Hello friends, welcome back to the daily Bible study.
We are jumping into Genesis chapter 32,
picking up at verse 22 today.
Yeah.
So this is,
in some ways, I think this is for me at least the most interesting part of the Jacob story,
in some ways the most unlike the rest of the story.
This is one of those texts that I think people know of,
one of the stories that you
probably grow up with if you grew up in church.
This is
Jacob at night.
And so remember that
Jacob is about to meet Esau.
He sent out all of these gifts,
these groups of animals and servants,
and he’s basically trying to
win Esau’s favor.
And then it says, “He stayed,
spent the night in the camp.”
So verse 22, “The same night he got up,
and he took his two wives,
two maids, and eleven children,
and crossed the fort of the Jabbok.
He took them and sent them across the stream,
and likewise everything he had.
Jacob was left alone,
and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.
When the man saw 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.
Then he said, ‘Let me go, for the day is breaking.’
But Jacob said, ‘I won’t let you go unless you bless me.’
So he said to him,
‘What is your name?’
And he said,
‘Jacob, when 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 do you ask?’
And there he blessed them.
So Jacob called the place Peniel,
saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face,
and yet lived.’
The sun rose up on him,
and he passed Peniel,
limping
because of his hip.
Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the thigh muscle that is on the hip socket,
because he struck Jacob on the hip socket of the thigh muscle.”
So this is one of the
strangest transitions of a story.
Jacob is there in the night,
and a man attacks him.
And it’s very possible that it’s told that way to try and give the reader some sense
of the suddenness of it,
the surprise of it.
We don’t see this coming,
nor evidently did Jacob.
And this unnamed man attacks him.
And you have to think that perhaps Jacob would have assumed this is Esau.
I mean, if he were going to be grabbed in the middle of the night by a man,
he might suspect that it’s his brother.
But it is an unexpected development in the story.
And the contest between them
becomes a kind of backdrop,
not only for this story,
but I think in some ways,
Michael, for Jacob’s life.
Yeah, right.
So the thing that makes this story so interesting is its ambiguity.
The things that are happening here are framed in some very strange ways,
like Jacob going across the river,
but then being by himself.
And then this individual,
which is best translated as human potentially,
but it could also mean deity.
There’s question in the original language.
And so there’s some big question marks on who is this individual that he’s meeting with.
And then you have this idea of wrestling,
and then you have some word plays that happen.
There are some texts that seem strange in English,
because translators are trying to translate the original sort of culture
and some of those things that may be behind the scenes that we just don’t take for granted.
This text is strange because it’s strange,
because when you read it in the original language,
it’s not clear.
It’s ambiguous on purpose.
The stuff is not fleshed out here.
And it is partly because of that,
Clint.
I really honestly believe it’s partly because of that,
that this has so much interesting draw power for us,
because we come to a text like this,
and it’s a transformational text.
The Jacob who begins this story is not the same as the different named Jacob at the end.
And I think that’s a really interesting sort of transition in the text.
Yeah, there’s a lot about this that I do think has some ties,
some resonance with other parts of the story.
We have here, for instance,
the reality that we get told a man wrestled with Jacob,
but we later suspect there was more to it than that.
We saw that in the Abram story when three men show up,
and then it turns out that they’re angelic figures.
Then it turns out one of them is likely God himself or some manifestation of God.
And we have the same kind of thing here.
He wrestles with this man,
and yet when Jacob himself names the place,
he says, “I have seen God face to face.” And so traditionally,
that’s been understood to mean that it is none other than God himself
that Jacob contends with,
that they struggle.
Here again,
he asks for a blessing.
And when we read the word blessing in Jacob’s story,
we should instantly go back and revisit his childhood.
When he tricks Isaac out of the blessing,
here there’s no trickery involved.
Through his own strength,
he holds on to this man and will not release him,
and says, “I will not let you go until you bless me.”
So this is a blessing that is earned,
that is earned physically, that is
fought for and that is deserved.
And he gets this blessing because he conquers.
And a lot of interpreters,
and I’m one of them,
I tend to agree with this version of it,
think that that’s the story telling us something about Jacob,
that Jacob is shifting as a character.
We have seen a man who survives on his wits,
who takes advantages of others,
who runs away from trouble.
And what happens to him here?
He’s confronted,
he fights,
and he’s wounded.
And the one thing we’re told about the wound is that he limps.
He’s hobbled in a way.
And what does that take away?
That takes away running.
That takes away the idea of fleeing.
And so there is, I think,
there are multiple levels to read this,
and I think this is one of those texts that’s really interesting to think about.
Beyond the obvious level of the match itself, the contest itself,
what else is happening here?
So Clint,
another thing we need to be especially mindful of is names here,
right?
So remember at the very beginning,
Jacob is named as the one who’s striving,
the heel grabber, the one who’s trying to get his older brother’s blessing.
Here,
the name Israel,
we are explicitly told,
is the one who is striving with God.
And that has in itself the same kind of grasping,
except in this case,
instead of holding on to the human,
he’s holding on to this being.
And in that,
he holds on to the promise.
Notice that he demands of this individual,
“Give me your name,”
and he’s not given one.
And there’s this idea that as we seek out God demanding this or that,
God doesn’t respond to our demands.
God’s not particularly compelled by what we think
things should be.
But yet,
there is a kind of honoring of Jacob’s tenacity here,
that it is, Clint, I think you’re right to point out,
a really transformational moment in his life.
Instead of reaching for external things,
instead of even setting up poles so that he might get richer as his animals breed,
here he’s facing God.
He says in his own language,
“I’ve seen God face to face,” which
scholars point out that there’s a long tradition
that no one sees the face of God and lives.
So then there’s talk about this as an angel.
That’s a rabbit trail.
But the whole point here is he explicitly says that he is contending with God.
And in that moment, then,
he has prevailed.
And so the blessing that once he was striving for now,
he’s in a moment held.
And it’s that promise,
then, that it’s going to really be handed down to the
generations as we see coming to the end of the text.
Yeah, and we move a little bit from interpretation to almost more of
the idea of preaching this text or the lessons in the text.
Because what has Jacob prayed for?
“I want to know that you’re with me.”
Just before this, we saw him reminding God,
“Hey, God, I have this problem.
And you said you would take care of me.
I want to know that you’re with me.”
And what we hope that means when we make those prayers
is that God will pat us on the back and say,
“Oh, yeah, don’t worry.
I’m with you.”
What Jacob gets instead is a contest of strength,
a contest of will.
What Jacob gets instead is a victory that brings him a wound.
And that’s a difficult concept.
Some of the things we limp away from are,
in fact, the things that make us the strongest.
And here we have a Jacob that is wounded but not beaten.
He limps forward likely with more strength than he initially walked with.
And when we understand we’re talking,
we mean that spiritually speaking.
What does it mean to be wounded and yet to be strong and to be blessed?
And this, again, is speculation,
but in this passage,
what did he do?
He sent all his family ahead of him.
He put everybody out in front of him, and he stayed.
Is he thinking of escaping?
Is he thinking of trying to run away by night?
Nothing in the text indicates that,
but it is odd
that he stays in that one place by himself,
because in the dark,
with the challenge ahead of him,
is to be alone.
And to wrestle with God,
to struggle with God,
is a part of the faith.
And to hold on with tenacity and be blessed in spite of it being painful
is part of the Christian story.
And so when we leave the actual words of this text and we begin to try and unpack
some of the lessons and meaning in it,
I think this is a deep well.
I think there’s a lot here.
This is a beloved story for preachers and Bible students,
because there is a ton of depth here.
Well, it’s fundamentally
a transformation story,
and in that transformation is an invitation.
Certainly, that does move towards the preaching moment,
but there are details in the text here,
Clint, I want to point out,
that I think we might miss if we don’t slow down to see them.
I’m looking at verse 31,
you’ll see it in green here.
“The sun rose upon him as he passed penuel,
limping because of his hip.”
That’s more than just the sun coming up.
That’s more than just a descriptive sort
of way of describing,
you know, a night turning into day.
This is, in many ways,
an image of a new day dawning, that for him,
the person who lived in that night is now transformed.
He has a new name.
He goes beyond this moment with a new kind of understanding and grasping of the blessing,
and that’s the kind of transformation that is a compelling witness to the gospel.
I mean, that’s what we see all throughout the accounts of Jesus and his work is
the people who encounter Jesus are transformed.
They’re transformed in body or in soul or those who are hungry or fed.
The kingdom transforms and changes.
And here, in this wrestling with God,
Jacob experiences that kind of transformation.
A darkness or a night turns into day,
and that new day creates a new opportunity for him.
I just want to point out,
once again, look at the end of verse 32.
There’s a “therefore to this day” statement,
you know, about what Israelites do.
It’s striking here that there’s a direct connection from who Jacob was and then becomes
to the very present community and who they are.
And it’s a very beautiful sort of pastoral connection even to say,
this is a thing that those in the family still do,
and this is why we do it.
It goes back to this individual.
And it’s a kind of beautiful little footnote kind of way in the text
to say that this isn’t just a story about one person and their encounter with God.
This is a story about why things are the way they are today.
Because of this person’s transformation by God.
And that gives it a kind of larger context,
a kind of more expansive understanding
than what you might just have if you were in Sunday school
learning what happened in this story itself.
And Michael, we’ve said it, and you just repeated it.
Names matter,
and notice that now for the first time is Jacob ready to be called Israel.
Now Jacob is ready to carry physically on himself this promise.
He’s limping forward,
but he’s limping no longer as Jacob the heel grabber,
but Israel the one who strives with God.
And as such, for the first time,
we see borne out in the narrative
the name of the nation,
the name of the people.
Those people who tie themselves back to this covenant promise
will be named for this moment and for the person who’s in it.
And I don’t want to steal tomorrow’s thunder
because we have some really great stuff to cover tomorrow as well.
But I do want to point out that the identity of the wrestler
has been a fascinating question in biblical interpretation.
And when Jacob meets Esau,
we will talk about this tomorrow,
but he says an interesting thing to him.
He says, “To see your face
is like seeing the face of God.”
And there are those who think
that he’s alluding to Esau being the one he wrestles with,
that there’s a sense in which he’s saying,
“Seeing you is like seeing God.”
Because he says, “I’ve seen the face of God.”
So I bring that up only to say that it is very
interesting that the scripture
doesn’t tell us the identity.
The question we perhaps most want to know in this text,
who is this and why are they there wrestling with him?
Historically, we thought God fits the bill and is an answer,
but the text never says that.
And I think perhaps the reason it doesn’t is because
the point is not the identity of the opponent.
It doesn’t matter who the opponent is.
Jacob has succeeded.
Jacob has overcome.
And because Jacob has striven with God,
he is now ready to face Esau.
He is now better equipped.
What is the challenge of earthly life as opposed to this spiritual battle that he’s been in?
And I think we’ll see that play itself out tomorrow.
The text tells us a couple of very interesting things.
I think we learn a lot in tomorrow’s text.
This is a wonderful story.
And the way that it is finished is really incredible.
And so I hope you can be with us again tomorrow.
I think maybe the only final note here is,
I think one of the reasons that this text is so compelling
is because it does present for us,
even hopefully, this idea that there are moments of life where transformation is possible.
I think a lot of us do walk along the path of life
and sometimes feel like we’re stuck in a rut,
that things are the way that they are.
And Jacob, if you’ll notice, has now gone through several seasons
where he’s had transformational moments.
We have that moment where he sees the latter, right?
And that becomes for him a transformational moment
from his family of origin to what becomes his new family.
And now we have this transitional moment
as he goes from Laban and his time there.
And he encounters Esau.
As you say, Clint, I think it’s striking and notable
that this person is changing and transforming.
His character is in motion.
And for anyone who gets stuck and feels like change is hard,
know that this character does in many ways represent
what happens when we come face to face with a God who mysteriously,
even ambiguously,
can change things.
That this New Testament idea of repentance and change
does live even in the character here of Jacob who becomes Israel.
You know,
the people of Israel are that way
because of a person’s transformational encounter with God.
And so this is 100% preaching.
This is an interpretation per se.
But I think that’s part of the good news here.
And if that strikes you and if that’s helpful for you,
I hope it encourages you today,
there’s no rut that you can be stuck in
where God can’t make a transformational change.
Yeah. And we, again,
we tend to separate the idea of woundedness
from the idea of blessedness.
And this is one of those rare passages
that would at least suggest to us
that sometimes they are not different.
Sometimes our moments of blessing have a cost.
We limp from them.
They slow us down.
They hurt in some sense because they’re good for us,
because they take our false narratives,
because they take our false strength,
because they take all the things that we trust
instead of trusting the only one we should.
And when that happens,
I think Jacob is a wonderful patron saint of that.
He emerges victorious, but he limps away from the victory.
And I think that’s a wonderful contradiction
in this story that I think we shouldn’t miss.
And there’s more to come.
So we look forward to seeing you tomorrow.
Thanks, sir.
Until then, be blessed.
Thanks, everybody.