypt, a strange country in which he never was before, but his life even in the land of his nativity was a pilgrimage.
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2. He reckoned his life by days; for even so it is soon reckoned, and we are not sure of the continuance of it for a day to an end, but may be turned out of this tabernacle at less than an hours warning.
3. The character he gives of them was, (1.) That they were few. Though he had now lived 130 years, they seemed to him but as a few days, in comparison of the days of eternity, in which a thousand years are but as one day; (2.) That they were evil. This is true concerning man in general, Job xiv, 1, he is of few days and full of trouble: Jacob's life particularly had been made up of evil days. the pleasantest days of his life were yet before him. (3.) That they were short of the days of his fathers; not so many, not so pleasant as their days. Old age came sooner upon him than it had done upon some of his ancestors.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 9. The days of the years of my…
Verse 9. The days of the years of my pilgrimage] מגורי megurai, of my sojourning or wandering. Jacob had always lived a migratory or wandering life, in different parts of Canaan, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, scarcely ever at rest; and in the places where he lived longest, always exposed to the fatigues of the field and the desert. Our word pilgrim comes from the French pelerin and pelegrin, which are corrupted from the Latin peregrinus, an alien, stranger, or foreigner, from the adverb peregre, abroad, not at home. The pilgrim was a person who took a journey, long or short, on some religious account, submitting during the time to many hardships and privations. A more appropriate term could not be conceived to express the life of Jacob, and the motive which induced him to live such a life. His journey to Padan-aram or Mesopotamia excepted, the principal part of his journeys were properly pilgrimages, undertaken in the course of God's providence on a religious account.
Have not attained unto the - life of my fathers] Jacob lived in the whole one hundred and forty-seven years; Isaac his father lived one hundred and eighty; and Abraham his grandfather, one hundred and seventy-five. These were days of years in comparison of the lives of the preceding patriarchs, some of whom lived nearly ten centuries!
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Gen 47:9. Observe, 1st, Jacob calls his life a…
Gen 47:9. Observe, 1st, Jacob calls his life a pilgrimage, looking upon himself as a stranger in this world, and a traveller toward another. He reckoned himself not only a pilgrim now he was in Egypt, a strange country in which he never was before, but his life, even in the land of his nativity, was a pilgrimage. 2d, He reckoned his life by days; for even so it is soon reckoned; and we are not sure of the continuance of it for a day to an end, but may be turned out of this tabernacle at less than an hour’s warning. 3d, The character he gives of them was, 1st, That they were few.
Though he had now lived one hundred and thirty years, they seemed to him but as a few days, in comparison of the days of many of his ancestors, and especially of the days of eternity, in which a thousand years are but as one day. 2d, That they were evil. This is true concerning man in general, Job 14:1, he is of few days and full of trouble: Jacob’s life particularly had been made up of evil days; the pleasantest days of his life were yet before him. 3d, That they were short of the days of his fathers; not so many, not so pleasant as their days. Old age came sooner upon him than it had done upon some of his ancestors.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Pilgrimage. He hardly deigns to style it life, as…
Pilgrimage. He hardly deigns to style it life, as he was worn out with labour and sorrows, and was drawing fast to an end, so much sooner than his ancestors. Isaac had lived 180 years, and was only dead the year before Joseph was made ruler of Egypt. Some had lived above 900 years. (Haydock)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain The days of the years of my pilgrimage, &c.--Though…
The days of the years of my pilgrimage, &c.--Though a hundred thirty years, he reckons by days (compare Psa 90:12), which he calls few, as they appeared in retrospect, and evil, because his life had been one almost unbroken series of trouble. The answer is remarkable, considering the comparative darkness of the patriarchal age (compare Ti2 1:10).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 9. pilgrimage] R.V. marg. sojournings. See Gen_17:8, Gen_28:4, Gen_36:7,…
9. pilgrimage] R.V. marg. sojournings. See Gen_17:8, Gen_28:4, Gen_36:7, Gen_37:1 (P). The two renderings depend upon the metaphorical, or literal, explanation of Jacob’s words. Is it the metaphorical pilgrimage of life? or is it the frequent change of Jacob’s abode to which he makes reference? The latter is perhaps preferable, (1) on account of the allusion to the lives of his fathers, and (2) because this metaphor in the Bible seems to be based on the experience of the patriarchs themselves. Cf. 1Ch_29:15; Psa_39:12; Psa_119:19; Psa_119:54; Heb_11:9; Heb_11:13.
few] i.e. by comparison with the traditional days of old (Gen_5:1 ff., Gen_11:10 ff.) according to P.
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evil] Alluding to the flight from home, the hardships of the service in Haran, the loss of Joseph, the death of Rachel, the violence of Simeon and Levi (chap. 34).
they have not attained] Jacob’s life of 130 years at this juncture seemed short in comparison with the 175 years of Abraham (Gen_25:7) and the 180 years of Isaac (Gen_35:28).
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (9) My pilgrimage.—Heb., my sojournings; and so at end…
(9) My pilgrimage.—Heb., my sojournings; and so at end of verse. The idea of a pilgrimage is a modern one. Even in 1Pe_2:11 “pilgrim” means in the Greek a stranger who has settled in a country of which he is not a native. So, too, here Jacob was not a pilgrim, for he was no traveller bound for religious motives to some distant shrine, but he was a sojourner, because Canaan was not the native land of his race.
Few and evil.—Evil certainly: for from the time when he deceived his father, Jacob’s life had been one of great anxiety and care, in addition to his many sorrows. If he had gained wealth in Haran, it had been by great industry and personal toil, aggravated by Laban’s injustice. On his return, there was the double terror of Laban’s pursuit behind and Esau’s menacing attitude in front. He had then long lain ill at Succoth, waiting till time healed his sprained hip. His entry into the promised land had been made miserable by his daughter’s dishonour and the fierce conduct of his sons. And when his home was in sight, he had lost his beloved Rachel; and finally, been compelled to remain at a distance from his father, because Esau was there chief and paramount. His father dies, and Esau goes away; but the ten years between Isaac’s death and the descent into Egypt had been years of mourning for Joseph’s loss. All these troubles had fallen upon him, and made his days evil; but they were few only in comparison with those of his father and grandfather. In Pharaoh’s eyes Jacob had lived beyond the usual span of human existence; but to himself he seemed prematurely old. His end came after seventeen years of peaceful decay spent under Joseph’s loving care.
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The land of Rameses.—See Note on Gen_45:10. Though the LXX. take “land of Rameses” as equivalent to Goshen, it was more probably some special district of it, for, as we have seen, Goshen was a territory of vast extent. Raamses (Exo_1:11) is the same word, though the Masorites have given it different vowels; but whether such a town already existed, or whether when built it took its name from the district, we cannot tell. If there were such a place, it would at this period be a poor village, consisting of a few shepherds’ huts; but long afterwards, in the days of King Rameses II., “it was the centre of a rich, fertile, and beautiful land, described as the abode of happiness, where all alike, rich and poor, lived in peace and plenty.”—Canon Cook, Excursus on Egyptian Words, p. 487. It deserved therefore its description as “the best of the land.”
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain Ver. 9.
HOMILIES BY J.F. MONTGOMERY
Ver. 9.
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The discipline of life.
Few and evil, yet 130 years; and how many blessings temporal and spiritual had been received during their course. We need not suppose him unthankful. But blessings do not of themselves make a man happy. Some worm may be at the root. And in Jacob"s case early faults cast a shadow over his whole life. The remembrance of early deceit, his natural shrinking from danger, his family cares, his mourning for Rachel (Gen_48:7) and for Joseph, gave a tinge of melancholy not entirely to be taken away even by receiving his son as it were from the dead. The retrospect of his life seemed that of a suffering man.
I ABIDING SORROW IS THE FRUIT OF EARLY FAULTS, THOUGH REPENTED OF. (1Co_15:9) It does not necessarily imply separation from God, or doubt of personal salvation. If "a godly sorrow," it works repentance, i.e. a more complete turning to God. But just as early neglect of the laws affecting bodily health produces a lasting effect, however carefully these laws may be attended to in after years, so neglect of God"s moral and spiritual laws produces sorrow, varying in kind, and in the channel by which it comes, but bearing witness to the truth of God"s unceasing watchfulness.
II THE DISCIPLINE OF LIFE IS NOT IN ANGER, BUT FOR OUR PURIFICATION. Thus suffering may be a blessing. But for sorrow Jacob might have sunk into taking his ease. His besetting danger was worldly carefulness. (Gen_30:41) So sorrow, from outward circumstances or from inward reflection, often brings us nearer God. It teaches the vanity of earth that we may realize the blessedness of the inheritance above; that frail and weary we may cling more closely to the promises of the rest which remaineth. (Heb_4:9)
III THIS LIFE IS INTENDED TO BE A PILGRIMAGE, NOT A REST. Its blessedness consists not in present enjoyment, but in preparation for the rest to come. (Luk_12:20, Luk_12:21) We are reminded that there is a goal to be reached, a prize to be won (1Co_9:24; 1Pe_1:3-9) and that the time is short, that we may put forth all our efforts (Ecc_9:10) to overcome Besetting faults and snares of worldliness. A pilgrim (Heb_11:14) is seeking a country not yet reached. The remembrance of this keeps the life Godward. True faith will work patience and activity; true hope will work cheerfulness under hindrances, and, if need be, under sufferings. And the love of Christ, (Joh_14:2, Joh_14:3) and the consciousness that we are his, will constrain us "to walk even as he walked." For what are you striving? to lade yourself with thick clay? To gain honor, renown, admiration, bodily enjoyment? or as a pilgrim (Num_10:29) walking in Christ"s way, and doing Christ"s work? M.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the…
Gen_47:9
And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been
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A pensive retrospect
I.
LIFE HAS BEEN TO HIM A PILGRIMAGE. He thinks of all his wanderings from that far-off day when at Bethel he received the promise of Gods presence in all places whither thou goest, till this last happy and yet disturbing change. But he is thinking not only, perhaps not chiefly, of the circumstances, but of the spirit, of his life. This is, no doubt, the confession that they were strangers and pilgrims referred to in the Epistle to the Hebrews. He was a pilgrim, not because he had often changed his place of abode, but because he sought the city which had foundations, and therefore, could not be at home here. The goal of his life lay in the far future; and whether he looked for the promises to be fulfilled on earth, or had the unformulated consciousness of immortality, and saluted the dimly descried coast from afar while tossing on lifes restless ocean, he was effectually detached from the present, and felt himself an alien in the existing order. We have to live by the same hope, and to let it work the same estrangement, if we would live noble lives. Not because all life is change, nor because it all marches steadily on to the grave, but because our true home--the community to which we really belong, the metropolis, the mother city of our souls--is above, are we to feel ourselves strangers upon earth. They who only take into account the transiency of life are made sad, or sometimes desperate, by the unwelcome thought. But they whose pilgrimage is a journey home may look that transiency full in the face, and be as glad because of it as colonists on their voyage to the old country which they call home, though they were born on the other side of the world and have never seen its green fields.
II. To JACOBS EYES HIS DAYS SEEM FEW. Abrahams one hundred and seventy-five years, Isaacs one hundred and eighty, were in his mind. But more than these was in his mind. The law of the moral perspective is other than that of the physicial. The days in front, seen through the glass of anticipation, are drawn out; the days behind, viewed through the telescope of memory, are crowded together. What a moment looked all the long years of his struggling life--shorter now than even had once seemed the seven years of service for his Rachel, that love had made to fly past on such swift wings! That happy wedded life, how short it looked! A bright light for a moment, and
Ere a man could say Behold!
The jaws of darkness did devour it up.
It is well to lay the coolness of this thought on our fevered hearts, and, whether they be torn by sorrows or gladdened with bliss, to remember this also will pass and the longest stretch of dreary days be seen in retrospect, in their due relation to eternity, as but a moment. That will not paralyze effort nor abate sweetness, but it will teach preparation, and deliver from the illusions of this solid-seeming shadow which we call life.
III. THE PENSIVE RETROSPECT DARKENS, AS THE OLD MANS MEMORY DWELLS UPON THE PAST. His days have not only been few--that could be borne--but they have been evil, by which I understand not unfortunate so much as faulty. We have seen in former lessons the slow process by which the crafty Jacob had his sins purged out of him, and became Gods wrestler. Here we learn that old wrong-doing, even when forgiven--or, rather, when and because for-given--leaves regretful memories life-long. The early treachery had been long ago repented of and pardoned by God and man. The nature which hatched it had been renewed. But here it starts up again, a ghost from the grave, and the memory of it is full of bitterness. No lapse of time deprives a sin of its power to sting. As in the old story of the man who was killed by a rattlesnakes poison fang imbedded in a boot which had lain forgotten for years, we may be wounded by suddenly coming against it long after it is forgiven by God and almost forgotten by ourselves. Many a good man, although he knows that Christs blood has washed away his guilt, is made to possess the iniquities of his youth. Thou shalt be ashamed and confounded, and never open thy mouth any more, when I am pacified toward thee for all that thou hast done.
IV. BUT THIS SHADED RETROSPECT IS ONE-SIDED. It is true, and in some moods seems all the truth; but Jacob saw more distinctly, and his name was rightly Israel, when, laying his trembling hands on the heads of Josephs sons, he laid there the blessing of the God which fed me all my life long, . . . the Angel which redeemed me from all evil. That was his last thought about his life as it began to be seen in the breaking light of eternal day. Pensive and penitent memory may call the years few and evil, but grateful faith even here, and still more the cleared vision of heaven, will discern more truly that they have been a long miracle of loving care, and that all their seeming evil has been transmuted into good. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The nothingness of life
The patriarch called his days few and evil, not because his life was shorter than his fathers, but because it was nearly over. When life is past, it is all one whether it has lasted two hundred years or fifty. And it is the fact that life is mortal which makes it under all circumstances equally feeble and despicable.
I. THIS SENSE OF THE NOTHINGNESS OF LIFE IS MUCH DEEPENED WHEN WE CONTRAST IT WITH THE CAPABILITIES OF US WHO LIVE IT. Our earthly life gives promise of what it does not accomplish. It promises immortality, yet it is mortal; it contains life in death and eternity in time, and it attracts us by beginnings which faith alone brings to an end.
II. Such being the unprofitableness of this life viewed in itself, IT IS PLAIN HOW WE SHOULD REGARD IT WHILE WE GO THROUGH IT. We should remember that it is scarcely more than an accident of our being--that it is no part of ourselves, who are immortal. The regenerate soul is taken into communion with saints and angels, and its life is hid with Christ in God. It looks at this world as a spectator might look at some show or pageant, except when called upon from time to time to take a part. (J. H.Newman, D. D.)
Jacobs retrospect
Jacob looked back on his life and saw but three things--God, love, grief. These were all he had to speak of. They were a trinity of the past; they dwarfed everything else.
I. GOD appeared unto me at LUZ. This one first and great appearance of God was memorable in all his life, because it was the first. It stamped itself upon his life; even in old age the memory of it was not obscured, effaced, or weakened, but was with him in the valley of the shadow of death.
II. Less august, but even more affecting, was the second of his three experiences--LOVE. Of all whom he had known, only two names remained to him in the twilight between this life and the other--God and Rachel. The simple mention of Rachels name by the side of that of God is itself a monument to her.
III. The third of these experiences was that RACHEL WAS BURIED. When Rachel died, the whole world had but one man in it, and he was solitary, and his name was Jacob. Application:
1. See how perfectly we are in unity with the life of this, one of the earliest men. How perfectly we understand him! How the simplest experiences touch us to the quick!
2. The filling up of life, however important in its day, is in retrospect very insignificant.
3. The significance of events is not to be judged by their outward productive force, but by their productiveness in the inward life.
4. In looking back through the events of life, though they are innumerable, yet those that remain j last are very few--not because all the others have perished, but because they group themselves and assume moral unity in the distance. (H. W. Beecher.)
The retrospect
1. The character given of human life. He considers this life as a pilgrimage.
2. The estimate of its worth. He counted the days of the years of his life to be few and evil.
3. The consequent necessity of provision for its ultimate result.
I. We are to consider this life under the figure which the text sets before us. It is a pilgrimage. Let us dwell for a short time on the practical view of life which is taken by the true believer.
1. He does not regard this world as his home. There are many who live in it as if they were permanently fixed in it. But the Christian pilgrim is conscious that he has a home to which he is travelling. There remaineth a rest for the people of God.
II. We notice the estimate which true wisdom gives us of the real worth of this life, regarded in itself. Few and evil, said the patriarch, have the days of the years of my life been. Life is short. And oh! how short!--how limited! The days of our years are threescore years and ten; sometimes with difficulty they reach to fourscore years. But how few of our race reach even the nearer limit! But the wise estimate of human life is not only that it is short in its duration, but that it is evil in its nature. It is evil, as it is the scene of continual trial and affliction, as it is chequered by calamities of various kinds, which bow down the spirit, and gradually render the end of life desirable. But we observe, again, that life is full of evil, because it is full of sin. Jacob knew his own heart well, and the contemplation of his own history could afford him no self-satisfaction. Let the votary of this world make a fair estimate of his days. They are few and evil. Can you make better of them? The cutting conviction of your heart, when you look within, is that they are so. You have no means of lengthening their duration. You cannot dismiss their oppressive sorrows.
III. We notice, then, the absolute need of a provision for the ultimate result of life. In conclusion, the subject suggests to us a few practical remarks.
1. It becomes all those who make a Christian profession diligently to examine their own ground of hope for a better world.
2. Again, we are called upon by our professed principles to take care that we are not bound down by an improper attachment to the perishing goods of this world.
3. We are called upon by our principles, as pilgrims towards another and a better world, to do our utmost as faithful stewards of the gifts of God in alleviating the sufferings and the sorrows of our fellow-creatures.
4. There is a duty incumbent on us also to use every fair opportunity of inculcating on our fellow-men the consideration of the true character of this life and its speedy termination. (E. Craig.)
The greatness and the littleness of human life
I. CONTRAST THIS POOR VANISHING LIFE OF OURS WITH THE GREAT CAPABILITIES OF OUR SOULS.
II. CONSIDER SOME FACTS OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE.
1. Consider the case of a man who dies full of days,
2. Consider the case of a man who dies before his time.
3. Consider the ease of the death-beds of some of the saints.
III. OUR DUTY IN THE PRESENCE OF THESE FACTS.
1. Seek eternal life.
2. Look forward to the compensations of another world. (T. H.Leale.)
Jacob before Pharaoh
I. LIFE AS A DISCIPLINE.
1. The changes of life often bring us nearer to the changeless God.
2. Bereavements teach us to set our affections on things above.
3. The heavy trials of life often remind of past sin and cause despondency, and yet reveal the wisdom and love of God.
II. LIFE AS A PILGRIMAGE.
1. Life is long in anticipation, but short in retrospect.
2. Life is bright in anticipation, and sad in retrospect.
3. Life as a pilgrimage is an incentive to effort (Heb_11:13 - 1Pe_2:11-25).
4. Life as a pilgrimage is an encouragement to endurance.
Conclusion:
1. What cause we have for gratitude, trust, hope!
2. To what are you looking forward?
3. What effect has your hope upon your life (1Jn_3:3)?
4. Who is your guide? Self, Satan, or God? (A. F. Joscelyne, B. A.)
Human life in retrospect
I. HUMAN LIFE IS RETROSPECT IS SADDENING.
1. Unsettled.
2. Brief. The shorter perhaps the better.
3. Evil. Because--
(1) Never to be recalled.
(2) Memory of moral imperfections more or less distressing.
II. IT STANDS IN CONTRAST WITH IT IN PROSPECT. Hope makes life to the young a settled, lengthened, and joyous thing.
III. IT SUGGESTS THE IDEA OF A BETTER EXISTENCE. Underlying this wail of the old patriarch, there was an impression of a life settled, long, and blessed. This impression was the standard by which he measured the ever-changing, brief, and unblessed past. Truly, a belief in a future life is almost necessary to reconcile us to the present. (Homilist.)
Mans life on earth a pilgrimage
I. THAT THE LIFE OF MAN UPON EARTH IS A PILGRIMAGE.
II. THAT MANS DAYS IN THIS PILGRIMAGE STATE ARE FEW AND EVIL.
III. THE CAUSE OF THIS; AND WHETHER, AND HOW FAR, THE EVIL ADMITS OF A CURE. Inferences:
1. Is this a pilgrimage state? Then why should we be so much attached to or affected with anything here--a country where we are pilgrims?
2. Are our days few? Then let us make haste, for we have a great work to do.
3. Are they evil? Then why are we in love with them? Why unwilling to go where days are evil no more?
4. Has God provided a cure? Then let us take care we do not reject it. (J. Benson.)
Life
I. LIFE IN ITS GENERAL CHARACTER.
1. It is evil. This may be understood as including two things--sin and affliction. Sin is evil and only evil, and that continually. This is mans true misery, and the only way to save man from misery is to save him from sin. Affliction is not misery; it may not have the sting of moral guilt in it, and therefore, although in itself an evil, by Gods merciful guidance it may become the means of great good to us.
2. This leads us to remark that another feature in mans natural life is that it is met by the great redemption of Christ Jesus the Lord. The man who uttered the words of my text spoke also of the Divine Messenger who redeemed him from all evil.
3. Life may become a pilgrimage to heaven. You may travel through the wilderness to Canaan; you may now set out for a city which hath foundations, whose Maker and Builder is God. Will you?
II. LIFE AS TO THE PERIOD OF TIME IN WHICH IT FALLS.
1. What a contrast between the time when the patriarch lived and our own!
2. And what is its state?
3. It is a time of great discovery and rapid and well-nigh universal communication.
4. The missionary work of the Church has only been preparatory; soon it will break forth in its proper strength.
5. The Church is being tried as silver is tried; every mans work is being tried of what sort it is.
6. There is a yearning in the Church of God for union; this we hail with delight!
III. LIFE IS ITS INDIVIDUALITY. My life.
1. Consider your life as a gift from God with its consequent responsibilities.
2. Your life as the time of your salvation.
3. But, again, let me remind you that your life is the opportunity for Christian activity.
IV. AND, LASTLY, LIFE AS TO ITS BREVITY, AND THE DIVISION OF ITS DURATION.
1. Its shortness. It is not only a vanity, but a short-lived vanity.
2. But think for a moment of its swiftness. Have you ever seen a shadow run along the ground, darkening the places beautified by the beams of the sun, but quickly disappearing? Such is mans life; for he fleeth as it were a shadow, and continueth not. A weavers shuttle is very swift in its motion; in a moment it is thrown from one side of the web to the other; yet our days are swifter than a weavers shuttle. My days are swifter than a post, says one; they flee away as the eagle that hasteth to the prey; the eagle flying, not with his ordinary flight, for that is not sufficient to represent the swiftness of our days, but as when he flies upon his prey, which is with an extraordinary swiftness. (T. E. Thoresby.)
Life: its duration, shortness, and uncertainty
I. The general life of man was in ancient times, that is, in the first ages of the world, MUCH LONGER THAN AT PRESENT. AS old as Methuselah has passed into a proverb. He lived 969 years. Adam lived 930 years. Noah lived longer than Adam by 20 years. He died at the age of 950. Lamech lived 777 years. But, after the flood, we scarcely read of one who lived up to even 200. And it is thought by some that, when God brought about the flood, He at the same time, by a Divine decree, shortened mans life. The three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, little surpassed this age; and we know that many of those connected with them sank into their graves at a very much earlier age.
II. THE LIFE OF MAN NOW IS NOT ONLY SHORT, BUT UNCERTAIN. The death that happens, happens frequently in a place when we least expect it. Those who we think are going to die many times earlier, and those who we think have years of life before them drop unexpectedly into the grave.
III. THE LIFE OF MAN IS CHEQUERED WITH EVIL. Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been. All people have their troubles. To use the expressive language of Scripture, Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. As Christians we are expressly warned to be prepared for trouble. In the world, says our Lord to His then immediate disciples, and doubtless He meant the same truth to be conveyed to us, in the world, says He, ye shall have tribulation. And, again, intimating the same truth, He says, Behold I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves. But I need not accumulate texts on a truth so evident, and so fully verified by experience. Who is there without trouble? Who has not heavy cares on his mind? Who can, with joyous mind, say that his fond expectations have not been disappointed? (W. Lupton, M. A.)
The shortness of life
I. IT IS SHORT IN COMPARISON WITH THE LIVES OF THE EARLY MEMBERS OF THE HUMAN FAMILY.
II. HUMAN LIFE IS SHORT IN COMPARISON WITH OUR EXPECTATIONS OF ITS CONTINUANCE.
III. HUMAN LIFE IS SHORT IN COMPARISON WITH ETERNITY.
IV. HUMAN LIFE IS SHORT IN COMPARISON WITH THE WEIGHTY INTERESTS WHICH ARE AFFECTED AND UNALTERABLY SETTLED BY IT.
V. HUMAN LIFE IS NOT ONLY SHORT, BUT ALTOGETHER UNSATISFACTORY.
1. The shortness of life is a consoling reflection to the Christian.
2. The shortness of life should admonish those who are impenitent immediately to enter on the work of their salvation. (I. Foot, D. D.)
Two views of life
I. THERE IS A SENSE IN WHICH LIFE MAY BE REGARDED AS EVIL.
1. It appears so when we consider the disparity between the good it affords and the good we desire. The earth hath He given to the children of men, and it is a goodly inheritance. Its sights and sounds are dear to our hearts; we love it as our first home--the only home we have hitherto known. But, like Jacob and his fathers when they sojourned in the promised land, we seek a better country; this world, with all its beauty, glory, and grandeur, does not satisfy our hearts. Our spiritual instincts make it impossible for us to find here perfect rest; they point us to the future, and are a prophecy of the world that shall be revealed.
2. Life may appear evil when we compare what it is with what in many cases it might be. Men spoil their own lives, and then complain that life is evil; they mar and rend the picture, and murmur because its beauty has disappeared; they run the ship upon the rocks, and weep to find her a wreck; they crush the flower with a rude hand, and are disappointed because it withers.
II. But the words of Jacob do not exhaust the subject; IN THE HIGHEST, TRUEST SENSE LIFE IS GOOD AND NOT EVIL.
1. It is the gift of God. He thought it right, and wise, and kind that we should be. Our existence appeared to Him a good and desirable thing; and what is good in His sight is and must be so in reality, for He sees things as they are, and not as they seem.
2. Our life is under His control. Let us then trust His perfect love. Seeing that He is with us in the ship, we will not fear the voyage, stormy though it be.
3. Our present life is connected with an endless future. (T. Jones.)
The days of our pilgrimage
Pilgrimage is the broad condition of every life-course that passes upward, as well as onward, and has its bourne in God. Pharaoh speaks of years of life, Jacob of pilgrimage. Pharaoh measured existence by days of power and pleasure, by banquets, triumphs, and festivals of the gods. Jacob by the stages where, after stern battle, he had left a lust, a vice, a weakness buried; by the waning of the stars which lit his night of sorrow, and the rosy flush in the east which was already brightening, breaking into the morning of his everlasting day. It is a very wonderful fact that Gods elect, His friends, in the early dawn of history, were men who lived upon promises, and who possessed absolutely not one clod of the land which God called their own, except the cave where they buried their dead. Very splendid, very wealthy, was their inheritance Gen_13:14-17). But the cave which they bought of Ephron (Gen_23:1-20.)was their only possession in the land which yet was all their own. Pilgrimage of the hardest, sternest character was their portion; and the wonder is that they never made a moan over it, and never reproach the justice and fidelity of the Lord. Bravely they accepted their lot as pilgrims; and they blessed the angel who had guided their pilgrimage when their heads were bowed in death. What had they then which was a richer possession than those graves? Well, they had the land; all its beauty and splendour, morning pomp and golden evening mists, moonlight that silvered its ridges, shadows that slept in its hollows, stars that watched its wolds through the dewy night, and the myriad gems that glittered a laughing welcome to the rising day. They had that; it was all their own. They lived with Nature as Gods children alone can live with her, and were filled with her blessing. Yes! they had the land, as we may all have the land, as no lustful heathen could have the land; and with hearts bursting with joy and thankfulness they praised His name, whose bounty and tenderness had laid all this wealth of beauty and splendour at their feet. Yes! they had the land, and they held it by the tenure of praise. And the things which were seen were prophets to them of the things which were not seen. Through the vestibule they looked into the temple; they had vision of fairer homes, of brighter suns, in the world to which they had the mysterious entrance; where, too, they had seen the white-winged troops of angels gleaming in the celestial sunlight, and whence they had heard the voice of the Invisible King. The pilgrims held in fee two worlds. They had the promise of the life that now is (compare Lot and Abraham), and of the life that is to come. And bravely Jacob bears witness before Pharaoh of his pilgrim life and lot. To Pharaoh earth was the home; men were pilgrims in the shades. Here the sunlight, the sun warmth, the joy of a home; there, behind the veil, the king could see only a rout of shivering, shuddering ghosts. Jacob had his pilgrimage here; his home, his kingdom, in eternity. Some sense of this perhaps flashed on the king as he gazed. It was a strange puzzle to him. Nebuchadnezzar, Herod, Pilate, Felix, were all perplexed by it in their times. These pilgrims, landless, penniless, powerless, were after all heavens priests and kings. But there is something special in the experience which this pilgrim confesses before the king. Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been. A sad and weary old man. Would faithful Abraham or pious Isaac have borne this testimony? The life of the one was nobler, purer, grander, than Jacobs; the life of the other more simple and serene. The old age of either would have been fairer and brighter to look upon. Jacobs experience, on the other hand, has much to do with the habit of his nature and the sins and follies of his life. It is one of the most profoundly interesting biographies in history; because of the breadth of human experience it covers, the heights and the depths through which this princely pilgrim passed. He had a keen and subtle intellect, easily tempted to display itself in cunning, but with a lordly power in its compass when set on its noblest use. While he had a craving, grasping appetite for riches, and intense power of acquisition, joined with a grand faculty of spiritual insight and constant vision of the realities of the unseen world. A power at once to grope and to soar; now the huckster, now the seer. Two powerful natures struggling within for the mastery; the spirit wresting the victory from the flesh through bitter anguish and wasting pain. This false brother, this crafty steward, this scheming chief, this foolish father, had terrible lessons to learn at the hand of the Angel who was redeeming him from all evil; and it is the glory of the man that he had patience, courage, and faith to learn them, and to bless the Angel who had redeemed him as he bowed on his beds head in death. He was such a pilgrim as most of us may be, with the double nature strongly developed. He might have made a successful venture of this life, as men count success, if God would have let him. But God endowed him with a nature which marred his prosperity, which would be aiming at unseen blessings, far-off fruits of birthright, and everlasting results. It is the battle of the two natures, both so strong and in such high development, which makes the striking interest of the patriarchs history. Few and evil were his days compared with his fathers, for his heart was rent by contending passions, his home was torn by hostile factions. The patriarch had won his freedom when he stood before Pharaoh; but the marks of the struggle, the dim eye, the furrowed brow, the sad lip, were on him. (J. B. Brown, B. A.)
Disappointment in life
A recent writer, who spent some years on the banks of the Nile and on its waters, and who mixed freely with the inhabitants of Egypt, says: Old Jacobs speech to Pharaoh really made me laugh, because it is so exactly like what a Fellah says to a Pacha, Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, Jacob being a most prosperous man, but it is manners to say all that. But Eastern manners need scarcely be called in to explain a sentiment which we find repeated by one who is generally esteemed the most self-sufficing of Europeans. I have ever been esteemed, Goethe says, one of Fortunes chiefest favourites; nor will I complain or find fault with the course my life has taken. Yet, truly, there has been nothing but toil and care; and I may say that, in all my seventy-five years, I have never had a month of genuine comfort. It has been the perpetual rolling of a stone, which I have always had to raise anew. Jacobs life had been almost ceaseless disquiet and disappointment. A man who had fled his country, who had been cheated into a marriage, who had been compelled by his own relative to live like a slave, who was only by flight able to save himself from a perpetual injustice, whose sons made his life bitter--one of them by the foulest outrage a father could suffer, two of them by making him, as he himself said, to stink in the nostrils of the inhabitants of the land he was trying to settle in, and all of them by conspiring to deprive him of the child he most dearly loved--a man who at last, when he seemed to have had experience of every form of human calamity, was compelled by famine to relinquish the land for the sake of which he had endured all and spent all, might surely be forgiven a little plaintiveness in looking back upon his past. The wonder is to find Jacob to the end unbroken, dignified, and clear-seeing, capable and commanding, loving and full of faith. (M. Dods, D. D.)
Jacobs pilgrimage
It was very true of the past of Jacobs life that it had been a pilgrimage, for he had been twenty-one years a stranger in the land of Padan-aram, and even after his return to Canaan he had not dwelt continuously in one place. For years, indeed, he had been at Hebron, near the Machpelah cave, where the ashes of his fathers were entombed; but now again he was away from the only spots of earth in Shechem and in Hebron which legally he could call his own. So with literal exactness he could say that his life had been a pilgrimage. But the expression had a forward as well as a backward look. It told that he was seeking a home beyond the grave, that he was desiring the better country, even the heavenly, and that his hopes were anchored there. It indicated that his feelings regarding his fathers were not so distinct and definite indeed, but of the same kind as those of Baxter when he wrote concerning a venerable relative who died at the age of a hundred years: She is gone after many of my choicest friends, and I am following even at the door. Had I been to enjoy them only here, it would have been but a short comfort mixed with many troubles which all our failings and sins, and some degree of unsuitableness between the nearest and dearest, cause. But I am going after them, to that blessed society where life and light and love, and therefore harmony, concord, and joy are perfect and everlasting. Thrice happy they who can look forward to such an end of their pilgrimage! (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)
The shortness of life
Remember that life at the longest is very short. Therefore, do at once that which you feel you ought to do at all. Yea, do first that which is most important. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Young man, do not leave it to a future day, but do it now, that all your life may be one of usefulness and enjoyment. Men of middle-age, you have a vivid sense of the rapidity with which your years have gone, but they will go just as rapidly in the future as in the past, and you will be on your death-bed before you know it; therefore, what thy hands find to do, do it with thy might. Men of old-age, you have to make haste, for you have no time to lose. The ancient law said kindly as to the sale of an estate, according to the number of the years thou shalt diminish the price; the nearer they were to the Jubilee, the cheaper were they to sell their land. So the nearer you come to the end of your days, you ought to hold earthly things more loosely, and prize heavenly things more highly. When your business day is drawing to a close, you hasten to finish your work, and sometimes you do more in the last hour than in all that went before. As your paper becomes more filled you write more closely, to get all in that you want to say. And in the same way, the older you grow, you should become the more earnest in the service of your God in Christ. And if you have not yet begun to serve Him, I beseech you to begin now! When Napoleon came on the field of Marengo, it was late in the afternoon, and he saw that the battle was really lost. But looking at the western sun, he said, There is just time to recover the day! and giving out his orders with that rapid energy for which, combined with quick perception of what an emergency needed, he was so remarkable, he turned a defeat into a victory. So your sun is nearing its setting, but there is time, in the present opportunity, to recover the day. Avail yourself of it, therefore, at once, lest your life should end in utter blank, eternal failure. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)
A backward look
A backward look is very different from a forward look in life. A quarter of a century, or a half-century, would seem a long way ahead to a young person; but how short it seems when it is remembered by those who have passed it! And our estimates of value vary as much as our estimates of time, in looking forward or backward. It is not those things which we thought most of while we were striving for them, that seem of highest worth when we have them, or when we remember how they missed us. Among the memories of Jacob, his pleasantest, we may be sure, were not his cheating Esau, or his deceiving his father, or his getting the advantage of Laban. Nor was it saddest to him to remember his disappointment in the loss of Joseph. There can be no doubt that the one-tenth which Jacob gave to the Lord was more of a treasure to him in memory than the nine-tenths he held on to; and that his being lamed at Penuel was a pleasanter recollection than his standing up so firmly to lie to Isaac at Beer-sheba. The days of the years of our lives will seem few enough at the best when we come to their close. Whether they are then to seem evil, or not, will depend on the use we now make of them. No day spent in the Lords service, no self-denial or generous act for others, will ever be counted evil in its memory. Now is the time to make ready for a pleasant old age--if our lives should be long spared. (H. C. Trumbull.)
Jacobs confession
We have a comment upon this answer, in Heb_11:13-14, where it is called a confession, and its implication is insisted on: They that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. We may see in it a charming example of spirituality, and how such a state of mind will find a way of introducing religion, even in answer to the most simple and common questions. We go into the company of a great man, and come away without once thinking of introducing religion: nay, it would seem to us almost rude to attempt it. But wherefore? Because of our want of spiritual-mindedness. If our spirits were imbued with a sense of Divine things, we should think of the most common concerns of life in a religious way; and so thinking of them, it would be natural to speak of them. Jacob, in answer to this simple question, introduces several important truths, and that without any force or awkwardness. He insinuates to Pharaoh that he and his fathers before him were strangers and pilgrims upon the earth--that their portion was not in this world, but in another--that the life of man, though it extended to a hundred and thirty years, was but a few days--that those few days were mixed With evil; all which, if the king properly reflected on it, would lead him to set light by the earthly glory with which he was loaded, and to seek a crown which fadeth not away. (A. Fuller.)
Reflections on life
When I look back to the earlier and middle periods of my life, and now, in my old age, think how few are left of those who were young with me, I always think of a summer residence at a bathing-place. When you arrive, you make acquaintance and friends of those who have already been there some time, and who leave in a few weeks. The loss is painful. Then you turn to the second generation, with which you live a good while and become most intimate. But this goes also, and leaves us alone with the third, which comes just as we are going away, and with which we have nothing to do. I have been esteemed one of Fortunes chiefest favourites; nor will I complain or find fault with the course my life has taken. Yet, truly there has been nothing but toil and care; and I may say that in all my seventy-five years I have never had a month of genuine comfort. It has been the perpetual rolling of a stone, which I have always had to raise anew. (Goethe.)
Life a pilgrimage
If men have been termed pilgrims and life a journey, then we may add that the Christian pilgrimage far surpasses all others in the following important particulars: in the goodness of the road, in the beauty of the prospects, in the excellence of the company, and in the vast superiority of the accomodation provided for the Christian traveller when he has finished his course. (H. G. Salter.)
Theodore Monod said he would like the epitaph on his tombstone to be Here Endeth the First Lesson. (S. Smiles.)
The true indication of old age
Old age, remarks Bishop Patrick, is not to be known by a withered face, but by a mortified spirit; not by the decays of the natural body, but by the weakness of the body of sin; not by the good we have enjoyed, but by the good we have done; and if we be prepared for death, we have lived long enough; if our life be a death, then no death can be untimely to us.
The course of a Christless life
The whole course of a mans life out of Christ is nothing but a continual trading in vanity, running a circle of toil and labour, and reaping no profit at all. (Archbishop Leighton.)
Home after the journey of life
Mr Hughes tells a characteristic anecdote of starting one winters night with his friend, Charles Kingsley, to walk down to Chelsea, and of their being caught in a dense fog before they had reached Hyde Park Corner. Both of us, Mr. Hughes adds, knew the way well, but we lost it half-a-dozen times, and Kingsleys spirit seemed to rise as the fog thickened! Isnt this like life? he said, after one of our blunders; a deep yellow fog all round, with a dim light here and there shining through. You grope your way on from one lamp to another, and you go up wrong streets and back again. But you get home at last--theres always light enough for that. (Clerical Library.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain
Genesis
GROWTH BY TRANSPLANTING
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TWO RETROSPECTS OF ONE LIFE
Gen 47:9. - Gen 48:15 - Gen 48:16.
These are two strangely different estimates of the same life to be taken by the same man. In the latter Jacob categorically contradicts everything that he had said in the former. ‘Few and evil,’ he said before Pharaoh. ‘All my life long,’ ‘the Angel which redeemed me from all evil,’ he said on his death-bed.
If he meant what he said when he spoke to Pharaoh, and characterised his life thus, he was wrong. He was possibly in a melancholy mood. Very naturally, the unfamiliar splendours of a court dazzled and bewildered the old man, accustomed to a quiet shepherd life down at Hebron. He had not come to see Pharaoh, he only cared to meet Joseph; and, as was quite natural, the new and uncongenial surroundings depressed him. Possibly the words are only a piece of the etiquette of an Eastern court, where it is the correct thing for the subject to depreciate himself in all respects as far inferior to the prince. And there may be little more than conventional humility in the words of my first text. But I am rather disposed to think that they express the true feeling of the moment, in a mood that passed and was followed by a more wholesome one.
I put the two sayings side by side just for the sake of gathering up one or two plain lessons from them.
1. We have here two possible views of life.
Now the key to the difference between these two statements and moods of feeling seems to me to be a very plain one. In the former of them there is nothing about God. It is all Jacob. In the latter we notice that there is a great deal more about God than about Jacob, and that determines the whole tone of the retrospect. In the first text Jacob speaks of ‘the days of the years of my pilgrimage,’ ‘the days of the years of my life,’ and so on, without a syllable about anything except the purely earthly view of life. Of course, when you shut out God, the past is all dark enough, grey and dismal, like the landscape on some cloudy day, where the woods stand black, and the rivers creep melancholy through colourless fields, and the sky is grey and formless above. Let the sun come out, and the river flashes into a golden mirror, and the woods are alive with twinkling lights and shadows, and the sky stretches a blue pavilion above them, and all the birds sing. Let God into your life, and its whole complexion and characteristics change. The man who sits whining and complaining, when he has shut out the thought of a divine Presence, finds that everything alters when he brings that in.
And, then, look at the two particulars on which the patriarch dwells. ‘I am only one hundred and thirty years old,’ he says; a mere infant compared with Abraham and Isaac! How did he know he was not going to live to be as old as either of them? And ‘if his days were evil,’ as he said, was it not a good thing that they were few? But, instead of that, he finds reasons for complaint in the brevity of the life which, if it were as evil as he made it out to be, must often have seemed wearisomely long, and dragged very slowly. Now, both things are true-life is short, life is long. Time is elastic-you can stretch it or you can contract it. It is short compared with the duration of God; it is short, as one of the Psalms puts it pathetically, as compared with this Nature round us-’The earth abideth for ever’; we are strangers upon it, and there is no abiding for us. It is short as compared with the capacities and powers of the creatures that possess it; but, oh! if we think of our days as a series of gifts of God, if we look upon them, as Jacob looked upon them when he was sane, as being one continued shepherding by God, they stretch out into blessed length. Life is long enough if it manifests that God takes care of us, and if we learn that He does. Life is long enough if it serves to build up a God-pleasing character.
It is beautiful to see how the thought of God enters into the dying man’s remembrances in the shape which was natural to him, regard being had to his own daily avocations. For the word translated ‘fed’ means much more than supplied with nourishment. It is the word for doing the office of shepherd, and we must not forget, if we want to understand its beauty, that Jacob’s sons said, ‘Thy servants are shepherds; both we and also our fathers.’ So this man, in the solitude of his pastoral life, and whilst living amongst his woolly people who depended upon his guidance and care, had learned many a lesson as to how graciously and tenderly and constantly fed, and led, and protected, and fostered by God were the creatures of His hand.
It was he, I suppose, who first gave to religious thought that metaphor which has survived temple and sacrifice and priesthood, and will survive even earth itself; for ‘I am the Good Shepherd’ is as true to-day as when first spoken by Jesus, and ‘the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall lead them,’ and be their Shepherd when the flock is carried to the upper pastures and the springs that never fail. The life which has brought us that thought of a Shepherd-God has been long enough; and the days which have been so expanded as to contain a continuous series of His benefits and protections need never be remembered as ‘few,’ whatsoever be the arithmetic that is applied to them.
The other contradiction is equally eloquent and significant. ‘Few and evil’ have my days been, said Jacob, when he was not thinking about God; but when he remembered the Angel of the Presence, that mysterious person with whom he had wrestled at Peniel, and whose finger had lamed the thigh while His lips proclaimed a blessing, his view changed, and instead of talking about ‘evil’ days, he says, ‘The Angel that redeemed me from all evil.’ Yes, his life had been evil, whether by that we mean sorrowful or sinful, and the sorrows and the sins had been closely connected. A sorely tried man he had been. Far away back in the past had been his banishment from home; his disappointment and hard service with the churlish Laban; the misbehaviour of his sons; the death of Rachel-that wound which was never stanched; and then the twenty years’ mourning for Rachel’s son, the heir of his inheritance. These were the evils, the sins were as many, for every one of the sorrows, except perhaps the chiefest of them all, had its root in some piece of duplicity, dishonesty, or failure. But he was there in Egypt beside Joseph. The evils had stormed over him, but he was there still. And so at the end he says, ‘The Angel . . .redeemed me from evil, though it smote me. Sorrow became chastisement, and I was purged of my sin by my calamities.’ The sorrows are past, like some raging inundation that comes up for a night over the land and then subsides; but the blessing of fertility which it brought in its tawny waves abides with me yet. Joseph is by my side. ‘I had not thought to see thy face, and God hath showed me the face of thy seed.’ That sorrow is over. Rachel’s grave is still by the wayside, and that sorest of sorrows has wrought with others to purify character. Jacob has been tried by sorrows; he has been purged from sins. ‘The Angel delivered me from all evil.’ So, dear friends, sorrow is not evil if it helps to strip us from the evil that we love, and the ills that we bear are good if they alienate our affections from the ills that we do.
2. Secondly, note the wisdom and the duty of taking the completer and brighter view.
These first words of Jacob’s are very often quoted as if they were the pattern of the kind of thing people ought to say, ‘Few and evil have been the days of the years of my pilgrimage.’ That is a text from which many sermons have been preached with approbation of the pious resignation expressed in it. But it does not seem to me that that is the tone of them. If the man believed what he said, then he was very ungrateful and short-sighted, though there were excuses to be made for him under the circumstances. If the days had been evil, he had made them so.
But the point which I wish to make now is that it is largely a matter for our own selection which of the two views of our lives we take. We may make our choice whether we shall fix our attention on the brighter or on the darker constituents of our past.
Suppose a wall papered with paper of two colours, one black, say, and the other gold. You can work your eye and adjust the focus of vision so that you may see either a black background or a gold one. In the one case the prevailing tone is gloomy, relieved by an occasional touch of brightness; and in the other it is brightness, heightened by a background of darkness. And so you can do with life, fixing attention on its sorrows, and hugging yourselves in the contemplation of these with a kind of morbid satisfaction, or bravely and thankfully and submissively and wisely resolving that you will rather seek to learn what God means by darkness, and not forgetting to look at the unenigmatical blessings, and plain, obvious mercies, that make up so much of our lives. We have to govern memory as well as other faculties, by Christian principle. We have to apply the plain teaching of Christian truth to our sentimental, and often unwholesome, contemplations of the past. There is enough in all our lives to make material for plenty of whining and complaining, if we choose to take hold of them by that handle. And there is enough in all our lives to make us ashamed of one murmuring word, if we are devout and wise and believing enough to lay hold of them by that one. Remember that you can make your view of your life either a bright one or a dark one, and there will be facts for both; but the facts that feed melancholy are partial and superficial, and the facts that exhort, ‘Rejoice in the Lord alway; and again I say, Rejoice,’ are deep and fundamental.
3. So, lastly, note how blessed a thing it is when the last look is the happiest.
When we are amongst the mountains, or when we are very near them, they look barren enough, rough, stony, steep. When we travel away from them, and look at them across the plain, they lie blue in the distance; and the violet shadows and the golden lights upon them and the white peaks above make a dream of beauty. Whilst we are in the midst of the struggle, we are often tempted to think that things go hardly with us and that the road is very rough. But if we keep near our dear Lord, and hold by His hand, and try to shape our lives in accordance with His will-whatever be their outward circumstances and texture-then we may be very sure of this, that when the end comes, and we are far enough away from some of the sorrows to see what they lead to and blossom into, then we shall be able to say, It was all very good, and to thank Him for all the way by which the Lord our God has led us.
In the same conversation in which the patriarch, rising to the height of a prophet and organ of divine revelation, gives this his dying testimony of the faithfulness of God, and declares that he has been delivered from all evil, he recurs to the central sorrow of his life; and speaks, though in calm words, of that day when he buried Rachel by ‘Ephrath, which is Bethel.’ But the pain had passed and the good was present to him. And so, leaving life, he left it according to his own word, ‘satisfied with favour, and full of the blessing of the Lord.’ So we in our turns may, at the last, hope that what we know not now will largely be explained; and may seek to anticipate our dying verdict by a living confidence, in the midst of our toils and our sorrows, that ‘all things work together for good to them that love God.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.