The night before Jacob is going to meet with Esau, he sent his wife, maids, and children ahead along with all his possessions, and remained alone in the camp.
There, a man wrestled with him until daybreak. Jacob would not give in even when his hip was put out of joint. "I won't let you go," Jacob told the man, "unless you bless me."
The man did bless him and also gave him a new name--Israel, a name that means "struggles with God."
Jacob recognized that his conflict had been with God. He has his blessing but he will carry his injury with him.
Gene M. Tucker,in Preaching through the Christian Year C writes:
Those who know struggle--and who does not?--will find it easy to identify with both the protagonist and the storyteller. Life entails strife, conflict, and struggle. Often we can neither see the face nor know the name of what confronts us in the night. The struggle may even be with the unfathomable mystery of God. The passage, however, goes further than holding up a mirror to life as struggle. By example it says: do not let go, but continue to struggle,, even when God is experienced as threatening. Furthermore, by its resolution it concludes that struggle--even with God--may end with a blessing even though one may limp on afterward with the scars of the battle.
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