Wrestling the Angel

Wrestling the Angel
By Odilon Redon

And Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and Jacob’s thigh was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, ‘Let me go, for the day is breaking.’ But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’ And he said to him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’ Then he said, ‘Your name shall no more be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.’ … And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel (meaning “face of God”), saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.’
Genesis 32:24-30

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At the ford of Jabbok, distraught and preparing to face Esau, the estranged brother he deceived, leading an army of 400 men, Jacob prays to the Lord for deliverance. In unexpected answer to his prayer, Jacob suddenly finds himself wrestling a heavenly being. His hip displaced, in pain and outmatched, Jacob grapples through the night, refusing to give up. At daybreak, in reward for his efforts, Jacob finds himself blessed and given a new name, having, in his words, seen the face of God. But this was no ordinary wrestling match. Matthew Henry reminds us that the prophet Hosea clarified just how Jacob wrestled: “he wept, and made supplication; prayers and tears were his weapons. It was not only a corporal, but a spiritual, wrestling, by the vigorous actings of faith and holy desire; and thus all the spiritual seed of Jacob, that pray in praying, still wrestle with God.”

Many of us come to God in the same condition: anxious, wounded, unsure what awaits us on the other side of the river, confused by circumstances that aren’t what we planned or expected. Yet we keep praying, keep pleading, keep grappling with God’s will, desperate to finally be out of the dark. Charles Spurgeon taught that “there are some mercies which never will be bestowed except in answer to continued, importunate prayer,” and that Jacob was blessed because he “kept on struggling for it.” Mary Oliver captures the paradoxical effects of such a night of the soul: “I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light.”

P.T. Forsyth describes this kind of holy wrestling as an embrace of divine strength: “Resist God, in the sense of rejecting God, and you will not be able to resist any evil. But resist God in the sense of closing with God, cling to Him with your strength, not your weakness only, with your active and not only your passive faith, and He will give you strength. Cast yourself into His arms not to be caressed but to wrestle with Him.” He reminds that, while God may ultimately lift us up off our feet, “it will be to lift you from earth, and set you in the heavenly places which are theirs who fight the good fight and lay hold of God as their eternal life.” In Jacob’s struggle, we see that to wrestle is not to push God away, but to cling with everything we have, trusting Him even in the night of uncertainty. In the words of Oswald Chambers, “We are not to be like jellyfish saying — ‘It’s the Lord’s will.’ We have not to put up a fight before God, not to wrestle with God, but to wrestle before God with things. Beware of squatting lazily before God instead of putting up a glorious fight so that you may lay hold of His strength.”

Hugh Nibley noted that the Hebrew word conventionally translated as “wrestled” can just as well mean “embraced,” and the medieval commentator Rashi observed that the word describes two individuals being “knotted” together. Jacob’s struggle is a divine embrace — refusing to let go because the blessing is found in God Himself. At dawn, he cries, “I will not let thee go except thou bless me,” and receives a new name: Israel — “he who struggles with God” and never lets go.

When our prayers come with tears, when we hold on through the long night, when we cling with active, determined faith, we discover what Jacob discovered: the God who wrestles us is also the God who embraces us, renames us, and at last lets us see His face. As Tim Keller observed, “This is the place where Jacob finally finds out what his life means. Before this incident, Jacob plays at religion. After this, he’s a changed man.”
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