part0069

The Myth: And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him. And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me. And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed. And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there. And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved. And as he passed over Penuel the sun rose upon him, and he halted upon his thigh. Therefore the children of Israel eat not of the sinew which shrank, which is upon the hollow of the thigh, unto this day: because he touched the hollow of Jacob’s thigh in the sinew that shrank. And Jacob lifted up his eyes, and looked, and, behold, Esau came…. (Gen. 32:24–33:1)

Jacob remained with Laban, his uncle, for twenty years. During that time, he acquired four wives, eleven sons, and a daughter. (Jacob fathered a twelfth son after he returned to Canaan.) At the end of the twenty years, God told Jacob and his family to return to his native land. On the journey, Jacob decided to pay his respects to Esau and see if they could come to a peaceful arrangement.

When Jacob arrived near the planned meeting site, he settled his family into a camp and went off on his own. That evening, a stranger appeared to him and the two of them wrestled throughout the night. Neither could gain a victory, but the stranger managed to lame Jacob in the course of the struggle. As morning light appeared, the stranger offered to break off the fight, but Jacob agreed only on condition that he receive a blessing. The stranger blessed Jacob by changing his name to Israel and declared him a prince of power.

Jacob asked his opponent to identify himself, but the stranger declined, and since Jacob believed that he had looked into the face of God, he named the place Penuel, “Face of God.” (The story uses both Peniel and Penuel as the name of the place. Sub-sequently, the Bible just refers to Penuel.)The sun then rose in the sky and Jacob began to limp. Immediately after his confrontation with the unidentified stranger, Esau appeared. The two brothers professed peace, hugged, and were gracious to each other. Then, Jacob made a rather curious statement,“I have seen thy face, as though I had seen the face of God” (Gen. 33:10). The statement implies that Esau had been the stranger that Jacob wrestled.

In the earliest Egyptian myths, as recorded in the Pyramid Texts, Horus the Elder and Set, the twin Egyptian deities, constantly fought with each other. Horus represented the force of day and light, Set the force of night and dark. Egyptians believed that the sun traveled a circular path between the light and the dark. At the end of the light there resided a huge serpent that sought to devour the sun. The Egyptians divided the full day into twenty-four periods, twelve day and twelve night. As the solar barque entered into the night realm, it confronted a series of challenges through twelve zones.

The myths sometimes depict Set as the serpent that tried to devour the sun. Horus functioned as a solar deity, and in Egypt’s earliest times may have been the original Creator deity. In any event, the fighting between Horus and Set signified the daily battle between the sun and its enemy.

The various icons in the story of Jacob’s wrestling match correspond to the Egyptian symbolism. Jacob, the Horus figure, wrestled all through the night with a stranger. He believed the stranger to be God, although the story does not make that direct claim. He named the location “Face of God” because he believed that he looked on the face of god during his wrestling match. But because the night was dark, he could not have seen much. The first person he saw when the light appeared was Esau, the Set figure. And he said to him, “I have seen thy face, as though I had seen the face of God,” identifying him with the stranger.

In addition, Jacob received a new name, a functional rebirth, and in this new identity began to limp as soon as the sun appeared, equating his new physical form with that of Horus the Son of Isis, who was born lame after Horus the Elder and Set made peace (according to Plutarch’s account).

Although the biblical story presents a corrupted account of the Egyptian tradition, we can see that underlying the story of Jacob and the stranger is the Egyptian account of the daily battle between Horus and Set, that originally Esau was the stranger with whom Jacob wrestled and that Jacob can be identified with Horus the Son of Isis, who was born lame.