Rembrandt, Jacob Wrestling with the Angel

Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.

When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip 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.’ So he said to him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’ Then the man said, ‘You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans,and have prevailed.’

Then Jacob asked him, ‘Please tell me your name.’ But he said, ‘Why is it that you ask my name?’

And there he blessed him.

So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.’ The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.

(Genesis 32:24-31 RSV)

Do you wrestle with God?

The Bible offers notable examples of wrestlers, for wrestling with God is not uncommon in life. But the most obvious wrestler is Jacob. We are told in Genesis that on a night when Jacob feared for his life, “a man” wrestled with him until daybreak. Jacob, however, was aware of having fought with more than a human being, for after the struggle was over, he said, “I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.”

At least two important things can happen when we wrestle.

1. An unexpected transformation

All night Jacob has been struggling. We read that that Jacob “prevailed” in this combat. But the old Jacob does not prevail.

Alone with God, Jacob is asked his name. Why? Surely God knows who he is.

Sister Elizabeth says that God wanted Jacob to acknowledge himself as the cheater. Remember that he had cheated his brother Esau out of his birthright and out of the paternal blessing as the first-born. Now, as dawn breaks, Jacob can no longer hide behind a disguise; he can no longer obtain what he wants by guile. Back then, when his blind father asked who he was, he had said, “I am Esau” (Genesis 27). Now Jacob must admit who he is. He has to face himself and face God directly.

Through his struggle, Jacob is transformed. “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel.” He has survived, not as his former self, but as someone resembling more closely the person God is calling him to be.

2. A defeat which is in truth a victory.

Notice what an intimate activity wrestling is, unlike other forms of fighting: boxing, for example, or modern warfare, where one can kill from a distance without even seeing the other. In wrestling, not only do you see your opponent, not only do you make contact, but the two of you might almost appear to be embracing, as in the Rembrandt painting above.

What is more, in this photo by Dreier Carr the two wrestlers are so entwined that it is difficult to distinguish to whom the arms and legs belong.

Dreier Carr, "Two High School Students Wrestling" (Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 Licence)

What shall we do in a match as intimate as this, when like Jacob we have been wrestling all night, and perhaps all day or all year as well? What shall we do when all the wrestling arms and legs and hearts and minds are scrambled and seem just a part of oneself; when God is so tangled up in our life that we wonder if God is there at all or if we were just imagining a divine Other involved in the combat? What is to be our response when we are so woven together with God that we can’t tell where we end and God begins?

This is not the time to push for a conquest. Neither is it the time to disengage.

Now is the time to sink into God in a blessed defeat which is the only victory worth winning — and to walk like Jacob into the future, limping perhaps, but graced by God.

Isn’t it the great tragedy, when one wrestles with God,
not to be defeated?
N’est-ce pas le grand malheur, quand on lutte contre Dieu,
de n’être pas vaincu?

Simone Weil, La pesanteur et la grâce (Gravity and Grace)