And he rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two maidservants, and his eleven sons, and passed over the ford of the Jabbok;
Jacob is about to meet Esau, the brother he had offended. He sends his whole household over the ford of the Jabbok and stays behind alone, on the bank where God will meet him.
Notice who crossed first and who crossed last:
He planned with real skill. But his faith was weak. And where was any generous, self-sacrificing love for his family? Everything bears the stamp of anxiety as well as cleverness, if not craft. This was his natural character. He was very much a man of God, yet God is not the one he keeps in view and depends on. He depends on his own human resources. Ill at ease, he sends over — I am sorry to say — himself last of all! What he valued most came latest. Jacob was not among the first! His flocks, herds and camels went first, wives and children next, Jacob last. He lined the groups up as a breakwater between the offended brother Esau and trembling Jacob.
There is a way of praying that still leaves us leaning on ourselves:
Nor will it do to make our prayers part of our management. We often feel very satisfied with ourselves when we add prayer to our arrangement. We feel the same when we have used every lawful means and then asked God to bless them. When this is the case, our prayers are worth about as much as our plans, because we are leaning on them instead of on God. God must truly bring us to the end of everything that self has anything to do with. Until then, He cannot show Himself. But we never reach the end of our plans until He has brought us to the end of ourselves.
The move that shows Jacob at his weakest is the move that puts him exactly where God wanted him:
All — even wives and sons — were sent over the brook at the ford Jabbok, and he was left alone, well to the rear. Not a very dignified or courageous way to act! Yet God was in all this. Now that he was alone, the moment had come for God to bring him face to face with Himself. It would give him an experience whose effect he would never lose. Up to this point his life had been mainly one of scheming against and wrestling with men. Now God, by His Messenger, was going to wrestle with him.
Now Jacob has nothing left to measure himself against but God:
This is a turning point in the history of this very remarkable man. Being left alone with God is the only true way to reach a right knowledge of ourselves and our ways. We can never get a true estimate of our nature and all it does until we have weighed it in the balance of the sanctuary. There we find out its real worth. It does not matter what we think about ourselves, or what others think about us. The great question is this: what does God think about us? We can hear the answer only when we are "left alone."
God does not deal with every believer this way:
"Jacob was left alone." God is wise, holy and loving in His dealings. Jacob was conscious that the Lord had blessed him, yet He must have Jacob discover where he was. No prosperity, no children could be any comfort to him if he did not have peace with God in practice. God has a controversy with the soul if it is not walking with Him. If I am walking up to the light I have, and not with a bad conscience, He has no controversy with me. You never hear of God wrestling with Abraham; he intercedes for others. This is God's dealing with a person who is not walking simply and practically by faith.
Who started the struggle that followed?
When Jacob was left alone, a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day — not Jacob with God, but God with Jacob. God wrestles with us: the flesh must be put to death. God can have no communion with the flesh.
- Alone by accident. Jacob sent flocks, servants, wives and children over the Jabbok as a breakwater against Esau. He came last — from fear, not courage.
- Alone by design. The fearful plan still served God's timing. Alone on the bank, Jacob had reached the moment God was waiting for.
- Alone is where self is measured. Away from everything, the only verdict left is God's verdict, and that is the one that counts.
- Alone because God had a controversy. God deals this way with a believer who is not walking simply by faith. He never wrestled with Abraham, who prayed for others.
- Alone with the stronger One. The struggle at the ford was God wrestling with Jacob, not Jacob wearing God down. The end of Jacob's own management was where God could show Himself.
and he took them and led them over the river, and led over what he had.
Genesis 32 finds Jacob on the night before he must face the brother he cheated. His answer to fear is organisation. Over the water go the droves of livestock, then the wives, children and servants, then everything else. The plan is careful, but it leaves Jacob himself on the near bank — and that is where God means to meet him.
The word behind "stream" names a particular kind of watercourse.
nachal, Genesis 32:23, and elsewhere — a mountain torrent, often dry in summer, and so often disappointing, as in Job 6:15. There are many such in Palestine. The same thing is called in the New Testament cheimarros, "winter flowing," in John 18:1. Its Eastern name is wady.
Jacob had already prayed. Then he spent the night arranging. One writer reads that restlessness as a sign of unbelief, not of faith.
Instead of remembering the promise and passing on in the quietness of faith, his soul, through unbelief, becomes deeply agitated. Instead of looking at God's host, he looks at Esau's host; he fears, and prays, and calculates, and settles everything according to man's best plan. Here was activity when all should have been stillness. And often it is unbelief that stirs up activity of spirit. There is such a thing as religious unbelief, praying unbelief. We have an instance of it here.
The order of the crossing shows where Jacob's confidence lay — and where he put himself in the line.
He is alarmed more than ever. He sets to work in his own way. He makes his plan and then he makes his prayer; but after all he is not at ease. He planned with considerable skill; his faith was feeble, and where was even generous self-sacrificing love for the family? It all bears the stamp of anxiety as well as cleverness, if not craft. This was his natural character; for though he was very much a man of God, still it is not God who is prominent to his eyes and leaned on, but his own human resources. Ill at ease, he sends over — I am sorry to say — himself last of all! His flocks, herds and camels went first, wives and children next, Jacob last. The bands in that order were meant to serve as a breakwater between the offended brother Esau and trembling Jacob.
The livestock sent ahead were a present meant to soften Esau. People carry that same instinct — buying peace with goods — into their dealings with God.
Jacob gave each driver in turn similar instructions, for he assumed that by this means he might soften any hostility in Esau (v. 20). This is the natural idea of human beings. They keep using this method in seeking any proper relationship with God, as though man could influence God by giving Him presents of things God created in the first place! But God is not looking for gifts from men. Rather, He desires their hearts.
Sending everything over left Jacob with nobody beside him. What looks like the low point of the story turns out to be its purpose.
He sent all — even wives and sons — over the brook at the ford of Jabbok, and he was left alone, well to the rear. Not a very dignified or courageous move! Yet God was in all this. Being left alone, the moment had come for him to meet God Himself face to face, so that he might have an experience whose effect he would never lose. Up to this point his life had mostly been one of scheming against men and wrestling with them. Now God, by His Messenger, was going to wrestle with him.
With the last of his possessions across the water, Jacob has nothing left to hide behind. And he is not alone with God only.
Jacob sends on his property, thinking the sight of defenceless wives and innocent children will move his brother's heart. And now we come to the crucial point in Jacob's history. We read, "And Jacob was left alone" — left alone with his guilty conscience, left alone with remorseful memories, left alone with God.
The night is usually told as Jacob's struggle. One writer turns that around, and marks where in Jacob's journey it falls.
Jacob must be alone with God. He was not yet at Bethel, but had a needed meeting in the dark meanwhile. It was not so much what men say — Jacob wrestling with God, true as that may be in its measure — but still more God wrestling with Jacob. Grace gave him perseverance and made him prevail, but in a way contrary to man's thoughts. It was not in any degree Jacob's goodness, wisdom and power, but God's faithful mercy.
- Fear. Jacob prays, then arranges. He sends livestock, servants, wives and children over the torrent ahead of him — activity where stillness was needed.
- Scheme. The gifts sent ahead are man's instinct to buy peace; God is not after presents but hearts.
- Order. The order exposes him: goods first, family next, Jacob himself last across the water.
- Alone. With everything on the far bank, he is left with his conscience, his memories, and God.
- Grace. The wrestling is God taking Jacob in hand. What carries him through is not his strength but God's faithful mercy.
And Jacob remained alone; and a man wrestled with him until the rising of the dawn.
Jacob has sent his family and everything he owns across the ford of the Jabbok. Tomorrow he must face the brother he cheated. Tonight a stranger takes hold of him in the dark. Who was wrestling with whom, and why did that night end in both a limp and a blessing?
His people, his flocks and his own careful plans have all gone on ahead. What is left behind is not an accident.
There is special force in the words, "Jacob was left alone." This is how it goes with everyone God has trained in His school. He brings them into the stillness and solitude of His own presence. There they look at themselves and their ways, and that is the only place where they can be seen truly. If Jacob had stayed among the bleating sheep and the lowing oxen, he could never have had the same calm, clear view of himself and his past.
The verse does not say Jacob wrestled with the man. It says a man wrestled with him — and commentators return to that word order again and again.
Many say this was Jacob wrestling with God to win a blessing by keeping at it. It was not. It was God wrestling with Jacob, to teach him that he is not as good and clever as he thinks he is. He was resisting God, and it took a mighty power to subdue him.
Read this way, the night is not a lesson in Jacob's persistence. It is a lesson in God's patience.
Taken as it stands, this passage gives no ground for the popular idea that it shows Jacob's power in prayer. Far from proving that, it proves how firmly he held on to the flesh and the things that belong to it. He held his "confidence in the flesh" so tightly that the struggle went on all night long... Instead of Jacob's patience and perseverance in prayer, we see God's patience with a man whose old self had to be crushed into the dust before God could make anything of him.
The account calls Him simply "a man," and that is how He first appeared to Jacob.
"A man wrestled with him" — that is the record, and no doubt at the start of this incident the unknown Stranger was to Jacob only a man. Who was Jacob to give way to another man? So it stirred him to fight back. The Stranger tried to break him down, and Jacob resisted until daybreak. Then the Stranger showed He was more than a man: one powerful touch crippled Jacob at his strongest point.
One writer settles what kind of night this was, and who the Stranger was.
The night at Jabbok was not a dream or a vision. It really happened. It is often said that Jacob wrestled with the Lord who came to him that night. It is the other way round: the Lord wrestled with Jacob. On that memorable night He appeared as Jacob's enemy and opponent. Jacob uses the same fleshly weapons he had used against God in the past; he meets Him in his own natural strength.
The touch that put his hip out of joint did not end the struggle. It changed it.
Jacob kept wrestling until the hollow of his thigh was touched and out of joint. He could then no longer wrestle, but he could cling, and he did... If we cling to someone, it implies that we trust his strength; if we wrestle, it shows we have confidence in our own. Are we clinging or wrestling? Weakness clings, strength wrestles.
The night has two halves, and they run in opposite directions.
What gave Jacob "power with God and with man" was the full sense of his own nothingness... First, Jacob's strength in the flesh, and God weakening him; then his weakness in the flesh, and God strengthening him. That is the great lesson of the scene. Jacob was content to go limping on his journey, since he had learned the secret of true strength.
Jacob got his blessing, but the Stranger would not tell him His name. One writer traces that back to how Jacob had been living.
If He is going to bless, He must give Jacob a lasting discovery of what he is, and Jacob carries it with him ever after. It was grace and mercy... He came to give blessing, but He does not reveal Himself; and that is the effect of not walking with God. He had been limping in his walk with God, and now God makes him limp in his body.
- Alone — the flocks, the family and Jacob's own plans crossed the brook first. God deals with a man where nothing else can distract or shield him.
- Wrestled — God is the one attacking, not Jacob. Nobody is talking Him into blessing. He is clearing away what blocks it.
- Crippled — the touch on the hip fell on the seat of Jacob's strength; God weakens before He strengthens.
- Clinging — when he could no longer wrestle, he could still hold on. Holding on admits that the strength is not ours.
- Blessed — Jacob left that night limping, and content to limp. The mark of his weakness became the proof of his new strength.
And when he saw that he did not prevail against him, he touched the joint of his thigh; and the joint of Jacob's thigh was dislocated as he wrestled with him.
Jacob is alone at night, waiting to face the brother he cheated, when a stranger takes hold of him. They struggle until dawn. The verse turns on one touch. That single moment ends the fight and marks Jacob for life.
The scene is often read as a picture of a determined man storming heaven. Commentators read the grammar the other way round. Who is holding whom changes the whole meaning.
"Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him." Notice, it was not Jacob wrestling with a man, but a man wrestling with Jacob. This scene is very commonly referred to as an instance of Jacob's power in prayer. That it is not this is clear from the simple wording of the passage. My wrestling with a man, and a man wrestling with me, present two totally different ideas to the mind. In the first case I want to gain something from him; in the second, he wants to gain something from me. Now, in Jacob's case, the divine object was to bring him to see what a poor, feeble, worthless creature he was, and when Jacob held out so stubbornly against God's dealing with him, God touched his hip socket and put it out of joint. The sentence of death must be written on the flesh. We must know the power of the cross before we can walk with God steadily and happily.
The verse says the man did not prevail against Jacob — a strange thing to say of God. One writer finds grace in it.
God, as a man, meets him and wrestles with him. He had been wrestling with him all his life, but now it was face to face. God stooped to say, "Let me go, for the day is breaking," and then He put it into Jacob's heart to say, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." It is the very thing God was waiting to hear... So here with Jacob: God wanted him to prevail so that He might bless him. This is the way His grace works. And He gives him a new name. We read that the lesser is blessed by the greater. The Greater here is the One who "did not prevail against him." Wonderful! The One who blesses is the one who did not prevail, and the poor man who as a prince had power with God and had prevailed is made lame for life.
Commentators name the wrestler differently. One says God met Jacob face to face as a man; another speaks of the angel.
The wrestler waits until dawn to use the one move that settles it. That delay is deliberate. Older translations call the hip socket "the hollow of his thigh."
Finally, because Jacob continued to struggle, the Lord simply "touched the hollow of his thigh," putting it out of joint (v. 25). He could have done this earlier, but He had given Jacob a chance to submit without any drastic action. Usually, though, we need some hard measures before we learn to truly submit to God.
The target chosen is not random. It is the exact place that decides a wrestling match.
At last the angel put forth a little more power, for he wrestled as man meets man, and crippled Jacob in the thigh. The thigh is a vulnerable point in the wrestler. When the thigh is out of joint, a man is not able to wrestle any more.
Once the hip goes, Jacob cannot fight — but he does not let go. One writer makes that shift the test of every believer.
It is not now God wrestling with Jacob, but Jacob clinging to God; and this is what it ought to be with all of us. If we cling to another, it implies that we trust in his strength; if we wrestle, it shows that we have confidence in our own. Are we clinging or wrestling? Weakness clings, strength wrestles.
The injury never heals. Jacob walks with a limp for the rest of his days.
He touches the hollow of Jacob's thigh. The Lord breaks him down. If He is to bless, He must give Jacob a lasting discovery of what he is, and Jacob carries it with him all along. It was grace and mercy. He was a limping Jacob all through, because he was limping in his walk with God... He had been limping morally, and God makes him limp in his body.
The same writer compares Jacob before the touch with Jacob after it.
It was his weakness that prevailed, not his strength... It was not the strong Jacob of verse 24, but the weak Jacob of verse 25, that prevailed.
- Direction. Read the sentence carefully: a man wrestles with Jacob, not Jacob with a man. God is the one seeking something here.
- Delay. The touch could have come at any hour. God gave Jacob a whole night to yield before taking the harder route.
- Touch. One touch on the hip socket ends a night of straining. The thigh is where a wrestler's strength lives.
- Cling. A man who cannot wrestle can still hold on. Wrestling trusts our strength; clinging trusts His.
- Limp. Jacob had been limping morally for years. Now he limps for all to see — the lasting mark that his weakness, not his strength, prevailed.
And he said, Let me go, for the dawn ariseth. And he said, I will not let thee go except thou bless me.
Jacob is alone at night, and a man wrestles with him until daybreak. A single touch has just thrown his hip out of joint. He speaks the words of this verse as a crippled man, and commentators read his demand in more than one way.
Jacob had spent his life arranging outcomes. One writer points to the exact moment his words changed.
This was a new era in the history of the supplanting, planning Jacob. Up to this point he had held on to his own ways and means. But now God brings him to say, "I will not let you go." Notice, reader, that Jacob did not speak like this until "the hollow of his thigh was touched." That simple fact is enough to settle the true meaning of the whole scene. God was wrestling with Jacob to bring him to this point.
"Let me go" sounds like a wish to escape. One writer reads it as an opening left for Jacob.
The Lord had made Jacob unfit to wrestle any more, but Jacob was still clinging to Him. The Lord told him, "Let me go, for the day has broken." He could have left at once. Instead He gave Jacob the chance to say what he did: "I will not let You go unless You bless me" (v. 26). At least Jacob's faith was real, though it was weak.
The scene changes direction at this verse. The grip is still there, but it now means the opposite of what it meant before.
It is not now God wrestling with Jacob, but Jacob clinging to God; and this is what it ought to be with all of us. If we cling to another, it implies that we trust in his strength; if we wrestle, it shows that we have confidence in our own. Are we clinging or wrestling? Weakness clings, strength wrestles. … It is one thing for God to lay hold of us, and quite another for us to lay hold of Him. Only a person who feels his own weakness knows how to do that.
Jacob asks his blessing from the very person who has just injured him. The writer turns that into an appeal to the reader.
He finds his joint is out, and he clings to the One who has crippled him. Friend! Cling to the mighty One. Cling to the One who brings you down and reduces you. It is blessing to cling to Him. It is sorrow to oppose Him.
The change in Jacob is not only in his body. One writer describes what now fills his mind.
It is no longer his own ability that fills Jacob's mind, but the resources of God. What a vast change! He now takes the place of a receiver instead of a planner. He draws his blessings from another, knowing he has nothing in himself to draw on.
Scripture looks back at this night later, and the picture is not one of muscle.
At the very time the sinew of his thigh was shrunk, God strengthened him to prevail with the angel. He gained the name that pledges the blessing of grace, and every victory, to the descendants of Abraham. "Yes, he had power over the angel, and prevailed: he wept, and made supplication to him." What! The man who cowered and wept for fear of Esau? That same man, on that very occasion, learns that grace is enough. He finds this strength made perfect in his weakness.
Jacob gets the blessing he asks for. He does not get everything he wants.
He says, "I will not let You go unless You bless me." It was right in its place. But it was not happy fellowship; it was forcing blessing out of God, as it were. He will not tell Jacob His name. Faith won the blessing, but God did not reveal Himself… He came to give blessing, but He does not reveal Himself. That is the effect of not walking with God.
Commentators differ over Jacob's tone here. Most hear faith holding on; one writer hears bargaining.
"He said, Let me go, for the day has broken": the most critical moment has arrived. Will Jacob answer to it? No! … Jacob dares to argue with the Lord, and to make terms with Him. At first he had made God's glory depend on his blessing, and now he would stake his blessing on his strength.
- Touched — Jacob speaks these words only after the touch that put his thigh out of joint. That order settles the meaning of the scene.
- Clinging — the grip changes meaning: wrestling trusts my strength, clinging trusts His. Weakness clings.
- Receiving — the planner stops planning and takes his blessing as a gift from another.
- Prevailing — Scripture describes the victory as weeping and pleading, strength made perfect in weakness.
- Limited — he leaves with the blessing and a new name, but God does not tell him His own name.
And he said to him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob.
The question comes at the end of a long night of struggle, and God asks for something He already knows — the name of the man clinging to Him. Everything that follows turns on the one word he answers.
God is not gathering information. He is drawing the truth out of Jacob's own mouth.
Now when Jacob clings, God says to him, "What is your name?" That was a very, very sore point with Jacob. The name Jacob means plunderer, cheat, double-dealer, intriguer — anything but what is decent and nice. A flush of shame, no doubt, spread over Jacob's face as he made his confession. What did he say? One word, only one: "JACOB." It was enough. Scripture says, "And He blessed him there." The place of blessing is the low place of confession.
To say "Jacob" was to admit a whole life, not just give a name.
Jacob's natural character was thoroughly unlovely. His name itself expressed what he was — "a supplanter." He began his life by acting out this trait. Until he was completely crushed, as in these verses, he lived by pure bargain-making. On leaving his father's house he makes a bargain with God.
Jacob answers this question only after his thigh has been put out of joint. The change in his body changed the way he held on to God.
Jacob kept wrestling until the hollow of his thigh was touched and out of joint. He could no longer wrestle, but he could cling, and he did. It is no longer God wrestling with Jacob, but Jacob clinging to God; and this is what it ought to be with all of us. If we cling to another, it implies that we trust in his strength; if we wrestle, it shows that we have confidence in our own. Are we clinging or wrestling? Weakness clings, strength wrestles.
The dislocated thigh and the spoken name teach different things, and the blessing waits for both.
There must be the fullest confession if we want the blessing. If God is not to hold anything back from us, we must keep nothing back from Him. He confessed he was Jacob. He confessed, in effect, "I am the supplanter." Here he learns two lessons, and we must learn them too: his weakness and his sinfulness. His weakness was shown by his thigh out of joint, and his sinfulness in that he was a supplanter. And now that these two lessons have been learnt, God can come in and say to him, "Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel."
The answer he gives is the last word of the old life, and the reply he receives is the first word of the new. (The older translation the writers quote renders verse 28 "as a prince you have power with God"; the ESV has "you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.")
And now the nameless man says to the helpless cripple, "What is your name?" And he said, "Jacob," which means a supplanter — a sorry name, that: supplanter! What is our common name? Sinner! That is my name, in nature. Now hear the gospel of that moment: "Your name shall no longer be called Jacob (supplanter), but Israel (a prince of God)." You are a prince, says God to him. You have lost your own strength and your old name, and now you are clinging to Me, and you are strong.
Jacob owns what he is and receives a new name. When he asks the same question back, he gets no answer.
God calls Jacob to speak out his name, to own that his name is "Jacob," or supplanter. Yet he still receives no revelation of the name of the One who had been wrestling with him and bringing him down into the dust... The Lord refuses to tell His name, though He had drawn out from Jacob the truth about himself, and He blesses him accordingly. How often this is the case among God's family! Self is uncovered in all its moral ugliness. Yet in practice we fail to lay hold of what God is, though He has come so very close to us, and blessed us too in connection with our discovery of ourselves.
One writer contrasts this night with a later meeting, where God gives everything of Himself unasked.
It is all coming from God — God speaking freely and fully, not His saying, "What is your name?"... He is now taking it into His own hands and giving it of Himself. It is not Jacob wrestling for the blessing; and he does not even have to ask God His name. He says, "I am God Almighty."
- Name — "Jacob" meant supplanter, and it fit him. God asks for the word so Jacob says out loud what he is.
- Weakness — the question comes after his thigh is out of joint. Weakness clings, strength wrestles.
- Confession — he owns two things at once, his weakness and his sinfulness. The blessing waits for both.
- Exchange — he loses his old strength and his old name together, and God gives him Israel in their place.
- Limit — he learns his own name, but God withholds His own. Being blessed and knowing God are not the same thing. God reveals Himself later, of His own accord.
And he said, Thy name shall not henceforth be called Jacob, but Israel; for thou hast wrestled with God, and with men, and hast prevailed.
Genesis 32 ends a long night by a river, where a man wrestles Jacob to the ground and leaves him limping. Jacob had schemed for blessing all his life, and now God gives him a new name and tells him he has prevailed — the question is how.
The scene is often read as Jacob fighting to get something out of God. Commentators read it the other way round: God came to break Jacob's trust in his own strength.
It is worth noting, though others have often noticed it, that Jacob's wrestling with the man is not to his honour. It was in fact the man, or God Himself, who wrestled with him. There was still a good deal in him that God had a controversy with, for Jacob's good, and not without his humiliation. In short, God was dealing with His servant. He was putting down his dependence on his own strength, devices and resources in every possible way. So, as the symbol of this, God touched the known sign of man's strength, and it shrank.
The new name comes only after Jacob answers the question "What is your name?" The order matters.
It was when he clung to the One who had defeated him, and admitted that his name was Jacob — meaning Supplanter — that God changed his name to Israel, meaning Prince of God. He was told that he had power not only with men but with God, and that he had prevailed. By changing his name God claimed Jacob as belonging now to Him.
The name he confessed was an accurate summary of his past. The name he received described nothing he had produced.
Take the history of Jacob. Without going into details, how well he deserved his name! Jacob — meaning the schemer, the supplanter, the cheat, the robber of his brother's birthright, the man who outwitted Laban over the cattle — and yet, out of such material, God could produce an Israel, "a prince … power with God and with men."
The verse joins two things: power with God and power with men. Older translations render it "as a prince you have power with God and with men," and writers ask where such power comes from.
And is not what follows interesting? He adds, "You have power with God and with men." You can have no power — divine power — except as you get it from God. Natural power — what use is that? It is a feeble, worthless thing. But you have no divine power with man unless you have power with God. And this is exactly the point for us. Look at the difficulties that trouble us on every side. Why can't we meet them? It is because we have no power with God. And how do I get power with God? It is when I am a poor crippled thing lying at His feet.
"Prevailed" cannot mean Jacob overpowered God. The moment God spoke the word explains it.
God said of Jacob that he would be named Israel because he had "striven with God and with men, and have prevailed." That does not mean he had defeated God in wrestling. He prevailed only when he was crippled, and so clung to the Lord in dependence. This dependence on God would enable him to prevail with men too. The same will prove true in the future day for the nation Israel. And it proves true for every believer today whom God has brought low to that place of clinging to Him in dependence.
Jacob asks God for His name and does not get it. Writers read that refusal as a real limit on what this night achieved.
Jacob is made to feel his weakness; he limps for the rest of his life. How many people go on limping all their days! In this way they keep a reminder that the flesh ought to have been humbled — and a reminder of the path of victory too. … But God did not reveal His name to Jacob, though he asked after it. He was not yet allowed the communion in the revelation of El Shaddai that he later enjoyed. There was faith, but not fellowship; the blessing of God, but His name withheld.
The new name did not make Jacob a new man overnight. The chapters after Peniel, the place where God met him, show it plainly.
At Peniel God meets him (His face hidden) to make him learn the strength that is perfected only in weakness. With his thigh out of joint he prevails and is blessed. The secret of strength is learned, and yet, strange as it may seem, the power he has with God he cannot yet find before man. He meets Esau with cringing servility… No part of his history is so dark and shameful as the part that follows this scene — and the words spoken in it are God's own: "as a prince he has power with God and with men, and prevails."
- God begins. Jacob did not start the wrestling. God came to end a man's reliance on his own strength, devices and resources.
- Weakness qualifies. The hip was touched, and only then could Jacob prevail — power with God is found "lying at His feet," crippled.
- Confession unlocks. He had to say "Jacob," the supplanter, before he could be called Israel. By changing the name, God claimed the man as His own.
- The reach widens. Power with God comes first; power with men follows from it, and never the other way round.
- The night was not the dawn. God blessed him but kept His own name back — faith without fellowship. The dark chapters that follow show a lesson learned long before it was lived.
And Jacob asked and said, Tell [me], I pray thee, thy name. And he said, How is it that thou askest after my name? And he blessed him there.
All night a stranger has wrestled Jacob and given him a new name. Now Jacob asks who the stranger is, and gets no name — only a question, and then the blessing he had chased since his youth.
One writer names the wrestler, and finds the same question asked again later in Scripture:
No doubt the mysterious wrestler was Christ — Jehovah. He would not tell His name. In those early days the system of Judaism, with its pictures of what was coming, had not yet been set up — let alone Christianity, where those pictures are fulfilled. Yet He still blessed Jacob. A little later, an angel foretold the birth of Samson to Manoah and his wife. Manoah asked the angel, "What is your name?" The angel replied, "Why do you ask my name, seeing it is secret" — or, as the margin of our Bible reads, "seeing it is wonderful." The truth comes out more fully there than in Genesis. "Wonderful" is just the word for Christ.
Older Bibles read "secret" in that answer to Manoah, with "wonderful" only in the margin. The ESV puts "wonderful" straight into the text.
Elsewhere Scripture calls this wrestler an angel. One writer shows what Jacob himself called Him:
Do you not know that Hosea says Jacob wrestled with the angel and prevailed? Yet Jacob called the place Peniel, because he had seen God face to face. And God had called his name Israel, a prince with God, because he had wrestled with God and with man and had prevailed.
Jacob comes away with a new name, a limp, and an unanswered question:
God makes Jacob feel his weakness; he limps all his life… As a prince he learns that he has power with God and with men, and had prevailed. His name was to be no more Jacob, the supplanter, but Israel, a prince of God. But God did not reveal His name to Jacob, though he asked after it. He did not yet have the fellowship he enjoyed later, when God made Himself known as El Shaddai. There was faith, but not fellowship; the blessing of God, but His name withheld.
The meeting began in the dark, and the visitor was gone by daylight:
God had indeed met Jacob, but He met him by night and not by day. When the day broke He had disappeared. In the same way, He blessed him in the end, yet He refused to tell His name at Jacob's request. Unknown He had come and unknown He departed.
The silence is not a refusal forever. It has to do with where Jacob was standing:
Jacob wanted to know the name of his opponent in the wrestling. The only answer he gets is a question: "Why is it that you ask my name?" Jacob would not learn that name properly until he was in the place of God's name, that is, Bethel, "the house of God." It is only in God's way that we really know God Himself. Jacob had begun the trip back to Bethel, but he was not there. Yet the Lord blessed him where he was.
Jacob had gone after this blessing before, and by the wrong route:
It was a case of seeking a right thing in a wrong way. He did not get the blessing then. Later he did get it from his father, but he only got it from God when he was afterwards brought face to face with Him.
The turning point was not harder effort but the end of it:
Then at once Jacob's attitude changed. Wrestling was now impossible for him, so instead he clung to his Conqueror. He stopped striving and took to trusting. He realised that the One who had overcome him had done so for his blessing, and that he was standing in the presence of God. The Stranger did not reveal His Name, but He gave Jacob the blessing he had wanted since his youth, then and there.
Commentators differ on how much Jacob understood that night. One writer reads the blessing itself as God showing Jacob who He was:
In blessing Jacob, the Lord shows Jacob who He was. Jacob himself says, "I have seen God face to face." What a wonderful secret for Jacob to carry with him through life! He had wanted to know the Name of the One who wrestled with him, and discovered that it was the Lord Himself.
- Weakness — Jacob stops wrestling only when his strength is gone; the limp is what makes clinging possible.
- Clinging — the blessing comes to the man who trusts his Conqueror, not to the man who outsmarts Him.
- Withheld — God gives the new name but keeps back His own; blessing comes without full fellowship.
- Bethel — the name waits for God's house, because we know God in God's way, not on demand.
- There — God blesses Jacob where he is, short of Bethel, and Jacob walks away knowing he has seen God face to face.
And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel -- For I have seen God face to face, and my life has been preserved.
Jacob has just come through a night of wrestling with a stranger. Now he names the place. The name says who he believes he was fighting. The reason he gives says he is amazed to be alive.
Jacob had once called the house of God a dreadful place. One writer reads the new name as his own summary of the night, and of how it ended:
By naming the place Peniel — "The face of God" — Jacob showed how deeply he felt that God had brought him face to face with Himself. The outcome was that he was preserved, not destroyed. Here was good reason for him to change his earlier thought that the house of God and the gate of heaven was a "dreadful" place.
Jacob says he saw God. Commentators place this among the Old Testament appearances where God showed Himself under a covering:
In earlier days the Son of God showed Himself, sometimes in veiled glory, sometimes in unveiled glory. To Abraham at the tent door, to Jacob at Peniel, to Joshua at the walls of Jericho, to Gideon and to Manoah, He came veiled. Faith, with more or less strength, through the Spirit, took the covering away and reached the glory underneath.
Jacob's shock is not that he met God, but that meeting God did not finish him. The writers quote the older wording, "my life is preserved"; the ESV reads "my life has been delivered." One writer turns that on every reader:
Jacob — the sinner — had seen God face to face, the One who cannot look on sin, and yet his life was preserved. Jacob is not the only person who must meet God. Every single one of you must meet God one day, sooner or later.
Two writers hear Jacob's words as thin rather than triumphant. Set beside what God told Abraham, his report is bare:
Even after God wrestled with him and enabled him to wrestle with God for His blessing, it was still far short of God's mind. How poor that he could say no more than "I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved!" God "talked with" His friend Abraham. He revealed His Name as the Almighty. He promised by covenant to make him the father of many nations, with things still to come from Him. He told him what He was going to do to the guilty cities of the plain, and so drew out his pleading for righteous Lot.
The proof, another writer says, is the fear that still gripped Jacob when he met his brother:
How often we misread the meaning of something that has been (as Peniel was to Jacob) of the greatest real importance to our souls! If he had truly seen God "face to face," how could he have added, as the wonderful thing, "and my life is preserved"? Everyone who has seen God's face has found in it deliverance from self-occupation and from fear — the fear that controlled Jacob when he met his brother.
The night left Jacob with a hip out of joint. One writer calls that a bargain:
Jacob wrestled with the angel, and the socket of his hip was put out of joint. This was sad. But God turned it to good, for there he saw God's face, and there the Lord blessed him. Who would not be willing to have a bone put out of joint, if it meant seeing God?
Another writer finds a Peniel wherever a believer comes to judge himself truly before God:
Nothing gives the failing, weak believer such confidence in the faithfulness and grace of God as coming to a true judgment of self in God's presence. Here the soul reaches its Peniel and can say, "I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved." After that, no failure can completely discourage the one who has been through it.
Jacob's word was "preserved" — he survived. One writer sets Christian ground higher:
These were precious combinations in Jacob's experience. They mean still more to us who remember the deeper truth of death at the cross. There we count "the old man crucified," and we know in reality that we are "alive to God through Jesus Christ" (not that life is preserved). And we see God face to face in our risen and ascended Lord: "For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." This is our Penuel.
- Face — Peniel means "the face of God"; Jacob named a place after the One who had just crippled and blessed him.
- Veiled — God met him under a covering. Faith had to see through it, as at other Old Testament appearances.
- Preserved — the wonder is the survival. A sinner met the God who cannot look on sin, and lived.
- Poor — writers judge his words thin. He won a blessing, far less than God gave Abraham, and he still met his brother in fear.
- Ours — a hip out of joint was a small price for a sight of God. What Jacob glimpsed in the dark now shines in the face of Jesus Christ.
And as he passed over Peniel, the sun rose upon him; and he limped upon his hip.
Jacob's long night by the Jabbok ends here: he walks away with a new name, a permanent injury, and the sun on his face. Daybreak and a limp arrive together here. Commentators see in that pairing a pattern for the believer's life.
One writer sets this sunrise beside the sunset that opened Jacob's journey, when he left Beersheba.
As he passed over Peniel, we read that "the sun rose upon him." This stands in designed contrast to Genesis 28:11, when he had left Beersheba and "the sun had set." The night of darkness in our lives passes only when the flesh has been crippled (or judged) and we learn to cling only to the Lord. The sun (a picture of the Lord Jesus) rises on our vision in a living, practical way. But Jacob remains crippled.
Jacob does not grow strong and then step into the light. He steps into it already weakened.
It is a good thing if we are weakened in our natural thoughts and desires, and brought into the shining of the light of Christ from heaven! Jacob limps out, a weakened man in himself, but he is in the shining of Christ.
The wrestling ended, but the injury stayed, and one writer reads God's intention in that.
From then on Jacob limped on his thigh. God wanted him to learn this lesson for good: His strength shows itself in human weakness. So the sun rose on his limping as he passed Penuel.
Another writer presses the timing: it was not only in the dark that Jacob felt it.
When the sun rises Jacob still limps on his thigh. That is, the night is past, the darkness is over, the wrestling is ended. This point is most important. He did not only limp while the wrestling was going on. When it was all over, and the day was at its height, Jacob knew he was a crippled man.
Jacob still had to face Esau, and now he would face him unable to run or fight.
We must always keep in the place of weakness, for it is the place of power... Jacob had gained the victory through his dislocated thigh. He limped on his thigh; still, he had prevailed. "The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong." He had to meet Esau now with a shrunken sinew. But it taught him not to trust in his own natural strength, but in the One who had weakened him and made him strong.
The limp became a family likeness, not a disgrace. One writer links it to Paul's words about bearing marks in his body.
The Israel of God have always carried weakness in themselves, like Jacob limping along, with the sentence of death written in their flesh. So the apostle goes on to say: "From now on let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus." So Jacob too bore on his body the marks of the Lord Jesus. He was not at all ashamed of them. They were the marks of Jacob's weakness, but they were also the marks of Israel's strength.
This weakness is what Scripture later remembers of him.
This limping of his is the only instance of his faith that Hebrews mentions. It records the man's feebleness: "He worshipped, leaning on the top of his staff."
The writer quotes an older translation of Hebrews 11:21.
The place name carries its own meaning, and one writer reads Jacob's daybreak as a picture of his descendants' future.
Jacob wrestled with the unnamed One until daybreak at Peniel, which means "before the face of God." There he received the name Israel, "a prince of God." Weakened, yet he prevailed, and the sun rose upon him as a prince of God. Jacob's night of wrestling pictured the nation's history in advance... Like Jacob, they will come out of their long night of wrestling, and the sun will rise upon them. Their Messiah, Christ, will give them light. He will arise as the Sun of Righteousness, gladdening them with His healing and health-giving beams.
- Night — Jacob's journey began at sunset when he left Beersheba; here God ends the night, but only after crippling the flesh.
- Wound — the hip does not heal at daybreak. The limp stays so Jacob learns for good that God's strength shows in human weakness.
- Morning — the sun rises on a weakened man, and the same sunrise waits for Israel, when Christ rises for them as the Sun of Righteousness.
- Power — he faces Esau with a shrunken sinew, leaning on the One who weakened him. The place of weakness is the place of power.
- Mark — the limp is the family likeness of God's people. It is also the one thing Hebrews recalls of Jacob's faith: a man worshipping, leaning on his staff.
Therefore the children of Israel do not eat of the sinew that is over the joint of the thigh, to this day; because he touched the joint of Jacob's thigh -- the sinew.
This verse explains a food custom: Israel will not eat one sinew from the thigh. The custom goes back to the night a man wrestled with Jacob and left his hip out of joint — and it asks why a whole nation would keep one man's injury in memory.
Jacob's own strength was what stood in the way. So God touched the hip socket — "the hollow of the thigh" in older wording.
He can do it in many ways. He can do it through those close to us. He can do it by sorrow. He can do it by bereavement. He can do it by sickness. But He will do it. And in this second time alone, Jacob is blessed as the Israel of God — as a crippled man. He touches the hollow of his thigh, and it shrinks. Oh, the hollow of that thigh! It is the energy of the man, it is the strength of the man, that hinders. When that is gone, He gives him the blessing as the Israel of God.
The story says a man wrestled with Jacob, not Jacob with a man. One writer shows how much hangs on that order.
Note, it was not Jacob wrestling with a man, but a man wrestling with Jacob. People often point to this scene as an example of Jacob's power in prayer. The simple wording of the passage shows that it is not. My wrestling with a man, and a man wrestling with me, are two completely different ideas. In the first case I want to gain something from him; in the second, he wants to gain something from me. Now in Jacob's case God's object was to bring him to see what a poor, feeble, worthless creature he was. Jacob held out so stubbornly against God's dealing with him that "he touched his hip socket, and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him." Only when he was left alone did Jacob see how helpless he was in himself. Then, with the seat of his strength touched, he learned to say, "I will not let you go."
The limp was for life. One writer wishes Israel had read what it meant.
From then on Jacob limped on his thigh. God wanted him to learn for good the lesson of His strength shown in human weakness. So the sun rose on his limping as he passed Penuel. And that is why the people of Israel do not eat the sinew that shrank, on the hollow of the thigh, to this day. If only they would read its meaning in the light! Instead they try to establish their own righteousness and refuse to submit to His righteousness. And Jews are not the only ones who need to learn this great truth.
Israel's children keep the custom because they identify with the man it happened to. One writer turns that into a question for the reader.
They remember the day of his wrestling, and they identify with him as "Israel." So they do not eat the sinew that shrank, on the hollow of the thigh, "to this day." Do we keep up this refusal of the flesh as they did?... The Spirit says of us, "Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires." (Galatians 5:24.) Neither Israel nor we eat the sinew that shrank.
Jacob still had to meet Esau, and now with a damaged hip. One writer calls that weakness the place of power.
We must always stay in the place of weakness, for it is the place of power... Jacob had gained the victory through his disjointed thigh. He limped on his thigh; yet he had prevailed. "The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong." He had to meet Esau now with a shrunken sinew. But it taught him to stop trusting his own natural strength, and to trust the One who had weakened him and made him strong.
The limp did not deal with what was wrong inside Jacob. One writer lines up the ways God has dealt with the flesh, and points past them all.
Jacob might "limp on his thigh" all the days of his life. Paul might come back from paradise with "a thorn in the flesh," a messenger of Satan to harass him, so that he would not become conceited. But the flesh in each was flesh still. Thank God, at the cross of Christ God took far more severe and final measures than the sinew, the law, the sifting of Peter, or the thorn. There He truly set us free from the power of the flesh.
- Touched. God went for the hip socket — the seat of Jacob's own energy. That strength stood in the way of the blessing.
- Crippled. Jacob limped for life. God wanted the lesson of His strength in human weakness to last.
- Clinging. He met Esau with a shrunken sinew and prevailed, because he now leaned on the One who had weakened him.
- Commemorated. Israel refuses that one sinew, identifying with Jacob's night. The custom asks us whether we still refuse the flesh.
- Cross. The limp taught Jacob but did not cure him. Writers point past the sinew, the law and the thorn to the cross, where the real deliverance came.