Wrestling with God

In context

After twenty years with Laban, fourteen for his two daughters and six for his flocks, Jacob leaves for home with his family and animals (Genesis 31:38–41). Rachel steals her father’s teraphim, household idols that the WEB’s note says may have had to do with the right to inherit (Genesis 31:19). Laban catches up in the hill country of Gilead, east of the Jordan, and the two make a covenant beside a heap of stones that each names “Witness Heap,” Laban in Aramaic and Jacob in Hebrew (Genesis 31:44–48).

Then Jacob must face Esau. Hearing that his brother is coming with 400 men, he prays, “I am not worthy of the least of all the loving kindnesses” (Genesis 32:10), and sends ahead a gift of more than 500 animals. By the river Jabbok he wrestles all night with a man who renames him Israel, “for you have fought with God and with men, and have prevailed” (Genesis 32:28). Hosea remembers it: “he struggled with the angel, and prevailed; he wept, and made supplication to him” (Hosea 12:4).

The meeting goes better than Jacob feared. He settles near Shechem and buys a piece of land there (Genesis 33:18–19); Joseph’s bones will one day be buried on that same ground (Joshua 24:32).