Jacob Wrestles with Yahweh – Genesis 32:22-32

We had a wrestling team in the junior high school I attended, and I learned wrestling and competed for a couple of years.  I haven’t done anything more fatiguing and energy depleting than wrestle.  It requires everything of you.  It is remarkable, then, that Jacob wrestled for so long and so successfully with the Man who engaged him in this match.

[22] The same night he arose and took his two wives, his two female servants, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. [23] He took them and sent them across the stream, and everything else that he had. [24] And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. [25] When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. [26] Then he said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” [27] And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” [28] Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.” [29] 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. [30] So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.” [31] The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. [32] Therefore to this day the people of Israel do not eat the sinew of the thigh that is on the hip socket, because he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip on the sinew of the thigh. (Genesis 32:22–32, ESV)

This is one of the more extraordinary accounts in Scripture.  Jacob has done everything he can, strategically, to prepare for a meeting with Esau, whether friendly or violent.  He separates himself alone from his family at night.  Then a man attacks him and they wrestle, for hours, until finally the man touches Jacob’s hip, throwing it out of joint.  He asks Jacob to let him go because it is dawn.  It has become apparent to Jacob now that he is not wrestling with a normal man, but with someone who can disable him with a mere touch, and to his mind that must be God.  So he refuses to let the man go until the man blesses him.

Then the man asks Jacob an odd question, “What is your name,” and not, apparently, because he does not know Jacob’s name but because he wants Jacob to attend to the meaning of his name.  His name means one who grabs the heal, one who cheats, one who wrestles with others.  He has wrestled the birthright from his brother, the blessing from his father, and just finished a wrestling match of sorts with Laban.  In the match with the man, Jacob has relied on his own strength to prevail.  Jacob tells the man his name, a sign of submission and acknowledgement of Jacob’s style of living, which is reliance on his own resources.

The man changes Jacob’s name, a symbol of authority over Jacob, and he changes his name to Israel, which means something like the one who prevails with God.  Jacob tries to discover the man’s name, a typical action we see when someone meets God (Exodus 3:13; Judges 13:15-20).  The man does not answer Jacob’s question, yet blesses Jacob.  Apparently he then leaves Jacob.

Jacob responds by renaming the area Peniel (“face of God”) and leaves limping.  Moses explains that this war wound is the origin of the practice in Israel of not eating the “sinew of the thigh that is on the hip socket.”

Hosea 12:3,4 speaks of this event, saying, “In the womb he grasped his brother’s heel; as a man he struggled with God.  He struggled with the angel and overcame him; he wept and begged for his favor.”  Though it identifies the man as an angel, it also says Jacob struggled with God.  We may assume then that Jacob wrestled with the angel of Yahweh, that is, Yahweh as he appears to people on earth.

We may say that this wrestling match with Yahweh leads to Jacob’s conversion.  He has seen that God promised to bless him and has blessed him, and Jacob had pledged to make Yahweh his God if He fulfilled that promise.  Now he has been humbled and seen the way God wants to have relationship with him and trust him.  Do you need to do any wrestling?