Scrapper-with-God (Genesis 32:22-32)

This dark little tale intrudes into the story of Jacob like an unwanted guest, like an unwelcome interruption in Jacob's headlong rush back to his family, and reading it, one of the first things I wonder is “why?”  What purpose does it serve?  Well, it does serve an obvious purpose, it explains why a couple of things are the way they are: first, how and why Jacob’s name becomes Israel and second, why Jews aren't allowed to eat meat from over the hip bone.  But why do that here? Why now, why interrupt the powerful rush of narrative redemption, the powerful suspense around the question of whether Jacob will be forgiven by his brother?

Well, you might say, that's pretty obvious: that's the way it happened, that’s why.  But that just pushes it back a ways, causing me to say “ok, God, if that's the way it happened, why did it happen that way?”  Which, I guess, is another way of asking “what does it mean?”  And that's not the only question this passage poses.  First of all, just who is it that Jacob wrestles?  The narrator just calls him “the man.”  Jacob is convinced that it's none other than God's own self, but he never identifies himself, even after he’s been asked he replies . . . why won’t he say who he is?  Indignant at the thought of the Almighty being beaten by a mere mortal, painters sometimes portray him as an angel.  In other interpretations, it's Esau, snuck across the river for some brotherly mano a mano; or maybe it’s a bandit, looking to steal some of Jacob's enormous wealth.  Maybe, some have suggested, it’s a demon, sprung up from Jabbok's cold depths: why else would he be afraid of the morning's light?

Well.  The first thing to notice is that it’s an interlude in the middle of a desperate flight: Jacob is fleeing one angry relative—Laban—and heading into the arms of another, his put-upon brother Esau.  He’d snuck out of Padan-Arram in the middle of the night, taking Laban's household gods with him, along with a huge household, much of it gained at Laban's expense.  Although Laban had come after him, after hearing from God he let him go, but not without a fair amount of grumbling and lingering ill will.

Now, as he heads back to the promised land, he's afraid that Esau still wants to kill him for that little birthright episode, and his fear is vindicated when he hears Esau is on his way to meet him with an army.   And our narrator skilfully builds suspense as Jacob first splits his wealth, so Esau won’t get it all at once, and sends him a series of bribes, a few at a time, in hopes of whittling Esau's anger away, a little at a time.

And now, on the eve of the confrontation, he sends his wives and children across the river Jabbok and waits alone in the deepening gloom.  Suddenly a man is there, and they are wrestling, and the scene is surreal, dreamlike . . . one minute, he’s alone, surrounded by his thoughts; the next, he’s confronted out of nowhere by a faceless menace.  One minute, he’s at rest, brooding about what awaits him in the morning; and the next he’s fighting for his life.  Just like that.

It's not just any kind of fighting, either, it's wrestling, one of the most intimate forms of combat there is.  It's not boxing, where you stand back and jab, parry and thrust, nor is it sword play, where your opponent is kept literally at arm’s length.  It’s wrestling, grappling where you are in close, sweaty contact from the moment you begin.  Jacob and the unknown man get the feel of one another. . . literally.  It may have been at night, it may have been in the dark, but they got to know one another, each curve, each nook, each cranny.  They compass one another, get the measure of one another, know each other in an intimate way, just like Jacob and Esau did, in the womb.

And they go at it all night, never speaking, with only ragged breathing and an occasional grunt of pain breaking the silence, and in that still moment before dawn, in the deepest dredges of the night, the man realizes that he’s not going to get the better of Jacob, so he strikes him on the hip socket, throwing it out of joint.  But Jacob hangs grimly on, with all the tenacity he showed hanging on to Esau’s heel in the womb.

Is there anybody else in Scripture we picture having this much tenacity?  Is there anybody else who would hold on after long, exhausting hours, after suffering the incredible pain of a dislocated hip?  I can’t think of anyone . . . it’s Jacob, that scrabbler after life and wealth and respect . . . and is that what drives him?  Was Jacob, man of the tents, favorite of Rebekah, laughed at by his brother and his father?  Was it always having to prove himself that fueled his ruthless drive to success?

Although this dime-store psychologizing is tempting—and plenty have done it, citing variations of Jacob wrestling with his better (or worse) nature—it takes the easy way out . . .  ha, ha, it was all a dream.  Jacob didn’t really wrestle someone who seems a lot like God, and he didn’t really fight him to a draw, and the man who seems a lot like God didn’t really cheat by hitting him below the belt, as it were, it’s all in Jacob’s mind.  But I think we have to face it in all its difficulty and ambiguity, and I think it’s all the more powerful if it leaves us wondering in the end,

The man says “Let me go, for it’s almost dawn” and is this the very first inkling that Jacob has that he is something more than a man?  Does he think he’ll evaporate in the morning air or burst into flames like some Palestinian vampire when touched by the light?  Or—and this seems really crazy—is the man looking out after Jacob and not himself?  Does he know that Jacob will die if he gets a good look at him?  Who else do we know like that?  Who else do we know that it is death to behold?

Well.  Jacob sees an advantage in everything, and he refuses to let go until the man has blessed him, and unlike with Isaac, he tells the man his real name when asked.  And at that, the man confers a new name upon Jacob, he calls him Israel, which means scrapper-with-God, because, as he says, Jacob has “striven with God and with humans.”  And thus is named both a person and a nation, for Jacob will go on to establish the nation of Israel.

And naming Jacob is a another big, fat hint as to the identity of the man, for who else but you-know-who confers names upon people?  As we all know, in the ancient world, names carried power and meaning, and the naming of someone implied a hierarchy of power and importance.  And Jacob, of course, knows this, so he tries to gain a little on the mysterious stranger by asking his name, because even knowing a person’s name gives one a certain power over them.  But the man is too smart for that, he replies with a pointed question: “why do you want to know my name?” (as if he didn’t know) and confers the blessing.

Note: he confers the blessing, in spite of everything that Jacob has done, in spite of the fact that he’s lied and tricked his way through two families, in spite of the fact that Jacob has just tried to weasel an advantage out of him, he confers the blessing.

And now Jacob is convinced that the man is God, and he names the place Peniel which means face (pen) of God (el) for, as he says, I have seen the face of God.  Which, you’ll note, is not strictly true . . . it was still dark, and one presumes that he would have been fried to a crisp if he’d actually seen God face to face.  Even Moses, first and greatest of the prophets, only got to see God’s back-side.  But hey: it’s Jacob, so we can cut him a little slack in the truth department.

The incident reminds me of another, earlier theophany when God appears in human form to Abraham at the Oaks of Mamre.  There again, the identity of the visitor isn’t revealed until the last moment, when God speaks directly to Sarah in the tent.  Here, we’re convinced because Jacob’s convinced, along with all the hints in the text.  Together, these somewhat ambiguous stories well convey the inscrutability, the ultimate unknowability of God.

It’s a mystery that leaves many more questions than answers.  If the man is God, what’s he doing losing to a puny human being?  Couldn’t he just zap him where he stood?  Why did he have to cheat, why did he have to dislocate Jacob’s hip, when even then Jacob wouldn't give up?  Was it some kind of test?  To get the blessing, did Jacob have to pass the test by not giving up, by showing God, in that intimate, wrestling conflict—the same manner in which Jacob struggled with his brother in the womb, by the by—did he have to prove he was worthy of God’s blessing, of God’s forgiveness, before he could be forgiven?

Because make no mistake, that’s what this story is about, forgiveness.  Forgiveness and reconciliation.  Jacob becomes a new person, with a new name: no longer was he Jacob-sniveling-heel-grasper, liar and conniver extraordinaire, but Israel-scrapper-with-God, striver-with-the-almighty.  And that became the story of Israel the nation, as it strived with God, wrestled with God, throughout it’s history.  Israel was (and is) no milquetoast nation of sycophants, toadying up to God, never arguing, never questioning.  When I picture this aspect of their relationship, I always think of that marvelous scene in Fiddler on the Roof, where Tevye confronts God, asking if it would it upset some divine plan if he were a richer man?  Israel was, and continues to be, a scrapper with God.

And as Christians, we have been engrafted into the family, the people of God, through our participation in the grace of God through Jesus Christ.  And like Jacob, marked with a perpetual limp, we are marked with a cross, a sign of weakness to the world, but one of strength to God.  And like God did there at Jabbok Ford, becoming weak, taking on human form to redeem Jacob, to welcome him back into the family, God became human, became weak once again to redeem us.  What was it the Apostle Paul said about God’s action through Christ?  God emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, and humbled himself . . . isn’t that what’s going on here, God effecting Jacob’s redemption through God’s own weakness?

Like Jacob, who carried the mark of weakness in his hip, we carry our mark of the cross on our foreheads, conferred at our baptisms, and every year on Ash Wednesday.  And the good news is that like Jacob, we don’t have to be perfect to be redeemed.  If God can forgive the conniver Jacob, if God can forge in him a new identity—scrapper-with-God—he certainly can, and does, forgive us.  And as he does, he bestows upon us a new identity as well:  we are named Beloved, we are named Child-of-God.  Amen.