Wrestling Until Daybreak

Darkness by a river. The sound of rushing water. A man is alone, and then, suddenly, he isn’t. Someone has hold of him. And all night long, until the sky begins to turn grey, the two of them wrestle.

Twenty years have passed since Jacob ran away from home. He has worked for his uncle Laban, married Leah and Rachel, and built up a large family and great flocks. Now God has told him to go back to the land of his fathers. But going home means facing Esau, the brother he cheated. And news has just arrived. Esau is coming to meet him, with four hundred men. Jacob is terrified. He prays. He sends gift after gift of goats, sheep, camels, cattle and donkeys ahead of him, hoping to calm his brother’s anger. Then, in the night, he takes his wives, his children and everything he owns across the ford of the river Jabbok. And Jacob stays behind on his own.

Genesis says it very simply. Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. We are not told how it started. We are not told what the man looked like. Just the struggle, hour after hour, in the dark. Jacob has been struggling his whole life. He was born holding on to his twin brother’s heel. He wrestled with Esau over the birthright and the blessing. He wrestled with Laban over wives and wages. And now, on the night before the hardest meeting of his life, he is wrestling again, and he will not give up.

When the man sees that he cannot overpower Jacob, he touches the socket of Jacob’s hip, and it is wrenched out of joint. Just a touch. And Jacob understands that this is no ordinary opponent. “Let me go,” says the man, “for the day is breaking.” But Jacob clings on. “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” Think about that. This is the man who once tricked his father to get a blessing. Now, injured and hanging on with everything he has, he asks for one honestly.

“What is your name?” “Jacob.” “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with people, and you have overcome.”

Jacob’s name sounded like the Hebrew word for heel. Esau had once said it bitterly: a heel-grabber, someone who trips others up. So saying his name out loud was a kind of confession. Now he is given a new name. Jacob asks the man’s name in return, but the man only says, “Why do you ask my name?” And he blesses him there. Jacob calls the place Peniel, which means the face of God. “I have seen God face to face,” he says, “and yet my life has been spared.” The sun rises over him as he passes Peniel. And Jacob, now Israel, is limping. He will walk differently for the rest of his life.

The Jabbok is a real river. It flows down from the hills east of the Jordan valley and joins the Jordan from the east, and today it is called the Zarqa, in the country of Jordan. Its deep, winding valley made a natural boundary in ancient times. As for the wrestler, Genesis calls him a man, Jacob says he has seen God, and the prophet Hosea later describes Jacob striving with an angel. Readers through the centuries have understood the encounter in different ways, but all agree that Jacob met God that night.

Jacob wrestles with God. You’ll find it in Genesis chapter 32, verses 22 to 32. Jacob went into that night afraid and came out of it blessed, with a new name and a limp to remind him. So here’s a question to carry with you. What are you struggling with right now, and will you hold on to God through it?