When Jacob hears that Esau, his brother who has sworn to kill him, is coming with 400 men, “Jacob was greatly frightened (Gen. 32:8).” Yet after Jacob’s encounter with the angel, from which he emerges limping, Jacob in fact does not send presents ahead, but “he himself went on ahead.” He now has the courage to present himself to his brother without the propitiation of gifts or appeals to mercy by first parading his family.

Jacob’s confidence is justified. Instead of killing him, Esau falls on his neck and both weep.

Why?

Rashbam (12th century) points out that Jacob is known for running away. When he deceived his father and took the birthright, he ran. When he left Laban’s house, he ran. Esau sees that Jacob has a limp. He can no longer run. The evader, the trickster, is straightforward and present. When Esau sees Jacob’s uneasy stride, he realizes this is a different person from the brother whom he swore to kill.

Benno Jacob was a German rabbi at the beginning of the 20th century. He, too, points to Jacob’s limp, but he draws a different conclusion. Esau remembered a Jacob whom he took as arrogant and entitled. Now the arrogant brother is gone, and in his place is an older, limping man who had been wounded by life. Struck by the difference, according to Rabbi Jacob, Esau’s heart changed.

These are both cogent and interesting readings. Yet my favorite is one offered by my father, z”l.

Esau and Jacob were twins. They were not identical twins, but they had been born at the same time. They were the same age.

For most ancient people the world was without mirrors, and one rarely if ever saw oneself. Now for the first time in decades, Esau is confronted by his twin. Esau sees how old Jacob has grown and therefore recognizes how old he, too, has grown. Much of life has passed, wasted, in hate. Before, Esau stands a mirror of the years and everything that has been lost.

Emmanuel Levinas, the French Jewish philosopher, wrote: “In front of the face, I always demand more of myself.” To truly see another person is to be better oneself.

At this hinge of history, Esau saw the face of Jacob, rose to the moment, and wept.