פרשת וישלח תשכ"ח - הכנות יעקב

And Avram passed through the land unto the place of Shechem: I will tell you a general principle - understand it in all of the coming sections about Avraham, Yitschak and Yaacov, and it is a great matter. Our rabbis mentioned it in a brief way, and said (Midrash Tanchuma 9), "Everything that occurred to our forefathers is a sign for the children." And therefore the verses will write at length in recounting the journeys and the digging of the wells and the other events. And one who thinks about them can think as if they were superfluous things with no purpose. But all of the events come to teach about the future, for when an event occurs to a prophet, [meaning] of the three forefathers, he will contemplate from it the matter that is decreed to come to his seed. And know [about] every 'decree of the wakeful ones,' that when it goes from a potential decree to a symbolic action, the decree will be realized no matter what. And therefore the prophets will do actions in prophecies, like the statement of Yirmiyahu that he commanded to Baruch (Jeremiah 51:63-64), "And it shall be that when you finish to read the words of this book, you shall throw it into the Euphrates. And you shall say, 'So will Babylonia sink, etc.'"; and so [too with] the matter of Elisha in the placing of his forearm on the bow (II Kings 13:17), "And Elisha said, 'Shoot,' and he shot, and he said, 'It is the arrow of salvation of the Lord and the arrow of salvation from Aram,'" and it is stated there (II Kings 13:19), "And the man of God got angry with him and said, 'To strike five or six times, then you would have struck Aram to its end, and now three times will you strike Aram.'" And therefore, the Holy One, blessed be He, kept Avraham in the land (of Israel) and did to him simulations of all of the future that would be done to his seed. And understand this. And I am [now] beginning to explain the matters in detail in the verses, with the help of God: And Avram passed through the land unto the place of Shechem: It is the city of Schechem, that is the name of that place. And Schechem, the son of Chamor, was named after the name of the town. And Rashi wrote, "He entered into it unto the place of Schechem to pray for the sons of Yaakov, when they would come from the field anguished. And this is correct. And I [would] add that Avraham held this place first, and before He gave him the land - it was [thus] hinted to him from this that his children would conquer this place first before they would merit [the land], and before the iniquity of the dweller of the land was complete to exile him from there. And therefore, it stated, "and the Canaanite was then in the land." And when the Holy One, blessed be He, gave him the land in a statement, then he traveled from there and planted his tent between Beit El and the Ei, since it is the place that Yehoshua conquered first....

...This parsha was written to show how Hashem saved his servant from a stronger foe, and sent his angels to rescue him. In addition it teaches us that he [Jacob] didnt rely on his righteousness, and made every effort to save himself. Another concept alluded to, is that all that occurred to our forefather with Esau, will repeat itself with us and Esau's descendants. It is therefore appropriate for us to emulate the efforts of Yakov who initiated 3 strategies for his encounter with Esau; Prayer, presents, and war. Our sages see this hinted to in this parsha as I will mention later.

Keep a space. See Rashi. According to the Midrash this was a prayer that Hashem would put spaces between the sorrows that were to befall his descendants.

And the messengers returned to Jacob, saying: ‘We came to thy brother Esau, and moreover he cometh to meet thee, and four hundred men with him.’

And he said: ‘If Esau come to the one camp, and smite it, then the camp which is left shall escape.’