MAHANAIM: THE TWO CAMPS
by Alexander Maclaren
'And Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God
met him. And when Jacob saw them, he said, This is God's host: and he called
the name of that place Mahanaim' (_i.e._ Two camps). -- GENESIS xxxii. 1, 2.
This vision came at a crisis in Jacob's life. He
has just left the
house of Laban, his father-in-law, where he had
lived for many
years, and in company with a long caravan,
consisting of wives,
children, servants, and all his wealth turned into
cattle, is
journeying back again to Palestine. His road leads
him close by the
country of Esau. Jacob was no soldier, and he is
naturally terrified
to meet his justly incensed brother. And so, as he
plods along with
his defenceless company trailing behind him, as you
may see the Arab
caravans streaming over the same uplands to-day, all
at once, in the
middle of his march, a bright-harnessed army of
angels meets him.
Whether visible to the eye of sense, or, as would
appear, only to
the eye of faith, they _are_ visible to this
troubled man; and,
in a glow of confident joy, he calls the name of
that place
'Mahanaim,' two camps. One camp was the little one
of his down here,
with the helpless women and children and his own
frightened and
defenceless self, and the other was the great one up
there, or
rather in shadowy but most real spiritual presence
around about him,
as a bodyguard making an impregnable wall between
him and every foe.
We may take some very plain and everlastingly true
lessons out of
this story.
1. First, the angels of God meet us on the dusty
road of common
life. 'Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God
met him.'
As he was tramping along there, over the lonely
fields of Edom, with
many a thought on his mind and many a fear at his
heart, but feeling
'There is the path that I have to walk on,' all at
once the air was
filled with the soft rustle of angel wings, and the
brightness from
the flashing armour of the heavenly hosts flamed
across his
unexpecting eye. And so is it evermore. The true
place for us to
receive visions of God is in the path of the homely,
prosaic duties
which He lays upon us. The dusty road is far more
likely to be
trodden by angel feet than the remote summits of the
mountain, where
we sometimes would fain go; and many an hour
consecrated to devotion
has less of the manifest presence of God than is
granted to some
weary heart in its commonplace struggle with the
little troubles and
trials of daily life. These make the doors, as it
were, by which the
visitants draw near to us.
It is the common duties, 'the narrow round, the
daily task,' that
not only give us 'all we ought to ask,' but are the
selected means
and channels by which, ever, God's visitants draw
near to us. The
man that has never seen an angel standing beside
him, and driving
his loom for him, or helping him at his counter and
his desk, and
the woman that has never seen an angel, according to
the bold
realism and homely vision of the old German picture,
working with
her in the kitchen and preparing the meal for the
household, have
little chance of meeting such visitants at any other
point of their
experience or event of their lives.
If the week be empty of the angels, you will never
catch sight of a
feather of their wings on the Sunday. And if we do
not recognise
their presence in the midst of all the prose, and
the commonplace,
and the vulgarity, and the triviality, and the
monotony, the dust of
the small duties, we shall go up to the summit of
Sinai itself and
see nothing there but cold grey stone and
everlasting snows. 'Jacob
went on his way, and the angels of God met him.' The
true field for
religion is the field of common life.
And then another side of the same thought is this,
that it is in the
path where God has bade us walk that we shall find
the angels round
us. We may meet them, indeed, on paths of our own
choosing, but it
will be the sort of angel that Balaam met, with a
sword in his hand,
mighty and beautiful, but wrathful too; and we had
better not front
him! But the friendly helpers, the emissaries of
God's love, the
apostles of His grace, do not haunt the roads that
we make for
ourselves. They confine themselves rigidly to 'the
paths in which
God has before ordained that we should walk in
them.' A man has no
right to expect, and he will not get, blessing and
help and divine
gifts when, self-willedly, he has taken the bit
between his teeth,
and is choosing his own road in the world. But if he
will say,
'Lord! here I am; put me where Thou wilt, and do
with me what Thou
wilt,' then he may be sure that that path, though it
may be solitary
of human companionship, and leading up amongst
barren rocks and over
bare moorlands, where the sun beats down fiercely,
will not be
unvisited by a better presence, so that in sweet
consciousness of
sufficiency of rich grace, he will be able to say,
'I, being in the
way, the Lord met me.'
2. Still further, we may draw from this incident the
lesson that
God's angels meet us punctually at the hour of need.
Jacob is drawing nearer and nearer to his fear every
step. He is now
just on the borders of Esau's country, and close
upon opening
communications with his brother. At that critical
moment, just
before the finger of the clock has reached the point
on the dial at
which the bell would strike, the needed help comes,
the angel guards
draw near and camp beside him. It is always so. 'The
Lord shall help
her, and that right early.' His hosts come no sooner
and no later
than we need. If they appeared before we had
realised our danger and
our defencelessness, our hearts would not leap up at
their coming,
as men in a beleaguered town do when the guns of the
relieving force
are heard booming from afar. Often God's delays seem
to us
inexplicable, and our prayers to have no more effect
than if they
were spoken to a sleeping Baal. But such delays are
merciful. They
help us to the consciousness of our need. They let
us feel the
presence of the sorrow. They give opportunity of
proving the
weakness of all other supports. They test and
increase desire for
His help. They throw us more unreservedly into His
arms. They afford
room for the sorrow or the burden to work its
peaceable fruits. So,
and in many other ways, delay of succour fits us to
receive succour,
and our God makes no tarrying but for our sakes.
It is His way to let us come almost to the edge of
the precipice,
and then, in the very nick of time, when another
minute and we are
over, to stretch out His strong right hand and save
us. So Peter is
left in prison, though prayer is going up
unceasingly for him--and
no answer comes. The days of the Passover feast slip
away, and still
he is in prison, and prayer does nothing for him.
The last day of
his life, according to Herod's purpose, dawns, and
all the day the
Church lifts up its voice--but apparently there is
no answer, nor
any that regarded. The night comes, and still the
vain cry goes up,
and Heaven seems deaf or apathetic. The night wears
on, and still no
help comes. But in the last watch of that last
night, when day is
almost dawning, at nearly the last minute when
escape would have
been possible, the angel touches the sleeping
Apostle, and with
leisurely calmness, as sure that he had ample time,
leads him out to
freedom and safety. It was precisely because Jesus
loved the
Household at Bethany that, after receiving the
sisters' message, He
abode still for two days in the same place where He
was. However our
impatience may wonder, and our faithlessness venture
sometimes
almost to rebuke Him when He comes, with words like
Mary's and
Martha's--'Lord, if Thou hadst been here, such and
such sorrows
would not have happened, and Thou couldst so easily
have been here'--we
should learn the lesson that even if He has delayed
so long that the
dreaded blow has fallen, He has come soon enough to
make it the
occasion for a still more glorious communication of
His power. 'Rest
in the Lord, wait patiently for Him, and He shall
give thee the
desires of thine heart.'
3. Again, we learn from this incident that the
angels of God come in
the shape which we need.
Jacob's want at the moment was protection. Therefore
the angels
appear in warlike guise, and present before the
defenceless man
another camp, in which he and his unwieldy caravan
of women and
children and cattle may find security. If his
special want had been
of some blessing of another kind, no doubt another
form of
appearance, suited with precision to his need, would
have been
imposed upon these angel helpers. For God's gifts to
us change their
character; as the Rabbis fabled that the manna
tasted to each man
what each most desired. The same pure heavenly bread
has the varying
savour that commends it to varying palates. God's
grace is Protean.
It takes all the forms that man's necessities
require. As water
assumes the shape of any vessel into which it is
put, so this great
blessing comes to each of us, moulded according to
the pressure and
taking the form of our circumstances and
necessities. His fulness is
all-sufficient. It is the same blood that, passing
to all the
members, ministers to each according to the needs
and fashion of
each. And it is the same grace which, passing to our
souls, in each
man is shaped according to his present condition and
ministers to
his present wants.
So, dear brethren, in that great fulness each of us
may have the
thing that we need. The angel who to one man is
protection, to
another shall be teaching and inspiration; to
another shall appear
with chariots of fire and horses of fire to sweep
the rapt soul
heavenward; to another shall draw near as a
deliverer from his
fetters, at whose touch the bonds shall fall from
off him; to
another shall appear as the instructor in duty and
the appointer of
a path of service, like that vision that shone in
the castle to the
Apostle Paul, and said, 'Thou must bear witness for
me at Rome'; to
another shall appear as opening the door of heaven
and letting a
flood of light come down upon his darkened heart, as
to the
Apocalyptic seer in his rocky Patmos. And 'all this
worketh that one
and the self-same' Lord of angels 'dividing to every
man severally
as He will,' and as the man needs. The defenceless
Jacob has the
manifestation of the divine presence in the guise of
armed warriors
that guard his unwarlike camp.
I add one last word. Long centuries after Jacob's
experience at
Mahanaim, another trembling fugitive found himself
there, fearful,
like Jacob, of the vengeance and anger of one who
was knit to him by
blood. When poor King David was flying from the face
of Absalom his
son, the first place where he made a stand, and
where he remained
during the whole of the rebellion, was this town of
Mahanaim, away
on the eastern side of the Jordan. Do you not think
that to the
kingly exile, in his feebleness and his fear, the
very name of his
resting-place would be an omen? Would he not recall
the old story,
and bethink himself of how round that other
frightened man
'Bright-harnessed angels stood in order
serviceable'
and would he not, as he looked on his little band of
friends,
faithful among the faithless, have his eyesight
cleared to behold
the other camp? Such a vision, no doubt, inspired
the calm
confidence of the psalm which evidently belongs to
that dark hour of
his life, and made it possible for the hunted king,
with his feeble
band, to sing even then, 'I will both lay me down in
peace and
sleep, for Thou, Lord, makest me dwell in safety,
solitary though I
am.'
Nor is the vision emptied of its power to stay and
make brave by all
the ages that have passed. The vision was for a
moment; the fact is
for ever. The sun's ray was flashed back from
celestial armour, 'the
next all unreflected shone' on the lonely wastes of
the desert--but
the host of God was there still. The transitory
appearance of the
permanent realities is a revelation to us as truly
as to the
patriarch; and though no angel wings may winnow the
air around our
road, nor any sworded seraphim be seen on our
commonplace march, we
too have all the armies of heaven with us, if we
tread the path
which God has marked out, and in our weakness and
trembling commit
ourselves to Him. The heavenly warriors die not, and
hover around us
to-day, excelling in the strength of their immortal
youth, and as
ready to succour us as they were all these centuries
ago to guard
the solitary Jacob.
Better still, the 'Captain of the Lord's host' is
'come up' to be
our defence, and our faith has not only to behold
the many
ministering spirits sent forth to minister to us,
but One mightier
than they, whose commands they all obey, and who
Himself is the
companion of our solitude and the shield of our
defencelessness. It
was blessed that Jacob should be met by the many
angels of God. It
is infinitely more blessed that '_the_ Angel of the
Lord'--the
One who is more than the many--'encampeth round
about them that fear
Him, and delivereth them.'
The postscript of the last letter which Gordon sent
from Khartoum
closed with the words, 'The hosts are with me--Mahanaim.'
Were they
not, even though death was near? Was that sublime
faith a mistake--the
vision an optical delusion? No, for their ranks are
arrayed around
God's children to keep them from all evil while He
wills that they
should live, and their chariots of fire and horses
of fire are sent
to bear them to heaven when He wills that they
should die.
Copyright Statement
To the best of our knowledge these files are public domain.
Click for printer friendly page
Bible Commentary Index
Maclaren Exposition on Genesis Index |
