On Striving and Overcoming

(Gustav Dore, Jacob Wrestles with God)

Gen 32:24-28 


Have you ever felt utterly alone?  One man's moment of desperate loneliness became the signature moment in defnining the nation of Israel.


32:24 Genesis

יותר יעקוב לבדו - "And Yakov was left alone"


Yakov (Jacob) suddenly finds himself utterly alone.   I was sitting in shabbat services, ready to be called to the Torah to read this portion. Monday would have been Linda and my 40th anniversary.  Everything was stripped away, the wonderful worship music, friends, and family around me. I felt what Jacob must have felt. Alone.

Yakov struggled for position his whole life, the original Jewish overachiever(!). Even in the birth canal at the moment of birth, he reached his hand out of his mother's womb to try to be the firstborn but Esau came first. He struggled with Esau for the family inheritance and convinced Esau to give it to him in exchange for a bowl of soup. Yakov fled from his brother Esau under threat of murder to live with Laban his uncle, and struggled with Laban his daughter’s hand in marriage, paying for it with fourteen years of labor (and an extra wife!). He struggled to become wealthy under unfair conditions, fled from Laban under threat of violence in Laban’s rage and jealousy of his success despite all odds, and now, as this portion begins, he’s returning to try to reconcile with his brother, who has set out with a small army to meet him:  his brother who was plotting to kill him the last time they saw each other, 20 years before.


After all the gains his life of struggles has yielded to him, now he knows he might lose everything.  He might be facing a violent death.   He has two wives, eleven sons and such vast possessions that he sends a gift ahead to his brother of 550 sheep, goats, camels, and donkeys.   For all his strivings to succeed, to get on top, he is reduced to humility.   Earlier in this chapter he even coins a new word: "Katanti" ... "I am made small"

 קטנתי מבול החסדים ומכול האמת

Gen 32:10  I have been made small - I am unworthy of all your Kindness,

and your being true to me, God.  


Gen 32:24 Starts at 13th line

And now, all alone, this supernatural being with whom he wrestles gives him a great reward:   He renames him Yi sra el…   because his wrestling is over.   He can rest in God’s promise 


I don’t read in his story that Jacob had been that interested in being the man that carried God’s calling to his grandfather to be a blessing to the whole earth.   Now, he could lose everything.   And God says… your whole life you’ve been wrestling.   But NOW something new:  this supernatural "man" (an angel? God? The man, Yeshua?) puts three words together to form a new name:

  • Y’ ... future and past tense in one ***… “it has been and will be”) 
  • SAR ... “a prince, an overcomer” 
  • EL  ... “God”  


"Yisrael" Some have translated it as "You wrestled with God and prevailed". That is of course, true. But literally it is "You have been, you will be a Prince, an overcomer with God"


That is the core of the Judaism I want, of Messianic Judaism. A person struggling with the great issues of life, of life and death, of lonliness, success and failure, and overcoming in their encounter with God.


The angel celebrated his tenacity in pursuing that blessing for those twenty long years.   But what was missing was that humility in the moment of alone-ness, where Jacob says “I am so small, unworthy of your grace and for You being so true”    and transformed him from a mere follower (his name “Yaakov” means "I will follow" and "Akov" means “heel”) into this new name - YI SRA  EL - a nation of God's promise.''


Here is a lovely music video from this portion.

 https://youtu.be/PQZCAMznc3U




*** prophetic perfect tense is a literary technique used in the Bible that describes future events that are so certain to happen that they are referred to in the past tense as if they had already happened.

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