Let’s set the scene. Jacob is on his way home after twenty years with his trickster father-in-law, Laban.The exile is over. Jacob has wealth, wives, children, and — perhaps for the first time — a sense that life might finally be settling into something like normalcy. And then, reality intrudes. Jacob remembers that he has unfinished business. Namely: Esau — the brother he cheated, the brother who vowed to kill him, the brother whose anger has echoed in Jacob’s mind for two decades. Jacob sends his entire family across the Jabbok River. He is left alone on the far bank — a man with nothing but the night and his thoughts.