A new identity - Genesis 32:22-31 - Living By The Word - Column

Christian Century, July 17, 1996 by William A. Holladay

There is a long buildup to the story of Jacob's wrestling match. When he arrives in Haran, Jacob the trickster almost meets his match. He works for his uncle Laban for seven years to gain Rachel, only to receive Leah instead. And if Laban gains 14 years of work from him for the two wives, nevertheless Jacob gains from the two wives (and their two maids) the offspring God has promised him. Then by tricky (and implausible) rearrangements of sheep and goats Jacob manages to rear vast and vigorous flocks in comparison with Laban's more feeble holdings (chapter 30).

Laban's own sons resent Jacob's wealth, and Laban himself has grown more hostile toward him (31:1-2). Jacob considers himself the innocent party in all these machinations, or at least he so represents himself to his wives (31:5-9). So when he hears God's call to return to Canaan with his family and livestock, he must resort to flight, just as he had done in fleeing from Esau years before.

This time it is flight on a grand scale, with all those animals and slaves and children and the two wives and two handmaids. It is undertaken while Laban is away from home sheepshearing. And Rachel, daughter of trickster Laban and favorite wife of trickster Jacob, engages in trickery of her own, unbeknownst to either her father or her husband, stealing her father's household gods (31:19-21).

After Laban overtakes Jacob's entourage and confronts Jacob, they conclude that there is rough parity between them and, though with lingering mistrust, they make a covenant (31:25-55).

But if Jacob has managed to settle accounts with Laban, the threat of Esau still lies ahead - Esau, from whose wrath he had fled. Who knows what Esau has become in the course of 20 years? Jacob sends out messengers, who report that Esau is approaching with 400 men. Jacob's immediate response is simple prudence: he divides his company into two halves for security's sake. Only then does he pray to God (32:9-12).

Remarkably, in all this narrative detail, this is his first address to God. If he is God's man, then his prayer life is certainly a long time taking shape. And what a prayer! It begins with Jacob's reminder to God that God has promised to do him good. He goes on to assure God of his unworthiness, an assurance which, given the tone of his talk to his wives in Haran and to Laban at their final encounter, sounds suspiciously like a dutiful formality. And then he comes to the real heart of the matter, a panic-stricken plea that God save him from Esau. He is afraid of being killed, but he mentions not himself but the mothers and children, and then once more reminds God of the divine promises, with the added note that God has promised him offspring. And there follows his elaborate plan for gifts, really bribes, for Esau (32:13-21).

All this is the background for the strange wrestling match between Jacob and a man at the ford of the Jabbok River. Though we are accustomed to understanding the antagonist to be an "angel," there is no angel in this text; the an I appears only in Hosea 12:4, a later prophetic reflection of the story. No, it is simply "a man." Yet this wrestling match is understood as the turning point in Jacob's life.

Curiously, little in the passage is clear to us. We can imagine the narrative as an explanation of the origin of the name Peniel (or Penuel), but this is not something we linger over. And we certainly do not understand the talk about the hip socket.

And we wonder: Does the "man" with whom Jacob wrestles really represent God? What is it like to wrestle with Almighty God and prevail? Is this whole unbidden, uncalculated experience the memory of an extraordinary dream?

What is clear is that here Jacob is renamed Israel. Jacob gains a new identity. With that identity he moves on to meet Esau, making a kind of peace with him.

The new name accents not the man but the covenant-people-to-be. Though we find it hard to perceive a whole community of people within the story of the patriarch Jacob, this is the implication of the narrative. Israel the family will go down to Egypt, Israel the people will hear Moses and move into the promised land and will live out their experience. It is the experience which has been lived out in the Samaritan, the Jewish and the Christian communities. Thus Paul calls the church the "Israel of God" (Gal. 6:16).

If the story of the wrestling match is the foundation word of the people Israel, we must recognize is an ambiguous word. We have noted the reference in Hosea, but that reference, in word-plays on both "Jacob" and "Israel," suggests that the people, by either name, inherit the guilt of Jacob's trickery.

And if we are the church, then we must expect to find in ourselves all the ambiguities of Jacob's character. Jacob was a hypocrite; when we find hypocrisy in the church, then we may be pained, but we are not surprised. Jacob cut corner, as does the church from time to time. The church may find itself journeying far from its appointed habitation, as did Jacob.