32 32:1Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him. 2 32:2And when Jacob saw them he said, “This is God’s camp!” So he called the name of that place Mahanaim.1
3 32:3And Jacob sent2 messengers before him to Esau his brother in the land of Seir, the country of Edom, 4 32:4instructing them, “Thus you shall say to my lord Esau: Thus says your servant Jacob, ‘I have sojourned with Laban and stayed until now. 5 32:5I have oxen, donkeys, flocks, male servants, and female servants. I have sent to tell my lord, in order that I may find favor in your sight.’”
6 32:6And the messengers returned to Jacob, saying, “We came to your brother Esau, and he is coming to meet you, and there are four hundred men with him.” 7 32:7Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed. He divided the people who were with him, and the flocks and herds and camels, into two camps, 8 32:8thinking, “If Esau comes to the one camp and attacks it, then the camp that is left will escape.”
9 32:9And Jacob said, “O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O Lord who said to me, ‘Return to your country and to your kindred, that I may do you good,’ 10 32:10I am not worthy of the least of all the deeds of steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant, for with only my staff I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two camps. 11 32:11Please deliver me from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him, that he may come and attack me, the mothers with the children. 12 32:12But you said, ‘I will surely do you good, and make your offspring as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude.’”
13 32:13So he stayed there that night, and from what he had with him he took a present for his brother Esau, 14 32:14two hundred female goats and twenty male goats, two hundred ewes and twenty rams, 15 32:15thirty milking camels and their calves, forty cows and ten bulls, twenty female donkeys and ten male donkeys. 16 32:16These he handed over to his servants, every drove by itself, and said to his servants, “Pass on ahead of me and put a space between drove and drove.” 17 32:17He instructed the first, “When Esau my brother meets you and asks you, ‘To whom do you belong? Where are you going? And whose are these ahead of you?’ 18 32:18then you shall say, ‘They belong to your servant Jacob. They are a present sent to my lord Esau. And moreover, he is behind us.’” 19 32:19He likewise instructed the second and the third and all who followed the droves, “You shall say the same thing to Esau when you find him, 20 32:20and you shall say, ‘Moreover, your servant Jacob is behind us.’” For he thought, “I may appease him3 with the present that goes ahead of me, and afterward I shall see his face. Perhaps he will accept me.”4 21 32:21So the present passed on ahead of him, and he himself stayed that night in the camp.
22 32:22The same night he arose and took his two wives, his two female servants, and his eleven children,5 and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23 32:23He took them and sent them across the stream, and everything else that he had. 24 32:24And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. 25 32:25When 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. 26 32:26Then he said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” 27 32:27And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” 28 32:28Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel,6 for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.” 29 32:29Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. 30 32:30So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel,7 saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.” 31 32:31The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. 32 32:32Therefore 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.
Response
Jacob’s painful wrestling with God points us clearly to the cross. Having completed his wrestling with man throughout his earthly life, Jesus Christ wrestled with God on our behalf so that grace and blessing might flow to his people. He wrestled with the difficult and painful will of God in the garden, crying out, “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me” (Matt. 26:39). He wrestled with the holy and fearsome wrath of God on the cross in that awful moment when he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46). The outcome of his wrestling was not merely a crippled hip; he was wounded and bruised for us, he was flogged and crucified, burdened with the whole weight of our transgressions. But in the midst of that painful trial Jesus clung to God and would not let him go unless he received a blessing—not for himself but for us, his people. Through Jesus’ faithful clinging to the Father he has prevailed over sin and death and, risen from the dead, has been given the name above every name.
Jesus is the true Israel, with no Jacob mixed in; he is the one who has in fullness struggled with God and man and has overcome. As we are united to Christ, we in turn are given a new name as Christians and become part of the Israel of God (Gal. 6:16). As we do so, we are called to participate in Christ’s struggles and suffering as well as in his victory, overcoming the world through our faith (1 John 5:4). Jesus struggled on the cross not so that we might never have to struggle but so that our struggles might conform us into his image (Phil. 3:10–11).
In our struggles and suffering we are taught to abandon our self-dependence and look to the cross, clinging to God alone for blessing. When we fear God, we have nothing else to fear. When we cling to him with all our strength, we will find that he will not let us go. Even when we feel too weak to cling to him and too fearful to hold on to him a second longer, we still find that his strong arms are encircling us in his love and that the Good Shepherd will not let us go. His strength is not empowered by our strength; rather, it is made perfect in our weakness (2 Cor. 12:9).
What is more, we too are called regularly to memorialize Christ’s great battle on our behalf in our eating of the Lord’s Supper. There we remember Christ’s wrestling on the cross. When we eat the bread, we remember the tearing apart of his body for us. When we drink the cup, we recall the shedding of his blood for our transgressions. There we cling to God and ask him to fulfill his promises to us and in us. At the table our souls are fed once again with God’s assurance that, no matter what difficulties may face us in this life, the love of God has chosen us for blessing in Christ, and he will not let us go.Genesis 32
Genesis 33
Mahanaim means two camps
Or had sent
Hebrew appease his face
Hebrew he will lift my face
Or sons
Israel means He strives with God, or God strives
Peniel means the face of God
32:1–2 As he goes on his journey back home, having put Paddan-aram in the rearview mirror, Jacob is immediately encouraged by an enigmatic meeting with angels (v. 1). We are not told that the angels bring him anything or provide for him in any way, so it seems likely that their presence represents the Lord’s protection of him on his journey. God’s angels are always present to guard and protect his own, whether we see them or not (cf. 2 Kings 6:15–17). As the psalmist puts it, “The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them” (Ps. 34:7). In this instance, however, the Lord opens Jacob’s eyes to enable him to see the angelic host keeping guard over him. They had been prepared to protect him against Laban, and they stand ready to guard him from Esau as well.
Jacob names the place of his encounter with the angels Mahanaim (“Two camps”) in recognition of the event. In the Hebrew numerous verbal connections link Jacob’s experience at Mahanaim to his former vision of the Lord and the stone staircase at Bethel (Genesis 28). His wilderness years outside the Land of Promise are thus bracketed by these two visions of angels, a drawing back of the veil that has enabled Jacob to recognize God’s unseen presence with him throughout the intervening period (cf. 31:5). Here is not only the camp of Jacob but the camp of God as well (32:2). This assurance would have been particularly meaningful to the original readers of Genesis, accustomed as they were to camping in the wilderness, by reminding them that the angels of God accompanied them too on every step of their own journey to the Promised Land.
32:3–6 Jacob now prepares to meet with his brother, Esau, who by this time is living near Mount Seir in the area that will become known as Edom, to the east of the Jordan (v. 3). It would be possible for Jacob to return to the Land of Promise without meeting Esau, since the road from Paddan-aram to Canaan does not run through Edom, but to his credit Jacob as a top priority seeks to set things right in that relationship. He therefore sends messengers ahead of him to Esau with instructions to tell Esau that (1) Jacob has been staying with Laban up until this point (and therefore setting things right with Esau is his first priority on his return to Canaan) and (2) he has prospered during his stay with Laban (and thus will not be a burden to Esau in any way; vv. 4–5). It is notable that when giving the inventory of his possessions Jacob omits mention of his camels, the rarest and most valuable of his items.
The messengers that Jacob sends to his brother correspond to God’s messengers that he received earlier (v. 3; in Hb. the word for “messenger” and “angel” is the same: Hb. malʾak). They go bearing gifts and a carefully crafted message of repentance. Jacob describes himself as “your servant” and Esau as “my lord” (v. 4). He thus voluntarily reclaims the position of subordinate younger brother, which he had schemed and worked so hard to get out from in his earlier life. Jacob’s only desire is to find favor in Esau’s sight and for their fraternal relationship to be restored (v. 5).
However, Esau’s initial response is more threatening than encouraging. The messengers return with the news that Esau is coming out to meet Jacob with four hundred men (v. 6). This is far more than what would be necessary to form a welcoming committee and sounds more like a small army. (For comparison, Abraham took 318 armed men with him to take on the mighty armies of the four kings in Gen. 14:14; cf. David’s force of 400 men in 1 Sam. 22:2.) This force would be more than large enough to wreak havoc on Jacob’s flocks and family.
32:7–12 Jacob’s response of fear is understandable under the circumstances. His faith in God’s calling to return to the land is being put to the test. He has the resources, humanly speaking, to make his way elsewhere in the world and to avoid a threatening encounter with Esau. It is a mark of his trust in the Lord, however, bolstered by his earlier vision of the angelic host surrounding his camp, that he continues on his course to return to the Promised Land. He also devises a plan to protect his family and resources by dividing them into two distinct camps, so that, if one is attacked, the other might still escape (vv. 7–8).
More significantly, however, Jacob prays (v. 9). This is the first time in the narrative that we have seen Jacob praying rather than relying on clever strategies. Jacob’s prayer begins with an affirmation of God’s past faithfulness to his promises (v. 9), the kind of recitation of God’s history of goodness that is common in Psalms. He acknowledges that God has fulfilled everything he had said he would do for Jacob in Genesis 28, using the plural of khesed as an intensifier to describe the “deeds of steadfast love” that the Lord has shown him (32:10). At the same time Jacob also proclaims his personal unworthiness of God’s favor (v. 10). It is hardly a coincidence that Jacob proclaims himself to be God’s servant for the first time on the same day he declares himself to be Esau’s servant. Jacob has come to see that in God’s program growing greater means becoming smaller (cf. Mark 9:35). Jacob is growing in his humility and his dependence upon God.
As a result, the essence of Jacob’s plea to God in his prayer is for God to continue to fulfill his promises to him, and before him to Abraham (Gen. 32:12). He acknowledges his own fear of Esau, who could attack Jacob along with his wives and children (v. 11). Yet these are the same children whom God had promised Abraham to make as numerous as the sand of the sea (v. 12; cf. 22:17), and thus they merit his protection.
32:13–23 After spending another night at Mahanaim under the protection of God’s angels, Jacob sends a caravan of gifts ahead of him (32:13–21). These gifts are designated minkhah, a word that means “homage” or “tribute,” offerings made by an inferior to a superior. The catalog of Jacob’s gifts is overwhelming: herds of goats and sheep and expensive camels and donkeys, underlining the depth of Jacob’s self-humiliation and his desire to make up for the blessing he had stolen. Then, after all these gifts have been received by Esau—in wave upon wave of generosity—Jacob will come last, hoping to receive Esau’s favor (v. 20). The brother who previously fought for first place is finally content to be last.
The implication of the gifts is to be reinforced by the explicit instructions given by Jacob to his servants. Each of them is to say to Esau that his offering is a gift from your servant Jacob to my lord Esau (v. 18). In this way Jacob hopes to turn aside Esau’s wrath and thus be able to see his face (v. 20)—not just to meet him but to be received before him with favor. The language is religious in nature, similar in vocabulary and form to that used in seeking favor and acceptance from a deity by means of sacrifice (cf. Ex. 32:30). It is easy to see the repetition of “face” in Hebrew; Jacob hopes to “cover Esau’s face” with his gift so that Esau might “lift up Jacob’s face” and enable Jacob to “see Esau’s face.” Of course, as it transpires, the “face” Jacob really needs to see is God’s—an encounter that will occur later in this chapter.
Meanwhile, Jacob sends his wives, his children, and his flocks over the Jabbok River, one of the major tributaries of the Jordan, while he remains alone on the other side (Gen. 32:21–23). It is unclear precisely why he does this. Perhaps Jacob thinks that if Esau encounters the women and children before encountering Jacob he might be more sympathetic, or perhaps it as an act of cowardice on Jacob’s part. John Currid suggests that Jacob actually sends the family back across the Jabbok from south to north, putting Jacob alone between his family and Esau’s men, though that would seem to reverse the geographical logic of the passage. Sarna’s suggestion that Jacob intends to minimize the time between the gifts’ arriving with Esau and the family’s following them seems more likely. His own remaining behind seems to be motivated by a desire to spend time in prayer with God prior to meeting Esau.
32:24–32 As so often, the biblical text reports an extraordinary event in very prosaic terms. While Jacob is alone—presumably in prayer—a man comes and assaults him, not merely striking him with one or two blows but wrestling with him for hours, until daybreak (v. 24). What is in view here is a monumental struggle for Jacob, a struggle he cannot win but which he is determined not to lose. The power of Jacob’s opponent is evident from the easy way in which he dislocates Jacob’s hip when he chooses to do so (v. 25). Clearly this man could kill Jacob if he chose to do so. Yet even when the struggle cripples Jacob’s hip and Jacob can do no more than cling to his adversary, he does just that and will not let him go until he receives from him a blessing (v. 26). Finally, when the day is breaking, Jacob receives the blessing he seeks—and along with the blessing a new name: “Israel,” “for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed” (v. 28).
All Jacob’s life thus far has been spent struggling with men, especially Esau and Laban, in an attempt to prevail over them and win the blessing. Yet everything Jacob has attained has been received not because of his struggles but because the Lord has been with him. Now in this climactic encounter Jacob wrestles with God and not man, and he prevails not by overthrowing his opponent—an impossible task—but simply by clinging to him in his wounded state and refusing to let go. Jacob has finally realized that God—and God alone—is the one with whom he has needed to wrestle in order to receive his blessing.
That transformation in Jacob is marked by the new name, Israel (v. 28). The original etymology and meaning of this name are obscure, but in context the name is taken to indicate a shift from man to God as the opponent of Jacob’s striving. What is particularly striking about this name change is that his new name is not a variant or an extension of his previous name, as with Abram/Abraham and Sarai/Sarah, but rather a total transformation of his identity. His lifelong attempt to gain the promised blessing by ingenuity and striving rather than by grace must now be abandoned. However, perhaps because that sanctifying transformation is partial in all of us in this life, Jacob’s name change is still only partial. Unlike Abraham and Sarah, who, once given their new names, never revert to their old ones, Jacob is from now on both Jacob and Israel. The biblical text alternates between the two designations for the patriarch, not because it comes to us from two different sources, as scholars have sometimes argued, but because Jacob/Israel has two warring natures. God’s transforming work is established in principle in this man’s life, as the new name declares, but it will take a lifetime for that principle to work itself out in fullness. As long as “Israel” lives here on earth, part of him will still always be “Jacob.”
It is significant that the crucial encounter with God climaxes at daybreak, just as the encounter at Bethel began at sunset. The intervening period, while Jacob has been out of the Land of Promise, has been one long night. God has been with Jacob to protect and bless him, but now he will be with Jacob in a new way as the dawn breaks on his renewed sojourn in the land. A new day is quite literally dawning for Jacob—and in him for all humanity.
Jacob obtains what he had sought from this encounter, as he sees God face to face and receives God’s blessing. Yet in this instance meeting with God leads not to peace and healing for Jacob but rather to an enduring, painful crippling of his hip. Jacob will forever bear in his body the marks of this excruciating yet grace-filled encounter, in which to survive and to cling to the Lord was to triumph. Thereafter his descendants memorialize Jacob’s encounter by not eating the meat attached to the socket of the hip as a permanent reminder of this reality (v. 32).