1And Laban got up early in the morning and kissed his sons and his daughters and blessed them and went. And Laban went back to his place,
2and Jacob went his way. And angels of God came upon him.
3And Jacob said when he saw them, “This is a camp of God,” and he called that place’s name Mahanaim.
4And Jacob sent messengers ahead of him to Esau, his brother, to the land of Seir, the territory of Edom,
5and commanded them saying, “You shall say this: ‘To my lord, to Esau, your servant Jacob said this, “I’ve stayed with Laban and delayed until now,
32:5. I’ve stayed with Laban. Rashi conveys a tradition that this means: “I lived temporarily with him, but I learned nothing from his bad ways.” But Jacob does in fact learn from Laban. The deceiver meets a deceiver. He learns how it feels to receive an injustice, not just how it feels to dish it out. He learns that it hurts. It is a step in his development as a man. And it apparently brings about the honorable way in which he behaves toward Esau when he returns.
6and ox and ass and sheep and male and female servant have become mine. And I’m sending to tell my lord so as to find favor in your eyes.”’”
7And the messengers came back to Jacob saying, “We came to your brother, to Esau, and also he’s coming to you—and four hundred men with him.”
8And Jacob was very afraid, and he had anguish. And he divided the people who were with him and the sheep and the oxen and the camels into two camps.
9And he said, “If Esau will come to one camp and strike it, then the camp that is left will survive.”
10And Jacob said, “God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, YHWH, who said to me, ‘Go back to your land and to your birthplace, and I’ll deal well with you,’
11I’m not worthy of all the kindnesses and all the faithfulness that you’ve done with your servant, because I crossed this Jordan with just my rod, and now I’ve become two camps.
12Save me from my brother’s hand, from Esau’s hand, because I fear him, in case he’ll come and strike me, mother with children.
13And you’ ve said, ‘I’ll do well with you, and I’ll make your seed like the sand of the sea, that it won’t be countable because of its great number.’”
14And he spent that night there.
And he took an offering for Esau, his brother, from what had come into his hand:
15two hundred she-goats and twenty he-goats, two hundred ewes and twenty rams,
16thirty nursing camels and their offspring, forty cows and ten bulls, twenty she-asses and ten he-asses.
17And he placed them in his servants’ hands, each herd by itself, and he said to his servants, “Pass on in front of me, and keep a distance between each herd and the next.”
18And he commanded the first, saying, “When my brother, Esau, meets you and asks you, saying, ‘To whom do you belong, and where are you going, and to whom do these in front of you belong?’
19then you’ll say, ‘To your servant, to Jacob. It’s an offering sent to my lord, to Esau. And here he is behind us as well.’”
20And he also commanded the second, also the third, also all of those who were going behind the herds, saying, “You’ll speak this way to Esau when you find him,
21and you’ll say, ‘Here is your servant, Jacob, behind us as well.’” Because he said, “Let me appease his face with the offering that’s going in front of me, and after that I’ll see his face; maybe he’ll raise my face.”
32:21. his face … in front of me … I’ll see his face … my face … ahead of him. The word “face” recurs five times in this line and all through these two chapters (as does the word “raise”). It also is part of the term that is translated as the preposition “in front of” or “ahead of” (in Hebrew, l
p
ny). The repetition conveys the force of this juncture in Jacob’s life. He must face his past. He must face his brother, whom he wronged. And in the middle of the account of his facing his brother will come the account of his most immediate contact with God in his life, his struggle after which he will say, “I’ve seen God face-to-face.” And the two encounters, first with his God and then with his brother, will then be brought together as he says to Esau, “I’ve seen your face—like seeing God’s face!” (33:10).
This is also ironic because Jacob left twenty years earlier in the wake of his deception, which worked because his weak-eyed father could not see his face!
22And the offering passed ahead of him. And he spent that night in the camp.
23And he got up in that night and took his two wives and his two maids and his eleven boys and crossed the Jabbok ford.
32:23. his eleven boys. His daughter, Dinah, is not mentioned.
24And he took them and had them cross the wadi, and he had everything that was his cross.
25And Jacob was left by himself.
And a man wrestled with him until the dawn’s rising.
32:25. a man wrestled with him. With whom does he wrestle? It says “a man.” But he is able against the man, and later the man names him yi
r-’
l, which is interpreted to mean “struggles with God,” and says to him, “You’ve struggled with God and with people and were able.” And Jacob names the place Peni-El, meaning “face of God,” and says, “I’ve seen God face-to-face.” This all indicates that he has wrestled with God in human form. But the prophet Hosea refers to this moment and says, “He fought with God, and he fought with an angel and was able” (Hos 12:5–6). This is consistent with the description of angels that I gave in the matter of the three people who visit Abraham (18:3). Angels are material expressions of God’s presence (emanations from the Godhead, hypostases). When they are in front of a human, they look like a “man,” like “people.” That is why Hosea can say “He fought with God” and then say in poetic parallel about the same event “he fought with an angel.”
26And he saw that he was not able against him, and he touched the inside of his thigh, and the inside of Jacob’s thigh was dislocated during his wrestling with him.
32:26. dislocated. This is the term that is used in Num 25:4 for a punishment that is inflicted on the Israelites following a heresy at Baal Peor. Its meaning is uncertain both there and here. There it may mean to hang or impale, in which case here it might mean that the thigh bone is hanging out of joint.
27And he said, “Let me go, because the dawn has risen.”
And he said, “I won’t let you go unless you bless me.”
32:27. I won’t let you go unless you bless me. Jacob demands a blessing. Is it usual to demand a blessing from someone with whom we have been fighting?! The struggle with God takes such an exertion of one’s strength, and takes such a toll, that the human who does it has to live with the wounds thereafter (Jacob limps after this struggle). And so he is in need of blessing—and has earned it.
28And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.”
29And he said, “Your name won’t be said ‘Jacob’ anymore but ‘Israel,’ because you’ve struggled with God and with people and were able.”
32:29. Israel. There is little character development in Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, or Rebekah, all of whom remain basically constant figures through the stories about them. But Jacob changes, and the matter of deception is intimately related to that development. As Esau points out, Jacob’s very name connotes deception: to catch. And Jacob starts out as a manipulator. But Jacob is changed after his experiences in Mesopotamia. He has been the deceiver and the deceived. He has hurt and been hurt. He is now a husband and a father, a man who has struggled and prospered. For the rest of the story he is no longer pictured as a man of action but, more often, as a relatively passive man, like his father Isaac, seeking to appease his brother, avoiding strife and risk. And precisely at the juncture that marks this change in Jacob’s character he has his encounter with God at Penuel. God blesses him in a remarkable etiology/etymology: “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel [yir-’l, understood here to mean ‘he struggles with God’], because you’ve struggled with God and with people and were able. Is this divine encounter the signpost of the change in Jacob’s character, or the cause? Either way, as his character changes, and he ceases to be the deceiver, just then he sheds the name Jacob (the one who catches) and becomes instead Israel (the one who struggles with God).
30And Jacob asked, and he said, “Tell your name.”
And he said, “Why is this that you ask my name?” And he blessed him there.
31And Jacob called the place’s name Peni-El, “because I’ve seen God face-to-face, and my life has been delivered.”
32And the sun rose on him as he passed Penuel, and he was faltering on his thigh.
33On account of this the children of Israel to this day will not eat the tendon of the vein that is on the inside of the thigh, because he touched the inside of Jacob’s thigh, the tendon of the vein.
