Jacob Wrestles With God
22 That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23 After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. 24 So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 25 When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. 26 Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”
But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
27 The man asked him, “What is your name?”
“Jacob,” he answered.
28 Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel,[f] because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”
29 Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.”
But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there.
30 So Jacob called the place Peniel,[g] saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”
31 The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel,[h] and he was limping because of his hip. 32 Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip, because the socket of Jacob’s hip was touched near the tendon.
(Gensis 32:22-32, NIV)
The context of this scene: Jacob is attempting to obey God’s directive to return to his homeland and confront Esau, his long-estranged brother whose anger and threatened retaliation forced Jacob to flee in the night many years previous. Though Jacob did make the trek home with his now large family clan and established wealth in obedience, he has just received word that Esau is coming to meet him with an army of 400 men. The odds don’t look good. Jacob assumes Esau will mercilessly slaughter his family, his herds, and himself. He’s taking last-ditch measures to try and protect his wives and children and make it possible for at least some of them to escape if things go completely south in the morning when Esau arrives.
And then, like this is normal (not even a new sentence?!), he “wrestles with a man until daybreak” and the above sequence plays out.
I have so many questions.
- How does Jacob (or us for that matter) know this is God? It says “a man.”
- If it is God, why couldn’t he overpower Jacob?
- Why did God arrive as a man to wrestle with Jacob in the first place?
- What in the world kind of story is this? It goes from feeling like a documentary about real, feudal, familial, Middle Eastern unrest or watching Succession to reading a tale about John Henry or Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox.
- If it is indeed God, is He content to lose a fight? He tells Jacob that he has “‘struggled with God and with humans and [has] overcome.'” What does it mean to overcome in a fight against God?
- If it is indeed God, is He a sore loser?! What kind of fair fight reveals a clear victor but then the defeated party gets to walk away after delivering a cheap shot? “His hip was wrenched” was apparently not something Jacob could just walk off.
- Where did the man (or God) go at the end of the story? Jacob doesn’t seem thrown in the least by this entire series of events, including the fact that it seems like the man vanishes into thin air as soon as they finish speaking.
In my current season, I wish I got a chance to wrestle phsyically with God. I don’t think I’d win, but I’d sure like to try.
-LS
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