An Atheistic Bible Study Of Genesis Chapter Thirty Two

Tweet

Having finally extricated himself from the manipulative clutches of Laban, Jacob continues his journey home with his four wives (two of them slaves) eleven sons, daughter, and assorted slaves, cattle, sheep, goats, and bags of gold and silver. Jacob is still fearful that his angry brother Esau might still want to kill him, understandably as he stole Esau’s birth-right and blessings. Jacob sees some angels as he travels (we are not told how many or what the angels say or do). Jacob names the location of this Biblical UFO sighting, Mahanaim. This may be the most pointless episode in the Bible. Usually when angels are seen by mortals they are doing something, as with the angels involved in destroying Sodom & Gomorrah. These angels are seen, and then Jacob moves on. So what? Jacob sends messengers ahead of the main caravan of people he is taking home to Isaac and Rebekah to tell Esau he is coming and to scout out what Esau is up to. He tells the slaves sent as scouts to tell Esau that he comes unarmed with great riches and cattle, etc. The scouts return and inform Jacob that Esau is coming towards him with an army of four hundred men. Jacob divides his people and the rest of his booty into two groups, so they can travel by separate roads. This is a reasonable strategy as it means that if Esau attacks, he will only intercept one or the other group of travellers, and not all of them at once. Jacob then prays to God, reminding God of his promise that he (Jacob) is destined to prosper and flourish and his peoples multiply when he gets safely home. He is effectively manipulating God into honouring the promise made. Esau camps the night at the location of his prayers. He wakes the next morning and sends some slaves out again to meet with Esau’s forces, offering them a gift of goats, cows, bulls, etc. The large body of livestock is to be divided into several groups, so that each part of the herd is presented as a separate gift and bribe. This is not just a peace offering. The gift giving and obliging on Esau to have to set aside men to tend the cattle gifts is going to slow Esau’s advancing forces down. Jacob does not travel with the slaves to see Esau. He remains in the safety of his camp. For all his genuinely clever strategy, he leads from the rear, risking many other lives before his own. Jacob leads his remaining wives, maidservants and sons to the river ford at Jabbock, and they cross the river. In the first verse, Jacob crosses the ford with the others, but in the second verse, he stays behind alone while the rest of the party departs over the river. What happens next is one of the oddest events in the entire Bible. An unknown man turns up and Jacob spends the entire night wrestling with him. It is unclear if this is sport or the stranger has assaulted Jacob or Jacob has attacked the intruder first. They fight all night long. As dawn arrives, the stranger finds that Jacob is winning the fight so he touches Jacob in the leg which dislocates Jacob’s thigh. The fighter then begs Jacob to let him go, but Jacob demands the man offers him a blessing first. The wrestling stranger asks Jacob his name. Jacob replies, ‘Jacob’, at which point the weird wrestler tells him that he is no longer to be called Jacob, as his name is now Israel. This is his reward for wrestling with men and with God himself. The wrestling with men is Jacob’s struggles with Esau and Laban. The wrestling with God is literally the nocturnal fight Jacob has just been engaged in. God appears to have turned into Hulk Hogan or Stone Cold Steve Austin. Everything about this scene is seriously messed up. Why does God take up wrestling? Why can’t he beat Jacob without fighting dirty and using magic to dislocate the mortal’s hip? God has lost the fight in the night? Perhaps he has done this on purpose to help teach Jacob a lesson. This is God’s most overt attempt to disguise himself as human before he turns up in the New Testament as Jesus, who is less inclined towards wrestling. Despite the change of name here, many editions of the Bible continue to refer to Jacob as Jacob after they should be calling him Israel. Jacob asks God his name but God declines to share it, but he does give Jacob (Israel) his blessing, and Jacob finally realizes who he was wrestling with all night. God vanishes, presumably to watch more wrestling DVD’s, and Jacob names the site of the all night rumble, Peniel, as it is where he got to see and even touch God, but survived the encounter. Jacob starts moving on from Peniel alone, walking with a limp, (walking at all so soon after God dislocated his hip seems absurd). The chapter ends by stating that the Israelites (Jews) no longer eat tendon meat because it symbolizes where Jacob was touched by God, even though Jacob is human. God did not dislocate the tendons of sheep, cow, etc. The much anticipated meeting with Esau is delayed to the next chapter. Arthur Chappell