Genesis 32:23-33 Commentary

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The dark night of the soul is a concept made popular by a book with that title, written by St. John of the Cross in the 16th century.  It means something like a sense of soul weariness, helplessness, a persistent and stubborn dismay with self, with others and with God.  Although the concept is expressed more openly in ancient documents, its prevalence is no less in our world today.  People who’ve had it with easy answers, who are “deconstructing.” Maybe they feel that the God of Sunday School stories doesn’t match the God of their stories. When black and white blend into shades of grey.  When “why?” isn’t just a bored or curious question but bears the weight of disappointment and grief.

American novelist, Flannery O’Connor, wrote, “The experience of losing your faith, or of having lost it, is an experience that in the long run belongs to faith; or at least it can belong to faith…’Lord, I believe, help my unbelief,’ is the most natural and most human and most agonizing prayer in the Gospels, and I think it is the foundation prayer of faith.” Perhaps Ms. O’Connor would allow this as a friendly amendment: Jacob’s prayer “I will not let you go until you bless me” is another way of praying this same “foundation prayer of faith.”

Commentary

The Bible — the Old Testament in particular — is not a book filled with stories about functional families. If you are reading the narratives in Hebrew Scripture in search of parenting advice and healthy examples of marital bliss, well, you probably shouldn’t.  We do a disservice to Scripture and to the messy realities of people’s lives, both then and now, when we treat the Bible as a rerun of Leave It to Beaver. The bible is not a book about functional families. The Bible, chock full of the realities of dysfunctional people, is always the story of a functional God.

Jacob’s whole life has been clouded by competition with the twin brother who had jockeyed him out of position to be born first.  It should have been him. He should have been the first-born.  His mother hinted around it throughout his childhood.  And, in his youth, he hatched a plan to humiliate his brother and con him out of his first-born rights. Later, with his father on his deathbed, he outright stole the blessing intended for his brother.

But that was all years ago now. Jacob fled to Padam Aram. He worked with his Uncle Laban for many years, married not once but twice, fathered many children. There, Jacob prospered. He prospered so much that Uncle Laban’s sons became jealous. And work became fraught with grumbling, unspoken tension, silences that spoke volumes.  Then

God sends Jacob back home.  Back to the mess of broken promises, betrayal, decimated relationships.  God says go back and, more importantly, “I will be with you.”

Perhaps at first, Jacob’s steps were hurried, putting distance between himself and his resentful father-in-law.  But each step away, Jacob realizes, is also a step toward.  Toward his brother. Toward the guilt and uncertainty and fear.  He knows his brother could still be angry after all these years. He knows his brother has a right to be angry after all these years.

In the beginning of chapter 32, Jacob learns that Esau is headed their way with 400 men alongside him.  Jacob begins to pray.  He sends gifts ahead of his caravan to appease his brother but, it seems, he is still afraid.  When he is alone, in one of the most poignant personifications of prayer, Jacob wrestles a man until daybreak.

According to Terrance Fretheim, “With human beings such as Jacob, God commits to a genuine encounter, entering deeply into the struggle with Jacob with a kind of power that doesn’t simply overpower him.” It takes power, gracious power to stay in the struggle. As any parent may attest, overpowering is the easiest option most of the time. Hauling that tantruming toddler up to his room. “Because I said so!” And “As long as you live under my roof.” It takes grace to stay in the struggle when everything in us wants to shut it down. Wants it to be over.  But, without the struggle, relationships atrophy. Without the struggle, we stay underdeveloped and shallow in our souls.

God chooses depth over expediency. God uses divine power to engage, rather than disengage the relationship. John Calvin observes, “For we do not fight against God except by God’s own power and God’s own weapons. For God, having challenged us to this context, at this time, furnishes us with means of resistance, so that God both fights against us and for us.”

The Gospel is not the story of functional people, left to fend for themselves and thereby becoming heroic. The Bible is the story of a functional God, stays in the struggle with us. In this way, the story of Jacob is a lifeline for us.  The story of God who takes questions, doubts, fears and uncertainties seriously enough to engage us about them.  A god who cares enough about us to invest int eh process rather than demanding mindless obedience. This is the God of Jacob.

At the conclusion of this episode, God renames Jacob.  God gives Jacob (the trickster and deceiver) the new name Israel, meaning “the one who struggles with God.” And it is THIS name that belongs not only to Jacob but to every one of Jacob’s descendants after him. They are Israel. They are the ones who wrestle with God.

Even the New Testament authors refer to the church as “The Israel of God.” The people who struggle with God are the people of God.  We are identified not as the ones with all the answers, but as the ones who struggle with God.

This reality changes not just our relationship to God but — as in the story of Jacob and Esau’s reconciliation — our relationship to one another.  When we are the people who wrestle with God, we are no longer afraid of the person asking questions we don’t have the answers to.  When we are the people who wrestle with God, we enter into the questions of those who are brave enough to voice their doubts, fears and grief.  When we are the people who wrestle with God, we don’t expect perfection or certainty from one another. Or from ourselves. When we are the people who wrestle with God, we enter into the suffering of others, not because we can fix or solve but because the entering in, the struggle itself is the grace.