Page 31 - Pentateuch

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 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 (v. 30). His name is
changed to match the change in character. Jacob, still part deceiver, becomes Israel, the one who struggles
with God (v. 30). He “wept and begged for his favor” (Hos. 12:4), or God’s grace.

The history of Jacob moves to its close. He returns to find a changed Esau. He is not looking for revenge.
They embrace and weep (33:4). Jacob, instead of deceiving to get more for himself, acknowledges God’s
hand in his prosperity and wants to give to Esau (33:5,10). More pain is ahead. Jacob’s daughter Dinah is
raped, but the transformed Jacob does nothing due to an offer of marriage by
the man. In a plot to get revenge, two of his sons deceive the locals into laer'f.yI –
becoming circumcised (34:13). While the men are healing, the two wipe out
the city. Jacob objects, “You have brought trouble on me by making me Israel
obnoxious to the Canaanites” (34:30). His sons reply, “Should he have treated
our sister like a prostitute (34:31). Jacob returns to Bethel and meets Yahweh
again. This time God changes his name from Jacob, “deceiver” to Israel, “he
who wrestles with God” (35:10). All along Yahweh has been shaping Jacob, changing him through the
events of life. His wife Rachel dies, giving birth to Benjamin (35:16-20). His son Reuben sleeps with Jacob’s

concubine (35:21-22). Jacob buries his father at 180 years (35:23-29).
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