He Had Inherited a God He Had Never Wrestled With

There is a phrase he has used his whole life without noticing what it does.

The God of his grandparents. He says it warmly and he means it as honor, and it is true: they carried this a very long way at a cost he can only estimate, and the whole thing reached him through their hands.

And it is also, when he looks at it, a description of a possession that belongs to somebody else.

He has never had an argument with God. He has never been angry with Him out loud. He has never asked Him for anything he was not fairly sure was going to be fine either way, and he has certainly never stayed up with Him about anything.

Everything between them has been conducted at the temperature of a family occasion, which is warm and formal and has never once been difficult.

Jacob spent decades in that exact position and then spent one night alone by a river.

The title he had been using

The phrase is worth tracking, because Jacob uses it earlier that same evening.

And Jacob said, O God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, the LORD which saidst unto me, Return unto thy country, and to thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee. (Genesis 32:9, King James Version)

God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac.

That is how he addresses Him, in a genuine prayer, in real distress, hours before the wrestling. It is not a formality and he is not being insincere; it is simply the title he has, and the title runs through two other men.

And that is the state at the top of this article. It is not unbelief and it is not distance. It is a relationship held by descent, addressed correctly, with somebody else's name in the middle of the address.

You are able to notice whose name is in the middle of your address. Genesis 32:9 has him praying sincerely with two other men's names in the title, and it is the Spirit who searches all things, 1 Corinthians 2:10, in a knowing that reaches what a person has not examined.

The night is alone and it is physical

Then the scene, and the first detail is the setting.

And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. (Genesis 32:24)

Jacob was left alone. He has sent everybody over the river. There is no family present, no witnesses, nobody to perform for.

And wrestled, which is a contact word and a difficult one. Whatever this was, it was not a vision and it was not a conversation. It went on all night and it was physical and it left a mark.

That is worth noticing by anybody whose whole religious life has been conducted at the temperature of a family occasion. What is described here is unmanageable, undignified, and entirely private, and the text does not apologize for any of it.

You are able to have something with Him that nobody witnesses. Genesis 32:24 puts him alone with no audience at all, and it is by the Spirit, Romans 8:26, who helps our infirmities in the place where a person has no words and no company.

The sentence he says at the end of it

And the line that has kept this passage alive for four thousand years.

And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me. (Genesis 32:26)

I will not let thee go.

That is not a sentence a man says to a God he has inherited politely. It is grabbing, it is insistent, and it would be unthinkable in the register the man at the top of this article has used for thirty years.

And notice he is not asking to win. He asks to be blessed, which is asking to receive, and he does it while holding on, which is a strange combination and it is exactly right: he wants something from Him and he is not letting go until it is his.

You are able to hold on and ask, and Scripture kept the sentence. Genesis 32:26 has him refusing to let go until he is blessed, and it is by the Spirit of adoption, Romans 8:15, that a person addresses Him with that kind of nerve rather than at the temperature of an occasion.

He is asked his name and then given another

The exchange that follows is the whole point of the chapter.

And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed. (Genesis 32:27-28)

What is thy name? He is made to say it. And the name he says is the one that means supplanter, which had been an accurate description of his career.

And then it is replaced. Not adjusted, replaced, and the new one is about having power with God, which is a description of what has just happened rather than of anything he did before.

The whole night produces a name, and a name is the most personal possession there is. He arrived with a borrowed title for God and he leaves with a new title for himself, and neither of those things came through his father.

You are able to leave with something that did not come through anybody. Genesis 32:28 gives him a new name after he says his old one out loud, and it is by the Spirit, Romans 8:16, whose witness with a person's own spirit is not inherited from a household.

And he names the place, which is the second half

He does one more thing before the sun comes up, and it belongs beside the name.

And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved. (Genesis 32:30)

I have seen God face to face.

The address has changed. There is no father's name in that sentence and no grandfather's. It is first person and it is direct and it is about something that happened to him.

And my life is preserved, which is the answer to the fear underneath all of this. The thing a person from a careful background is most afraid of, in getting close enough for it to be difficult, is that the closeness would not be survivable.

He limps for the rest of his life and he survives the night, and both are in the text.

You are able to come out of it marked and preserved at the same time. Genesis 32:30 says my life is preserved and verse 31 records the limp, and it is by the Spirit, Romans 8:16, that a person is assured of belonging rather than of being unmarked.

The title God uses about Himself afterward

There is a detail generations later that finishes this properly.

Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. (Exodus 3:6)

And the God of Jacob.

He names Himself, to Moses, using three men, and the third one is the man from the river. Jacob is in the title now.

Which means the inherited title is not the problem, and never was. It is a real thing and God uses it Himself. What matters is whether a person is in it, and the only way anybody has ever got into that list is the way Jacob did, which is a night of their own.

And I would say plainly: nothing about this requires anybody to leave anything, or to hold anything at a distance, or to construct a crisis. Jacob was on his way home to his family when it happened, and he went on to them in the morning, limping.

You are able to get into the title rather than only be under it. Exodus 3:6 has God naming Jacob in the list, and it is by the Spirit of adoption, Romans 8:15, that a person cries out as their own rather than as a descendant.