Wrestling with God
“Wrestling With God”
Genesis 32:22-32
We are in the final section of Jacob’s story. Today’s narrative is the middle of the first part of this final section. Jacob’s meeting with Esau happens on either side of this story. Last week we read how Jacob prepared an ark of atoning items for his brother. Next week we will read what happens when they finally meet after twenty years apart. The narratives are positioned this way in order to guide us in meditation. Somehow the meeting with Esau is compared to the meeting with God. Jacob’s reckoning with Esau is also connected to Jacob’s reckoning with God. The three stories are bound together on purpose.
If we could read this story in ancient Hebrew we would discover that Jacob’s name is riddled throughout.
This is significant because this is where Jacob’s name is going to be changed for the first time.
His name comes up twice in the first sentence, verse 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.”
The ford’s name uses the same letters as in Jacob’s name.
Remember, just before this Jacob has created his own sort of ark and has sent it on before him. It’s the night before he will meet Esau. He has placed himself, and his two wives, his two female slaves and his eleven children in the rear. He arose that night and moved his family across the stream. He is then left alone, by the river.
Then we are then told a man wrestled with him until daybreak.
The Hebrew word wrestle is “ye’aveq” again, the same letters that are in Jacob’s name. By daybreak the man realized he could not overpower Jacob, so he struck Jacob in the hollow of his thigh, so hard that Jacob’s hip was wrenched, or jerked away. OUCH!
Let’s try to put this image in our mind. Some mysterious man shows up and starts a wrestling match with Jacob. It turns out to be an even match because they manage to keep wrestling until daybreak. The man realizes he is not going to win, so he strikes Jacob’s inner part of his thigh so hard that it dislocates. It doesn’t take too much imagination to figure out what part of the thigh was hit so hard it actually knocked it out of the socket.
On top of that, the narrator creates a mysterious riddle to this story because we are not directly told who this man is.
As we read on, we can follow the logic and figure it out but even the two wrestlers don’t seem to know each other.
The man who struck Jacob realizes it is daybreak and says, verse 26,
“Let me go, for it is daybreak.”
Jacob may be wounded but he seems to have some kind of wrestling hold on the man because his response is,
“I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
Verse 27,
“The man asked him, “What is your name?”
“Jacob,” he answered.
The man then said, verse 28,
“Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”
The man had no sooner told Jacob he had been wrestling with God and Jacob said, verse 29,
“Please tell me your name.”
The man replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Like, hello, I just told you who you had been wrestling with. “And then he blessed him there.”
Jacob called the place Peniel, “Peni” means face, so the face of “El,” because Jacob had seen God face to face and his life was spared.
The sun rose and Jacob limped away because of his bruised hip.
The narrator then pauses the story to provide some historical details. This is why, centuries later, the sons of Israel, do not eat the sinew of that hip nerve that’s on the hollow of the thigh, even to this day, because the socket of Jacob’s hip was touched near the tendon.
Whoever said the Bible is boring?
This story has some significant details we should notice.
Let’s start with the timing. The story happens at the transition from night into dark, then to sunrise.
This is a hyperlink back to the Genesis 1 theme. It turns out sunrise moments are actually significant. The crossing of the Sea of Reeds happens at sunrise, signifying the beginning of a new day. The resurrection story begins at sunrise, also referring to the beginning of a new day.
What about the question as to who the man really is?
It’s clear that Jacob comes to think the man is God. The man actually tells him that. This isn’t the first time in Genesis God has appeared as a human. Three men appeared to Abraham at his tent.
Messengers were sent to Sodom. There will be a mysterious man that directs Joseph to his brothers.
Okay, so this man appears and Jacob initially thinks he is wrestling some man but in the end realizes he had been wrestling with God.
Isn’t it interesting that God can’t beat Jacob in this wrestling match? God even says, “Okay, it’s clear, I’ve got to give you credit here Jacob, you just don’t give up.” So God has to wound him. Think about it, God picks a fight and ends up having to wound His chosen one.
Thinking about this offers us a way to think about the whole story up to this point. Let’s try to think of how Jesus would read this story.
God has chosen a particular people, a particular family, through whom to accomplish His purpose to restore Eden blessings to the world.
What if the family is a snake?
What if this family has become more accountable and culpable because of God’s unique generosity to this family?
God definitely treats this chosen family differently. Not only is He more generous with this family, but His justice gets focused in a super intense way. We see what happens when God’s chosen one becomes rebellious and recalcitrant. It’s almost like God’s generosity actually makes Jacob even more accountable. So, what is God to do with His chosen representative who, of all humans, should be more humble?
Here is where extreme circumstances require extreme measures. At least that is how Jesus viewed the history of this family. Jesus talks about the Romans coming to Jerusalem to take out the temple and the whole cosmos collapsing. For Jesus, what happens with His family is of cosmic significance and He uses cosmic imagery to describe it. Thus, members of this family who choose to go awry, receive specially harsh treatment. In the New Testament, James warns those who want to become teachers/leaders to watch out because they will be judged more strictly.
Does wounding Jacob make a difference? What will Jacob do from now on? The answer to that question waits to be seen.
Check in time.
Do you really think Jacob was able to out wrestle God? What does “winning” mean in this story? In order for God to resolve the story He had to figure out a way for God’s will and human’s will to become one. Jacob certainly wasn’t going to give in and God could see that.
God could have killed him and been done with it, but He had tried that before with the flood and after all was said and done, humans were just the same.
God had to work with Jacob the way He found him. This meant God had to hurt him so he could taste the consequences of all the choices he had been making.
Jacob’s sins were not going to thwart God’s overall purpose. Regardless of how humans behave, God provides blessings.
Many times we read stories in the Old Testament and ask, “What implications does that story have for believers today?” When it may be more beneficial to read the narrative as a whole and imagine the way Jesus, as Israel’s Messiah, would view the story.
When Jesus reads this narrative it may look something like this. The chosen representative goes into suffering and death to emerge out the other side, alive, a new creation, Eden. Why? So that forgiveness and blessing can go out to the nations.
Aren’t we all, a lot like Jacob? We all deserve severe consequences. And yet, God’s mercy and generosity towards me is that He went through the death and resurrection on my behalf.
And that means, I don’t get what I deserve.
Like Jacob, I get another chance to become a new and different kind of human being, because of what the Messiah did for me.
The judgement Jacob was facing, is meant to show us as coming to ultimate fulfillment in the suffering Messiah on our behalf. So that our own physical death doesn’t become a punishment, but becomes our greatest test and passage into whatever the new creation is going to be.
We should be humbled and rejoice in the graciousness of God. Think about it,
Lord’s Supper.
Blessings
We pray for blessings - We pray for peace
Comfort for family, protection while we sleep
We pray for healing, for prosperity
We pray for Your mighty hand to ease our suffering
All the while, You hear each spoken need
Yet love is way too much to give us lesser things
CHORUS
'Cause what Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
What if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You're near
What if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise
We pray for wisdom - Your voice to hear
We cry in anger when we cannot feel You near
We doubt your goodness, we doubt Your love
As if every promise from Your Word is not enough
All the while, You hear each desperate plea
And long that we'd have faith to believe
CHORUS
When friends betray us - When darkness seems to win
We know that pain reminds this heart
That this is not, this is not our home - It’s not our home
CHORUS
What if my greatest disappointments - Or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can't satisfy
What if trials of this life
The rain, the storms, the hardest nights
Are Your mercies in disguise
Songwriters: Laura Story
Blessings lyrics © Capitol Christian Music Group