Contradictions, Confrontations, And Conflicts Series

Returning from our momentary flight into fantasy, however, one could argue that the blessing pronounced upon Jacob is contained in the words, "Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed" (Gen. 32:28 KJV). Indeed, what a blessing that is. It gets to the heart of what the wrestling was all about. I will add also that it was a blessing that he didn’t die, as he said, "for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved" (32:30). Ultimately, of course, the very friendly and congenial meeting with Esau was the greatest blessing of all when the reconciliation was complete between them. And Jacob moved on up the road toward home.

Is this the end of the story? No. It actually goes on for several chapters ending happily in Egypt with all his sons, their families and grandchildren, gathered around him as he is dying. "And when Jacob had made an end of commanding his sons, he gathered up his feet unto the bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people" (Gen. 49:33 KJV). He was 147-years old when he died. Jacob has blessed the world through the people who bear his name--Israel.

Here, at last, is my favorite line that I will use to close our journey with Jacob:

…. And Jacob slowly limps off into the sunrise! (see 32:31)

The Dénouement

I think the most honest thing that is to be said about our study of Jacob is that it has barely scratched the surface of this intensely interesting and complex individual. I am left with a feeling of dissatisfaction. It is an honest feeling. I have no need to apologize for lack of effort in research, study, and preparation. I feel no need of self-reproach for not having done a "perfect" job. My dissatisfaction may lie in the very complexity of the issues that lie deep within the soul of the story. Reflecting as I am doing now, my mind sees a jigsaw puzzle consisting entirely of a bed of wildflowers. It is a puzzle of 5,000 pieces. They all look the same but each piece has a unique shape of its own. We know the pieces fit together. The challenge is to find how they fit. Once we have all the pieces in place we have a beautiful picture. Such is the story of Jacob. Such is the problems associated with it. Such is the reason why we don’t have the whole picture.

In the movie industry, when it is time to edit and splice all the different pieces of a film into a continuous whole, they have pieces they choose not to incorporate into the movie. They are edited from the picture. These pieces are known as having come from "the cutting room floor." Sometimes they are called "out-takes." I have from this study, lying about, "out-takes" and pieces on "the cutting room floor". They are in the form of questions that I found which had no satisfactory answer. So I dropped them. This doesn’t mean they don’t have an answer at all. It just means that I didn’t have a satisfactory one. Conjecture is allowable to a point but not to the point of skewing truth. Let me give you an example or two.