As he’s
getting closer to home, he starts to worry that Esau might still be holding a
grudge. So he sends some servants to go ahead and let Esau know he’s coming,
and see how he seems to feel about it. When they get back, they tell him Esau
is on his way to meet him, and bringing four hundred men.
Now
Jacob’s pissing his pants, afraid Esau is coming to kill him. So he quickly
pulls a whole bunch of livestock out of his herd, divides them into three
groups, and sends servants to take each group ahead one after the other. The
servants in each group are instructed to tell Esau that the livestock are gifts
from Jacob, who will be following after them (so that each time Esau encounters
a group, they’re giving him another huge gift while building anticipation to
meet the gift giver).
That
night he sends his family across the river. And I find the phrasing
interesting.
“Gen 32:22 The same night he
arose and took his two wives, his two female servants, and his eleven children
and crossed the ford of the Jabbok.”
Now,
back when Leah and Rachel were having the conception wars and each gave Jacob
one of their servants to impregnate, the specific phrasing in each case was
“she gave him her servant as a wife.” But now we see them demoted to “female
servants,” and later one of them is referred to as a concubine. So the Bible is
inconsistent about how it describes them, but I suspect “concubine” is the
closest to what is intended. The other interesting thing about the phrasing is
that it says eleven children. But I counted eleven sons and one daughter (i.e.
twelve children). I guess the daughter doesn’t count.
Anyhow,
he sends them across the stream, but he stays behind.
“Gen 32:24 And Jacob was left
alone. And a man wrestled with him until the break of the day. 25 When the man
saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob’s
hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. 26 Then he said ‘Let me go,
for the day has broken.’ But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go unless you
bless me.’”
Soooo…
what the fuck?! One second Jacob is ushering his family across the stream, the
next he’s suddenly in the middle of WWF Summer Slam? There’s literally no
transition, no context… he’s alone, and then he’s wresting some dude. That’s
what we call crap writing.
Now I
should point out that it’s revealed later in the scene that the man Jacob is
wrestling with is none other than God himself. God blesses Jacob and changes
his name to Israel, though for some reason the Bible and everyone else continue
to refer to him as Jacob, and God has to rename him again later.
And I
just have to wonder… what the hell is the point of this scene? Are we supposed
to believe Jacob actually wrestled the all-powerful maker of the universe and
won? Given that this isn’t even remotely possible, either God deliberately
threw the match and thus Jacob’s “victory” was meaningless, or the scene is
just a metaphor. As in… not literally true. But I wonder what lesson we should
learn from a metaphor in which someone wrestles with their faith and defeats
it.
I’m
afraid the reunion with Esau is much less exciting. Jacob meets Esau, Esau
greets him with hugs and tears of joy and forgiveness. Esau tries to refuse the
gifts, but Jacob insists. Then Esau offers to have them all travel home
together, but Jacob says his herds and children wouldn’t be able to keep up so
Esau should go ahead and they’d catch up later. Esau departs, and Jacob goes to
Succoth instead (wtf? Even when reconciling he couldn’t be assed to tell the
truth? But I guess untrustworthy people tend to see others as untrustworthy as
well, and perhaps he wasn’t all that confident that Esau had really forgiven
him).
This
seems as good a break point as any. Next post will feature rape and mass murder
as we continue reading from the Good Book.
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