Who in the World…?

(Lectionary for August 6, 2017)

Of all the texts in the book of Genesis, this enigmatic little tale has garnered by far the most reflection, not to mention confusion. Every preacher loves to have a go at it, since no one can much agree what the story is finally about. Nothing like a vacuum of knowledge to generate loads of delightful speculation! I suppose one might say that about a lot of Bible talk in our day—speculation based on very thin knowledge! But that may be a subject for another day. Today I want to add to the ruminations on this strange story my own passel of thoughts, however random and wild they may prove to be.

The best I can offer will be suggested in a series of bullet points with some additional comments where appropriate—or inappropriate as the case may be.

1. Why is this story here? The location of the piece is important. It follows directly after Jacob (Grabby) has completed his well-crafted theft of nearly all of his uncle Laban’s goods, including his two daughters, and is followed by Grabby’s meeting with his brother, Esau (Hairy) after some twenty years of separation. The pericope is somehow a bridge from one story to the next, wherein Grabby confronts someone or something at the ford of the Jabbok River, a stream that flows into the Jordan River from the east, an entrance point into Israel.

2. Grabby is once again alone. This reminds us of his meeting with YHWH at the spooky mountain, right after he has fled for his life from his furious brother and aged father (Gen.28). Grabby is rarely alone in his tale, and these two scenes are clearly connected by his solitary experiences.

3. Though the story has long been characterized as “Jacob wrestles with God” or Jacob wrestles with the angel,” the fact remains that the text says, “A man wrestled with him until daybreak” (Gen.32:24—Gen.32:25 in Hebrew). Grabby’s wrestling partner is never named anything other than “man” in the story, Hebrew ‘ish. From Gen.2 we recognize this word as one for “male,” the counterpart there for ‘ishah, “female.” If we are take the storyteller at his word, Jacob’s adversary is decidedly not an angel or God; he is a man. Granted, he is a formidable man, and a deeply mysterious one, one capable of an all-night tussle, one who will never reveal himself by name to Jacob, but who promises to, and finally does, bless the patriarch, and one who changes Grabby’s name from “Grabby” to “Israel.”

4. The new name, Israel, can mean either “God wrestles” or “wrestler with God.” Given the context of the story, I favor the latter definition, since this is Jacob’s story primarily. Grabby is one who wrestles, who fights, and in the light of his previous stories, that seems to be an appropriate name for him; his first name was “Grabby” but now he is known as “God wrestler.” I think it important to note that the man gives him that name for one clear reason: “you have struggled with God (Elohim) and with humanity (‘enoshim), and you have won” (Gen.32:28). Far too little attention has been paid to this astonishing clause. It plainly states that Grabby will now be named Israel precisely because he has struggled both with God and humans and has won! Spools of sermons have made much of the fact that Jacob leaves the Jabbok stream limping after the man has “struck him on the hip joint” (Gen 32:32). This is of course quite true according to the story, but the fact remains that Jacob is now known as Israel because he has defeated both God and human beings. That is what the text says!

5. Since that is the case, as the text makes plain, I conclude that the tale is told only from the perspective of Grabby/Israel. It is only Jacob who thinks he has bested God; it is only Jacob who thinks that he has been wrestling with God, claiming that he has “seen God face to face” (Gen.32:30). And because the point of view of the story is only Jacob’s, why should we trust the lying weasel in the first place? He is, after all, the consummate liar of the Hebrew Bible. Why should I conclude that Jacob has in reality seen God, when he is the only one to think that?

6. My conclusions about this remarkable story are as follows: Jacob has wrestled with a man at the Jabbok, but the man is not God nor is the man an angel of God. Jacob has been wrestling with a series of “men,” as the preceding and following scenes make clear. He has first wrestled with Hairy, his doltish brother, and will confront him again in the very next chapter; he then wrestled with God at Bethel, wresting from God, he thinks, both blessing and promise, though in reality God gave both to him with no strings attached; he then wrestled with Rachel and Leah, winning them both after a very long period of service as set by his wily uncle Laban; and he of course wrestled with that same Laban, outwitting him at the end, taking from him both of his daughters, all eleven of his grandchildren, and the very best of his flocks and herds. Grabby is God wrestler, all right; he spends all of his days struggling and fighting and wrestling, because that is the way he imagines life to be, a series of struggles and victories over vanquished enemies. Hence, his “defeat” of God and humanity at Jabbok, as he imagines the result of the scene to be.

7. I suggest that Jacob’s real adversary at Jabbok is Jacob! I think that Jacob finally wrestles with himself, attempting to defeat that Grabby character. However, in his self-wrestling he indeed defeats Grabby, but thinks that he has now become Israel, the God wrestler. In short, his self-aggrandizement has inflated from the trickery of human beings to the wild thought that he has now bested God!

8. The real confrontation, Jacob’s necessary wrestling, and the real “face of God” in Grabby’s story does not occur until Gen.33, when the “idiot” Hairy, after twenty long years of humiliating separation, embraces his wastrel brother and kisses him in open-hearted welcome back to Israel. “Seeing your face,” exclaims an astonished Grabby/Israel, “is just like seeing the face of God, because you have received me with such grace” (Gen.33:10). And here finally is the sign of God’s face, a face of acceptance, of clear grace. God’s face is finally not to be found in the dog-eat-dog wrestling matches of our lives, even with ourselves, but in those grace-filled moments when we are accepted. The grace of God is always surprising, and so it is in this ancient story of Genesis.

(Images from Wikimedia Commons)