22 The same night he got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23 He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. 24 Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. 25 When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. 26 Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” 27 So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” 28 Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.” 29 Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. 30 So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” 31 The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.
In the mystical journey back to the true self we call home forces us to look deeply within in order to come to terms with who we are, where what we have done, and whom we have harmed.
Jakob is at the ford of the Jabbok, the archetypal point which he must cross over in order to come back home after being gone for many years. He must come home to himself and the acknowledgment of who he has been.
He wrestles at night with a mysterious being. “What is your name?” he is asked. “Jacob”, he must admit, which means “grasper”, or “swindler”, the name which was given to him because he grasped the heel of his twin brother Esau in the womb, but then later denied when he stole Esau’s blessing from their father. Now he must come to terms. He is Jacob, and always has been Jakob. He’s been a swindler by birth, and it’s how he got where he is.
But then, just at the moment when he admits that he is Jakob, the mysterious being he wrestles with tells him he will not longer be Jakob, but now he will be Israel, meaning “Wrestles with God”.
The night is long. The match severe. Jakob loses. But in losing, he also wins. He will now walk with a limp forever. The pain of the encounter with his own self leaves him wounded. It will be a reminder of where he has been and he will carry it forward as he crosses the river.
But he will cross the river. And he will come back home. And he will come back no longer a swindler but now a wrestler, no longer a clutching, grasping, lying, and conniving Jakob, but now a blessed Israel — a blessed, and also limping Israel.
NOTE- We are reading the whole Bible this year. Tomorrow’s Daily Lesson will come fro Genesis chapters 35 through 37.
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