Genesis 32: 22-32


Crossing the Jabbok

Struggle is the dominant theme of the Jacob saga. His new name (Israel) means ‘God struggles’.  Jabbok is very difficult to cross on foot and the name comes from a rare Hebrew verb meaning ‘to wrestle’. Describing it as a key moment for Jacob even more significant than Bethel, R N Whybray suggests a pagan background where spirits, powerful only at night, guard particular streams and attack travellers. It may be significant that the sun rose (v 31) only when the incident was over. 

What was the struggle about we can only surmise. One possibility is that if Bethel was his struggle to move from the familiar to the unfamiliar, like logging in to the new, Penuel is his struggle as he returns, with the prospect of logging back into the old, the difference being that whereas at Bethel he was running away, at Penuel he was coming to terms with change and the consequences of change. Such life-changing moments inevitably carry an element of pain.

Re-read Shakespeare’s ‘seven ages of man’ in As You Like It or recall your experience of the Rights of Passage. Bar mitzvah at twelve, believer’s baptism or confirmation, leaving school and starting work, marriage, partnership, separation, divorce, or bereavement. The possibilities are legion. Focus on the most memorable. 

Recall the struggle. What was it all about? Guilt and conscience? Fear of losing the past or not losing the past? Anxiety about an unknown future? Identify what it was that enabled you to know that you had achieved closure and enabled the sun to rise. Define ‘your new name’. Think what it means. And don’t overlook the limp — what was it you experienced as a constant reminder you would never be the same again?

After a bad night Jacob emerged with a new spring in his step, though not the spring he had before and not without the limp, a reminder of his victory and the price he had to pay to achieve it. What such a moment does (to us or to Jacob) may never be all that clear but a little reflection may at least help us to appreciate how different we might have been without it.

© Alec Gilmore 2014