Wrestling with God for a blessing, Jacob expected to receive from Him strength for the meeting with his brother, supernatural strength that he thought could be very useful to him. Instead of strength he receives a new name, becoming a different, new person. It would seem that for the meeting with Esau this has no special significance. It turns out, however, that inward changes can sometimes lead to outward changes, and very significant ones at that. In any case, the meeting with Esau takes place quite peacefully, without the bloodshed Jacob so feared. Esau too had changed during the time Jacob was away; it is hard to say with certainty. One thing is clear: much time had passed, and if Jacob had managed over the years of absence to become a different person, the same thing could have happened to Esau as well.
God worked with Jacob in a special way, but He does not leave anyone, ever, at least as long as a person himself has not said to Him an unambiguous and decisive "no." It is hard to think that God had completely forgotten Esau. After all, while caring for Isaac, for example, He did not abandon Ishmael either. In any case, the brothers meet peacefully. Jacob is now different; he lays claim to nothing.
Now he undoubtedly looks differently at all the things he did in his youth in his native house. He also understands that Esau is stronger, just as he understands that Esau has more right to the authority he holds in his native tribe. Jacob is ready to acknowledge his brother's rights. But this is not only because he now sees the situation more realistically and is not building risky, far-reaching plans. Jacob has simply learned to trust God. This is not only the ability to wait; it is precisely confidence that God will be able to show him the right path, that He will do what Jacob himself could never have achieved by his own strength and his own plans. Jacob truly became a man of God. This took more than one decade and cost him great labor and risk, but God made Jacob what He wanted to see. Jacob's plan was ready to be fulfilled, though not in the way Jacob himself had thought.
