One of the ancient stories of most significance to me is that of Jacob’s “wrestling encounter” with a stranger, in the middle of the night (Genesis 32.22-32). It is one of those stories that lend themselves to multiple layers of interpretation, especially because after 2,500 years of debate, we still don’t know who Jacob wrestled that night.
From reading verse 28 (and 30, but to a lesser extent), we might get the impression that Jacob wrestled with God: “Your name won’t be Jacob any longer, but Israel, because you struggled with God and with men and won,” the mysterious figure says to Jacob. It remains unclear, however, to whom the term Elohim refers here – if to Jacob’s immediate adversary or to other encounters he’s had in his career. Besides, we read in the beginning of the story that this person is a ‘man’, the Hebrew for which distinguishes him from a divine figure.
Interpretatively, I think it would make sense to see Jacob’s adversary here as God; in my own life, it certainly has in many seasons. Understanding my own faith as a “wrestling match” with God was the thing that saved it when I began to suspect that existing in the world as a Christian had absolutely nothing to do with prosperity. Confronting my own beliefs felt like throwing aimless punches into the air, and I needed to know I had the permission to do that: that if my fists ever hit God’s face accidentally (or not), my anger and confusion would not disqualify me from the fight. I needed to know that God was loving enough to hear me shout without walking away on me; loving enough to stay in the ring until one of us bled to death.
Turns out, we both lived. My questions were okay and my doubt welcome; my faith became more complex and multi-layered, but also more embracing and accepting. Choosing to step further into it (rather than abandoning the whole thing) felt like being tackled from behind by a total stranger. Except the stranger was God – a God who, though I had put inside a tiny box, fought back bravely to expand my own boundaries.
And while I wouldn’t say the questioning has ceased or that my “deconstruction” has ended, the season has certainly changed. Now, it is no longer God I am wrestling. Rather, my adversaries are my own history, past, and life decisions.
Like Jacob, I struggled with God and won. And now, it is my own demons I face.
In my favorite commentary of the Hebrew Bible, scholar Robert Alter writes about Jacob’s encounter:
“The image of wrestling has been implicit throughout the Jacob story: in his grabbing Esau’s heel as he emerges from the womb, in his striving with Esau for birthright and blessing… Now, in this culminating moment of his life story, the characterizing image of wrestling is made explicit and literal. [It is] the embodiment of portentous antagonism in Jacob’s dark night of the soul… an externalization of all that Jacob has to wrestle with within himself. Jacob, whose name in Hebrew can be construed as ‘he who acts crookedly,’ is bent, permanently lamed, by his nameless adversary in order to be made straight before his reunion with Esau.” (121-2)
Whew… right?!
Jacob’s encounter happens almost as a prelude to a much-anticipated reunion between him and a brother he had tricked out of their father’s blessing (Gen 27.18-27, 41); it’s as if before he can look into his brother’s eyes, Jacob must first to come to terms with the choices he has made. Understandably, Jacob is fearing for his life as his brother marches north leading an army of 400. Jacob is afraid of what his brother might do, but even more so, Jacob is afraid of the very person he realizes he has become.
The Bible is uniquely good at presenting characters who are split unto themselves —who are very ambiguous, complex, and whose memories never go on the Israelite “Hall of Fame” as something pure and clean. The Bible challenges the mistaken, deadly idea that to be a person of faith is to live above or detached from the realm of human messiness.
When I read Jacob’s story now, I see my own fragmented personhood in his struggle to understand himself. I find it interesting that, before leaving Jacob, the mysterious man asks Jacob for his name, and probably not because he doesn’t already know, but so as to make Jacob say it aloud – for Jacob himself to hear it.
Does Jacob know who the real Jacob is, and can he accept it?
As a brown immigrant in predominantly white spaces, I’ve had to divest of parts of myself in order to survive, blending in just enough to become noticeable and acceptable by others, but in many instances, also becoming unrecognizable to my own truth. And I don’t believe the immigrant is the only one who does that; we are all, in one way or another, constantly shedding authentic bits of ourselves to survive and meet expectations that aren’t our own. Which is fine – most of us are simply trying to do the best we can with the hand we were dealt. But it doesn’t negate the fact that we inevitably create internal divisions that will, sooner or later, come back to haunt us in the form of ghosts.
Ghosts we’ll need to wrestle if we want to remember who we were in the first place.
And facing our demons will always leave us limping and transformed, for we cannot see the depths of our own existence and remain the same. Before we can cross the ford in search of redemption, like Jacob, we must first acknowledge and accept our own life and story.
We must embrace our scars – our “limp” – so we may learn how to walk on our own feet.