The Wrestler

Read it: Genesis 28; 32

Isaac grows up, marries Rebekah, and they have twins: Esau and Jacob. Before they were born, God told Rebekah something surprising: “the older will serve the younger” (Genesis 25:23). In the ancient world the firstborn son got the bigger inheritance and the family blessing. God was turning that upside down.

Jacob, the younger, didn’t wait for God to work it out. His name sounds like the Hebrew for “heel” and came to mean someone who trips others up. He lived up to it. First he got Esau to trade away his birthright for a bowl of stew. Then, with his mother’s help, he dressed up as his brother and tricked their blind old father into giving him Esau’s blessing (Genesis 27). Esau was furious: “Is he not rightly named Jacob? For he has cheated me twice” (Genesis 27:36). He decided that when Isaac died, “I will kill my brother Jacob” (Genesis 27:41).

So Jacob runs. And that’s where Genesis 28 finds him: alone, on the road north to his uncle in Haran, with nothing but a stone for a pillow.

A stairway to heaven

That night Jacob dreams. “And Jacob had a dream about a ladder that rested on the earth with its top reaching up to heaven, and God’s angels were going up and down the ladder” (Genesis 28:12). The word might mean a stairway, like the steps on an ancient temple tower. Heaven and earth, cut off since Eden, are joined.

At the top stands the LORD, and what He says is astonishing. No telling off. No “after what you did?” Instead, He gives this cheat the same promise He gave Abraham: the land, descendants like the dust of the earth, and “All the families of the earth will be blessed through you and your offspring” (Genesis 28:14). Then something personal: “Look, I am with you, and I will watch over you wherever you go” (Genesis 28:15).

Jacob wakes up shaken: “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was unaware of it” (Genesis 28:16). He names the place Bethel, which means “house of God”. But listen to the vow he makes: “If God will be with me and watch over me on this journey ... then the LORD will be my God” (Genesis 28:20–21). Even now, Jacob is bargaining.

Twenty years later

Jacob spends twenty years in Haran, and the deceiver gets deceived. His uncle Laban tricks him into marrying the wrong sister, Leah, before he can marry Rachel, the one he loves. Jacob works hard, his family grows, and he becomes rich. Then God tells him to go home.

There’s just one problem: Esau. As Jacob nears the border, messengers tell him Esau is coming to meet him with four hundred men. Jacob is terrified. And for the first time, we hear him pray like someone who knows he has no cards left to play: “I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness You have shown Your servant” (Genesis 32:10). “Please deliver me from the hand of my brother Esau, for I am afraid” (Genesis 32:11).

He sends wave after wave of gifts ahead to soften his brother. He sends his family across the river Jabbok. And then: “So Jacob was left all alone, and there a man wrestled with him until daybreak” (Genesis 32:24).

The night at the river

All night they wrestle. The text never fully explains who this “man” is. Later the prophet Hosea calls him an angel, and Jacob himself says, “I have seen God face to face” (Genesis 32:30). When the man can’t overpower Jacob, he simply touches his hip and puts it out of joint. With one touch the fight is over. Jacob could never have won it.

But Jacob won’t let go. “I will not let you go unless you bless me” (Genesis 32:26). The man asks a strange question: “What is your name?” (Genesis 32:27). The last time someone asked Jacob who he was, it was his blind father, and Jacob lied: he said he was Esau. Now he tells the truth: “Jacob.” Heel-grabber. Cheat. It’s a confession.

And then: “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men, and you have prevailed” (Genesis 32:28). The whole nation will carry this name. Israel isn’t named after a winner. It’s named after a man who wrestled with God, was broken, and clung on for a blessing.

As the sun rises, Jacob limps away. The next morning Esau, instead of attacking, “ran to him and embraced him, threw his arms around his neck, and kissed him. And they both wept” (Genesis 33:4).

Where Jesus is in this

When Jesus first met a man called Nathanael, He said something that must have made him think of Jacob: “you will all see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man” (John 1:51). Jesus is saying: I am Jacob’s ladder. He is the place where heaven and earth meet, the way between God and people that was shut after Eden.

And Jacob’s limp says something the whole Bible keeps saying, which Jesus told Paul plainly: “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). God’s blessing doesn’t come to people who have it all together. It comes to those who stop pretending and cling to Him.

Think about it: Jacob had to admit his real name before he got a new one. Is there something about yourself you need to be honest with God about?

Go deeper: The God of All Comfort by Hannah Whitall Smith — Smith explores what God reveals about Himself through His names, and along the way argues that Jacob did not win at the river by out-wrestling God: he “gained victory by becoming too weak to struggle any longer”. Start with chapter 6, “Jehovah”.