Jacob’s Struggle with God

Jacob returns to his land after twenty years spent far from home, with his uncle Laban. The return fills him with dread, for he must there meet Esau again, the twin brother he had once robbed: he had taken from him his birthright, and then, by a deception, the blessing their father Isaac had kept for him. On the eve of their meeting, Jacob sends his wives, his children and his flocks across a torrent, the Jabbok, and remains alone on the far bank. There, in the night, a man attacks him and wrestles with him until dawn.

The struggle

It all begins with the identity of the one who engages it. The account calls him a man, and in the morning Jacob will say he has seen God. The one who attacks him is the angel of the Lord. Hosea names him thus: “He wrestled with the angel and prevailed.” Hosea 12:5 The angel of the Lord wrestles with Jacob the whole night: “Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until daybreak.” Genesis 32:25 Yet he does not manage to overcome him. That God cannot prevail over a man says enough that he holds himself back: he acts like a father who wrestles with his child and lets him win on purpose, restraining his strength so that Jacob may stand firm and give himself wholly to the struggle. Then, with a single touch, he strikes his hip and puts it out of joint. The one blow he strikes reaches the body’s point of support, there where a man draws his strength to walk and to wrestle. Jacob still holds on, and when day threatens to break, he refuses to let go of the one he has seized: “I will not let you go until you bless me.” Genesis 32:27 This man who had taken his father’s blessing by cunning no longer steals it: he asks for it openly, and clings to it.

The name

At the heart of the struggle a transformation takes place, and it passes through the name. Before blessing Jacob, the angel of the Lord asks him what his name is, and Jacob answers: “Jacob.” Genesis 32:28 God knows this name; if he has him speak it, it is so that Jacob may confess who he is. For the name sums him up: Jacob, in Hebrew Ya’aqob (יַעֲקֹב), is built on the word ’aqeb (עָקֵב), the heel, and means the one who grasps the heel, who supplants, who takes another’s place. At his very birth he was already holding his twin brother’s heel; all his life thereafter he lived by cunning. In speaking his name, he acknowledges what he has been. Only then does God give him another: “You will no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have struggled with God and with men, and you have prevailed.” Genesis 32:29 Israel, in Hebrew Yisra’el (יִשְׂרָאֵל), means the one who strives with God, or the one whom God strengthens. The man who defined himself by his cunning struggles against men now defines himself by his struggle with God. And this name is not only his own: in renaming Jacob, God does more than transform a man, he lays the beginning of Israel, the whole people that will bear this name. This change of name opens a series Scripture will continue, from Abram become Abraham to Simon become Peter: God gives a new name to the one he brings into a new life, up to the new name promised to those who conquer, “a new name, which no one knows except the one who receives it” Revelation 2:17.

The wound

The hip is the body’s support, the point where a man stands and draws his strength. In putting it out of joint, God breaks this support, and with it the pride and the carnal nature of Jacob. The old Jacob is thus humbled to make way for the new man, submitted to God and leaning on him alone. “you have stripped off the old self with its deeds, and have put on the new self.” Colossians 3:9-10

The face of God

When dawn breaks, the adversary asks to leave. Jacob wishes to know his name, but the angel of the Lord blesses him without telling it, and withdraws. Jacob then understands with whom he has wrestled the whole night, and he gives the place the name of Penuel (פְּנוּאֵל), which means the Face of God: “I have seen God face to face, and yet my life was spared.” Genesis 32:31 This last word reveals what is at stake in the scene. In Scripture, to see God face to face is held to be deadly, for no one can endure his presence. Jacob, however, comes out alive: this God comes to bless, and his face, which ought to strike down, leaves him living.

The sun rises on him as he sets out again, and he limps on his hip (Genesis 32:32): his own strength is broken, and it is leaning on the blessing received that he walks from now on. This wound passes into the whole people: in memory of the blow Jacob received, the children of Israel abstain to this day from the sinew of the hip. “to this day, the children of Israel do not eat the great tendon attached to the socket of the hip: for it was there that God had touched Jacob’s hip” Genesis 32:33 The mark of the struggle is inscribed for ever in the life of Israel, as the name was in his soul. The next day, to go out to meet Esau whom he dreaded, Jacob walks at the front, the first before his own, he who had kept to the rear all the day before. “He himself went ahead of them.” Genesis 33:3

The Combat of Prayer

The Church reads this night-long struggle as the image of prayer. To pray is to hold fast before God without letting go, until the blessing comes. Like Jacob clinging to the one he will not release before he is blessed, the one who prays prevails by perseverance, holding fast to him from whom he awaits everything, for no one forces the hand of God. The Catechism sees in this combat the symbol of prayer as a battle of faith and perseverance. Christ will teach it in the same terms, calling us to “pray at all times and never lose heart” Luke 18:1. And the wound remains: whoever has truly wrestled in prayer comes away marked, his own strength broken, henceforth leaning on God alone.