So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak.25 When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. 26 Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.” But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” 27 The man asked him, “What is your name?” “Jacob,” he answered. 28 Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel,[f]because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.” 29 Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.” But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there. 30 So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.” (Genesis 32: 24- 30)
Hosea 12: 3 In the womb he grasped his brother’s heel; as a man he struggled with God. 4 He struggled with the angel and overcame him; he wept and begged for his favor. He found him at Bethel and talked with him there—5 the Lord God Almighty, the Lord is his name!6 But you must return to your God; maintain love and justice, and wait for your God always.
Rev. 2: 17: Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give that person a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it.
As I had him pinned to the ground, just before daybreak, I expected the angel to beg for mercy. Or at least to give me the blessing I demanded of him, as the price of releasing him. Instead, he asked for my name. Of all the pain and struggle I experienced in last night’s all-night wrestling match, just saying, “Jacob,” was the hardest, most painful thing of all. It was worse than the wrenching of my hip socket a moment before. For I realized that I had had to answer that very question, “What is your name?” once before, at another very important point of my life. Then I had answered it with a shameless, bold and bald-faced lie.
That was many years earlier, when I came into the tent of my blind, aged, frail and dying father, Isaac, and he asked me, “Who is it?” I lied and said, “I am Esau, your first-born son.” So deliberate and elaborate was my lie that I backed it up with a few props, like Esau’s clothing, goat skins tied to my hand, and a stew that my mother, Rebecca, had cooked to fool him into thinking that I had brought my father his favorite wild game stew. My brother, Esau, meanwhile, was out busting a sweat and risking his life to get our father the real thing. I pulled off that pretense in order to steal the deathbed blessing that belonged to Esau as the first-born son, and to seal the deal on my theft of his birthright. I’m pretty sure the angel’s question was meant to remind me of the time I lied to my father, and to give me a chance this time to get it right. Saying my name, “Jacob,” to that angel broke something in me. But now I see that that was also the beginning of the blessing that I begged for.
Within a few hours of lying to my father and cheating my brother, my only regret was that I had been caught. Little good that birthright and that blessing did me as I ran for my life from Esau’s death threats, with nothing but a staff and the clothes on my back. What does a father’s blessing matter if you’ve offended and alienated your brother and provoked his curse? But sibling rivalry runs in the family ever since one of my ancestors so sarcastically asked our heavenly Father, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” And that was after Cain had murdered his brother, Abel. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” In my family, we will give the right answer to that question, but only after we’ve tried everything else.
I may have pinned the angel to the ground come sunrise, but his question, “What is your name?” did more to pin me down. Jacob: that’s the name my family gave me when I was born, hand first, holding on to my twin brother Esau’s heel. “Jacob” means “grabber,” or “snatcher,” and in all my years of growing up I lived down to people’s expectations, down to the identity they gave me. I grabbed on to Esau and never let go. I lived my life and defined my very self in calculation, competition and contrast with Esau. As a toddler, my first complete sentences in life were, “Me, too!” and “But that’s not fair!” Whatever Esau had, I wanted. And more.
While we were yet in the womb, a prophet of God said that of the two of us, “the older would serve the younger.” But now I see that I was a slave to my resentment, jealousy and envy of Esau as the firstborn heir and father’s favorite. I envied how Esau, strong as he was, could take whatever he wanted from life, by force, and by right of the firstborn, while I, by contrast, had to plot, scheme and swindle to get my way.
I especially envied his first-born blessing and birthright. Not only because the laws of inheritance favor the firstborn son. Our father, Isaac, blindly and blatantly preferred Esau over me. Favoritism runs in the family, too. Dad grew up the favored son of a family with a resentful, mistreated half-brother, Ishmael, born of a servant girl, Hagar. Such position and privilege must have made Dad clueless about his favoritism toward Esau, and how that would affect our mother and me.
With Esau’s death threats ringing in my ears, I fled to live among relatives back in Chaldea, from where my grandparents, Abraham and Sarah, had come. When uncle Laban welcomed and sheltered me, I thought I was safe.
You know, I had always thought that you could never cheat an accomplished cheater like myself. I thought that anything you tried on me, I’d already know about, having tried it myself. Now I know differently. Try to fool others and you’ll only become the biggest fool of all, by deadening your own sensitivity to the truth. Uncle Laban turned out to be an even more accomplished cheater and trickster than I was. When I thought I was marrying his daughter Rachel, I found I had married her older sister, Leah, first. Then, truth-challenged as I was—or am—I overlooked the virtues and the value of Leah, her worth and dignity, and mistreated her by favoring her sister. Like father, like son.
Only by lying to ourselves and each other could Laban and I run our livestock business together. Until finally, inevitably, the lies could no longer be hidden. Once again I was running, looking for safety from the consequences of my own denial of the truth. Cornered again, I tried to bargain with God, like I did with everybody. But God said he’d deliver me only if I went back to my offended brother, Esau. Would all those years of separation between us have cooled his ardor for revenge? I wondered. Or was I leaping from the frying pan into the fire?
I had often imagined coming back to my home and my people in Canaan, but not like this, not in these desperate straits. I had envisioned some sort of triumphant return, at the head of vast herds of camels, donkeys, goats and sheep, so many that Esau would have to bow to me and admit that the blessing and the birthright should have been mine to begin with, because I was obviously so highly favored of God. But as I and my family, servants and livestock headed east and south, the first reports I got back did not sound good. “Esau’s coming to meet you, “someone told me, “with 400 armed men.”
Once again I was staring death in the face, at the hand of my brother. This time, however, it dawned on me that I bore some responsibility for this mess. And what about my innocent family? All my years of trickery, deceit, and manipulation, driven by resentment, greed and ambition were not only bringing disaster on my own head, they had imperiled innocent others. That’s when it struck me: our choices are never only about ourselves. Thinking that these defenseless little children and the women who had stood by me might pay for my crimes and misconduct, even more things started to break in me: my pride; my sense of entitlement, my resentment, and my habits of self-reliance, self-justification, self-promotion and self-deception. When I started to curse my brother, I was caught up short by this question: Would I have done anything different, were I in his sandals? That was also an entirely new way of thinking for me.
As my excuses fell away, one after another, all that was left were memories of a promise that God had made to me, long before, in the same general area as I fled Canaan and my brother’s vows of revenge, one night in a dream. In that dream I saw a ladder linking heaven and earth at the very place where I slept, and on that ladder were angels ascending and descending. Then God himself spoke and promised that he would be with me and would make of my descendants a mighty nation, in the land of Canaan, just as he had promised to my father, Isaac, and my grandfather, Abraham.
I had thought about that promise from time to time, but always as a matter of entitlement, as though I was somehow worthy of it, because I was this God’s worshiper, and not the worshiper of some local idols. Then I realized that this promise to myself and my ancestors was simply a matter of God’s mercy, and of God’s faithfulness to his own Word, even when his worshipers are unworthy and unfaithful. I came to understand that all the promises of God work that way; they are not entitlements earned by the worthy few, but acts of mercy bestowed on the unworthy many by the only One who is worthy, faithful and true. That promise was all I had to go on, and with it in my heart I called upon God to remember it and fulfill it.
Still, I knew that I had to do my part. And there was no denying anymore what it was. It was not a matter of finding just another clever trick to save my hide. It was about justice. Would the God who asked Cain, “Where is your brother?” grant me his blessing if my brother has anything against me? And if I don’t do my part for reconciliation between us? For there to be reconciliation between my brother and me, there also had to be repentance on my part. But even if I did admit that I had done wrong, say that I was sorry, and ask for my brother’s forgiveness, what would that matter if I continued to benefit from my theft of Esau’s birthright and blessing? I could only prove my repentance by making restitution. So I divided my flocks and sent them by droves ahead of me, half my herd, as gifts for Esau. With my gifts, in addition to what livestock he already had, Esau would effectively be getting back the value of his inheritance as the first-born son, that I had stolen. And I would end up no richer than had I stayed home with him on good terms. For now, the younger would have to serve the older.
Unable to sleep for sheer terror, fearing that Esau would still kill me and my family, the all night wrestling-match began. I was wrestling with God. Or an angel. Or myself, my fear, my character, my habits, my past, my regrets in place of my resentment. I was wrestling with the truth that I could no longer hold at arm’s length: “I am Jacob,” the grabber, snatcher, sneak and thief who had walked so long through the world under false pretenses, that he had nearly lost all sensitivity to the truth, until it was finally confronting him in the undeniable form of my offended and angry older brother and 400 armed men. “I am Jacob,” who is backed up into a corner by his own character and his own choices, a corner from which he can no longer escape by lying, shading the truth and manipulating others. No longer could I blame and resent other people when they wised up to my ways.
Instead of seeing angels going up and down a ladder between heaven and earth, I was wrestling with one. And while technically, physically, I won that match, I could only win it by losing. A fight with God is not a fight anyone can afford to win. As though winning against God were even possible. Just before the angel relented, like me, he had one more trick up his sleeve. Somehow his hand got loose and he dislocated my right thigh at the hip. I don’t blame him for it; I’d made plenty of moves twice as dirty. So severe is the injury to my hip now that I am sure I shall walk with a limp for the rest of my life.
Or is it that I am finally beginning to walk straight and the world is askew? If anyone should ask me about my limp, (if I am around to be asked) I will say that it is a trophy of a fight that I won by losing it. It is a reminder of a blessing I received by being broken. Yes, I was broken by my blessing, and now I am blessed in my brokenness.
For just when I was most broken was I also most blessed. After I finally owned up to my name, Jacob, and all that it meant, God gave me a new name: Israel, “One who contends with God.” No longer does the world define me; no more shall I live down to the identity that mere mortals assign me. Now I shall seek to live up to God’s extravagant and unmerited name for me. No longer shall I spend my life envying, resenting and grasping for anyone else’s blessings. If I am granted to live beyond my meeting with my brother, I will spend the rest of my days seeking the blessings of God. I shall wrestle against all the fears and false loves, the resentments and the rancor that would keep me from receiving God’s promised blessings, that would keep me from being the person whom God says I am.
Chief among God’s promised blessings is that our descendants will multiply like the stars of the sky and the sand on the beach, and will dwell securely on this earth. How can God fulfill that promise, if our children should die for my sins? Let God do with me what he wills when I meet Esau after all these years; I am trusting God to protect and preserve my innocent family and their descendants.
And now that I have told you my story, let me ask you a few questions: Who defines you? On what do you base your identity? Yes, your family gave you your name; that’s only right. But are you going to let the identity that mere mortals assign us get in the way of the identity and the name that God wants to give us? Before you answer that, remember and consider, that the God who knows better than us even the worst things that we keep secret from ourselves, also has a much greater identity, and a much greater destiny in mind for us than we can ever imagine.
So tell me, What are you wrestling with? What are you fighting for? What, or who, were your longest sleepless nights about? Or was there nothing to sweat or struggle for, nothing to care about, no blessing worth fighting for? If so, you may have missed some heartache and some long, dark sleepless nights. But you may also have missed out on angels and the blessings that come with the sunrise. I’ve just come through a dark night of sleeplessness and much breaking, but I’ve also seen the face of God, and survived.
And what stands between you and that blessing? Don’t look outside yourself, blaming or using others, like I’ve done for so long. Look within. And as for the others with whom God puts us, don’t ask, “How are they hindering me from getting the blessings for which I struggle?” Ask, “What am I doing that might hinder God’s blessing to them?” and even, “How might I be God’s blessing to them?”
And if I could see you walking before me, what would I think? That you’re very much in step with the world, with nothing to distinguish your walk from that of everyone else? Or would I notice that you’re out of step with the world, like me, now? I’m not talking about how you put one foot in front of the other, physically. I’m talking about whether or not I can tell that you are walking with God as one both broken and blessed, in a world that’s all crooked and cock-eyed. Or are you too eager to fit in with the world’s lockstep march to nowhere?
So I limp off this morning, both broken and blessed, to go meet my estranged and offended brother. I am past last night’s terror; I am at peace, for I have been broken of my sense of entitlement, resentment and falsehood, of all my calculating and the compulsion to grab what God freely gives. I saw the face of God and lived, so what can mere mortals do to me? Now I go to face whatever happens next, peacefully indifferent to life or death, because I have been so blessed by God Almighty, and am blessed again with a new name and a promise on behalf of the children. Whatever happens to me, God is just even if I am not. Whatever happens, God wins. That’s the only way that any of us wins, too: when God wins.