Genesis 32: Struggle with God

Key Verse
28 Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.”
 
Meditation
Struggling in prayer transforms Jesus' followers.
 
Jacob entered the world struggling (Genesis 25:26), grasping his brother’s heel. In today’s reading, Jacob struggles again, this time with God. Before reconciling with his brother Esau, Jacob must wrestle with the Lord. 
 
God’s presence frames Jacob’s preparation. Angels meet Jacob on his journey home (vv. 1-2), and later God Himself confronts him at the Jabbok (vv. 22-32). Jacob is “afraid and distressed” (v. 7). True to form, Jacob strategizes (vv. 7-8) by sending gifts ahead to appease Esau (vv. 13-21). Jacob’s plans are careful, but they do not quiet his heart.
 
Finally, for the first time recorded in his story, Jacob prays (vv. 9-12). It is his longest recorded prayer in Genesis and illustrates how fear finally drives Jacob to dependence.

Left alone that night, Jacob wrestles with a mysterious man until daybreak. With a touch, God wounds his hip. Jacob is finally determined to grasp God: “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” In weakness, Jacob finds strength.
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Jacob’s name is changed to Israel, meaning “God strives” (v. 24). No longer defined by his own grasping, Jacob is now defined by God’s gracious grip on him. Christians can be sure of this reality, too, not because of our own struggling but because God struggled in Jesus’ work. 

Jesus wrestled in prayer in Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36-46), emerging with wounds far deeper than Jacob’s limp. Jesus dies as a sacrifice so believers can be transformed by His grace, forgiven of their past, and free to wrestle with God in prayer.
 
Today’s Reading
​Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him. 2 And when Jacob saw them he said, “This is God’s camp!” So he called the name of that place Mahanaim. 

3 And Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau his brother in the land of Seir, the country of Edom, 4 instructing them, “Thus you shall say to my lord Esau: Thus says your servant Jacob, ‘I have sojourned with Laban and stayed until now. 5 I have oxen, donkeys, flocks, male servants, and female servants. I have sent to tell my lord, in order that I may find favor in your sight.’ ” 
 
6 And the messengers returned to Jacob, saying, “We came to your brother Esau, and he is coming to meet you, and there are four hundred men with him.” 7 Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed. He divided the people who were with him, and the flocks and herds and camels, into two camps, 8 thinking, “If Esau comes to the one camp and attacks it, then the camp that is left will escape.” 
 
9 And Jacob said, “O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O Lord who said to me, ‘Return to your country and to your kindred, that I may do you good,’ 10 I am not worthy of the least of all the deeds of steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant, for with only my staff I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two camps. 11 Please deliver me from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him, that he may come and attack me, the mothers with the children. 12 But you said, ‘I will surely do you good, and make your offspring as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude.’ ” 
 
13 So he stayed there that night, and from what he had with him he took a present for his brother Esau, 14 two hundred female goats and twenty male goats, two hundred ewes and twenty rams, 15 thirty milking camels and their calves, forty cows and ten bulls, twenty female donkeys and ten male donkeys. 16 These he handed over to his servants, every drove by itself, and said to his servants, “Pass on ahead of me and put a space between drove and drove.” 17 He instructed the first, “When Esau my brother meets you and asks you, ‘To whom do you belong? Where are you going? And whose are these ahead of you?’ 18 then you shall say, ‘They belong to your servant Jacob. They are a present sent to my lord Esau. And moreover, he is behind us.’ ” 19 He likewise instructed the second and the third and all who followed the droves, “You shall say the same thing to Esau when you find him, 20 and you shall say, ‘Moreover, your servant Jacob is behind us.’ ” For he thought, “I may appease him with the present that goes ahead of me, and afterward I shall see his face. Perhaps he will accept me.” 21 So the present passed on ahead of him, and he himself stayed that night in the camp. 

Jacob Wrestles with God
22 The same night he arose and took his two wives, his two female servants, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23 He took them and sent them across the stream, and everything else that he had. 24 And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. 25 When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his 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 has broken.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” 27 And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” 28 Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, 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 name of the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.” 31 The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. 32 Therefore to this day the people of Israel do not eat the sinew of the thigh that is on the hip socket, because he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip on the sinew of the thigh.
 
 
Richly Dwelling
-What stands out to you about this narrative, especially God meeting Jacob to shape him through struggle?
 
-Where do you identify with Jacob, needing to wrestle with God face-to-face in prayer to be shaped to face a future?
 
-How does Christ wrestling with the Father before dying shape us to know we are secure on the ground of God’s grace to struggle in prayer? If this is true, what is holding you back? Get on the mat with the Divine- He invites you to cast your cares upon Him (1 Peter 5:6-7).
 
Key Verse
28 Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.”