These two chapters go together, telling us about Jacob’s journey back home to Canaan. Before that journey can be complete, there’s one little matter that has to be resolved. When Jacob left home two decades earlier, he left in fear for his life. His brother, Esau, had determined to kill him, angry because of how Jacob had tricked and deceived him on two occasions, taking away from Esau his birthright as well as his blessing (Gen 27:36). So now, as Jacob makes his way home, this is the one matter he is most concerned about, namely, the bitter anger and murderous plans of his brother, Esau. What can Jacob do about that? How can Jacob ensure that his brother will not kill him upon his return home? That’s what these two chapters are about.

In other words, these two chapters are about forgiveness and reconciliation, both on the individual level as well as on the corporate level. These chapters show us that in order for there to be true forgiveness and reconciliation, there has to be a radical change to our identity, both individually but also corporately. We learn this as we see Jacob seek forgiveness, secure forgiveness, and then experience forgiveness.

Forgiveness Sought

First, forgiveness sought. Jacob, having just escaped the wrath of his uncle Laban, now must face the wrath of his brother, Esau. Given what we’ve seen from Jacob so far in his life story, where he tricks and outwits everyone, we might be surprised to see here that he is genuinely seeking forgiveness. He wants to be reconciled to his brother rather than simply outmaneuvering him. Jacob could fight and defend himself against Esau, but instead he seeks Esau’s favor and forgiveness. Perhaps he’s getting tired of living by lies and deceit and is seeking a better way. Wouldn’t it be great if there could be peaceful relationships between people without any hint of manipulation, deceit, fraud, and trickery?

A Fearful Scene

As Jacob neared the Promised Land, verse 1 says that “the angels of God met him.” When Jacob had left home twenty years earlier, he had had a similar divine encounter which left him equally terrified and encouraged. These two verses in chapter 32 have the same effect. Jacob senses that God is with him (“This is God’s camp”), but this is both a comfort as well as a cause for concern. To be on holy ground, as it were, means also that danger lurks nearby. Like being at a campfire late at night out in the desert. The fire is a comfort, but you shudder at what lurks in the shadows just a little further out.

So, in verse 3 Jacob sends his own messengers out into the darkness to see what’s there, and they come back in verse 6 with this report: Esau is coming, accompanied by 400 men. That number resembles something of an initial strike force in other Old Testament stories (1 Sam 22:2; 25:13), so we are not surprised to read in verse 7 that “Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed.” Jacob makes plans in verses 7-8 to make sure that if Esau attacks at least some of his family can escape, but this whole scene has now been set up with fearful overtones. What will happen to Jacob if his brother attacks him?

A Present to Appease Esau

But Jacob is not simply going to hunker down and ready his defenses. He goes on the offensive. He goes on the attack. His weapon? A present.

And what a present! Count them up, in verses 14-15. He prepares to offer Esau 550 animals from his livestock. Jacob’s intentions are made clear in verse 20. Perhaps “I may appease him with the present that goes ahead of me, and afterward I shall see his face. Perhaps he will accept me.”

Verse 20 is an important verse in this narrative as indicated by the deliberate use of words here. Four times in this verse we find the Hebrew word paneh, “face.” The last occurrence, “perhaps he will accept me,” is a regular Hebrew idiom for forgiveness.[1] It seems, then, that Jacob is sincerely seeking reconciliation with his brother.

Jacob hopes he can “appease” Esau with his present. This can sound to us like a buy-off, hush money or some kind of settlement that keeps one from having to admit guilt while also keeping the victim off one’s back. Jacob is not interested in that. He seems to sincerely desire a restored relationship with Esau.

An Offering for Forgiveness

So, his present is virtuous and commendable. Even the way Jacob speaks to his brother through his messengers demonstrates the virtue of Jacob’s offering. He calls Esau his “lord” and refers to himself as Esau’s ‘‘servant.” Could his present be understood as if he is returning to Esau the blessing he had stolen from him?[2] At the very least we can see Jacob here restoring something of the benefits of the blessing he had stolen from Esau.[3]

The word for present in verses 13-21 is usually translated “offering.” It is what a subordinate brings to a superior to denote an “attitude of homage and submission.”[4] It is a regular word used throughout Leviticus and Numbers for the offerings that were to be brought to God. It is the word used to describe what both Cain and Abel brought to God in Genesis 4; here we see Jacob offering it to Esau, clearly in hopes that it will pacify any wrath that Esau still holds against his brother and prevent Esau from doing what Cain did to his brother, Abel.

This can all sound rather practical given the animosity that we, along with Jacob, fear Esau still holds against his brother. But the word appease in verse 20 is literally to cover the face by use of an offering and thereby to cause that person to be favorable toward you.[5] It is often translated “make atonement” and is quite an important word in the Bible. (This is the first occurrence of the term other than its rather ordinary sense “to cover” found in Genesis 6:14.) Using these “religious” words here seems to indicate that Jacob’s quest for peace with his brother is to be understood as just as much his quest to make peace with God.[6]

And that’s why, if Jacob is going to come face to face with Esau he has to come face to face with God.

Forgiveness Secured

The center of this episode in Jacob’s life in these two chapters is the mysterious account given in verses 24-32. The fearful scene continues as Jacob, left all alone at night, struggles with a man until daybreak. But when it’s all said and done, it appears that the forgiveness Jacob sought has now been secured, secured somehow through this mysterious all-night struggle.

The Significance of the Struggle

This story is often spiritualized to describe the act of prayer as “wrestling with God.” Is that what it means? The story is told as a quite physical entanglement. Jacob is there, all by himself, and then wham! Jacob must have initially thought this was Esau attacking him. But we come to learn with him that this is some kind of divine encounter. That makes it really strange and mysterious. What would you expect the outcome of that to be? How could we even explain what it means for someone to wrestle with God? Even after all these years and so much concentrated study of this story, Gordon Wenham says, “The nature of the experience remains mysterious, as all encounters with God must necessarily be.”[7]

We need to learn to be ok with that, but not because we just have to accept what the Bible says and leave our questions about the text at the door. Although there are so many questions that cannot be definitively answered, that’s partly because those answers are not the point. This is ancient Hebrew narrative, and it is a distraction to try to read into all the elements of the story some particular meaning or significance. What we need to ask is where the storyteller is directing our attention.

Here’s one important clue. We’ve already noted that this story is the center point of the larger story told in these two chapters. Well, the central part of this smaller story is the two name changes that take place in verses 27-30. The name changes are the point of the story, and they are the reason the story is told.[8]

Who Is Israel?

Here we see Jacob getting his name changed (by God) to Israel. This is incredibly significant. The Old Testament gives us the story of ancient Israel, and this is Israel’s naming story. So Jacob is not just the immediate ancestor to the ancient nation of Israel. In light of this story, he is the very embodiment of that ancient nation. Here we are told the answer to the question, “who is Israel?” And the answer is not simply, “the biological descendants of Jacob.” The answer is the one who has “striven with God and with men” and has “prevailed.”

We must remember that Israel is the nation through whom God has promised to bring salvation to the world. It is through Israel that all of creation will be rescued from death and destruction. It is with that in mind that we think of Israel prevailing as necessary to the hope for the world that the Bible offers. This is what this strange narrative in Jacob’s life means, even if we can’t satisfy all of our questions about what actually happened.

If you think the story is clear enough about what happened, you should know that the word wrestled is found in the OT only here, in verses 24-25. The word itself refers to some sort of physical engagement, some sort of entanglement with another person.[9] But in using this word, there is a deliberate wordplay: the word sounds similar to the name Jacob as well as the name of the place where the mysterious encounter takes place. This mysterious person “Jacobed” Jacob on the banks of the Jabbok.[10]

What was the outcome? This mysterious man “did not prevail against Jacob.” Indeed, he concedes that Jacob has “striven with God and with men and has prevailed,” and that’s why he changes his name to Israel. The name means “God fights,” but the story is not so much about this one mysterious encounter. It is clearly meant to be emblematic for the larger nation called by that name.

So here, in this new name, something rather important is being communicated. Whoever “Israel” may be—and that’s a hotly-debated topic throughout the Old Testament story and in New Testament perspective and all the way to the modern day—but to be “Israel” means to be “intertwined” with God himself. That’s terrifying, yes, but it should not be thought of as a struggle against God, as though he were an enemy. It may feel that way at times, but there’s more to this story. There’s another important name.

Face to Face with God

Since Jacob’s wrestling partner has changed his name, Jacob inquires as to the name of his partner in verse 29. But the mysterious person won’t say. His response, “Why is it that you ask my name?” might communicate to Jacob, “You know who I am. No need to ask.”

After all, once the mysterious person is gone (did he vanish?), Jacob names the place Peniel, “face of God.” He seems to have understood that he was intertwined with God in some way or another; he seems to have known this even during the struggle, because he refused to let go of his partner “unless you bless me” (v. 26). Going back a bit further, we see that Jacob had prayed for God to deliver him from what he feared was his brother’s murderous intentions, back in verses 9-12. In that prayer he appealed to God’s promise to him to “do you good and make your offspring as the sand of the sea” (v12). This story is not about Jacob wrestling with God in prayer, because Jacob has already done that. This story is about the answer to that prayer. Verse 29 says it plainly, “And there he blessed him.”

Jacob’s response to the whole thing is, first, wonder that he survived the whole ordeal. “I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.” That is the answer to his prayer: since “he has survived meeting God, he will survive his meeting with Esau.”[11]

But how will he prevail? Since his survival with Esau depends upon securing Esau’s forgiveness, his survival with God depended upon the same. Up to this point, he has prevailed largely by his own schemes. But in his struggle with God, Jacob’s tactics were useless. God merely “touched his hip socket” and put it out of joint, so that Jacob now walked with a limp. But Jacob prevailed by holding on to God, refusing to let his wrestling partner go without the blessing. And the narrator concludes this story by telling us that it was because of this story that the people of ancient Israel did not eat “the tendon attached to the socket of the hip” (NIV). There was no prohibition from doing so, but rather it had become something of a memorial and reminder of Israel’s elect status.[12]

This mysterious episode is one of those defining and life-changing moments in the life of Jacob, but even more for the nation that would take his new name. The whole thing takes place on the border of the Promised Land and shows that Israel will not prevail in their calling and election to be the mediators of God’s salvation for the nations apart from their own entanglement with God. Such a struggle they cannot win, but by holding on to God, they also cannot lose. The only way that salvation would come into the world would be by clinging to “the blessing, grace, and power of God” and not “by the craftiness, wisdom, power, or deceit of men.”[13]

Forgiveness Experienced

Now that Jacob has secured the blessing of forgiveness with God, it is time for the blessing of forgiveness to be experienced with Esau. We see it unfold in chapter 33.

Genuine Repentance

 “And Jacob lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, Esau was coming, and for hundred men with him.” (Gen 33:1). As Jacob layered his presents to Esau, so now he layers his family, dividing them by their mothers. But Jacob puts himself out in front. And he bowed seven times—showing respect and submission to his brother, “until he came near to” Esau.

Gordon Wenham suggests that Jacob is doing more than showing respect. “He is trying to undo the great act of deception whereby he cheated Esau of his blessing.”[14] If so, this is remarkable: though he had received the forgiveness of God, he is not, we might say, content with that.

Too many self-professed Christians are. Dallas Willard called this “Bar-Code Faith.”

The theology of Christian trinkets says there is something about the Christian that works like the bar code. Some ritual, some belief, or some association with a group affects God the way the bar code affects the scanner. Perhaps there has occurred a moment of mental assent to a creed, or an association entered into with a church. God ‘scans’ it, and forgiveness floods forth. An appropriate amount of righteousness is shifted from Christ’s account to our account in the bank of heaven, and all our debts are paid. We are, accordingly, ‘saved.’ Our guilt is erased. How could we not be Christians.[15]

I’m with Willard that the problem here is not that salvation is not that free (“grace is cheap from the point of view of those who need it”) but that the whole “bar-code” arrangement tends to underestimate “the intelligence and agility of our Father” who “will not be tricked or cheated.” We are the ones who are “in danger of missing the fullness of life offered to us.” The kind of salvation God is offering to us freely is not limited to what we might gain after death. God is eager to save us now, to offer us real help in the real world and with our real lives.[16]

Forgiveness Is What I Want

Is this what you really want? Or are you content with “bar-code Christianity”?

It is what Jacob wanted, and it is what he experienced in his reunification with his brother. The kind of forgiveness that is not less than our own moral standing with God but is about so much more. In this case, the salvation God is offering to Jacob is peace not just with God but also with other human beings like his brother Esau. The story of salvation is about that, too, and it is right for Christians to hope for (and aim for) that kind of experienced forgiveness and reconciliation with our neighbors.

Genesis 33 is such a heart-warming encounter of two brothers reconciled to each other. Gone are Jacob’s deceitful schemes.[17] Something had happened there on the bank of the Jabbock that brought different results to Jacob’s encounter with his brother the next morning. On that lonely night he “wrestled with a man,” the next day he was “embraced by his brother.” The two episodes are worth comparing, and worth pondering, especially in light of Jacob’s words in verse 10: “For I have seen your face, which is like seeing the face of God, and you have accepted me.” He has seen in the peace he has found with his brother a shadow of the peace he found with God the night before.

But “struggle” is what it took to get there.

Just like the True Israel, Jesus of Nazareth, who struggled with God alone in Gethsemane the night he was betrayed. A limp? The whole encounter left him sweating drops of blood, the result the next day left him dead on a cross.

That cross is what his faith family are marked by to this day. Because that cross is the means by which we prevail, with God and with our fellow man.

_____

[1] Robert Alter, Genesis: Translation and Commentary (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), 180.

[2] Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 16–50, Word Biblical Commentary 2 (Dallas: Word Books, 1994), 291.

[3] Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 11:27–50:26, The New American Commentary 1B (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2005), 553.

[4] R. Laird Harris, ed., Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (Chicago: Moody Press, 1980), 514.

[5] Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, ed. Johann Jakob Stamm, trans. M. E. J. Richardson (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1994), 494.

[6] Wenham, Genesis 16–50, 292.

[7] Wenham, Genesis 16–50, 295.

[8]  Wenham, Genesis 16–50, 294–95.

[9] Koehler and Baumgartner, HALOT, 9.

[10] Recall how Isaac’s name, which sounds like the verb “to laugh,” becomes something of a theme of his life in Gen 21:9; 26:8.

[11] Wenham, Genesis 16–50, 297.

[12]  Wenham, Genesis 16–50, 297-98.

[13] Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., “Narrative,” in Cracking Old Testament Codes: A Guide to Interpreting the Literary Genres of the Old Testament, ed. D. Brent Sandy and Ronald L. Giese, Jr. (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1995), 86.

[14] Wenham, Genesis 16–50, 298.

[15] Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1998), 37.

[16] Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, 38.

[17] I am with Mathews (Genesis 11:27–50:26, 573) who sees nothing sinister in Jacob’s decision not to go to Seir, as he suggests he will do in verse 14. “The text has been candid heretofore about deception and obfuscation by Jacob, and its silence here implies that Jacob’s action is not a violation of the peaceful intention agreed upon by the brothers.”