who struggles with God
Genesis has always been my favorite OT book. Genesis in the OT, and Mark among the gospels and other NT writings, so that's two favorite Bible books. As is well known, my third prize goes to the excruciatingly violent and outrageously vengeful apocalyptic that is the Revelation of John, which tells us Either and hopefully, nothing about the lovingkindness of Jesus but much about Revelation John's frame of mind; Or, appallingly, devastatingly, and frightfully, that we need to keep looking.
I've always liked Year A, when our lectionary includes reading through Genesis. Don't recall, and I'm not bothering to look back and check, whether I blogged on last week's good old Time Sunday school Bible story or not - - the, again chortle-worthy campfire tale of Jacob getting his comeuppance of waking from his blissful wedding night that he has worked and waited so many years for, only to discover that his father in law has tricked him into marrying the ugly but fruitful one.
That was Jacob last Sunday. Sunday before last it was Jacob's Ladder. This coming Sunday, it's Jacob wrestling with the stranger who, as it happens, turns out actually be God's own self. Here's the story:
Genesis 32:22-31
The same night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.
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So, for all his fears - - in this series Jacob is terrified of meeting his brother Esau whom he wronged so many years ago - - and this night of wrestling with life itself and discovering that he can handle it - - the next day he meets his brother, who it not a threat after all, but has loved Jacob and missed him all these years, and they reunite and then go off to live their own lives.
But that's not Sunday, Sunday is Jacob wrestling with God, however one might imagine that, and not losing, and coming out of it with a limp (maybe there's an etiology there: where did Jacob get the limp?), but claimed by Elohim, who renames him in honor of the event.
The Hebrew name Israel (Yisra'el, יִשְׂרָאֵל) breaks down into two main parts: yisra (from sarah, meaning to struggle, strive, or contend) and el (meaning God). It translates literally to "one who struggles with God" or "God strives". (AI on line)
A name (a Hebrew name) is not something of its own, but a real word, or combination of words, that can be used in normal conversation; that, as a name, is supposed to imbue the person who wears it with its essence. Just so, Jacob, now Yisra-El, has struggled physically with God, and now he, and the nation that bears his name, will struggle with their God throughout history, as the rest of the OT (which is Israel's story of their struggling relationship with the one true God) witnesses.
Not only Jacob, struggling with God is a challenge of my own life too, maybe yours as well?
Anyway, there you go! Now I'll see if I can round up a picture that honors all this.
RSF&PTL
T90
Gustave Doré, “Jacob Wrestles the Angel,” 1866, found online.
Did Jacob wrestle with a man or with an angel? The story itself says he wrestled with ish, a man (remember the name of the protagonist in the apocalyptic novel "Earth Abides" was, significantly, Ish). Later in the OT, in the poem that refers back to this Genesis story, Hosea 12:4 recalls that Jacob "Wrestled with an Angel." So, it's safely whatever or whichever you imagine it to have been, man or angel. I'm with "angel" because it's not uncommon in OT stories for people who appear first as human or angels to turn out to be God, and I like that transition in the storytelling. TW+