Wrestling Until Dawn: Genesis 32:22-32

That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok.

The Jabbok—a river whose name sounds like the Hebrew for "wrestle." Jacob was returning home after twenty years of exile, and ahead of him waited Esau with four hundred men. The brother he had cheated was coming.

After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. So Jacob was left alone.

Alone. Everything he had—wives, children, servants, flocks—sent ahead. Jacob stripped down to nothing, alone in the darkness on the wrong side of the river.

And a man wrestled with him till daybreak.

A man. No introduction. No explanation. Suddenly there was combat—bodies grappling in the dark, limbs locked, neither yielding. The wrestling went on for hours, through the night, until the sky began to lighten.

When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man.

One touch. The "man" who could not overpower Jacob could disable him with a fingernail. The wrestling was not about God's power but about Jacob's perseverance. And now Jacob fought wounded, hip screaming with every movement.

Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak."

But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me."

The heel-grabber, grabbing again—but this time for blessing, not birthright. This time from the right source. Jacob clung to his mysterious opponent with the desperation of a man who knew this was his last chance.

The man asked him, "What is your name?"

"Jacob," he answered.

The question demanded honesty. What is your name? Who are you? Jacob—deceiver, supplanter, heel-grabber. For once, he told the truth about himself.

Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome."

Israel: "He struggles with God" or "God struggles." A new name for a new man. The deceiver became the wrestler. The supplanter became the one who prevailed.

Jacob said, "Please tell me your name."

But he replied, "Why do you ask my name?" Then he blessed him there.

The name was withheld. But the blessing was given—what Jacob had stolen from his father, he now received from God himself.

So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, "It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared."

Peniel: "Face of God." Jacob had wrestled with the Almighty and lived. No one sees God and survives—yet Jacob did, marked but breathing.

The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip.

The sun rose. The darkness ended. And Jacob limped into the dawn—wounded, renamed, blessed. The hip that was touched would never fully heal. Every step for the rest of his life would remind him of this night.

Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip, because the socket of Jacob's hip was touched near the tendon.

A dietary law born from one night's wrestling. Generations of Israelites would remember what happened at the Jabbok every time they prepared meat.

Jacob crossed the river a different man. The deceiver had become Israel. The grabber had learned to cling. The runner had stood his ground against God himself.

He had won by refusing to let go. He had prevailed by demanding blessing. And he limped toward Esau with a new name and an old wound—ready, finally, to face what he had fled.