The Breaking at Peniel: Israel's Strength

Jacob deserves a bit of grace for being the one of two sons who had a heart for God, despite all his flaws. It is easy to exaggerate his flaws by interpreting his whole life in a negative light. However, rather than taking our liberties to infer, and always with a twinge of self-righteous smugness, that he was a "sneak" or a "cheat," we can abide faithfully with the text and refrain from judging. God does not call Jacob these things; Esau does, and his viewpoint is hardly credible. If Jacob's name, "supplanter," was given at birth for grabbing onto Esau's heel, are we really to make such a big deal out of a baby's instinct? That this behavior revealed a personality streak in Jacob later in his life proves nothing, since that same sense of struggle that was born into him is the very thing God Himself commends at the close of Jacob's hours-long wrestling match at Peniel.

We must notice that Scripture is very slow to judge the patriarchs and allows the narrative to speak for itself. When we editorialize in our self-importance thousands of years later, it is our own motives that should be questioned. Why do we want to blame Jacob? Does Esau ever get any blame? Is it because we see Esau as he wants us to see him--the victim? Scripture is clear elsewhere that he is not. This fact does not invalidate Esau's emotions; nor does it justify Jacob's actions. What it does do is require us to give God's Word many more hours of honest investigation than we are prone to do by merely rehashing favorite stereotypes that somehow serve to validate our own foibles. If we are not careful, we will soon be applying revisionist history to the Bible, such that there are no heroes left. That is not to say Jacob is a hero, but the fact that God chose to make of him the father of the entire nation of Israel speaks for itself, as does the name He gave Jacob at Peniel. "Israel" would indeed struggle with God and with men and will even yet prevail. And when have we ever seen such a nation hold on with greater ingenuity and tenacity when their very survival was at stake?

Is this not, after all, what Jacob did most of his life? Although Jacob is perhaps best known for his epic wrestling match at Peniel, his life to this point can almost be symbolized by his dream at Bethel. In a metaphoric sense, Jacob himself is ascending and descending the ladder to heaven in his quest for God, sometimes pointing his soul heavenward and sometimes slipping back to his own mortal mindset. Peniel wrestles this duality out of Jacob. When we consider that Jacob was 97 at Peniel, he was almost as old as "old Abraham" was when Isaac was born. Jacob had lived under his own father's uneasy favoritism for 77 years before he left Beersheba, and this cannot have been easy when Isaac himself was blind to his son's need for male validation. It would not appear that Isaac himself suffered from this need as the "firstborn" and only son whom God recognized as Abraham's rightful heir, despite the Lord's prophecy that Abraham would be the father of many nations. Jacob fares no better with his father-in-law Laban than he does with his father Isaac. The fact that Isaac eventually wakes up to his error is to no credit of his own; rather, we can say of his two blessings of Jacob, only one of which was volitional, that this was indeed "too little, too late."

The fact that Esau was so incensed by Jacob's supplanting him further proves Isaac's dotage on Esau, such that he felt secure no matter how he behaved or misbehaved. Whether he sold his birthright in a hungry moment or hobnobbed with wicked and worldly women or indulged his bloodlust on the hunt, he always won his father's heart. Jacob had to work for every single thing that Esau got by default. It is to Jacob's credit that we never hear him complain of this growing up. He is a problem solver and thinks for himself because, apparently, no one else does except Rebekah. The fact that Rebekah did not feel free, as Sarah apparently did with Abraham, to give Isaac a piece of her mind, saying, "Dear, you remember that Jacob is supposed to receive the blessing," shows just how deep and unconscious this personal preference had grown within Isaac. It would not be an overstatement to say that Isaac favored Esau over God, for God had told Jacob's parents the prophecies before the boys were ever born "for such a time as this." Things should never have gotten so far out of hand that a scheme seemed necessary.

And yet here is also where Jacob, who did seem to try to plan ahead, made his biggest mistakes. He depended upon himself most of his life because it appeared that he had to do so. He had to look out for number one. And yet, maybe he was ironically guarding himself against himself, like the trickster afraid of being tricked. And yet, it wasn't so much that Jacob was a trickster as that he was competitive. It does not follow that he was always a cheat. If we take, for example, his narration of the dream God gave him to increase his "striped" and "streaked" wages from Laban, God showed Jacob how to make ends meet when Laban would have kept him a virtual slave. So, rather than calling Jacob a cheat, we need to look at what he worked so hard to obtain. It's not that he did things the easy way. If anything, his life was a story of the opposite. And his life would have been a whole lot easier if he had let God take over long before he did.

I also wonder if Jacob behaved this way because of his perhaps introverted personality. We are told he was a "mild man," or as the New American Standard Bible translates this, a "peaceable man." I wonder if a good bit of Abraham ran in Jacob's veins--the Abraham who tried to avoid conflict with Pharaoh so told some half-truths about Sarah? Or the Abraham who avoided confrontation with Lot by allowing him to accompany his pilgrimage to Canaan? Jacob seems more likely to avoid conflict by solving problems behind someone's back. This is also why what Simeon and Levi did at Shechem horrified him so much. What they did was inherently evil, but these sons combined deception with violence, and Jacob was never like this. If anything, Esau was. Jacob told his sons how they had made his name to stink. And yet even here we see a bit of Abraham causing bigger problems by letting small ones go by. If we could say, for example, that Jacob should never have settled in Shechem, we could also say that Abraham should never have taken Lot with him to the Promised Land. Moral disaster resulted from both bad moves.

So, with Jacob we see that calling him a "cheat" is only true once if it is true even then. Yes, he did deceive his father and Esau in order to obtain the patriarchal blessing. But it wasn't Esau's blessing; it was Jacob's. And the birthright, Esau sold himself. I have worked outside all day long and have been fit to drop when I finished, but I have never been so desperate that I would sell my soul. Esau cheated himself and then blamed Jacob for it. But Jacob saw Esau's careless ways and headed him off--both times, actually. We can realize these things without in any way diminishing the horror of Jacob's deception with his father. But this was as much a sin of faithlessness and self-sufficiency as it was a sin of dishonesty. Jacob had to learn to trust in God, and he is learning to do this during the twenty years he works for Laban because Laban would have robbed him of everything. We could say Jacob got what he deserved, but more than this period of treachery's being a punishment, it is an education for Jacob, a moral mirror of sorts. It is a mirror he ultimately must look into as he burns his bridges with Laban and initiates contact with Esau after twenty troublingly silent years.

It is Jacob's home journey which leads him to retrace his behavior that fateful night in Isaac's tent. By now it isn't a matter of who was right or wrong; it happened, and it hasn't healed. Jacob has paid dearly, and rightly so, for his deception. He has seen treachery play out before his eyes like the proverbial broken record, and always he was helpless to prevent being the victim--except that, unlike Esau, Jacob did not play the victim. If he has to work fourteen years for Rachel instead of the promised seven, so be it. If he is to receive the speckled and spotted sheep and goats for his wages, so be it. He finds a way--and we cannot forget that it is God Himself who shows Jacob a way. Why? Because God promised to be with him, and how else will Jacob know that God is with him unless he succeeds at his profession? How do any of us know that God is with us except that He gives us the mental and moral equipment to do the work He has called us to do, even when it is hard? And even when the result is merely to endure, God is with us.

Here is where Peniel comes in. Jacob's meeting with the Angel of the Lord at Jabbok's Ford is the true watershed of Jacob's life. Jacob has lived two-thirds of his life. He has spent twenty years in the land his father was forbidden even to step foot in--the land God told Abraham to leave. Was it Jacob's own fault that he ended up there? Yes, it was. How else could he have obtained his father's blessing? The narrative never explains or make any suggestions whatsoever. What it does do is show Jacob that God's blessing at Bethel was his all along. It came, not amid Isaac's blindness, but during Jacob's dream--"God is in this place, and I knew it not." How would Jacob have had this Bethel experience if he was not running from Esau? God is not limited to our mistakes as His reasons for intervening in our lives. The point is that God blessed Jacob while he was running away from the consequences of his own lack of faith. Whatever else we may glean from Jacob's life, we must recognize the unending patience and kindness of God.

If God is ever to prepare a people through whom He can send His only Son, He must use imperfect people. Imperfect people become perfect only through suffering--whether caused by their own failures or someone else's. We will see with Joseph a virtually flawless moral character, whatever else his childhood immaturities are believed to be. But with Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham, the Lord is gracious to withhold punishments even when the tests He sends seem relentless and severe. Abraham must sacrifice his only son--is this payback for having misused Hagar? Isaac must lose, in a sense, both of his sons--is this payback for playing favorites? Jacob must indeed lose his favorite son--is this payback for pretending to be his father's favorite son? The story plays on again and again, but we always see redemption. It simply isn't true to the text to interpret these patriarch's lives as being so negatively natured as we so flippantly do. It is almost as if any steps in the right direction are a win when the whole world seems bent on going the other way.

If we read Jacob's life as a quest--and I truly believe it was--we can see the significance of Peniel. It isn't that Jacob found God here; it is that God found Jacob here. It is God who started the unannounced wrestling match that left Jacob at his weakest point mentally, physically, and emotionally before facing his worst foe, Esau. However, God left Jacob at his best point spiritually, and this is the exact lesson he needed to learn. He needed to know that his spiritual life came first; faith came first. Yes, Jacob prayed for deliverance from Esau, and this prayer was indeed answered. But this is how it was answered. Jacob had to be delivered from himself in order to be delivered from Esau. A man certainly ought to be stunned to his knees, rather, prostrate on the ground, if he sees that what is inside of him is so intense that he could fight even God for hours and hours throughout the night--to the point that God had to wound him and would have left him without blessing him. It doesn't matter that Jacob didn't know at first that this was God. He probably thought it was Esau--and all he could still think about was winning.

God let Jacob win by crippling his hip so that God could pin him through confessing his name. If Jacob wants a blessing that is truly his own, he must give his own name--no matter what curse such an admission might bring on his head. And so it is with all of us--that is, if we have indeed allowed God to arrest our attention at our own Peniel. I fear that the worst fate God can allow a soul is to let that soul escape the crisis of being broken. The fact for Jacob is this: Jacob was mortally afraid Esau would kill him, but Jacob needed to die. His life had to end at Peniel in a way that cannot be literally explained. He had to see himself as Jacob for what he was--supplanter, yes, but schemer, planner, manipulator, call it what you please, Jacob had to be in control, even when he was right.

And I think a lot of good people never really grow past middle school spiritually for this very reason. They always have to be right. Even their good deeds are performed for self-advantageous reasons. They never lose their good opinions of themselves when this is the very best thing that could happen to all of us. Jacob was disabused of his own strength physically that day when the Angel of the Lord crippled him with just one touch. Can we imagine if God wanted to crush him? But He didn't. He wanted to subdue him; to break him so that He could bless him.

Jacob is also disillusioned regarding his strength mentally. He might have prepared the finest gifts for Esau, but now he can't even run for his life if things go badly. And worst of all, Jacob is at his weakest psychologically, for the entire wrestling match serves as a catharsis by parody of his blessing with Isaac, and I think this ironic replay with its juxtapositions of exquisite repetitions and reversals focuses Jacob's mind on justifying himself until he can no longer do so. The Father who can see Jacob's face can also see deep into Jacob's soul, and He knows good and well what Jacob's name is, even though He did not call out to Jacob by name at Bethel. Jacob senses this omission in his soul, which is why he always refers to the God of "'his father." It is not until Peniel when Jacob experiences his name change that he calls God the God of Israel. Jacob knows that God sees him as He saw Hagar so many years ago in her desperation. It didn't matter that she bore some degree of guilt for her own plight; she was helpless in it, and this is Jacob's situation here. "I was brought low and He helped me" (Psalm 116:6).

Jacob is indeed a psychological study, but the root of his problem is not in his psyche only; it is in his soul--his estrangement from God to the point that God will be his God "if" He does this or that. Bethel pointed Jacob in the right direction heavenward, but it asked nothing of him. Peniel points Jacob's attention inward and demands his all. My mother once said that God sent Peniel to Jacob to strengthen him, and this is indeed what God does for Israel as a whole. Jacob learns that he wins by losing and that, when he is weak, he is strong. His thorn in the flesh will remain, but his new normal will be to lean on his own God the rest of his life.