Wrestling with God
Genesis 32:22-31
My three closest friends in high school were somehow all on the wrestling team. I say “somehow” because none of them were built like wrestlers. They were not particularly muscular or stocky. John was a terrific long-distance runner, Dave excelled on the golf team, and Jeff—well, he was voted most theatrical. But wrestling? I didn’t understand the appeal. I knew my lanky frame belonged on the cross-country course not the wrestling mat. And those tights? No way.
I will say that one satisfying thing about wrestling is it’s clarity. A wrestling match boils down to win or lose. There are no draws. It’s pin your opponent or be pinned. Or barring a pin, outscoring your opponent on points. And if tied on points, then there’s a lengthy system of tiebreakers. In other words, there will always be a winner and a loser.
But the wrestling match that we see in today’s passage is not nearly so clear in its outcome. Jacob and this mysterious man whom he wrestles out of the blue wrestle each other to a draw. When the man sees that he cannot defeat Jacob, he strikes him on the hip and dislocates it, and yet Jacob still refuses to release his grip until the man agrees to bless him.
There’s a lot to unpack there, but let’s first ground ourselves in the larger story of Jacob and his growing family. Last week, in Genesis 29, we heard how Jacob was tricked by his uncle into marrying his older daughter Leah rather than his younger daughter Rachel, whom Jacob preferred. For the opportunity to marry Rachel as well, Jacob agreed to serve his uncle an additional seven years on top of the seven he had already served.
In total, Jacob stayed with Laban for about twenty years, and during that time he had twelve children, including eleven sons. As the family grew, so did Jacob’s wealth, largely at Laban’s expense. Through selective breeding of his uncle’s herds and flocks, Jacob was able to keep for himself the best of the bunch, leaving Laban with inferior animals. By the time Laban got wise, Jacob had already fled in the night with every animal, servant, child, and wife.
Jacob and family then head for Canaan, the land of Jacob’s birth—the land promised by God to Jacob’s father Isaac, and to his grandfather Abraham. That is where God has directed Jacob to go. But as they near Canaan Jacob learns that Esau, the brother whose birthright he was all too glad to take, whose blessing he had stolen, and who had vowed to kill him in revenge, is at that very moment headed Jacob’s way with a company of four hundred men.
Jacob is thrown into a momentary panic, but ever the schemer, he devises a plan. He divides his people and possessions into two camps, thinking that if Esau’s forces descend upon one, the other may escape. He sends a third group of servants on ahead bearing gifts for his brother—dozens upon dozens of the finest animals from his flocks and herds. As well as perhaps soothing Esau’s wrath, the gifts are intended to serve as a delay tactic because Jacob has instructed the servants to travel in a sort of parade formation, one group trailing another—a long line of presents for Esau to unwrap.
Finally, in the dark of night Jacob sends his family—his wives, their maids, and all of his children—across the river. He is now utterly alone. By protecting his family, he has endangered himself. He has made himself vulnerable. If Esau comes upon him now, Jacob will be entirely defenseless.
If Jacob and this man have a history between them, we’re not told the nature of it.
But it’s not Esau who advances upon Jacob this night but a mysterious stranger. Who he is, where he has come from, why he has come—we’re not told any of it. The narrative is incredibly sparse. Verse 24 simply reads, “Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.” If Jacob and this man have a history between them, we’re not told the nature of it.
Their wrestling match is not held under the regular rules of competition. This is not three two-minute periods supervised by a referee but rather something more primal. Jacob and the man grapple all night until the dawn is about to break. Unable to pin Jacob, the man resorts to striking him on the hip—a move for which I’m pretty he would be penalized in competition. Still, Jacob refuses to loosen his grip unless and until the man blesses him.
What is it with Jacob and blessings? First he steals the blessing of his father that was intended for his brother. Now he demands a blessing from this stranger.
“What is your name?” the man asks.
With nothing left to hide, no deception to employ to gain an advantage, Jacob is free to be honest. He tells the man his name. “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel,” the man says, “for you have striven with God and with humans and have prevailed.”
When Jacob asks for the man’s name in return, the man refuses to give it, but he does pronounce his blessing upon Jacob. Curiously, the passage says nothing about the man leaving Jacob. He departs as he arrived, without so much as a word.
So, what is this all about? Who is this man? Why does he wrestle Jacob? Why does Jacob demand a blessing? And let’s add one more for good measure: Why the name change from Jacob to Israel?
The clue to all of these questions comes in verse 30. Jacob names the place where he and the man wrestled Peniel. In the Old Testament, whenever you see a place name or a person’s name that ends in “el,” chances are that it has something to do with God. A few weeks ago, in Genesis 28, we heard about “Jacob’s ladder.” Jacob has an especially vivid dream in which he sees angels descending and ascending a ladder that stretches from the heavens to the ground upon which he is sleeping. When he awakes, Jacob names the place “Bethel,” meaning “house of God.”
Similarly, here in Genesis 32, Jacob names the site of his wrestling match Peniel, meaning “face of God.” “For I have seen God face to face,” he says to himself.
We see the exact same thing when Jacob is given a new name. Several weeks ago, when we read about the birth of Jacob, who was born grabbing the heel of his older twin Esau, we learned that the name “Jacob” means “supplanter.” That name would prove to be prophetic, as Jacob supplanted his older brother Esau by taking his birthright. But now Jacob the supplanter is given a new name, Israel, meaning “wrestles with God.”
Face of God. Wrestles with God. This was no man that Jacob wrestled; it was God—the same God who had promised Jacob’s grandfather Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars and that through him all the nations of the world would be blessed.
The realization that he has sparred with the Lord of heaven and earth and lived to tell the tale humbles Jacob. He had got the better of his brother Esau. He had got the better of his father Isaac. He had got the better of his uncle Laban. But now he says to himself, “I have seen God face to face, yet my life is preserved.” He seems amazed simply to have survived the encounter.
When my oldest nephew Thomas was little, he was into all things Bat-Man, especially the campy TV version from the 1960s, which we would watch together in the afternoon. As soon as he heard the first notes of the theme music—that flare of brassy trumpets—it was as if an alarm went off in his imagination. He would instantly transform into Bat-Man, and suddenly I was the Joker, and he would pounce on me and we would do battle.
Thomas was four years old; I was twenty-two. I’m confident that I could have overpowered him, but of course he always won.
I think we see a similar dynamic at work in Jacob’s wrestling with God. God is not interested in having a test of strength with Jacob. God wants to show Jacob that even though he is by himself, he is not alone. God is with him. The God of Abraham. The God of Isaac. And, yes, the God of Jacob. Jacob the schemer, the trickster, the dreamer.
God was with Jacob when he served his uncle for twenty years, seeing that he prospered so that his labor was not in vain. And God is with him now when he is at his most vulnerable, alone in the wilderness and fearing that he’s about to lose everything he owns and everyone he loves to the brother whom he had wronged. God is with him in order to bless him.
That’s what Jacob fails to understand. He doesn’t need to twist God’s arm (figuratively or literally) in order to receive a blessing. But God, in God’s mercy, wants to make that blessing obvious to Jacob. God leaves Jacob with a permanent reminder of their encounter in the form of the limp with which he will walk for the rest of his life. More than that, God gives Jacob a new name. He is no longer Jacob the supplanter but Israel—the one who wrestles with God.
I don’t think I’m saying anything controversial in suggesting that to follow Jesus Christ is to wrestle with God.
I don’t think I’m saying anything controversial in suggesting that to follow Jesus Christ is to wrestle with God. To follow Jesus Christ is to wrestle with a God who does not conform to our expectations or our ways. We see examples of this all over the Gospels. Again and again the disciples struggle to understand the teachings of Jesus and the ways of Jesus. “How many times must we forgive?” they ask. “As many as seven times?” That seems reasonable.
“No,” says Jesus. “Not seven times but seventy-seven times,” meaning infinitely.
When Jesus tells the disciples that in the kingdom of God the last shall be first and the first shall be last, they still compete with one another for prestige and honor. “Lord, when you come in your glory, allow us to sit at your left and right.”
Even when Jesus lays it out for them three times—in plain language—that he is heading for Jerusalem not to be crowned but to be crucified, they try to stop him. They struggle to understand how any of this—boundless forgiveness, humility, and self-sacrifice—could be the will of God.
In your own life you may be wrestling with God right now, perhaps waiting and waiting and waiting for a prayer to be answered. Or wrestling with an uncomfortable truth that God wants you to face. Or wrestling with what feels like God’s absence.
But know this: the place in your life where you feel most vulnerable, the place where you feel alone, the place that seems like it’s just a constant struggle—that is the very place where God meets you, just as God met Jacob. That is the place where God is at work and where God’s blessing is felt—right there in the thick of the struggle.
And it is also the place where you are given a name just as Jacob was. But whereas Jacob was renamed Israel, the one who struggles with God, in Jesus Christ we are named “God’s beloved,” not because we have won the struggle but because in the midst of it we are held in the arms of a God who loves us.