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Wrestling at the Jabbok · Behind the Bible Verse: The Stories and History Behind Scripture

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  A man is left alone by a river at night, and someone wrestles with him until dawn.
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  By morning he has a new name and a limp, and the story never quite says who he was
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  fighting.
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  Behind the Bible Verse. This is made with the assistance of AI.
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  Our reading is from the book of Genesis, chapter thirty-two, verses thirteen to
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  thirty-two, in the World English Bible, British Edition.
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  Jacob is on his way home after twenty years away, and he has just heard that his
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  brother Esau is coming to meet him with four hundred men.
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  He stayed there that night, and took from that which he had with him a present for
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  Esau, his brother: two hundred female goats and twenty male goats, two hundred
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  ewes and twenty rams, thirty milk camels and their colts, forty cows, ten bulls,
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  twenty female donkeys and ten foals. He delivered them into the hands of his
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  servants, every herd by itself, and said to his servants, “Pass over before me, and
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  put a space between herd and herd.” He commanded the foremost, saying, “When
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  Esau, my brother, meets you, and asks you, saying, ‘Whose are you?
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  Where are you going? Whose are these before you?’ Then you shall say, ‘They are
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  your servant, Jacob’s. It is a present sent to my lord, Esau.
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  Behold, he also is behind us.’ ” He commanded also the second, and the third,
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  and all that followed the herds, saying, “This is how you shall speak to Esau, when
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  you find him. You shall say, ‘Not only that, but behold, your servant, Jacob, is
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  behind us.’ ” For, he said, “I will appease him with the present that goes
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  before me, and afterward I will see his face. Perhaps he will accept me.”
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  So the present passed over before him, and he himself stayed that night in the camp.
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  He rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two servants, and his
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  eleven sons, and crossed over the ford of the Jabbok.
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  He took them, and sent them over the stream, and sent over that which he had.
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  Jacob was left alone, and wrestled with a man there until the breaking of the day.
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  When he saw that he didn’t prevail against him, the man touched the hollow of his
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  thigh, and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was strained as he wrestled.
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  The man said, “Let me go, for the day breaks.”
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  Jacob said, “I won’t let you go unless you bless me.”
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  He said to him, “What is your name?”
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  He said, “Jacob”.
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  He said, “Your name will no longer be called Jacob, but Israel; for you have
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  fought with God and with men, and have prevailed.”
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  Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.”
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  He said, “Why is it that you ask what my name is?”
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  So he blessed him there.
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  Jacob called the name of the place Peniel; for he said, “I have seen God face to
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  face, and my life is preserved.” The sun rose on him as he passed over Peniel, and
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  he limped because of his thigh. Therefore the children of Israel don’t eat the sinew
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  of the hip, which is on the hollow of the thigh, to this day, because he touched the
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  hollow of Jacob’s thigh in the sinew of the hip.
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  To see why Jacob is so afraid, you have to go back to the day he was born.
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  Jacob and Esau were twins. Genesis says Esau came out first, and then his
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  brother came out with "his hand had hold on Esau's heel," and so he was named
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  Jacob. In Hebrew the name sounds like the word for heel, and the story keeps coming
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  back to it.
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  Years later, Jacob bought Esau's birthright for "bread and lentil stew."
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  Then, with his mother's help, he put on a disguise and told his blind father, "I am
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  Esau your firstborn," and took the blessing meant for his brother.
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  Esau's response plays on the name: "Isn't he rightly named Jacob?
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  For he has supplanted me these two times." And Genesis says Esau planned to kill him
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  once their father had died. So Jacob ran, to his mother's brother Laban in Haran.
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  By his own count he stayed twenty years: "fourteen years for your two daughters,
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  and six years for your flock."
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  Now he's coming back with two wives, two servants, eleven sons and large herds.
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  At the start of chapter thirty-two, before our reading, he sends messengers ahead to
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  Esau and calls himself "your servant." They come back with the news about the
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  four hundred men, and the text says that "Jacob was greatly afraid and was
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  distressed." He splits his people into two companies, so that if Esau attacks one,
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  the other might escape. And he prays, reminding God of the promise to do him
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  good, and saying, "I am not worthy of the least of all the loving kindnesses."
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  Then he sends the gift. If you add up the animals listed in our reading, it comes to
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  five hundred and fifty, not counting the camels' young.
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  He sends them in separate droves, with spaces in between, and the same message
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  each time: "your servant, Jacob, is behind us."
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  Listen for one word in that part of the story. Jacob says of Esau, "I will appease
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  him with the present that goes before me, and afterward I will see his face."
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  Face comes back at the river, and again when the brothers meet, and it's the word
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  that gives the place by the river its name.
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  The river is the Jabbok. It's usually identified with the river called the
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  Zarqa, in modern Jordan, which flows west into the Jordan.
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  This is the first time the Bible mentions it. Later on, it's the border of the land
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  of the Ammonites.
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  The details of the crossing are a little puzzling.
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  Jacob takes his family over the ford and sends everything he has across, and then,
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  the text says, "Jacob was left alone." Was he on the far side, or had he gone back?
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  The Talmud, as quoted by the medieval commentator Rashi, offers a homely answer.
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  "He had forgotten some small jars and he returned for them."
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  Then comes the fight. The Hebrew text calls the stranger "a man."
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  When it's over, Jacob says he has seen God face to face.
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  And later, the prophet Hosea looks back on it and calls the stranger an angel: "In
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  the womb he took his brother by the heel, and in his manhood he contended with God.
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  Indeed, he struggled with the angel, and prevailed; he wept, and made supplication
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  to him." Genesis doesn't say that Jacob wept; Hosea does.
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  One ancient Aramaic translation, the Targum of Onkelos, puts angels in place of
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  God in Jacob's words about seeing face to face.
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  So who was it? Readers have answered in different ways.
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  The medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides said it "took place in a prophetic
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  vision." Rashi said Jacob wrestled with Esau's guardian angel, which ties the
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  fight at night to the meeting the next morning. John Calvin read it as Jacob
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  wrestling with God himself, though he too called the event a vision.
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  And an old commentary in the Cambridge Bible series notices the line "Let me go,
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  for the day breaks," and sees in it "a survival of the old belief that unearthly
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  visitants of the night must be gone before daybreak."
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  Then there are the names. The whole passage is full of wordplay in Hebrew.
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  Jacob, Ya'aqob, sounds like 'aqeb, heel. The river's name, Yabboq, sounds like the
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  Hebrew word used here for wrestled. And Israel is usually explained from a verb
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  meaning "to struggle," with El, God. That's how the stranger explains it in our
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  reading: "for you have fought with God and with men, and have prevailed."
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  English Bibles translate that verb in different ways, as struggled, striven,
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  wrestled or contended. But scholars differ on what the name meant before the story
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  explained it. Taken on its own, the form may mean something closer to "God
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  strives," with God as the one doing the striving.
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  And Genesis gives the new name twice. In chapter thirty-five, back at Bethel, God
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  says, "Your name shall not be Jacob any more, but your name will be Israel."
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  Yet the narrative keeps using both. Years later, when God speaks to him in a vision
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  at night, it's "to Israel," and the words are "Jacob, Jacob!"
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  Jacob also asks the stranger his name, and doesn't get one.
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  "Why is it that you ask what my name is?" Instead he's blessed.
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  And Jacob names the place Peniel, which, as the footnote in our translation says,
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  means "face of God." The next morning he sees Esau coming with the four hundred
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  men. He bows to the ground seven times as he gets near.
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  And then: "Esau ran to meet him, embraced him, fell on his neck, kissed him, and
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  they wept." When Esau tries to refuse the gift, Jacob tells him, "I have seen your
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  face, as one sees the face of God, and you were pleased with me."
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  The same image, one night apart.
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  Penuel, as the place is also spelled, turns up again later in the Bible.
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  In the book of Judges, its men refuse bread to Gideon's soldiers, and he comes
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  back, breaks down their tower and kills the men of the city.
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  Later still, Jeroboam, king of the northern kingdom of Israel, "built
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  Penuel." For a long time scholars placed it at the twin hills of Tulul adh-Dhahab,
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  by the Jabbok in modern Jordan. That identification has been questioned.
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  The archaeologist Israel Finkelstein has suggested the two hills were two separate
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  places, one of them Penuel and the other Mahanaim, the place in chapter thirty-two
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  where Jacob saw the angels and named it "two camps."
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  The last verse of our reading leaves the story and talks to the listener:
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  "Therefore the children of Israel don't eat the sinew of the hip."
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  In Hebrew Bibles this verse is numbered thirty-three, because the chapter is
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  counted a little differently. Jewish law took it seriously.
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  The Mishnah, an early collection of Jewish law, says the rule applies both in the
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  land of Israel and outside it, and to wild animals as well as domestic ones.
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  It doesn't apply to birds, because the verse speaks of the sinew on the "spoon of
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  the thigh," and the Mishnah says a bird doesn't have one.
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  The sinew is usually identified as the sciatic nerve.
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  Removing it, along with certain fats, is skilled work, called nikkur, and because
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  it is so difficult, some communities don't eat the hindquarters at all.
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  Artists have kept coming back to the scene. Rembrandt painted it
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  in 1659, Eugène Delacroix in 1861. In 1888
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  Paul Gauguin painted Vision after the Sermon, where villagers in Brittany see
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  the wrestling match as if it were happening in front of them.
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  And in 1940 and 1941 the sculptor Jacob Epstein made a sculpture of
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  Jacob and the angel that is now at Tate Britain.
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  Genesis ends the night with a short sentence. "The sun rose on him as he
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  passed over Peniel, and he limped because of his thigh."
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  He has the blessing he asked for, and the limp he didn't.
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  So here's a question to sit with, and there's no right answer to it.
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  If you had been the one to tell this story, would you have said who Jacob was
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  wrestling with, or would you have left it the way Genesis does?
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  Thanks for listening to Behind the Bible Verse. Scripture readings are from the
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  World English Bible, British Edition, which is in the public domain.
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  Every episode is checked against the text and the historical record.