Biola University B.A. Biblical Studies – OTS300: Advanced Studies: Patriarchs – Fall 1981

Reading: Genesis 32: 22-32: The Wrestling at Peniel

by Joseph B. Bustillos

OTS300: Advanced Studies: Patriarchs

October 28, 1981

close up of a book in hebrew — Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

One of the basic interpretive problems with this section of scripture is determining its relationship to the story of Jacob’s encounter with his brother, Esau. It was the consensus of the commentaries that I read, however, that this story may serve as a type of forewarning to Jacob, a test before actually re-entering the Promised Land. Speiser entitles this section, “Encounters.”

Another difficulty is this section’s “undesirable” illustration of God physically combatting with a mere mortal and then having the mortal force his will upon the retreating God. A very confusing picture. The whole feel of the encounter is reminiscent of Abraham’s covenant encounter in chapter 15. It’s not a mere vision ..(i. e. , in his head) but it takes place in the plane of the physical/material universe. By the choppy, incomplete narrative we can see that words fail to depict the episode completely.

The verses (beginning actually with verse one) take us from Laban’s farewell to Jacob’s preparatory steps before meeting his brother then finally to Jacob’s encounter with YHWH.

Verse two introduces us to the aspect that some sort of divine activity is taking place (this is never completely elaborated upon in the text). Verse four on until verse twenty-two depict Jacob’s attempts to appease his brother(which climaxes in his encounter with YHWH and not Esau). Verses twenty-three and twenty-four, Jacob finally sends off his family. And then, verses twenty-five through thirty-three, we have Jacob’s unusual encounter with God. Speiser writes:

The chapter as a whole is given over to en counters of one kind or another: actual and anticipated, sublime and trifling. Iron ically enough, it is the incalculable thAt turns out to be real, while the carefully calculated never comes off. (pp.255-256).

Robert Davidson in the Cambridge Bible Commentary summarizes this section as follows:

There is no more strange or perplexing narrative that this in the whole of the Old Testament. The boldness of the language and the symbolism in the story is startling. It is not recounted as a dream or vision, but as an incident which happened one night. Jacob wrestled with lan unidentified “man” who turned out to be God, wrestled and lived to tell the tale. Gathered into the story are so many curious elements that we can only assume that here is a story which had taken many centuries to reach its present form, and which has assimilated material, some of it very primitive, which goes back long before the time of Jacob, (p.184).

Depending on ones willing ness to accept the hypothesis that the patriarchal narratives include “legend” will dictate the openness with which one entertains various explanations given for some of the more difficult aspects of this story. Regarding the nature of the unidentified man that wrestles with Jacob at the ford of Jabbok the Cambridge Bible Commentary says:

This may have its roots in stories, widespread in many cultures, of the river spirit who has to be placated or defeated before he will allow the traveller to cross. The unidentified man may originally have been the river spirit of the Jabbok.

And regarding his comment about the day Breaking:

the belief that spirits and ghosts who haunt the night are doomed to disappear before day break. “Let me go,” says the man, “for the day is breaking” verse 26). (both p.185).

The ICC notes regarding the explanation of Jacob’s new name, “Striver with God”:

This can hardly refer merely to the contests with Laban and Esau; it points rather to the existence of a fuller body of legend, in which Jacob figured as the hero of many combats, culminating in this successful struggle with deity, (pp.409-10).

A professor once warned us that as undergraduate students we should not expect nor be expected to resolve the “great questions of the faith.” This is simply because by definition these controversies do not easily bend into any given resolution. In this passage we have such a problem. We are left with either a “modernized”, Hebraized legend of a water spirit or an embarrassingly anthropomorphic YHWH. It must be confessed that both of the views cited are extreme views, but even in the “extremeness” the two essential points of the narrative come through: (1) God has kept His end of the deal up and has remained close to Jacob (ch.28), and (2) Jacob’s priority/ contention is with God and not Esau (or any other obstacle for that matter.