Meeting, Genesis 32-33 - Life of Jacob

Meeting - Genesis 32-33

An exposition by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson

Where Jacob wrestles with God at Peniel and is reconciled to his brother Esau.

No sooner than Jacob is clear of the threat of Laban's armed band than he hears news that is much more troubling. Jacob has sent messengers ahead to let his brother Esau know he is coming. They return with the report: "We went to your brother Esau, and now he is coming to meet you, and four hundred men with him" (32:6). Laban had only suffered loss of property; Esau has been nurturing a murder wish against Jacob for twenty years! No wonder Jacob is in "great fear and distress" (32:7).

Sign of the Angelic Army (32:1-2)

But knowing this was coming, God had sent a wonderful sign to Jacob.

Jacob also went on his way, and the angels of God met him. When Jacob saw them, he said, "This is the camp of God! So he named that place Mahanaim (32:1-2).

In Bethel Jacob had seen angels in his dream, ascending and descending a staircase to heaven and called the place Beth-el, "house of God" (28:17-19). Here he sees angels and exclaims, "This is the camp of God!" (32:2). God who had promised him in Bethel to watch over him wherever he went (28:15) has not forgotten. Jacob's small encampment of wives and children, servants and livestock, is matched by God's nearby encampment of an army of angels. When Jacob moves, the angelic army moves as well, shadowing him, protecting him from any harm. When Laban had gotten his band of men within range to threaten Jacob, God had spoken a stern warning (31:24, 29, 42), and Laban complied. Jacob realizes that his camp is protected by God's camp, so he names the place Mahanaim, in Hebrew "two camps" (see Derek Kidner, Genesis [Tyndale OT Commentaries, IVP, 1967], p. 167).

Preparing to Meet Esau (32:3-21)

Jacob knows he must reconcile with Esau if he is to live in the land to which God told him to return, and so he makes careful preparations.

1. He sends messengers ahead.

First, Jacob sends messengers ahead so that he will not surprise Esau suddenly by word of his presence. The messengers are to bring several things to Esau's attention (31:4-5):

Jacob has been with their uncle Laban for 20 years and is only now returning home. Jacob shows that his past actions have constituted no threat to Esau, and that he has not secretly returned home without Esau's knowledge to somehow gain further advantage over Esau.
Jacob is wealthy, and returns home with a considerable fortune. Thus he does not need what Esau has and constitutes no threat to Esau's goods. He does not need to exercise the birthright inheritance of double the portion Esau would receive. Jacob is independently wealthy. And he is not sneaking home, his tail between his legs. He comes on his own, and is a person to be reckoned with.
Jacob comes humbly. He instructs his servants to refer to Esau as his lord, his superior. All his life Jacob had been struggling to be Esau's lord. He had tricked Esau into handing over his birthright, and had deceived in order to receive the blessing of the firstborn from his father. But now he comes acknowledging Esau as his lord. This may be the formal deference of courtesy, but it is deference nevertheless.
Jacob comes to seek Esau's favor and heal the rift between them.

2. Jacob prays (32:9-12).

He reminds God that he is returning in obedience to God's own instructions. He acknowledges his own unworthiness of God's great blessings to him. We see both humility and thankfulness have grown in Jacob these twenty years since he first met God at Bethel. Now he asks for God's salvation (rescue) and protection from Esau. He admits his fear for himself and for his wives and young children, all under 13 years of age. This kind of transparency in prayer is another indication that Jacob has gotten to know God. He concludes with a reminder of God's promise to him and his ancestors that God would prosper him and make him fruitful.

Does Jacob remind God of his promises as some kind of persuasive leverage? Perhaps. But in addition is the element that these promises are the bedrock of Jacob's own faith. He believes and has acted on God's instructions to return home. God has confirmed the Blessings of Abraham to him, and he believes them, too. I think Jacob reminds God of his promises as a faith-statement. It is this faith that props Jacob up when he is afraid. He shares with his God both his fears and his faith, and so his prayer is an authentic, faith-filled prayer. My, how Jacob has grown.

3. He prepares a succession of gifts to appease Esau (32:13-21).

Look at the quantity of animals he gives to Esau, a total of

1.	200 female, and 20 male goats	220
2.	200 ewes and 20 rams	220
3.	30 female camels and their young	30
4.	40 cows and 10 bulls	50
5.	20 female donkeys and 10 male donkeys	30
		550

Five hundred fifty animals, 490 of which are female and will cause Esau's herds to increase rapidly. (However, I wonder if the second group of ewes and rams is just a restatement of the first group of female and male goats, as in Hebrew parallelism.)

Jacob gives instructions that the animals are to be sent as individual groups, each with space between it and the next, so that the cumulative effect will be of one gift after another. Perhaps if Esau is angry when he encounters the first herd, his anger will have abated somewhat by the time the fifth herd reaches him. Each herder is to bring the same humble message when he meets Esau's army: "They belong to your servant Jacob. They are a gift sent to my lord Esau, and he is coming behind us" (32:18).

Jacob's purpose is clearly stated: "I will pacify him with these gifts I am sending on ahead; later, when I see him, perhaps he will receive me" (32:20). Jacob seeks to pacify with generous gifts a tribal chieftain whom he has offended, much as centuries later, Abigail the wife of churlish Nabal seeks to pacify David's insults with gifts and gracious words to David who is coming with his own 400 men (1 Samuel 25:18-31).

Jacob is traveling down the east side of the Jordan, south towards Seir, Esau's lands in Edom. He has just come to the Jabbok ravine, a creek flowing into the Jordan from the east. Jacob has sent these herds of animals ahead of him the previous afternoon, but he stays the night on the banks of the Jabbok.

4. Jacob divides his party into two groups (32:7-8; 33:1-2).

Jacob's final preparation is to divide his party into two groups to avoid a wholesale massacre.

Wrestling with God (32:22-32)

At nightfall, Jacob finally sends his wives and children across the ford in the Jabbok creek with all their possessions, ready for an early start in the morning. But he stays behind, as the Scripture records, "So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak" (32:24).

Who is this strange antagonist? What is the significance of this struggle? While the event is shrouded by darkness and mystery, several things emerge as we meditate on it.

First, we find that "man" was a manifestation of God himself. Hosea calls him both an "angel" and God:

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 (Hosea 12:3-4)

Would God reveal himself as a wrestler? Isn't God gentle and peaceful? Yes, and he is also just and holy and a God of vengeance. Both the Old and New Testaments give many indications of God's violent judgment upon the unrighteous. In Paul's writings, he refers to spiritual conflict as "wrestling," both struggling with the dark powers as well as struggling in prayer before God (Ephesians 6:12; Colossians 1:29; 2:1; 4:12 "wrestling in prayer for you").

Who is this struggling in the night? Is it with a ghost? A phantom? A river god guarding the ford of the Jabbok? A spirit who can only manifest itself in the darkness and must flee at dawn? All these pagan theories of Jacob's struggle ignore the text itself which clearly identifies the Wrestler as none other than God (32:28, 30).

Was this a symbolic wrestling? In the daytime we are often too busy to dwell on the past, but at night our mental struggles can increase. Haven't you ever struggled with your conscience at night? Agonized over guilt? Wondered if God would forgive? Been buffeted with fears of the day ahead? Jacob had elements in his past of deceit and trickery. In the morning he would face the consequences of them, but he had little sleep the night before.

So it is symbolic, you cry. Yes, I would respond, it is very symbolic, but it was physical, too. There is no spiritualizing away the injury to Jacob's hip socket, and the limp that characterized his walk in later years. These were not just symbols of his encounter and humbling before God, they were physical remnants of the struggle, too. We have trouble believing in events that we have no experience base from which to understand. We have experienced the mental and spiritual anguish and struggle of the night, but not the physical, and so we doubt the physical. This event is both physical and symbolic!

But having said that, I can't say I fully understand what was going on. Why couldn't the "man" (God) overpower Jacob? Certainly, God's strength is infinite. What was the significance of laming Jacob at the close of the conflict? As a father, I've wrestled with my sons and daughter on the lawn or the living room floor. I've seen their intent expressions of maximum effort to best me, and I have resisted their strength to encourage persistence and greater effort rather than always pinning them with my obviously superior strength. Cats play with their kits in mock battles to teach them and challenge them. This must have been some kind of testing of Jacob's persistence, and perhaps of the supernatural strength that he had exhibited 20 years before when he had single-handedly removed the large rock covering the well (29:10).

Somehow Jacob recognizes that this is no human assailant he has wrestled with all night. This is a divine messenger who has the power to bless him. Jacob and the "man" are locked in combat, but at an impasse. Neither can overcome the other, but neither wants to release his grip in fear that the other will take advantage of the moment. The "man" injures Jacob's hip, but still he holds on

"Let me go, for it is daybreak," the "man" finally says.

Jacob is tenacious and persistent: "I will not let you go unless you bless me." Unless the "man" will speak words of peace and blessing to him, Jacob will not release him.

"What is your name?" the "man" asks.

"Jacob," he answers.

"Your name will no longer be Jacob [meaning 'supplanter'], but Israel [meaning 'he struggles with God']," says the "man," "because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome" (32:27-28).

This new name from God was significant. We see this several times throughout the Bible as a sign of a new place with God, a new phase of faith.

Abram is renamed Abraham (father of nations)	Genesis 17:5
Sarai is renamed Sarah (princess)	Genesis 17:15
Simon is renamed Peter (rock)	Matthew 16:16-18

One of the promises to people of overcoming faith in Revelation is "a new name � know only to him who receives it" (Revelation 2:17). God who has struggled with Jacob now bestows on him a new name to remind all that he has "struggled with God and with men and have overcome" (32:28). Jacob's new name now contains the name of God (-el) within it. What a heritage: to be known as one who has met both God and man and succeeded! What a goal for us to strive for in our own spiritual pilgrimage!

Jacob now asks the "man's" name, but receives instead a question ("Why do you ask my name?") and a blessing in return. Centuries later Manoah, Sampson's father, asks an angel his name with a similar answer. "Why do you ask my name? for it is beyond your understanding" (KJV, Hebrew "wonderful"; Judges 13:17-18). Jacob receives the blessing and calls the name of the place Peniel (Hebrew "face of God"), saying, "It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared" (32:30).

So at dawn's light, Jacob receives yet another blessing, and walks -- no, limps -- into what the day will hold between him and his brother Esau. I like this verse:

"The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip" (32:30).

Twenty years before, Jacob had left Bethel a new man. Today, as well, he departs a changed man, a marked man.

But how could God injure or hurt someone he loves? Let me tell you what happened to me in college, but first state very emphatically that I do not believe that all sickness and injury is caused by God nor is intended as a punishment. It was late at night, and I was up studying. My roommate and I my sophomore year were both Christians, but had fallen into the sin of familiarity with holy things. We practiced saying the word "Hallelujah" (which means "Praise Yahweh") until we could utter it with the perfection of revival fervor. Back and forth we would say it, mocking. I took my cup, half full of cold coffee, down the hall to the restroom to dump it and rinse it, and then put it on the narrow metal shelf under the mirror which protruded over the porcelain sink. Somehow the cup slipped out of my wet fingers and came crashing down into the sink, and in grabbing for it my left thumb was sliced open diagonally. I wrapped it in paper towels to try and stop the bleeding, and headed up to the infirmary at the top of the hill. It was Sunday evening, and no one was about except the nurse. She looked at it and decided that it didn't need stitches, closed the wound with a butterfly Band-Aid, and sent me back to my dorm.

On the way back I was asking God, "Why did this happen?"

And so clearly he answered that it was to remind me not to trifle with holy things. I returned much sobered. My roommate didn't understand why I no longer played the "Hallelujah" game, but now I not only knew better. I knew that my God was watching over his holiness.

To this day I occasionally look at my left thumb and trace the clear diagonal scar across the thumbprint and remember. It is a mark that God gave me in discipline and love, and as a way to remember him.

I think Jacob's limp must have been something similar. I don't see it as a mark of discipline so much, but as a mark of encounter. A mark which ever after reminded him of the seriousness with which he served his God. A mark of faith which he carried to his grave.

"The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip."

Jacob Meets Esau (33:1-20)

Jacob is struggling has he limps forward. Now out in front of his two parties of wives and children he looks up and sees Esau "coming with his four hundred men." He goes forward bowing himself all the way to the ground seven times as he approaches his brother, a sign of obeisance to his brother. Esau runs to meet him, but instead of anger is an embrace, instead of a knife thrust he offers a kiss of peace. After a lifetime of enmity the two brothers are reconciled.

We will pass over the formalities quickly. The children and their mothers come bowing and are presented. "These are the children God has graciously given your servant," Jacob explains.

"What do you mean by all these droves I met?" Esau inquires.

"To find favor in your eyes, my lord."

"I already have plenty, my brother. Keep what you have for yourself."

It is vital that Esau accept Jacob's peace gifts to him. To accept them puts Esau under a certain obligation to Jacob. Once he has taken this from his brother's hand he cannot easily or righteously take up arms against him. That would be seen as a sinister act of betrayal by the culture.

Jacob insists. Esau refuses politely. Jacob persists, for, he explains, "God has been gracious to me and I have all I need." Notice how God's grace figures centrally in Jacob's conversation with his brother. He is not attributing his family and children to his own shrewdness but to God's graciousness. This is no longer the supplanter but the one who looks to God for his very life and safety.

Now Esau offers to accompany Jacob, or to leave some men with him to protect him. Whether this is an act of brotherly care for Jacob's safety or a way of exercising power over Jacob we can't be sure. But Jacob politely declines to have any of Esau's men with them. He needs his freedom. And he doesn't want to move his family to Seir under his brother's headship. So he suggests that he will "come to my lord in Seir," but doesn't specify a time. Esau departs, and so far as is recorded, they only meet again briefly at their father's burial (35:29).

Instead of Seir, Jacob heads for the nearby city of Succoth (which means "shelters" or "booths"), so named because Jacob built shelters for his family and livestock there. Later he and his family move to Shechem, to the west of the Jordan in Canaan. There he purchases a plot of ground on which to pitch his tent. He finally owns some land in the Land of Promise. And here he builds an altar to his God, and calls it El Elohe Israel, which means "God, the God of Israel" or "mighty is the God of Israel."

Conclusion

The story of Jacob's wrestling with God on the banks of the Jabbok moves me. Our walk with God includes some quiet and uneventful times where we seldom see his active intervention (though we are often blind to his care over us). At these times it seems that we experience little spiritual growth. But at the crisis times we are now pushed up against God with no where else to turn. We are called to steps of faith, and as we take those difficult steps we can move to a new place in God.

Jacob is told directly, "Go back to the land of your fathers" and is feeling the pressure of his Laban's resentment of him. Does he obey God and face the threat of his brother's blood vengeance which has been hanging over him for two decades, or stay where he continues to be dominated by his unfair and increasingly hostile father-in-law? Too often we take the path which requires of us the least change, even though it may mean taking backward steps from what God would have for us. Taking steps of faith requires the willingness to endure change and the unknown, relying upon God's resources rather than our own comfortable place of security. Jacob, to his credit, doesn't argue but obeys God in spite of his fears.

At the Jabbok this profound change comes to a climax. Jacob has been leaning heavily upon God throughout this journey. He has seen God turn aside Laban's hostile forces, and now he has called upon God to keep him safe from his brother Esau, according to God's promises. The time of prayer leads to a time of intense struggle in the dark hours of night.

I think of Jesus' struggle with his Father in the Garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:39-46). "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me," he pleads. But then says just as firmly, "Yet not my will, but yours be done." This is Jesus' step of faith, if you will. He knows how to minister for the Father on earth. He speaks words of power and energy to convert men's souls. His voice and touch heals men's bodies as well, and drives away demons who have been tormenting their souls. Jesus knows this ministry.

But he is praying in Gethsemane because he senses that it is time to fulfill God's ultimate call upon his life, to die on the cross carrying upon him all the sins of the world. While that which is human in him shuns death, this is not about physical death. That which is holy in him is repulsed by sin, but within a few hours he will feel the crushing load, the ugly, filthiness of compounded human sin bearing down upon him, suffocating him and creating between him and his Holy Father a gulf, a separation for the first time in all eternity. The Father cannot embrace sin, but must punish it. And the Son must cry out in agony of soul, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:45-50), and then, in faith, commit his spirit into the Father's hands.

The wrestling in the Garden of Gethsemane was mental and spiritual, certainly. But it was also intensely physical, as well. The physician Luke records, "And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground" (Luke 22:44). The struggle was so intense, modern-day physicians explain, that some of the capillaries in his skin had burst causing his sweat to contain blood.

Like Jacob, Jesus wrestled with his Father in the Garden. And like Jacob he came from that struggle intent upon doing the Father's will. You, too, may be locked in a great struggle with God. You will not let go and neither will he. You are marked by the struggle, never to be the same, and exhausted, and yet you continue: "I will not let you go, Father, until you bless me," you say in your earnestness, in your persistence. And he does bless you.

The crisis of faith passes and you are changed by it, marked by it, and perhaps limping because of it. But you can step forth from your encounter at a new place of intimacy and knowledge of your Father. A place where your faith becomes unbounded and unfettered. A place where you are now ready to walk, or limp, wherever he would lead you. Against whatever foe lies ahead of you. Because you know that He will walk with you. He loves you, and because you are his son, he disciplines you, that you may share in his holiness (Hebrews 12:4-13). May you and I arise from our struggle of faith to a new Day in the Lord!

"The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip"