Deeper Commentary
Gen 32:1 Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him- Jacob had promised the Angel that if he was kept on his way, then Yahweh would be his God. Hence the connection between the Angels and Jacob going on his way. The meeting of Jacob by Angels looked forward to the meeting with Esau; the angels could have rightfully slain Jacob as could have both Laban and Esau, but they did not, because God influenced them by grace not to. These Angels were representative of the forces of Esau who were coming to likewise 'meet' Jacob, and so his reconciliation by grace with the Angels was prophetic of his reconciliation with Esau.
Jacob had promised at Bethel, at least 20 years ago [possibly 40, depending how you read the chronology] that Yahweh would be his God if Yahweh brought him back to his father's house. And Yahweh wanted that... even though I suggested on Gen. 31:13 that Jacob may have forgotten that vow ["I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar, where you vowed a vow to me"]. And even though the whole tenor of Jacob's vow was sceptical and not exactly generous towards Yahweh, offering to give Him just a tenth of all he had if Yahweh came through for him. And so the Angels as it were come forth to meet Jacob, who now stands near the Euphrates, the border of the promised land, to welcome him home. As the Angels meet Jacob now, so they had done at Bethel (Gen. 28:12 s.w.); as Jacob was "on his way" (Gen. 32:1 s.w. Gen. 28:20). Jacob names the places with words which have very similar meanings, Bethel and Penuel. Clearly this meeting with Angels was to help Jacob see that in order to return "home" to the land of promise and the covenant, he had to engage with God, through the Angels, and not just keep ignoring Him. Perhaps this explains the otherwise strange way that Hos. 12:3,4 appears to call Penuel "Bethel": "he struggled with the angel, and prevailed; he wept, and made supplication to him. He found him at Bethel, and there He spoke with us". The apparently obvious error is in order to make a point- that the wrestling with Angels was effectively at Bethel, because the Penuel incident was so similar to that at Bethel.
Rabbinic
Judaism understands that the one met is greater than those who go forth to
meet him, as the one carried is greater than the one who carries. And that
is not without Biblical support. We see here the huge respect of God for a
man who as yet had not returned to his God. Jacob's last experience with
Angels was at Bethel, so this was to remind him of that experience. The
Angels had appeared in their hosts to Jacob, as he fled from his brother.
Now they appeared as he returns to meet his brother. The meeting with the
Angel is clearly parallel with Jacob's meeting with Esau. Jacob perceives
this when he says in Gen. 33:10: "I have seen your face, as one sees the
face of God, and you were pleased with me". The simple take away is that
our attitudes to our brother are of extreme interest to God. Hosts of
Angels were involved with Jacob at the point of leaving his brother and
reconciling with his brother. God saw Jacob's attitude to Esau as so
absolutely significant. His struggle with his brother was his struggle
with God. Hosea states this in so many words: “In the womb he grasped the
heel of his brother, and in his manhood he struggled with God”.
Gen 32:2 When he saw them, Jacob said, This is God’s army. He called the
name of that place Mahanaim- The idea of "camps" is developed
throughout this section. Jacob and Laban had both camped in Mount Gilead,
forming two camps. And the Angel had influenced Laban's camp not to harm
Jacob, as explained on Gen. 31:25. But now Jacob perceives that the 'two
camps' of Mahanaim had not so much been his and Laban's; but Laban's and
this Angelic camp. And he is now to learn that likewise Esau's "camp" had an
Angelic "camp" reflecting it in Heaven; and Jacob's camp was hopelessly set
against the Angelic camp. See on :7.
Jacob actually saw the Angels. "This is God's host",
he commented, with the implication that this sight further humbled him and
led him towards the necessary contrition of mind for deliverance from Esau. If "the sign of the son of man" which appears over Israel and
leads the tribes of Israel to mourn in repentance is a literal vision of
the Angel-cherubim (Mt. 24:30), then this has a basis in Jacob seeing the
Angelic vision in the time of his distress, the "time of Jacob's trouble".
Particularly in that watershed night of wrestling, Jacob was our
example. The Lord taught that we must all first be reconciled with our
brother before we meet with God (Mt. 5:24)- an obvious allusion to Jacob's
reconciliation with Esau in his heart, and then meeting with God. We
really must
all go through that process, whether in one night or a longer
period. The commentary on that night in Hos. 12 makes this point: "In his
(spiritual) manhood (RVmg.) he had power with God... he wept, and made
supplication unto him: he (God) found him (Jacob) in Bethel,
and there He
spake with us, even the (same) Lord God of Hosts [armies of
Angels]... therefore
turn
thou to
thy God" as Jacob made Yahweh
his God and
turned to Him (vv. 3-6). Jacob is our example. Jacob
only truly turned to God that night of wrestling, at the age of 97,
despite having been brought up in the ways of the true Gospel, and after
having lived almost a century of half commitment to God.
We can so easily
slip into the same life of half-commitment and never, even for a century,
turn to our God with all our heart. Ps. 34:3 promises that the Angel of
the Lord will encamp / Mahanaim around
all His servants, just as the Angel did at Mahanaim
for Jacob. Jacob’s struggle at [or with] Peniel strikes a chord with each
of us. Frank Lake has pointed out that each person struggles to find peace
in their relationships with others and also with their God- whether or not
they are conscious of those struggles (Frank
Lake,
Clinical Theology
(London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1966)).
Jacob’s experience is clearly set up as representative of our own.
Jacob evidently forgot or resigned the promise that the elder would serve the younger when he sent messengers to Esau, describing himself as Esau's servant, and Esau as his Lord; yet just a few hours later he was pleading in almost unparalleled intensity to receive the promised blessings of forgiveness. Such oscillating faith and perception of the promises is tragically a characteristic of Israel after the Spirit too.
Gen 32:4 He commanded them, saying, This is what you shall tell my
lord, Esau: ‘This is what your servant, Jacob, says. I have lived as a
foreigner with Laban, and stayed until now- Describing Esau as his
lord and himself as Esau's servant is all a studied rejection of the
blessing he had stolen, that he would be lord over his brothers and they
would bow down to him (Gen. 27:29). The way Jacob bows to Esau and asks
him to "take away" the blessing in Gen. 33:11 is all tantamount to saying
that he was handing back the blessing of the firstborn, because he had
experienced the Abrahamic blessing. Having the blessing of forgiveness and
fellowship with God was all he needed.
Jacob's desperate humility before Esau is remarkable: "My lord Esau... I have sent to tell my lord, that I may find grace in thy sight... peradventure he will accept of me" (Gen. 32:4,5,20 AV). This was a far cry from his nonchalance and cold shouldering of Esau at the time of the theft of the birthright. Likewise the present Jewish attitude towards the Arabs will dramatically change. Jacob sending droves of presents to appease Esau will connect with Israel's frequent appeasement of their aggressive Arab neighbours in the last days, on the road to their final repentance in the time of Jacob's trouble.
Jacob says that he had lived as a foreigner with Laban- for either 20 or 40 years. This is so much the language of the patriarchs, living as passers through and not permanent residents; and that is the spirit of all the true seed. But he says he "stayed until now" with Laban. The Hebrew implies procrastination, as if he had stayed longer than he should have done. Significantly, it is the same word used by Eliezer when he had gone to Laban seeking Rebekah as Isaac's wife; he refused to be 'delayed' by Laban (Gen. 24:56 AV "hinder me not"). Jacob is recognizing that he had remained longer than he should with Laban because initially he had been obsessed with Rachel and had not taken Leah and returned home sooner; and latterly, he had remained longer with Laban as he built up his fantastic wealth with the myth of the rods, which was really Divine blessing. He recognized he had not been as his mother and father in spiritual terms, he had delayed with Laban, whereas Rebekah had followed the Spirit and not allowed Laban to delay her.
"Lived as a foreigner" [AV "sojourned"] has a numerical value of 613, the number of commandments in the Law of Moses. Perhaps we are to deduce that it was through his exile in the East that he learned obedience to God's law.
Gen 32:5 I have cattle, donkeys, flocks, male servants, and female servants. I have sent to tell my lord, that I may find favour in your sight’- This isn't Jacob boasting; he was hardly in the mood for that. Rather is he wishing to inform Esau that he has indeed received Divine and human blessing, and wishes to share this with Esau. If indeed the messengers were Angels (see on :3), then Jacob was sending them, relying upon God, in order to find grace before Esau.
Gen 32:6 The messengers returned to Jacob, saying, We came to your
brother Esau. Not only that, but he comes to meet you, and four hundred
men with him- As noted on :4, this is the going and returning of the
Angels ["messengers"] upon Jacob which he had seen in the staircase vision
of Gen. 28. I suggested on :3 that these messengers were in fact Angels,
even if they appeared as men. This suggestion is confirmed by the way this
verse seems to differentiate between the Angel-messengers 'coming to Esau'
and also, separate to that, 'finding out' that he was coming to meet Jacob
with 400 men with him. The Angels coming to meet Jacob in :1 were in a
sense representative of Esau coming to meet Jacob. Just as Laban was out
to kill Jacob but he was saved by Angelic grace, so Esau was out to kill
him. Rebekah had been wrong in thinking that Esau would soon forget it
all. Having 400 men with him was really evidence enough that he was out
for conflict. The same figure of four hundred men refers to a
battallion of soldiers (1 Sam. 22:2; 25:13; 30:10).
Gen 32:7 Then Jacob was greatly afraid and was distressed- Jacob
has just been "afraid" of Laban (Gen. 31:31), just as he now was of Esau
(:11 s.w.). Yet he had learnt that God's Angels had saved him from what he
feared; for the Angel appeared to Laban and warned him not to do evil to
Jacob. We pass through one experience or test in order to prepare us for
the next one; and we see this so clearly in the parallels between the
meeting with Laban and now that with Esau.
Jacob is clearly not believing the promise made at Bethel- that Yahweh would indeed bring him back to his father's house / family in peace, i.e. peace with Esau. His chronic fear reflects his lack of faith in the promises to Abraham and himself.
He divided the people who were with him, and the flocks, and the herds, and the camels, into two companies- Literally, two camps- Mahanaim. These two camps of Jacob are stressed (:8,10,21).
Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed- This is the basis of "the time of Jacob's trouble" (Jer. 30:7), the "time of trouble" from which Israel will be Angelically "delivered" (Dan. 12:1) after the pattern of Jacob. Yet this "time of trouble" is picked up by the Lord in Mt. 24:21 and applied to the time of great tribulation "such as was not" which will encompass all God's people, natural and spiritual. What this means is that the Jacob experience must be gone through by all of us, natural and spiritual Israel; and this will entail a desperate praying to God and an earnest repentance, recognizing that we have lived out our parental expectations for too long; and above all, a realization that "this God is our God", a personalizing of God, a grasping of the wondrous reality of those things which we have previously seen as only so much correct theology and logical theory.
Gen 32:8 And he said, If Esau comes to the one company, and strikes it, then the company which is left will escape- "Company" is "camp"; Jacob should have perceived that there was a camp of Angels with him, that we was not alone, but his camp was but a reflection of the heavenly camp of Angels whom he had just "met" as a foretaste of how he would "meet" Esau's camp / company.
Gen 32:9 Jacob said, God of my father Abraham, and God of my father
Isaac, Yahweh, who said to me, ‘Return to your country, and to your
relatives, and I will do you good’- He came to see that 'God' was Yahweh (cp. notes on
Gen. 28:20); he saw that there was only one 'God', and that the vague sense of 'God' which he had was in fact 'Yahweh'. But still he speaks of this Yahweh God as someone else's God.
And the promise made was that he would be kept, blessed, and brought to
his father's house in peace. Yet he admits that he 'fears' this will not
be the case, and he and his family will be 'struck' by Esau (:11). He was
being led to realize that he couldn't just plead a part of the promise,
and doubt that the rest would be fulfilled too, questioning whether in
fact it was God's plan to "do [him] good" and not evil. We likewise have
this tendency. And Moses' primary audience, Israel in the wilderness, were
likewise challenged to believe that indeed it was God's purpose to do them
good and not evil in their latter end (Dt. 8:16). The story of Jacob was
to be their encouragement.
Jacob however is still manipulative. Yahweh had promised that "I will be with you", but Jacob turns this into claiming God had promised "to do you good" (Gen. 28:15; 31:13; 32:9). He wanted God to come through for him in material, visible terms. God's promise of His abiding presence was not enough for Jacob.
Gen 32:10 I am not worthy- This is new language for Jacob,
and we
see that indeed as Dt. 8:16 teaches, he had to be humbled before being
done good and not evil in his latter end. The same word for "worthy" is
used by David when likewise faced with God's covenant promises (2 Sam.
7:19).
David was humbled when he received the promises, just as we should be by
realizing that we really are in covenant relationship with God. “Who am
I…?” was his response (2 Sam. 7:18). Like Jacob, he felt himself unworthy
of all the “mercy and truth” shown him in the promises.
And we too should be humbled by these promises; for we are in the
same new covenant. The word is also used of how Jacob was the "younger"
son (Gen. 27:15,42). He surely alludes to that; he had so struggled to
rise above being the younger son, but he now finally realizes that he is
who he is before God. And once he realized that, the promise could come
true- that the elder would serve the younger. And the little one, Jacob
the small / not worthy / younger, would become a great multitude finally
(Is. 60:22 s.w.).
Of the least of all- The LXX here is alluded to by Paul when he confesses that he is less than the least of all (Eph. 3:8). Jacob's path is indeed that of us all.
The loving kindnesses, and of all the truth, which You have shown to Your servant; for with just my staff I passed over this Jordan- Strong comments that the word for "staff" here suggests a magical, pagan stick associated with fertility, coming from a root meaning 'to germinate'. Jacob and idolatry go together. The same word occurs when we read that Jacob put the animals before the "rods"; it seems this is an intensive plural for 'the great rod', i.e. his staff. Yet, fascinatingly enough, at the very point when Jacob leaves home to start his wilderness journey with only (in his eyes) his pagan staff to bring him good luck, God as it were takes a snapshot of him, and asks Israel to leave Egypt with a staff in their hands- a strange request, surely, unless it was intended to drive their minds back to Jacob, asking them to emulate his example. Again we see the relevance of the Genesis narrative to its primary audience, Israel in the wilderness.
Jacob saw material prosperity as an indicator of the fulfillment of the promises to him. Because he was physically blessed in his life, he came to feel that the promises had been fulfilled, and therefore he almost lost sight of the future aspect of our relationship with God. There are powerful lessons for us here. He saw the promises ("mercies... truth") as having been fulfilled to him already, and therefore he needed the night of wrestling to bring him to the realization that the blessing of forgiveness (Mic. 7:20), with its eternal, future implications, was what the promises are really all about. But now perhaps he was realizing this- that he had indeed been materially blessed, but what he needed far more than that was forgiveness for his sin against his brother Esau, both by Esau and God, and peace thereby with God and man. This dimension of the promises suddenly came into focus for him. We likewise can dwell too much upon the material aspect of the promises- resurrection of the body to receive eternal life in future. What we need even more essentially is the blessing of forgiveness and reconcilliation with God and man which will enable that to be so.
And now I have become two companies- Before the wrestling began, Jacob evidently felt that basically, the promises to him had been fulfilled in the material prosperity which he had; for "kindness and truth" is a common idiom for the promises.
Gen 32:11 Please deliver me from the hand of my brother, from the hand
of Esau: for I fear him, lest he come and strike me, and the mothers with
the children- Because Jacob saw, for much of his life, that the fulfillment of God's promises depended on his effort, he so often doubted them; because, of course, men can never make enough effort.
And as noted on :10, he had seen the promises as too much about material
blessing rather than the blessing of forgiveness and reconcilliation with
God and man which is the more essential part of them. Thus he asks God to deliver him from Esau, because if Esau killed him, the covenant would not be fulfilled.
"I fear him, lest he come and strike me (first!) and the mothers with the children".
The AV and Hebrew have "mother" singular- as if he was still fixated upon
Rachel and her son, and those born to her maid. Whether he died or not that night would not have nullified God's promise that his seed would become a multitude (:12)
and that God would return him to his father's home in peace and blessing
(Gen. 28:20). Until now, Jacob had seen the promises as offering him personal, temporal blessing, rather than having a firm faith in their future
and spiritual implications. His wrestling with the Angel was a cameo of this whole attitude; he thought that the promised blessing of God could be achieved through his wrestling and struggling. This is why, in the course of that night, he stopped wrestling with the Angel and clung on to him with tears, begging that through pure grace he might receive the
spiritual blessing of forgiveness (Hos. 12:2-4).
He effectively hands back the birthright to Esau after the night of wrestling, when he says "Take [away] my blessing..." because he had experienced God's grace. The blessing of the firstborn involved the other brothers bowing down to the firstborn (Gen. 27:29), so Jacob's protracted and emphasized bowing to Esau (Gen. 33:3,6,7) was likewise a way of resigning from the birthright which he had been born trying to grab hold of, and the desire for which had obviously filled his mind. We too are led to resign all our material, secular aspirations and dreams for the sake of God's grace. And in Jacob's case, he was born with the desire for the firstborn status, with his little hand desperately trying to grab his brother's heel to stop his brother being the firstborn. But encounter with God's grace [as happened to Jacob in Gen. 32] is enough to reorient a man away from even his natural, born-with passions and obsessions towards [in this case] materialism and jealousy. In Jacob's case his very name, 'heel catcher', reflected this obsession which was so strong it had become his self-definition; until he encountered God's grace. The blessing of the firstborn as given by Isaac involved the firstborn being "Lord" over his brothers; but Jacob repeatedly calls Esau his "Lord" in Gen. 32,33. Jacob's gifts to his brothers are described with a standard Hebrew word for "gift" [minha]; but in Gen. 33:11 Jacob then starts to consciously refer to them as berakah, the word for "blessing". And he urges Esau to take [s.w. 'take away'] his "blessing". I discussed on Gen. 25:23 how the blessing of the firstborn never came true- perhaps because Jacob's resignation of the firstborn blessings in Gen. 32,33 was accepted by God.
There can be no doubt that the wrestling experience of our lives will result in our rejection of materialism, and wholehearted devotion to the more spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
Jacob began that night by pleading: "Deliver me from Esau", and he concludes by marveling that his life is "preserved (s.w. "deliver") from God's wrath (Gen. 32:30).
The camp of Esau coming to meet him was the camp of Angels he had met and
in a way become superior to as noted on :1,3,4. His concern with
immediate physical problems became dwarfed by his awareness of his need for reconciliation with God. In essence, this is Paul's teaching concerning peace in the NT; if we have peace with God, the wonder of this will result in us having peace in any situation. This is easy to write, so easy. And yet it is still true. If we see the seriousness of sin, and the wonder of being in free fellowship with the Father and Son, we will have peace. The wholehearted repentance and clinging on to God of Jacob that night is used in Hosea 12 as an appeal to all Israel to repent as our father Jacob did, and rise to his level of maturity.
If Jacob's prayer had not been heard, Esau would
have smitten "the mother with the children". This will be
done by the latter day Esau to those Jews who do not match Jacob's
intensity of prayer and repentance (Zech. 14:2), as it happened at the time
of the Babylonian invasion which prefigured the Arab attack of the last
days (Lam. 5:11).
Gen 32:13 He lodged there that night, and took from that which he had
with him, a present for Esau, his brother- Jacob is an example of the hurrying man beset with unvoiced
inner conflicts trying to buy off his guilt. Struggling with an awful
conscience, he sent huge gifts ahead of him to try to appease his offended
brother Esau. But he wasn’t thereby freed from his bad
conscience. He had to wrestle it out with God, with an Angel who at times
appeared in the form of both Jacob’s father and brother, and come to know
his own desperation and God’s utter grace and love towards him.
Gen 32:14 Two hundred female goats and twenty male goats, two hundred
ewes and twenty rams- All told, Jacob gave Esau 550 animals. His
wealth in terms of herds was therefore immense; and he had acquired this
by the relatively sudden Divine blessing upon his herds in the final part
of his life with Laban.
Gen 32:15 Thirty milk camels and their colts, forty cows, ten bulls,
twenty female donkeys and ten foals- Just one camel was considered
very valuable; to give 30 plus their colts was a huge gift or sacrifice.
I
noted on :13 that "present" is better translated "sacrifice". As we learn
from Noah's ark, there was a concept of clean and unclean animals, and yet
unclean animals such as camels are here effectively offered as sacrifice;
and were accepted, as the impure likewise was.
Gen 32:16 He delivered them into the hands of his servants, every herd
by itself, and said to his servants, Pass over before me, and put a space
between herd and herd- There were five different groups of animals:
goats, sheep, camels, cows and donkeys. And then there was Leah and her
children, and finally, as the seventh group, Jacob and Rachel. This would
connect with Jacob bowing seven times to Esau (Gen. 33:3). "Before me" is
literally 'before my face'; and the idea of faces / presence occurs often
here in this incident. Jacob had feared the face of Laban and been
preserved (Gen. 31:2,5). Now he was preparing for his face to come before
the face of Esau, and again with Angelically provided Divine grace, he
would see his face and be saved. All this leads up to the significance of
the wrestling incident, where for an extended period, Jacob looks at close
quarters into the face of an Angel as they wrestle, and due to Jacob's
desperate tears of repentance he is preserved to see the face of Esau and
finally that of God, by grace. So he comes to marvel that he has seen God
face to face and was preserved (Gen. 32:30); and he saw in the Angel's
face that of Esau (Gen. 33:10).
Gen 32:17 He commanded the foremost, saying, When Esau, my brother,
meets you, and asks you, saying, ‘Whose are you? Where are you going?
Whose are these before you?’- The question 'Who are you?' was exactly
that which Isaac had asked Jacob, and he had lied (Gen. 27:18 s.w.). It
was the question Jacob had asked the shepherds when he first came to
Mesopotamia. Now all the wrestlings of his life, against Isaac, Laban and
Esau, were coming together. They same questions were being asked, to take
him back to previous failures.
Gen 32:18 Then you shall say, ‘They are your servant, Jacob’s. It is a
present sent to my lord, Esau. Behold, he also is behind us’- Jacob
was of course aware that "the elder shall serve the younger". But he
wanted to give away the blessing of the firstborn to Esau (see on Gen.
33:11). He felt quite unworthy of the blessing that the elder should serve
the younger and is as it were resigning it. Or it could be that he was
driven to realize a future dimension to the fulfilment of the promises. In
this life just as he was not to literally inherit the eretz for
ever, so too, he would not be served by the elder. As Abraham bought land-
his own eternal inheritance- in which to bury Sarah, so Jacob may have
humbled himself as the younger before the elder, when he knew that in the
scheme of eternal realities the opposite would be the case.
Gen 32:19 He commanded also the second, and the third, and all that
followed the herds, saying, This is how you shall speak to Esau, when you
find him- I suggested on :16 that there were in fact five droves of
animals sent. Jacob had rightly guessed the psychology of his brother. The
droves of 'presents' or offerings did indeed appease Esau and turn away
his wrath. But as Esau had come to slay him, so had the Angel who was to
wrestle with him. And Moses' own account of how an Angel sought to slay
him for his unfaithfulness to the covenant is surely based upon this.
Moses recognized that the path of all the true seed, including himself,
was to be based upon Jacob's.
Gen 32:20 You shall say, ‘Not only that, but behold, your servant,
Jacob, is behind us’. For, he said, I will appease him with the present
that goes before me, and afterward I will see his face. Perhaps he will
accept me- The appeasing of Esau by sacrifice ["presents"] is not to
be taken as meaning that God too was somehow appeased by sacrifice. For
God is not an angry deity. Rather, God's anger turned away by Jacob's
appeal to His grace with tears, and deep repentance. As noted on :16,
Jacob's seeing of Esau's face represented how he saw the Angel's face and
was preserved. In the end, the plan to appease Esau using presents /
sacrifice wasn't used.
Gen 32:21 So the present passed over before him, and he himself lodged
that night in the camp- "The present" uses the Hebrew term usually
and many times translated "offering"; and acceptable offerings come up
before the face of Yahweh. That is stressed many times; and the offering
here comes before the face; "before him" is added by the
translators as the phrase as it stands seems strange. But so many times
these words offering and "before [the face]" are used together about
sacrifice coming acceptably before Yahweh. So there is the hint that this
present / sacrifice, although it largely included unclean animals, was
acceptable with God.
Gen 32:22 He rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two
handmaids, and his eleven sons, and passed over the ford of the Jabbok-
Jacob passed over the ford; but then we find him alone, wrestling
with the Angel all night; and then in :31 he passes over the ford again.
So I suggest his fear was at such a pitch that he left his family and
crossed back over the ford, alone. And it was at that point, so alone and
so fearful, that he met God.
Gen 32:23 He took them, and sent them over the stream, and sent over
that which he had- The language of taking and sending over is exactly
that used of how he had crossed the Euphrates before meeting Laban (Gen.
31:21). Truly circumstances repeat; one situation is to strengthen us for
the next. "That which he had" meant that Jacob was now stripped of
everything. He wasn't even with Rachel; he had sent her over the Jabbok,
and was totally alone. We wonder whether he was hatching some desperate
plan to try to return alone toward Haran, or at least to cross the
Euphrates back into the land of the east. He was in a similar situation to
when 20 or 40 years previously, he had been left alone at Bethel and saw
the staircase with Angels.
Gen 32:24 Jacob was left alone, and wrestled with a man there until
the breaking of the day- Through this, Jacob learnt the real import
of the promises. Like us and Elijah, he had to come to a point of being
totally alone to perceive how they applied to himself personally (the same
Hebrew phrase "left alone" is used in 1 Kings 18:22; 19:10,14). The
tension of ideas is between being "left alone", and yet having "a man"
with him- clearly an Angel, representing God's presence when a man is
truly stripped of all else, just as Jacob had been earlier at Bethel.
All Jacob's scaffolding was removed, to leave him "alone" with
God, and yet not alone because God was with him. This is the path of all
who comprise the Israel of God. Perhaps it was in retrospect that he named
the place Mahanaim, the two camps, Jacob's camp and that of his guardian
Angels. Jacob came to realize that all his life, he had been wrestling with God,
his Angel, and he now came to beg his God for the blessing of forgiveness,
implying he had repented. The Hebrew for "wrestle" can mean both to
wrestle and also simply to cling on to. It seems he started wrestling, and
ended up clinging on to the Angel, desperately begging for salvation and
forgiveness. His great physical strength (remember how he alone moved the
huge stone from the well, Gen. 29:2) was redirected into a spiritual
clinging on to the promises of forgiveness and salvation. And this will be
our pattern of growth too. It seems Jacob was familiar with the idea of
wrestling with God as being related to prayer. Rachel speaks of how "with
wrestlings of God have I wrestled... and I have prevailed" in obtaining a
child (Gen. 30:8; AV "great" = Heb. 'elohim'). We know from Hos. 12 that
Jacob became aware that he was wrestling with an Angel, not just a man.
At first, he thought this was a random stranger. But the random
stranger in his life was in fact God. He began wrestling, then the Angel
touched his thigh, and then he realized... and clung to the Angel in
prayer with tears, begging for mercy, as Hosea describes. And received the
Angelic blessing. And so it was a case of the magnificent defeat; the
wrestling turned into a desperate clinging to the Angel, refusing to let
go until he was blessed / forgiven; even though the promises to Abraham
were all about blessing. His wrestling is therefore to be understood as prayer and pleading,
although doubtless it started as a physical struggle with an unknown
stranger, who he later recognized as an Angel, and then perceived as God
Himself. The Angel came to Jacob with the desire to kill him, as Esau
(whom the Angel represented) approached him in the same spirit. It was by
Jacob's desperate clinging on to God, his pleading, his intense prayer
(Hos. 12:4) that he changed God's intention, after the pattern of Moses in
later years. The sentence of death we received in Adam perhaps doesn't
mean as much to us as it should. Our reversal of it will involve quite
some struggle.
Gen 32:25 When he saw that he didn’t prevail against him- God had taught Jacob this idea through Rachel saying that she had wrestled with God's wrestling in order to have a child (Gen. 30:8). Jacob however did not prevail in prayer, and neither did God as it were prevail against or upon him. It was a perfectly equal balance of power [or so it seemed to Jacob]. But then the Angel with a touch demonstrated that this apparent balance of power between God and man was [and is] utterly illusory. Jacob was being made to realize that this was how he had perceived things; but God's grace makes all such balance of power theory irrelevant. Hos. 12:4-6 presents the wrestling as Jacob begging the Angel for grace, and prevailing over God, as it were, by receiving this. So I suggest that the hours of wrestling to a perfectly balanced stalemate was not the time Hos. 12 refers to. Rather it was once Jacob had got to this point of apparent balance of power with God, that the Angel touches his thigh. And then after that, knowing he was utterly beaten, Jacob begs for grace and mercy and will not let the Angel go, looking right into his face, and it is in this sense that he 'prevails' as Hosea says.
Hosea comments that Jacob had power with God and prevailed. But the folklore of the time was full of stories of mighty men who wrestled with the gods- and always lost. But here, with Yahweh the only true God, God allows Himself to be defeated; or, holds Himself back from conquering and humiliating man. And in fact, allows man to win; in that man's collapse and clinging to God for His grace is in fact the magnificent defeat. Until both sides collapse into each other's arms in love and mutual respect. Hence the Hebrew words for "wrestle" and "embrace" are virtually identical. It is therefore hugely significant that Esau embraces Jacob in Gen. 33:4. His embrace of Jacob reflected how the Angel ended up embracing Jacob, as Jacob clung to him begging for mercy. Esau's embrace of Jacob reflects how after Jacob's repentance, the Angel embraced him. Indeed, all God's wrestling with Jacob was really an embrace of him, all done in love.
This is what it is, to be Israel. When a man starts to wrestle with another, the other has to wrestle against the body that begins wrestling against his. And this is how wrestling becomes such an appropriate image. Man wrestles with God in resisting His ways; and so God ends up wrestling with man. And He never prevails against man by some overpowering use of force or strength; indeed, He allows His Israel to win, although thereby He also wins; and He shows at the end how with just one touch, all our muscular strength is revealed as nothing. The wrestling was at night, recalling how it was in the darkness of the womb that he had grasped at Esau's feel; and how he had used the darkness of his father's blindness to deceive him and grasp the blessing of the firstborn. He now realizes that the only blessing he desperately wants is that of God's mercy and forgivenss ["I will not let you go until you bless me", :26].
He touched the hollow of his thigh, and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was strained, as he wrestled- "Wrestled" translates a Hebrew word which is a form of that for 'Jacob'. Jacob's wrestling, trying by sleight of hand to win in his own strength, was what Jacob was all about. He 'Jacobed' against God. To touch the thigh is an image used elsewhere in the Jacob story, where the same Hebrew word for "thigh" is used: When Abraham makes his servant touch his thigh to promise to not marry Isaac to a Canaanite (Gen. 24:2); and about Jacob asking Joseph to promise not to bury him in Egypt (Gen. 47:29). So to touch the thigh is to promise. God through the Angel was reaffirming the promises to Jacob- even whilst he was pitting all his strength against God. And that touch of the thigh disabled Jacob, making him give up all reliance upon human strength. Our response to being sworn to by God has to be the same. We limp the rest of our lives, clinging on to His grace. We would have expected God to wait until Jacob realized he was fighting God, beg for forgiveness- and only then reconfirm the covenant with him. But God's grace is such that whilst Jacob was pitting all his strength against God, God reconfirms the covenant. Grace takes the initiative. We have the same experience. Jacob was born the seed of Abraham, but we likewise are the seed of Abraham, in the same covenant, through baptism. Jacob had [rather manipulatively] pleaded the promise to Abraham that his seed would be "as the sand of the sea", reasoning as if that promise was also made to himself. When that had not yet been promised to Jacob personally. So Jacob was slowly moving towards accepting he was the seed of Abraham; and God moved towards him in leaps and bounds. He does the same with us.
The sign of circumcision was given as the confirmation that the promise regarding a son would be fulfilled. Abraham had to figuratively cut off part of his vital organ in order to be assured that God would provide a son for him. Accepting God's promises means that we too must give up our human strength and attempts to fulfil them. Likewise when Jacob was given the repeated covenant acceptance, he was wounded in his "thigh" and thereafter walked with a limp. "It is not impossible that the damage to the "thigh" means Jacob was assaulted in his vital organs. Thus, the "limp" refers to the mark left on his very manhood and future". So the touching of the thigh may have removed his virility; whatever, it was a touch at a very deeply internal point. God likewise touches us deep within, to convict us of our weakness. And we walk through the rest of life limping, just as we have a choice to fall upon the stone of Christ and be broken, or have that stone fall upon us and grind us to powder.
It has been observed: "Three biblical scholars, S. Gervitz, L.
Eslinger, and S. H. Smith, also argue that
Jacob’s injury occurs to his genitals.The kap yareh, they point
out, refers either to the “hand of the thigh”—the penis, or to the
“hollow, pouch-like” scrotum. Citing J. Skinner, L. Eslinger suggests that
when Genesis says that Jacob’s hip was put out (32:25), what it means is
that “Jacob had a hernia at the place of the scrotum’s attachment to the
body in the course of the struggle.” This interpretation of Jacob’s injury
as sexual has far-reaching implications...". Possibly we could argue that
his wasted years with Laban were a result of his sexual list for Rachel,
and now this was revealed to him- by one gentle touch of the Angel.
Gen 32:26 The man said, Let me go, for the day breaks- We enquire why the Angel was so urgent that Jacob stop wrestling before daybreak. It could be that the idea was that Jacob was to be slain by the Angel unless he learnt his lesson before daybreak. But it was clear Jacob wasn't going to do so. But the Angel wanted to bless him; hence he urges him to give up his wrestling with God before daybreak. Rather like Gen. 19:22,23 could imply that the Angel could do nothing to destroy Sodom until Lot was in Zoar at day break. So we see again how God urges Jacob to meet the preconditions for salvation, despite Jacob struggling against submitting to them. Just as Abraham was dragged kicking and screaming, as it were, from Ur to Canaan. We see here the essence of Yahweh, the God who so desperately wants to save, and who was to be so exactly manifested in His Son Yahshua, 'Yah saves'.
Jacob said, I won’t let You go, unless You bless me- Notice the chronology of events and the explanation give on :25. They wrestle but neither wins. They are apparently at perfect balance between Divine strength and Jacob's. Then the Angel touches Jacob, and after that Jacob knows he is humanly beaten. But he clings on to the Angel begging for mercy and in this way 'had power with God' as Hosea 12 says; he in that sense "had power over the Angel" and prevailed, refusing to let the otherwise victorious Angel go, unless he blesses him with forgiveness. There is a strong link between blessing and forgiveness; we think of Pharaoh asking to be blessed (Ex. 12:32), and David speaking of the blessedness of forgiveness (Rom. 4:6). Acts 3:25,26 makes explicit that the Abrahamic blessing was essentially of forgiveness. Having been made powerless and beaten, Jacob clung on to the Angel [this is one possible understanding of the Hebrew translated 'wrestle']. And it was this which paradoxically gave Jacob the upper hand.
Gen 32:27 He said to him, What is your name? He said, Jacob-
There is reason to think that the Angel also reminded Jacob of his father Isaac;
for it was Isaac who had asked Jacob 'Who are you?', and he had lied in
saying 'I am Esau'. His father had loved him less than Esau; and he had
struggled with his father because of this. The way Jacob begs the Angel to bless him recalls how he so earnestly wanted to obtain his father's blessing. Jacob's pleading for blessing with the Angel would have reminded him of Esau's desperate pleading for the blessing from Isaac..
But the struggle with his father, as with his brother, was all now
revealed as essentially a struggle with God. All these things were restimulated in Jacob's mind by the wrestling. The Angel asks him what his name is, in exactly the same way as Isaac had asked him 20
or 40 years before. At that time he had lied. But now he truthfully answers the Angel: "Jacob", the deceiver. And then he begs for the blessing of forgiveness. He had struggled with men, with Isaac and Isaac's influence of Jacob's spirituality, with his brother Esau, with Laban, and with himself. And the Angel said that in all these struggles with men, Jacob had ultimately won in that he had confessed he was a deceiver,
a sinner.
Gen 32:28 He said, Your name will no longer be called Jacob, but Israel; for you have fought with God and with men, and have prevailed- As explained on :25-27, after reaching a stalemate where Jacob did not prevail against God, the Angel touched his thigh and he became powerless. But he desperately clung to the Angel, peering into his face, and begged for the true Abrahamic blessing of forgiveness and fellowship with God. And this was granted. So the paradox was that by not prevailing in his own strength, he did prevail. This is why he was renamed "Israel". "Israel" effectively means something like 'God rules' (Gen. 32:22-28) (James Muilenburg, The Way Of Israel (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962) p. 45); His people of the new Israel are those over whom He rules. We therefore are under His Kingdom now, if we accept Christ as King over our lives. The name was a testament to the fact that in a way, God had prevailed; in another sense, Jacob had prevailed. We see here the endless mutuality between God and man, once we surrender. He wins, and we win. "With God and with men" confirms the idea often presented in this section, that the Angel represented men like Isaac, Laban and Esau with whom Jacob had wrestled.
But the meaning of 'Israel' is hard to define; just as the true nature of God's people, His "Israel", is hard to define. It can mean 'God struggles' just as much as it means 'struggler with God'. It can also imply 'let El rule / prevail / win'. Israel are those who let Him rule and have His way in their lives. It perfectly reflects the mutuality of man's relationship with God. Our struggle with Him means that He inevitably, axiomatically struggles with us. "Israel" is the epitomy of the whole Divine-human encounter. "Israel" likewise can mean 'God struggles' as well as 'God rules', i.e. wins the struggle. God wrestles with us because we wrestle with Him. But because He struggles / wrestles, He must win / rule. For God shall not be ever defeated. And His 'winning' means our salvation and blessing, as happened with Jacob. This incident gave birth to the whole name 'Israel'; it is therefore programmatic of every man's walk with God. And so Hosea says, commenting on this incident, that there God spoke with us; or as the Hebrew means, “There He keeps on speaking with us". This is what it is, to be Israel. And I suggest that "Israel", with all it implies, is the fulfilment of the promise to Abraham to make his name great. Great in significance, freighted with God's grace and human struggle against it. The question is whether man, as Jacob, wants to become Israel, or remain fearful Jacob in the darkness, trying to manage life in our own strength.
Gen 32:29 Jacob asked him, Please tell me Your name. He said, Why is it that you ask what My name is? He blessed him there- The Hebrew idea of a name is connected with the idea of who a person essentially is. In Biblical Hebrew, one would enquire after a person's literal name by asking "Who (mi) are you?"- not, as was asked of Jacob, "What (mah) is your name?" (Gen. 32:28). This question to Jacob was therefore a request for him to ask himself who he really was. God's Name in this sense is to become part of ours- hence after God's declaration of His Name to Moses, the Israelites started to insert parts of the Yah / Jah name into their own. Jacob's request to know [effectively] God's Name is not answered with a specific word or lexical item. His natural quesion would have been "Will you please not harm me?". Instead he asks for the Name of his opponent. He guesses it's an Angel. It is God. And he asks for the Name, because he senses that he needs the grace which he guesses is in that Name. It is answered by giving Jacob a blessing by grace, and that blessing is of forgiveness. Jacob of course would have perceived that "This is Yahweh"; but Yahweh is not so much a word [and all who are obsessed with the Name per se are missing this], but an intention, the Divine intention to bless by grace. That is His Name, His "I will". And it came to full term in Yahoshua, 'Yah saves'. Jacob's statement 'I am Jacob', 'the twister', is effectively a statement of repentance. He twice lied to his father, "I am Esau". Now he is honest about who he really is. God's response is to bless, to forgive, and to assure Jacob that this is effectively His eternal Name. And "Jacob have I loved...". In fact all obsession with pinning God down to a lexical item like Jehovah or Yahweh is utterly misplaced.
Manoah had to learn the same in Jud. 13:17-19: "And Manoah said to the angel of the LORD, “What is your name, so that, when your words come true, we may honor you?” And the angel of the LORD said to him, “Why do you ask my name, seeing it is wonderful?”". The Name is to be experienced, not mouthed off as a word, as a mere lexical item. "Why do you ask my Name?", as here with Jacob, is a rhetorical question. 'Why do you ask it? Because you want to just think that relationship with Me is a question of knowing a word. But it's more wonderful than that. Experience My grace and blessing, and then you will know My Name'. Likewise when Moses asked to be given the name of God in order to tell Israel who had met with him, he was told a seven fold series of "I will..." statements. God is who He is to us in our experience of His salvation."I am who I am" to you, in experience. The obsession with pronouncing the Name, as seen in the "Jehovah's Witnesses" and other groups, is thus presented as primitive and totally misplaced.
Jacob knew the Yahweh Name, he knew the name El Shaddai (Ex. 6:3); surely he was asking for a deeper exposition of the Name. He realized his need to draw closer to God. But the Angel grants him the blessing of forgiveness, and says that Jacob doesn't need such an exposition, because he now knows the character of God: he has received such grace and forgiveness and future assurance. This is the Name / character of God revealed. Thus Jacob realized that he knew the theory of God, but not the practice. Latter day Jacob, natural and spiritual, are little better. In so many ways, so often, we know but don't believe; and it has been commonly observed that the problem with us is that we are right in doctrine but very weak in practice. This shouldn't surprise us. It was exactly the characteristic of our father Jacob. But the God of Bethel is our God too, and will bring us through to a deeper maturity. That night, Jacob reached "manhood", spiritual maturity (Hos. 12:3 RV).
Gen 32:30 Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for, he said, I
have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved- Jacob's comment at the end of the wrestling experience was that "my life is preserved"; and that Hebrew phrase is so often used by David (Ps. 7:2; 22:20; 25:20; 33:19; 56:13; 86:13; 97:10; 120:2). Likewise Jacob commented that the experience had shown him that God had been gracious unto him (Gen. 33:11); and that Hebrew phrase too is a catch phrase of David's (Ps. 4:1; 6:2; 9:13; 25:16; 26:11; 27:11; 30:8; 31:9 and many others). We too can make Jacob our hero, as David did.
It could be that 'seeing face to face' is being used in the same way as in 2 Kings 14:8, where armies 'see each other face to face', i.e. in confrontation. He is marvelling that he has had confrontation with God, both that night and throughout his earlier life- but has been preserved by grace.
Jacob will tell Esau, “I see your face as seeing the face of God” (Gen. 33:10). Clearly He saw what happened at Peniel, 'the face of God', as having been a foretaste of meeting Esau- and being saved from rightful death by grace. The Angels went out to meet him (:1) just as Esau came out to meet him. His meeting with God [in the Angel] was his meeting with his brother. Again he was shown that wrestling with our brother, even in our own mind, is actually wrestling God. We have here an Old Testament form of the explicit New Testament teaching, that our attitude to our brother is our attitude to God. The blessing of Num. 6:24-26 associates God's face with blessing and peace. And Jacob saw that face. We can infer from this that Esau was totally forgiving towards Jacob, because Esau's faith reflected that of God. We note that in wrestling, Jacob would have looked right into the face of the Angel, from very close quarters. This is how close we can get to God in our struggles. It is not possible for man to see God's face (Ex. 33:20). The idea is that Jacob has done the impossible. Without realizing it at the time; just as at Bethel he felt that "The Lord is in this place, and I knew it not" (Gen. 28:16). The experience of grace and blessing is the experience of that which is impossible by any other means. The Hebrew for "preserved" is that used in :11, where Jacob prays to be preserved from Esau. The wrestling with the Angel and obtaining blessing and victory through surrender... was understood as prophetic of Jacob's preservation from Esau, and final victory over him.
Gen 32:31 The sun rose on him as he passed over Peniel, and he limped because of his thigh- Paul may well allude to Jacob in speaking of how his "thorn in the flesh" humbled him. The same word for "limped" is used of how latter day repentant Israel will also limp, and yet likewise be saved by grace from their neighbouring enemies, whose ancestors were Laban and Esau (Mic. 4:6,7; Zeph. 3:19). Again we have a case of 'Bible television', of the text enabling us to envisage the situation, and focusing in upon an individual; and here the spotlight is upon Jacob limping, silhouetted against the dawn of a new day and worldview for him.
Yahweh had earlier promised Jacob, quite simply: "I will do you good", and had undertaken to return Jacob. But this involved His meeting with Jacob and wrestling with him, and wounding him so that he limped the rest of his life. All this was the path needed [because of Jacob's being 'Jacob'], in order to ultimately 'do him good'. And as Hosea notes, "There He spake with us" each one. We limp into God's Kingdom. All the calls and claims to triumphalism, to healing and blessing now, are rather missing the whole point.
Gen 32:32 Therefore the children of Israel don’t eat the sinew of the
hip, which is on the hollow of the thigh, to this day, because he touched
the hollow of Jacob’s thigh in the sinew of the hip- This refers to
the nerve tendon which extends from the thigh down the leg to the ankle.
But I suggested above that the wound to the thigh may have been an
equivalent to circumcision, and could refer to damage to Jacob's
reproductive organ. The Hebrew for "thigh" is used in this way both
specifically (Gen. 24:2; 47:29) and more figuratively when it is the same
word often translated "loins" in the context of begettal of a child. As
with us, it was the touch of Jacob at his most sensitive which humbled
him, and made him give up his attempts to justify himself in his own
strength. This is why we often fail, or made to realize our weakness, at
what we may think of as our strongest point. The careful driver runs a red
light, the capable craftsman makes a foolish mistake.
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