Genesis 32:22-32
Our Bible story needs a little prefacing this evening. Its kind of like the original Star Wars Triliogy - we’re coming in to the story at Episode VI.
In recent days we’ve been taking a look at some Old Testament characters, and tonight we turn our attention towards Jacob - the grandson of Abraham who we’ve discussed the last couple of weeks.
Unlike his grandfather who has this reputation for doing the right thing, there are a different set of words used to describe the character of Jacob.
As I researched Jacob this week I found words such as cunning trickster, liar, cheat, scoundral, manipulator, swindler, con artist, schemer, and double-talker used to refer to Jacob.
Some would say the character of Jacob was revealed at his birth. Jacob was a twin and the second born. He was born clutching his brother’s heal, and was grabbing at things ever after.
My favorite description of Jacob is he’s the kind of guy that could enter a revolving door behind you, and come out ahead of you.
Jacob cheated his brother, conned his father, and swindled his father-in-law. For the most part, the things Jacob engaged in techincally could be considered legal or legitimate - they just weren’t moral or right. In all that he did, Jacob was his primary focus.
You’ve heard the saying, what goes around comes around? Well its coming around back to Jacob.
Jacob is fleeing from his father-in-law and his family right into the hands of his brother. It wasn’t that long ago that he was fleeing from his brother. Now its time to face the music, and he’s worried about the outcome of this homecoming.
He’s done all that he can think of to do, done some more scheming to insure that things will work out right.
Finally, Jacob is left alone with nothing else to do, but worry about his problem. This is where our Bible story begins.
GENESIS 32:22-32
Now what’s going on here? Jacob finds himself alone in the dark of the night burdened with a problem as big as all outdoors, when someone appears to jump on him from out of nowhere. They wrestle together throughout the night with neither one beating the other until dawn approaches.
Because they are still deadlocked, the assailant somehow wrenches Jacob’s hip from his socket to bring an end to the struggle, but Jacob will not give up.
Still locked in a fighter’s embrace, the assailant tell Jacob to let him go because it will soon be daylight.
Jacob, who by now has figured out that his assailant is God, will not let go until God gives Jacob a blessing.
Jacob receives a new name - Israel - because he has wrestled with God and with humanity and has prevailed. Jacob, however, fails to discover the name he is looking for to identify God.
Jacob renames and dedicates the spot of his struggle, and proceeds to his meeting with his brother, affected by his encounter and walking with a limp.
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This story has in fact been a very controversial story when trying to understand and identify what is going on here. This idea of hand to hand combat with a God, the idea that the all powerful God is unable to sway the battle and calls for release before the coming of day makes us uncomfortable.
What’s going on here?
Dr. Terence E. Fretheim in the Interpreter’s Bible suggests there are more questions than answers concerning this story. Questions such as:
Why does God wrestle with Jacob?
Why does God seem so concerned not be fully revealed? Why must the struggle end before day? Why won’t he give Jacob his name?
In what sense does God not prevail in the struggle and Jacob prevail?How is Jacob able to stay in the ring with God?
Who is changed by the struggle? Is it Jacob? Is it God? Is it both?
What is the context of the blessing Jacob receives? What does it mean?
What is the significance of the mark left upon Jacob?
Others have askes questions such as:
Since he is only identified as a man, is it God who wrestles with Jacob, or an angel - a messenger of God, or is it Christ before the incarnation?
Are we to interpret this as an actual physical encounter, or is it more a metaphor for us signifying an emotional and intellectual struggle with our faith and obedience to God?
These are all very good and interesting questions. We could become very bogged down in seeking the absolute answers to these questions and miss the overall story entirely.
The Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture suggests the questions are the most important part of the story, and in fact is the contemporary struggle with the holy today.
“The Talmud itself – the corpus of law and learning at the center of Judaism as defined in the centuries following the destruction of the Second Temple – is about challenging and questioning. It is a book of questions and arguments, not answers, which can only be studied through a process of questioning. This sort of interactive study of Talmud – or the Torah, or other sacred texts – is, to some thinkers, the central religious act in Judaism.”
“At Passover, the holiday most observed by Jewish families, questioning is actually mandated. On Passover one is commanded to question. “Four questions” traditionally recited by children are written into the Passover Haggadah. But, according to the Talmud, even more important are the spontaneous questions that emerge from real curiosity, rather than mere rote., e.g. “Why in the world are we doing this?”
I believe they have the right idea. Lets take for example the last qestion we asked concerning the story of Jacob.
Is this a spiritual struggle or a physical one?
My response is, ‘Why can’t the answer be both?’
Jacob certainly had an emotional burden on his heart - he was afraid!
His brother whom he had cheated and whom he had not seen since he ran away in the dark of the night because he was looking to kill Jacob, was coming to meet him with 400 hundred men.
Just prior to the story we read this evening, Jacob, after learning that his brother was coming to meet him with 400 hundred men, divided his family and entire household into groups and placed them strategically away from each other, so that if one group was attacked, the other group could escape and survive.
Then he prayed and called upon God to remember a promise God had made his grandfather Abraham and had promised Jacob too.
Jacob is a desparate man and most certainly afraid of his brother’s response - his struggle is certainly a spiritual one, wrestling not only with his fear, but with what is the right thing to do.
In one sense, Jacob’s return home to face his brother in an attempt to turn his life around and to do things differently than the past. He not running away anymore - he’s meeting his problem head on, and yet, there is a struggle within him concerning facing the consequences for his action.
In another sense Jacob struggles with who will be in control of his life. Until now, Jacob has been in control. Jacob has had his own way of doing things. His way included deceit and trickery. But now Jacob must make a decision whether he will continue to control his own life, or whether he will hand it over to God to control. If he submits his life to God, then Jacob will have to begin to do things differently.
This struggle is certainly a metaphorical one - spiritually, morally, and emotionally.
Yet it is also a physical one. Some of us can think of times - nights - when we wrestled with situations. We can think of nights when sleep alluded us and we tossed and turned, struggling with God over decisions to be made. We can remember being physically affected, physically exhausted in the morning from the struggle the night before.
It is very possible that this struggle is both an emotional struggle as well as a physical one. It would seem that absolute, black and white answers will allude us, even on this question concerning this Bible story.
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So if we are not to nitpick it apart, what can we know from this story? Why was this story told and recorded for us here in the book of Genesis? I do believe there are some overall truths that can be drawn.
1. God did indeed engage in and embrace the battle.
This is not something we feel comfortable with because we can’t easily explain it. It goes against our sense of “right and wrongness”. We have this view of expected humility on the part of humanity to God. We are not suppose to be..., well..., confrontational with God and live to tell about it. Certainly we shouldn’t receive a reward - a blessing - for the battle.
Yet God not only accepts this confrontation, it appears that God welcomes the combat. Why is that?
Here we go asking questions again.
Perhaps it is because it is better in God’s eyes to ask the questions and embrace the struggle, rather than not to seek God at all, or to have a shallow faith without demintion or debth.
Throughout the Bible, there are countless stories of Bible heros, if you will, who would seem to be less than deserving of the name. And yet God appears to desire people with fire and viberant personalities who seem to get it wrong as much as they get it right. Jacob is just one of those viberant personalities. He is filled with passion - a passion for life, a passion for success, a passion for getting ahead at all costs, a passion for everything he does, and now through this struggle, he develops a passion for God.
2. Within the struggle we see the self-limitation of God. God meets us on our own level and within the manner of our personality.
Another thing that makes us uncomfortable is the idea that God appears to be unable to prevail in this wrestling match, and vulnerable to the coming of daylight. I would suggest that what we really see is a choice on God’s part to be vulnerable. At any moment God could have chosen to over power Jacob and win the wrestling match. I most certainly believe that. But God chose before the struggle had even begun, to limit himself in such a way to be equal to Jacob. As long as Jacob would remain to struggle, God would remain to struggle with him.
I also find it interesting that God would chose this method, this timing in order to engage Jacob. Why wrestle with Jacob in the middle of the night?
Perhaps because it was a method of which Jacob could understand. His whole life has been a struggle of one kind or another. Each senario - from his brother, to his father, to his father-in-law, and now to God - has been about finding a way to triumph in any given situation. In some respects, this struggle is invitational to Jacob in ‘language’ that Jacob can understand. The invitation is enter a relationship with God, which Jacob does in way familiar to him.
It also cannot be over looked, that it is at his most vulnerable moment - alone, removed from all that he has to depend upon, frightened and in the dark - that God begins the encounter with Jacob. It is often takes such times before we will let God in to begin to work in our lives.
3. Anytime we engage in struggle with God, we are indeed changed.
When the day light comes and the struggle is over, Jacob leaves changed. He leaves with a new name and a new identity, but he also leaves with a limp - a new humility, a new respect for what God can do.
None of us can encounter God in such a way - when we are most vulnerable, wrestling with God, and prevailing when all is said and done - and come away from the experience unchanged.
Such is the case for Jacob.
This encounter he has with God mirrors one to come when he will meet his brother face-to-face. How will he handle that struggle? It reaction is forever changed. Jacob now knows whatever will come his way, whether by his own hand or by another way, he can prevail because of his encounter with God.
Kathleen Norris sees the Jacob story as a story about grace. She concludes our discussion of this story most eliqantly:
“As Psalm 139 puts it, darkness is as nothing to God, who can look right through whatever evil we’ve done in our lives to the creature made in the divine image.I feel as awe-struck as Jacob, because I realize that this is how God looks at us, staring onto our faces in order to be delighted, to see the creature God made and called good, along with the rest of Creation.
“God loves to look at us, and loves it when we look back at him. Even when we try to run away from our troubles, as Jacob di, God will find us, and bless us, even (and I would add - especially) when we feel most alone, unsure if we’ll survive the night. God will find a way to let us know that God is with us, in this place, wherever we are, however far we think we’ve run.
“And maybe that’s one reason we worship - to respond to grace. We praise God not to celebrate our own faith but to give thanks for the faith God has in us. To let oursevles look at God, and let God llok back at us. And to laugh, and sing, and be delighted because God has called us his own.”
Maybe its time to wrestle with God.
Maybe its time to stop running and engage in the struggle, to determine whose going to be in control of the issues and parts of our lives we’ve yet to deal with.
Maybe its time.
