Page 34 - Pentateuch - Student Textbook

most animals are born streaked, spotted, or speckled. What do you think? Can Laban trick God into
revealing his preference for Jacob? Can Jacob trick animals into giving birth to only certain colored
offspring (30:25-43).

Jacob must flee from his uncle. Taking his wives, children, and animals he leaves, deceiving Laban by not
telling him (31:20). At the same time Rachel steals the household gods (31:19). When Laban chases the
crowd, God warns him not to “say anything to Jacob, either
good or bad” (31:24). A search is made for the gods, but
Rachel escapes discovery by sitting on them and refusing to
get up due to having her period. The two parties set up a
stone heap to mark the place and make a promise to one
another. These two deceivers cannot trust one another, so
they invoke God in the famous Mizpah benediction. “May
the Lord keep watch between you and me when we are
away from each other” (31:49). By now Moses surely has
tears of laughter running down his cheeks. An unclean
woman sits on her household gods to hide them. Two
cheats appeal to YHWH to protect them from one another.
Perhaps those tears on the cheeks of
Moses are in sadness over the state of our sinful Fig. 19: Typical Canaanite god
human nature. God has a lot of work to do in Jacob’s life to
change him in any way like Yahweh.

Jacob is on the way home. He is afraid. Home is the place of his brother Esau. He sends servants ahead
of him who report that Esau is coming with four hundred men. Jacob is at the end of himself. He prays
to God, or at least to the “God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, O LORD” (32:9). He
appeals to God based on God’s promises, “You have said” (32:12). He shuns any standing on his own, “I
am unworthy” (32:10). He decides to send a variety of servants ahead and spends the night in the camp.

We come now to the most important event of his life. Jacob once more encounters God. In the previous
meeting some twenty years earlier, Jacob had promised that YHWH would be his God, “If…I return safely
to my father’s household” (28:20-22). Now he is tested about the sincerity of his promise so many years
previously and about the development of his spiritual growth in the intervening years. Does he have any
trust in God, or does he still rely on his own wits?

The text says, “a man wrestled with him till daybreak” (32:25). By the end of the incident, the wrestling
man says, “you have struggled with God” (v. 28), and Jacob remarks, “I saw God face to face, and yet my
life was spared” (v. 30). We are to understand another theophany such as in the Garden of Eden (3:8)
and in front of Abraham’s tent (18:1, 22). Jacob is physically struggling with God in human form. Hosea
notes, “as a man he struggled with God. He struggled with the angel and overcame him” (12:3-4).

We are encouraged to meditate on a puzzling event. If this is God, in what way could he not
“overpower” Jacob (v. 25)? If this is not God, how could he so easily “wrench” the hip of Jacob with a
“touch” (v. 25). In what way has Jacob “overcome,” as he has struggled both with God and with humans
(v. 28)? The conflict illustrates the change in Jacob’s heart, twenty years in the making. He is desperate
for God’s blessing (v. 26). In struggling with other humans, he could only get his way for a time. Now,
when he must face his brother again, he truly turns to God, desiring God’s blessing more than life itself

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