November 14

“And Jacob said when he saw them, This is God’s host; and he called the name of that place Mahanaim.” Genesis 32:2

This glimpse of the angels of God should have sufficed to reassure Jacob on his return to Canaan. The verses which follow, however, tell how fear of his brother overcame him and led him to divide his people and possessions into “two companies.” Here we find in Hebrew the same word Mahanaim, two hosts, that Jacob had used before. Now, though, he had substituted his own mahanaim for God’s. Where there had been “two hosts” before—namely one heavenly company and one earthly, his own—he now forgot the former and divided his earthly company into two. He then prayed his first real prayer.

In Jacob’s early years it was all scheming and bargaining, and no prayer. Now it was both scheming and prayer. Yet if we pray, we need not scheme. If we scheme, there is no meaning in our prayer. Jacob, however, did both: on the one hand he trusted God, and on the other hand he did the work himself. Happily for him, it was on that night that God met him.