Jacob continued his journey without interruption until the fords of the Jabbok were reached. While at Mahanaim he sent messengers to Esau, with a view of bringing about a reconciliation with his grieved brother. When he reached the Jabbok the messengers returned and brought the alarming intelligence that Esau was coming to meet him, and four hundred men were with him. This greatly distressed Jacob, and led him to divide his family and his flocks, and to send them in bands before him. Once more, in a critical time, when he expected an attack from Esau, his discriminate regard for Rachel is again shown by placing Leah and her children in the place of danger, in advance of Rachel and her child. [Illustration: JACOB’S STRUGGLE AT THE JABBOK.] Having thus disposed of his family and his flocks, Jacob remains behind to pray. It was the great struggle of his life. And the burden of that midnight cry was, “Deliver me, I pray Thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau; for I fear him, lest he will come and smite me, and the mother with the children.” At length the angel of the Lord said, “Let me go, for the day breaketh!” But Jacob, as if his life hung on the issue, which it doubtless did, replied, “I will not let Thee go, except Thou bless me!” God heard his prayer and delivered him out of the hands of his brother, Esau. As Jacob passed over the Jabbok “the sun rose upon him,” and he set forward on his journey a changed man. In due time Jacob reached the Jordan at Succoth, thence to Shechem, and then to Bethel. At each of these places he halted. It seems that for a considerable time after the return to Palestine, the images, or household Penates, which Rachel had stolen from her father, remained in the family, perhaps connived at by Jacob, till, on being reminded by the Lord of the vow which he had made at Bethel when he fled from the face of Esau, and being bidden of Him to erect an altar to the God who appeared to him there, Jacob felt the glaring impiety of thus solemnly appearing before God with the taint of idolatry cleaving to his beloved Rachel, said, “Put away the strange gods from among you.” After thus casting out the polluting things from his house, Jacob, at Bethel, amidst its sacred associations, received from God an emphatic promise and blessing. After his spirit had been purified and strengthened by communion with God, by the assurance of the divine love and favor, by the consciousness of evil put away and duties performed, it was, as he journeyed away from Bethel, that the chastening blow fell and Rachel died. Doubtless the blessings that came as a result of the cleansing and purging from idolatry at Bethel had their effect in bringing Rachel to a higher sense of her relation to that Jehovah in whom her husband, with all his faults of character, so firmly believed.