Since it is difficult to make default JsonNode.equals(Object) work "perfectly" (cover all use cases users have), partly because there is no way to configure this handling (no way to pass context/config info, for example), it may make more sense to add a way to use custom Comparators.
The only real functionality in databinding, then, would be traversal of ArrayNodes and ObjectNodes, to handle structural part; but use passed-in comparator object for scalar value comparisons.