A Contextual Bible Study on Restoring Peace with Justice Amidst Conflict and War by Rev. Dr. Lee Hong-Jung

A Contextual Bible Study on Restoring Peace with Justice Amidst Conflict and War

 

The Narratives of Esau and Jacob (Genesis 25-33; 33:1-17)

Overcoming Monopolistic Privatization and Restoring Kenotic Interdependence through Healing and Reconciliation

Rev. Dr. Lee Hong-Jung

Signs of the Time: A Transition from Unipolar to Multipolar

The post-Cold War era was largely considered unipolar, with US as the unchallenged superpower after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.  The US shapes global policies, norms, and security frameworks, and global institutions and alliances such as UN, IMF, NATO are apparently centered around the US dominant power.

The US-centered unipolar world system is now shifting to a multipolar world system where multiple countries or power blocs have significant influence, resulting in more distributed and competitive balance of power and leading to more negotiation and potential conflict and greater competition.  They are non-alliance and multi-alignment strategies e.g., India's balancing of US, Russia, and China, the formation of new coalitions like BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) etc.

In the course of transition from unipolar to multipolar, the ability of the US dominant power to unilaterally enforce its will globally has been declining; the US exceptionalism is now ending up and the Trump’s America-First policy and his slogan MAGA (Make America Great Again) will be continuously challenged by a multipolar world order.  However, this transition is also increasing instability due to power struggles, risk of regional conflicts escalating without a central authority to mediate, and more complex international negotiations.  China's rapid growth and its Belt and Road Initiative and India's increasing role in technology, trade, and geopolitics are challenging US influence.  In the domain of military dynamics, regional powers are developing their own military capabilities e.g., China's military modernization, Russia's assertiveness etc.  In this transition technology and soft power have also been decentralized as seen in China's advancements in AI and space, increasing competition through media, education, and cultural exports.

As we can see today, the dynamics of the transition has been manifested through the on-going hegemony struggle between US and China, the inhumane wars between Russo-Ukraine, Israel-Palestine, and the everlasting crisis between the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, forming a neo-Cold War structure.  The human avarice is, with no exception, transmitting from the unipolar to the multipolar.

An Opening Remark: Reading the Narrative of Esau and Jacob from the Perspective of Human Avarice

In Genesis, the kenotic interdependent order of God’s creation was distorted and broken because of human’s ‘disobedience’ to God.  As a result, alienation as an existential reality of separation from and discontent with God, human and nature, has been spread over the world, and the whole interdependent community has been turned into the ‘dangerous’ society.  The root cause of these three-dimensional conflicts - spiritual, social, ecological - is deeply related to human avarice.

“For everything in the world - the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does - come not from the [God] Father but from the world.” (1 John 2:18).

“The love of money [that is human avarice] is a root of all kinds of evil.” (1Timothy 6:10)

Veiling our eyes to see the face of God in the faces of the people and nature, human avarice keeps on motivating, stimulating our personal and collective will of monopolistic privatization which breaks down the two principles of sustaining the oikoumene, that is, kenosis, meaning self-emptying, and interdependence. All living beings inhabited in the broken and wounded web of life are now crying for healing and reconciliation, and God always set in front of us an open invitation to see God’s face in the faces of the broken and wounded people and nature, whispering us, “You see me among the people and nature crying for healing and reconciliation.”

Today in dealing with the concise narrative of Esau and Jacob in Genesis 25 to 33, my presentation will consist of the three interrelated parts.  In each part, I will provide some socio-historical and contextual perspectives and interpretations of the biblical narratives.

Part I: Genesis 25 to 28

Perspective - An Apocalyptic Reality of Human Avarice: A History of Human Conquest of Life from Columbus to Globalization

In the Columbus and post-Columbus history, the Western initiatives of ‘openness’ did not always mean mutual acceptance based on a kenotic interdependence, but more often forceful, uninvited invasions, that is, the conquest of ‘otherness’ with the will of monopolistic privatization. Since then, under the consecutive decades of colonial, neo-colonial, Cold War and global empire subjugation there have been more than 500 years of conquest and dominance by all means.

After the Cold War Era, reshaping the world order, globalization of neo-liberal market economy system has become the complex venue where all living beings have been turned into commodities and slaves of human avarice.  Globalization is a strategic process of monopolistic privatization driven by the logic of corporate profitability and a transnational 'corporatization' of the world which is incompatible with the ecological sustainability.

Global Climate Change as one of the fatal results of globalization has been used as the clue to justify the ‘nuclear renaissance’.  In spite of the existing reality of the nuclear victims of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl, Fukushima etc., the journey of human avarice from Hiroshima to Fukushima has been a journey of ‘cognitive dissonance’; it has dissolved the memories of nuclear disasters into the nuclear armament competition and the nuclear renaissance, instead of sublimating them into the “world without nuclear.”

God of Life give us a critical warning against the “Brave New World” being motivated by human avarice, modifying God’s creation by genetic fabrication as if it is a machine, producing greenhouse gases by over-production, over-consumption and over-disuse, and stealing ‘the fire of heaven’ by nuclear fission.  As stated in Deuteronomy 30:15-20, God set before us life and death, prosperity and destruction, blessings and curses, and command, “Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God!”

Biblical Narrative - Esau and Jacob’s Struggle for the Birthright in a Patriarchic Tribal Society

The Book of Genesis 25 to 28 speaks of the mortal conflict between Esau and Jacob, focusing on Esau's loss of his birthright to Jacob. Because of Jacob's deception of his father Isaac to grasp Esau's birthright and blessing from him, the kenotic interdependence between Esau and Jacob as the twins was ruined, and the will of struggle for monopolistic privatization replaced it.  As a result, Jacob had to live out a painstaking life in the darkness of exile and suffering, and the inherited conflict has been being spawned among their descendant nations.

The society in which Esau and Jacob were born was a patriarchic tribal society maintained by a monopolistic system such as monotheistic faith and order, androcentric polygamy, birthright of firstborn, right of blood etc.  In this social system, the birthright caused very often mortal conflicts among the sons, the wives, and even the parents.

The scenes of the birthright in the narrative show us Jacob’s deceptive nature and behavior to vehemently desire to seize the favored and sacred position of firstborn in the family.  Jacob eventually inflicted a fatal wound on his brother that may never heal.  As Rebekah noticed Esau's murderous intention towards Jacob, she made him flee to Haran to her brother Laban.  Rebekah convinced Isaac to support Jacob’s exile so that, unlike Esau who married the Hittite becoming a source of grief to Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob could marry a woman from their own clan.

The biblical history further tells us that the contest between Esau and Jacob repeated itself in the rivalry between Jacob's wives, Leah and Rachel, and hence continued in the next generation, between the two sons of Rachel whom Jacob loved most, and the ten sons of Leah and the two maidservants under Leah's control.  The pattern of Jacob's descendants dividing into a ‘ten-plus-two’ continued even into the division between the ten tribes of the Northern Kingdom and the two tribes of Judah.

From a perspective of hermeneutics of suspicion, the narrative of Esau and Jacob tried to describe Jacob, Israel, as the blessing and the superior, explaining the ancient enmity between the two tribes, Israel and Edom. The unflattering portrayal of Esau who sold impulsively his birthright for a pot of red lentil stew may be another way of expressing Israel’s malice against Edom.  The narrative of Esau and Jacob has been used to justify Israel's dominance over Edom on the grounds that "the elder will serve the younger" as revealed in God’s oracle during Rebekah’s pregnancy (Genesis 25:23); and “Be lord over your brother,” as declared in Isaac’s blessing to Jacob. (Genesis 27:29).

Human avarice embedded in the birthright conflict between Esau and Jacob has been reproducing a never-ending enmity among the descendent of the two ‘imagined’ nations and civilizations passing through the Crusade to the 9/11 Incident.  Each one has been eager in historicizing and theologizing the oral traditions and narratives for one’s own monopolistic privatization-sake, creating historical cultural prejudice and civilizational phobia against each other.

In this light, we may critically reflect on today’s mortal enmity between the State of Israel and the Arab nations, particularly on Palestinians’ struggle with the State of Israel.  And from a viewpoint of the Jacob’s historical cultural ‘superiority’ and his kind of will of dominance spawned in the Western civilization and its imperialism, we may reflect on Asian people’s suffering, particularly on the Korean people’s life-long, tripled suffering due to the 36-year Japanese colonialism, the almost 80-year ongoing division of the Korean Peninsula, and the inhumane course of monopolistic privatization in globalization.

Part II Genesis 29 to 31

Perspective - The Confrontational Ways in the Oikoumene: Kenotic Interdependence versus Monopolistic Privatization

The cognitive distortion that afflicts modern humanity derives from the anthropocentric worldview and its conditioning. As a historical consequence, the driving forces of globalization have deteriorated God’s kenotic interdependent way of life-giving economy into Mammon’s monopolistic privatizing way of death-dealing economy. Today’s global power structure of the transnational oikoumene and its enigmatic ambiguity has been characterized as a closed system of domination and dependence which has been militarily secured, geo-politically administered, geo-economically organized, and genetic-scientifically devised; it obeys the logic of power based on the rule of monopolistic privatization deeply rooted in human avarice.

On the contrary, the biblical perception of the oikoumene proves to be a liberating impulse sprung from the totality of relationships rather than structures.  This is a life-giving interaction based on the principle of kenotic interdependence.  In the ecologically interdependent structure of the household of the oikoumene, there is always a harmonious duality between boundary and openness, independence and relationship.  The notion that ‘being-in-relationship is as much a part of our nature as being-in-oneself’ requests each living being of the web of life to collectively overcome the rule of monopolistic privatization by circulating and sharing its own energy and resource in the relational web of life in a kenotic way with a deep awareness of interdependence.

Biblical Narrative - Between the Exiles: Laban and Jacob’s Struggle for Monopolistic Privatization

The Book of Genesis 29 to 31 narrates of Jacob and Laban’s mutually destructive engagement in the monopolistic privatization of relationship and wealth, practicing human misbehaviors such as deceit, double dealing, trickery etc.  Jacob, who deceived his father, was in turn deceived and cheated by his mother’s brother Laban.  In Haran, Jacob was forced to work for wages as a servant in Laban's household. By exercising the power of monopolistic privatization, Laban exploited not only Jacob’s labor and his proficiency in animal husbandry but also his life-planning and marriage.

In a tactically revengeful response to Laban’s exploitation, using a ploy involving clever breeding techniques, Jacob was able to steal Laban's fortune and became extremely wealthy.  As a result, Jacob incited the envy and rage of Laban and Laban's sons.  Finally, without informing Laban, Jacob took another exile from Haran to Canaan with his family. Before they left, Rachel even stole her father’s household gods, the teraphim that represents title deeds to the contested property.  En route to the land of his ancestors, Jacob must pass through Edom, the territory of his estranged brother Esau.

Instead of circulating and sharing human and material resources in their relational web of life and of keeping a harmonious boundary between them, Laban and Jacob exercised the will of monopolistic privatization which always denies the ethics of mutual sharing and caring and dries up the well of the spirituality of kenotic interdependence.  It veils one’s eyes to see God’s face in other people’s faces.

Re-reading the biblical narrative of Laban and Jacob in the light of monopolistic privatization, we may reflect upon the mortal conflict between the State of Israel and the Palestine.  The land of Palestine as the inheritance of Palestinian forefathers was not a people-less wilderness waiting for a nation of a landless state but a fully inhabited land with the Palestinian Arabs and the Jewish people.  Besides, the Zionism cannot be in moral succession to the victims of the Holocaust; in fact, from the very beginning it compromised with the Nazism in order to get its permission to occupy the land of Palestine.  Motivated by the Zionistic myths and their apocalyptic visions, the State of Israel has enthusiastically pursued the divide-conquer policy to colonize the Palestine and eventually other Arab nations by tightening the Omni-faceted alliance with the USA.  The Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestine in a way of monopolistic privatization has claimed numerous lives in its history of genocide, distorted the rights of both peoples, deepening the mortal conflict between them.  The State of Israel has closed their eyes to see the faces of the Palestinian people whom God always see, therefore being unable to see God’s face.

Human avarice unfolded under the consecutive decades of colonial, neo-colonial, Cold War and global superpowers’ subjugation has also inflicted the fatal wounds on the Korean people.  After liberated from the 36-year captivity of Japanese harsh colonialism in 1945, the ‘innocently’ suffered Korea, not Japan, was geometrically divided into North and South.  The 1945 division was the most reckless compromise between the USA and the former Soviet Union, based on a short-term tactical expediency rather than a long-term strategic vision. In the cold war rivalry frame, the Korean people have been mutually suffered from the tragedy of the 3-year Korean War and its collective post-traumatic stress disorder.  The Korean War ceased only with the Armistice Treaty, brutally destroying the kenotic interdependence between North and South and completely losing their eye sights to see the face of God in the faces of the suffering people due to the cold war-driven division system.  Painfully analyzing the historical root-causes of the division and the ever-escalating inter-Korean tension, the Korean churches have prophetically denounced the division of the Korean Peninsula as the socio-geopolitical ‘original sin,’ a collective sin rooted in human avarice for the monopolistic privatization of the oikoumene.

Part III Genesis 32 to 33

Perspective - An Ecumenical Mile Stone: Integrating Justice and Peace in the Process of Healing and Reconciliation

The theme of the WCC 10th Busan Assembly in 2013, “God of Life, lead us to justice and peace,” integrates justice and peace in the reality of life in a most convergent way.  Justice and peace are the two inseparably interdependent pillars that sustain the world of life, the oikoumene.  A peace with no foundation of justice can result in a false and fragile peace; and a justice with no fruit of peace can be degraded into a vicious circle of revengeful violence.  Without healing and reconciliation there will be no integration between justice and peace, no life giving and no abundant life.  Only the ongoing process of healing and reconciliation can sustain the coexistence and integration of justice and peace for life, restoring the spirituality of kenotic interdependence by overcoming the will of monopolistic privatization.

As seen in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, healing and reconciliation is the core of God’s economy of life, the spirituality and strategy of God’s ministry, and the way of witnessing to the wholeness and totality of the Gospel in all dimensions.  In the process of healing and reconciliation, the truth leads the way towards justice and peace, becoming the source of the healed and reconciled life community, the community of God’s people.  All healing and reconciliation are therefore ultimately rooted in God.

Biblical Narrative - The Reunion of Esau and Jacob: Entering into the Process of Reconciliation by Healing the Open Wound

The Book of Genesis 32 to 33 describes of Esau and Jacob's fateful encounter which led them into a process of healing and reconciliation.  Feeling extremely precarious at the prospect of the reunion, Jacob was painfully aware of his indiscretion.  In great fear and distress, Jacob placed his trust in God and decided to reconcile with his brother. Preparing for the fatal encounter with Esau, Jacob sent the messengers ahead to his brother with bounteous gifts meant to appease Esau’s unforgettable memory of the inflicted wound by him.

On that night, after sending his family and possessions across the Jabbok River, Jacob was left alone, and encountered God so desperately that he had wrestled with a mysterious being till daybreak. Although the mysterious being made Jacob’s hip wrenched, Jacob would not give up, demanding a blessing first.  The mysterious being finally declared, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome.” (Genesis 32: 28) Afterward Jacob named the place Peniel, meaning "the face of God," saying, "It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared." (Genesis 32: 30)

There may be different understandings as to whether this mysterious being might be a man, an angel, God-self, or the guardian angel of Esau himself sent to destroy Jacob before he could return to the land of Canaan.  A modern psychological interpretation sees the wrestling as an inner struggle in which Jacob must confront his own demons of alienation, fear and insecurity.

No matter what the mysterious being was, the night at the ford of the Jabbok River was Jacob’s painstaking process of kenosis, self-emptying, and of restoring the kenotic interdependence with God and Esau.  Jacob as “the single individual” in front of God, confronted an existential uncertainty and anxiety as a matter of life or death, being honest to God.  Jacob’s injured hip became the symbol of the healed and reconciled wound in connection with the broken and wounded memory of Esau and Jacob.  We may affirm that “Prayer does not change God, but it changes the person who prays.” (Kierkegaard)

In the morning, as he approached Esau, Jacob humbled himself and bowed to the ground seven times, signifying his sincere apology for all the mortal hatred between them.  At last, the moment of truth came and Esau made the first overture: "Esau ran to meet Jacob and embraced him; he threw his arms around his neck and kissed him.  And they wept." (Gen. 33:4) Their anxious reunion was turned into the most emotional event, and the tension was subsided.

Jacob also asked his family members and slaves to bow down to Esau, and implored him to accept his presents, confessing that “For to see your face is like seeing the face of God, now that you have received me favorably.” (Gen. 33:10) Jacob, now Israel, saw “the face of God” in the face of Esau who had sworn to kill him.  In the light of his experience of obtaining the new name Israel at the ford of the Jabbok River, Jacob convinced of God's forgiveness through Esau's forgiveness and of God’s grace in Esau's favor.

Seeing the face of God in the face of the hostile person is the witness and evidence to enter into a process of healing and reconciliation, to be ready for forgiveness, and to eventually restore a kenotic interdependence among God, victim, and wrongdoer.  All these are possible because God always see us with the compassion for healing and reconciliation and with an open invitation to see God’s face in the faces of the broken and wounded people.

Although Esau accepted Jacob’s bounteous gifts, Jacob did not accept Esau’s proposal to accompany him on his way.  Jacob preferred that they would go their own separate ways.  Closing his exile, Jacob must remember the God of Bethel who appeared on his exile to and from Haran, assuring him, "I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go.” (Genesis 28:15) For Jacob, on his return to the land of Canaan, Bethel, the “house of God,” was the place where he must offer first his faithful thanksgiving and royalty to God.

Re-reading the narrative of the reunion of Esau and Jacob in the context of the mortal conflict between the State of Israel and the Palestine, we may convince that it should not be the end of the history of the Palestinian people to be stoned to death, divided and conquered one-sidedly by the State of Israel backed-up by the Zionism and the Zionistic Anglo-Saxon-Jewish alliances.

Affirming a faith in God’s ongoing process of healing and reconciliation of the two nations and a faith in God’s open invitation to see God’s face in each nation’s face, we should be able to declare, now is the Kairos to end the unholy conflict in the so-called ‘holy’ land, making freedom from occupation, pulling down barriers in others’ property, respecting human lives regardless of their religions and races, and sharing their equal rights.  Now is the Kairos for Palestinians to have the right of self-determination and not to allow any kind of discrimination, segregation and restrictions against the Palestinian self-determination movement.  Now is the Kairos for Jerusalem, as the capital of two nations and a ‘holy’ city, to be shared by three faith communities, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, becoming an openly inclusively shared oikoumene in terms of sovereignty and citizenship. Now is the Kairos for all of us to participate in God’s ongoing process of healing and reconciliation, acknowledging past wrongs, understanding each other’s anger, seeking forgiveness between communities, repairing a broken land together, and restoring a kenotic interdependence between the two nations and among us.

As we re-read this narrative in the context of the division of the Korean Peninsula, we should also have the same faith as the Palestine.  If we see the history of the Korean people from a perspective of God’s salvific action in the world and of what God wants for the world, the division is not the end of the history of the Korean people.  As the death of Jesus is not the end of the narrative, but a key transition to allow the narrative to come to its genuine fulfillment, the division as a human-induced wilderness will be eventually overcome, in God’s grace and the power of the Holy Spirit, to fulfill the Exodus, Liberation and Jubilee of the Korean people.  It is in such a faith-setting that the cup of suffering caused by the division can be transformed into the cup of hope for the peaceful reunification of the Korean Peninsula.  This is a transformative process of healing and reconciliation which restores the kenotic interdependence between North and South as one nation.

Open Conclusion: An Ongoing Process of Healing and Reconciliation for Reconstructing the Kenotic Interdependent Oikoumene

Healing and reconciliation are not an occasional event but a Spirit-leading process in God’s mission.  A prophetic process of healing and reconciliation contains the principal elements of God’s mission such as accompaniment, hearing and retelling, hospitality, awakening and change of perspective, being united with the crucified and resurrected Christ, coming to faith and transformation, new hope and new commission etc.  The church as the healed and reconciled life-giving community must be able to see God’s face in the faces of the broken and wounded people, providing them security, memory, ritual, new hope and vision of healing and reconciliation in order to restore the kenotic interdependence.

On the basis of the biblical understanding of the oikoumene, we may imagine a sustainable oikoumene in which the way of kenotic interdependence become the primary nature and rule in life rather than the way of monopolistic privatization.  We may hope a life-giving oikoumene where human avarice is being cleansed by the compassionate love, and the ethics of mutual sharing and caring becomes the organizing principle of economy and ecology.  We may weave a correlational web of life in the oikoumene in which God's people as the life-affirming communities can learn to dwell together with reverence for one another, with the courage to ask hard questions, with the willingness to shatter false images, and with the freedom to imagine the common future.  Regardless of our religions and races, we, as human beings created in God’s image, should be able to speak out truth to the principalities of the earthly power, to break the silence surrounding injustice, and to share something for peace, now for Palestine and Israel, for North and South Korea, and for every-each broken and wounded part of the oikoumene.

I believe we all want to see the olive trees and the vineyards in the land of Palestine to flourish and grow old as in Israel.  I believe we all desire to see the people in North and South Korea to peacefully dwell together in the Demilitarized Zone, DMZ, neutralizing it literally as a permanent eco-peace park as a cell membrane between North and South, and gradually extending it to the whole Korean peninsula, to the whole North East Asia, and to the whole world.

As the immediate signs of our dream to come true, the Israel’s brutal attack to Palestine Gaza Strip must be ceased now, and the peace-talks on the Korean Peninsula must start now, suspending all the military exercises in and around the Korean Peninsula including nuclear missile tests, and lifting up all the sanctions against North Korea.

With these perspectives and understandings, we may sincerely offer each other among us mutual hospitality, building the circle of compassionate love by blessing, breaking and sharing bread with one another at our daily ‘Eucharistic’ table.  A Eucharistic act as an act of seeing God’s face in each other’s face in a communitarian way requires from us an act of trust.  Mutual trust, the risk of believing in one another, is fundamental to human life.  Moreover, it connects us to God, and humanizes us more deeply and fully.  Then we may become self-extending with one another, just as God has been to us.

I sincerely wish all of us to be transformed from a victim of the monopolistic privatization into a healed and reconciled being living out the kenotic interdependence. Amen!

Questions for Group Discussion

1. How has human avarice been expressed, materialized and systematized in the present society where we live in?
2. In the history of our own nation state, in what ways has the confrontation between the kenotic interdependence and the monopolistic privatization been unfolded and what has been the result of it?
3. In what ways can we see the face of God in the faces of the marginalized people outside the gate who are crying for healing and reconciliation?
4. In the transition from the monopolar to the multipolar what must be the principle of global ethics?

Rev.Dr. Lee Hong- Jung

Rev. Lee Hong-Jung is a distinguished retired pastor with a long and impactful vocation in ministry and ecumenical leadership. With a deep commitment to justice, development, and international affairs, he has significantly contributed to the global Christian community through various prestigious roles.

• He served the Presbyterian Church of Korea (PCK) as a pastor,
• A former Executive Secretary for Justice, International Affairs, Development, and Service, at the Christian Conference of Asia (CCA)
• Former General Secretary of the Presbyterian Church of Korea (PCK)
• Former General Secretary, National Council of Churches in Korea (NCCK)
• He is serving on the  Executive Committee of the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC)

Throughout his career, Rev. Lee has been a passionate advocate for justice and development, playing key roles in various religious and ecumenical organizations. His leadership has been instrumental in fostering international dialogue and cooperation, addressing critical issues on a global scale. He has a Ph.D. from Birmingham University, England.

Rev. Lee presented this Biblical Theological Reflection at the 40^th Advanced Studies Program of the Asia Pacific YMCA, held from November 1-30, 2025