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Here we have what I like to think of as a novel within the Torah about
the life of Jacob. I think of it as a novel because unlike most
ancient literature, the story of Jacob is a story of a character who
changes. When we first met Jacob, he was doing things like tricking
his brother Esau out of his birthright, ricking his blind father into
blessing him, running away from his understandably irritated brother
and proceeding to trick his uncle out of several hundred sheep. But
now it's years later, and Jacob is the wealthy father of eleven
children by several women, including two sisters who proved to be
pretty good at tricking him. As he's leaving his equally manipulative
uncle's house, he hears that his twin brother Esau--the one whose
inheritance he stole so many years ago-- is coming to meet him, along
with a personal security detail of four hundred men.
At first, Jacob handles this the way he's handled everything else in
his life-- by manipulating, dodging, and hedging his bets. First he
divides his entourage of family, servants and goats into two separate
camps, so that if one of the groups is attacked, he'll at least have
some children and goats left over. Next he calls in a favor from God,
asking God to remember the promise made to him a few chapters back
that he would let Jacob prosper. But this still isn't quite enough
insurance for him. Never one to avoid negotiating with terrorists,
Jacob arranges for a series of gifts to be sent to Esau. Finally he
sends his wife and children ahead across the river, and spends the
night alone.
Then something strange happens. As the Torah tells us, "a man wrestled
with Jacob until daybreak." A man. And then, we are told, "when the
man saw that Jacob was winning, he wrenched Jacob's hip at its socket
so that the socket of his hip was strained as he wrestled with him."
As we've already seen, Jacob isn't the type to take things lying down,
and even having his hip dislocated doesn't stop him from winning this
seemingly unprovoked fight. But somehow this mysterious opponent is
different. Once defeated, this man says to Jacob, "Let me go, because
dawn is breaking"--as though we were some sort of zombie who can't be
seen by the light of day. The Jacob we know, of course, isn't about to
let this guy go without getting something for himself out of the
transaction, so he tells the man that he won't release him unless the
man blesses him. But his opponent isn't so easy to manipulate. Instead
he asks Jacob his name, and unlike back when he tricked his blind
father, Jacob tells the truth. Then, instead of blessing him, the man
who injured him changes him, telling him, "Your name will no longer be
Jacob, but Israel"-- which means 'wrestles with God'--because you have
struggled with God and men, and succeeded." Jacob then asked the man
what his name is, but the man responds, maddeningly, "Why do you ask
me my name?" And then the man leaves.
Jacob understands that something important has happened, though he
doesn't yet know what. He names the place P'niel, or "the face of
God," meaning, as he puts it, "I have seen God face to face and my
life has been preserved." As Jacob limps off into the sunrise on his
damaged hip, we see something in him that we've never seen before:
humility. Then he sees his brother Esau.
Before his encounter with the mysterious man the night before, Jacob
probably would have had an armed entourage meet his brother, or have
avoided him somehow, or at least have let his wives and servants meet
him first. But the new, humbled, crippled Jacob bows to the ground
seven times at Esau's feet. Esau runs up to greet him, falls on his
neck to kiss him, and the two brothers weep. Esau then tells Jacob
that he doesn't want the gifts Jacob sent to bribe him. Jacob's answer
to him is quite revealing: he tells Esau to please accept his gifts,
because, as he puts it, "To see your face is to see the face of God."
Esau accepts the gifts, and toward the end of the torah portion, when
their father Isaac dies, the two brothers bury him together.
The most important question in this story, of course, is who is this
mysterious stranger who wrestles with Jacob? The Torah goes out of its
way not to tell us, of course. The most common explanation, of course,
is that Jacob was "wrestling with an angel." Personally I find this
hard to believe, because just a few chapters back, Jacob met a whole
slew of angels climbing up and down a ladder, and the text wasn't
afraid to call a spade a spade. This wrestler is clearly called a man,
and his power is no more magical than anyone else's. Another
possibility is that this wrestling match is a metaphor for Jacob
wrestling with his own conscience. It's an intriguing idea, but the
story is a bit too physical for that. I mean, I can't remember the
last time my conscience dislocated my hip. Which brings me to who I
think this mysterious man really is: I think it's Jacob's brother
Esau.
This is a physical reenactment of Jacob's first moments, when, as the
text told us, Jacob and Esau wrestled each other in their mother's
womb, and Jacob was born holding Esau's heel. Now Esau has his
opportunity to finish that first wrestling match, knowing all that
Jacob has done to wrong him since then, but also knowing how time and
life can change what matters most to us. Esau is like an alternative
version of Jacob, what Jacob might have been if he hadn't deceived his
father and his brother, if he'd been a little less smart, a little
less ambitious, a little more innocent. Esau comes by night almost
like Jacob tricked their blind father, so Jacob won't recognize him,
but Jacob does know who this man is. He names the place P'niel because
"I have seen God face to face." When he meets Esau, he tells him that
"To see your face is like seeing the face of God." While it might be
more exotic to wrestle with an angel, Jacob knows at that moment that
the way we see God on earth is by facing the people we've wronged, by
looking into their faces and knowing that we can change.