The Wrestling Match

Question

What does Jacob wrestling with God mean?

The Text

The wrestling match is recorded in Gen 32:22–32:

The same night he arose and took his two wives, his two female servants, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and everything else that he had. And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him.

Then he said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.”

Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.”

The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. Therefore to this day the people of Israel do not eat the sinew of the thigh that is on the hip socket, because he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip on the sinew of the thigh.

Short Answer

The wrestling match with God is sort of like an illustration to Jacob of what Jacob had been doing all his life: instead of trusting God for blessings, he had been using his own cheating and cunning methods to receive blessings. God changed Jacob’s name to “Israel” to let Jacob know that God will fight for him, no need to cheat.

More Detailed Answer

Observations

1. Jacob should be around 97 years old now, so he’s not a strong young man anymore.
2. Jacob took his family across the Jabbok (a tributary of the Jordan, flowing into the Jordan from the east), then he returned back across the Jabbok afterwards. He was then all alone in the night (32:23–24).
3. A man came to wrestle with him. From this description, we don’t know who this man is. But later (32:30), Jacob said he has seen God face to face and his life was delivered. So it seems this “man” was God, or at least a supernatural representative, like an angel. In fact, in Hosea 12:4, Hosea tells us Jacob wrestled with an angel.
4. It sounded like Jacob was able (despite his age) to wrestle an angel all night; but in Gen 32:25, we read that the man just touched his hip socket, and Jacob was disabled. This shows that the man could have defeated Jacob anytime, and he’s just letting Jacob continue with the wrestling (sort of like playing with Jacob).
5. As dawn was breaking, the man asked Jacob to let him go, but Jacob hangs on and won’t let the man go unless he blesses Jacob.
6. The man asked Jacob his name. It’s not that he doesn’t know Jacob’s name, but he wants Jacob to acknowledge it out loud. The man then changed Jacob’s name to Israel. See below for what this new name might mean.
7. Jacob in turn asks the man’s name, but the latter doesn’t answer. He blesses Jacob, and leaves.
8. Jacob named the place Peniel. (Gen 32:30).
9. The Israelites don’t eat “the sinew which is attached to the socket of the hip” (Gen 32:32) as a memorial to Jacob’s injury. Even today, observant Jews “still refuse to eat the tendons of the hindquarters of animals.”^[1]Allen Ross and John N. Oswalt, Cornerstone Biblical Commentary: Genesis, Exodus,Vol. 1 (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers., 2008), 190. However, this observance is not made part of the dietary laws in Exodus. We also don’t know if this injury was temporary or permenant, or even what part of the anatomy it refers to (there are various opinions on this).

There’s not much detail given about the wrestling match; all the details seem to be with the name-change from Jacob to Israel. So it seems this passage’s focus is on Jacob’s new name.

In Gen 32:28, the new name is exlained as, “for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.” But I like the explanation given by Ross: “Israel” means “God fights.”^[2]Ross and Oswalt, 191. When he was born, Jacob’s name meant something like “heal grabber,” since he came out grabbing onto the heal of his elder brother Esau. However, Esau (in Gen 27:36) gave a new meaning to “Jacob”, implying that “Jacob” means deceiver.

All his life, Jacob had been using his own cunning and cheating to get blessings. He cheated his brother Esau to get the birthright of first-born (Gen 25:29–34), then tricked his father to get the blessing destined for Esau (Gen 27:35; read the entire story starting at the beginning of Gen 27). At his uncle Laban’s place, he himself met his match (Laban was just as big a cheater as Jacob), but he also did some things to make his own flocks prosper at the expense of Laban’s flocks.

At the wrestling match, it seems the man is pointing out to Jacob that this sort of wrestling was what Jacob had been doing all his life. He asked Jacob to acknowledge his own name, which can be taken to mean he’s forcing Jacob to acknowledging his own character: someone who depends on his own strength and cunning to get blessings from others (or from God). With the name-change to “Israel”, it is now God who will do the fighting, and Jacob just has to trust God. If Jacob just trust in God, God will bring him blessings; there’s no need to cheat or fight deceitfully.

All this happened as Jacob was about to meet Esau. Jacob still greatly feared that Esau is sending the large party of four hundred men to wipe out Jacob in revenge (you can see this by how he arranged his family to meet Esau). However, some of that fear might have dissipated because the wrestling man told him, “you have … prevailed.” (Gen 32:28) Jacob actually went ahead of his entire family to greet Esau (i.e., if there’s any danger, Jacob would be the first one killed!) God assured Jacob that he will be successful in everything he did, including his meeting with Esau.

Jacob still has lots to learn about trusting God. He still kept many of his old “Jacob” characteristics, while learning to become “Israel”. I think that’s why even after the name-change, the Bible often goes back to using “Jacob”, and only once in a while uses “Israel”. You can compare this to Abraham and Sarah; they both had their names changed by God (Gen 17), and the Bible never went back to using their old names.

Summary

The wrestling is mainly about the name-change of Jacob to Israel. God wants Jacob to know that instead of depending on his own cunning and deceit, he should trust God for blessings. Remember that Genesis was written for the generation of Israelites going into the promised land. The Israelites would learn that “Israel’s victory would come not by the usual ways by which nations gain power but in the power of the divine blessing.”^[3]Allen P. Ross, Creation and Blessing: A Guide to the Study and Exposition of Genesis (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1998), 558. We can see this in the book of Joshua, where it was God who fought for them (like marching around Jericho for seven days, no fighting involved!)

This is also a lesson for us, as we also must learn to trust God that he will give us whatever we need in order to be a good disciple or a good witness to God. Sometimes, as disciples, we encounter difficulties and roadblocks that might even require some sort of fight, but we need to trust God that he will do the fighting for us.