Jacob the Striver becomes Israel the Overcomer

"Vayishlach" - “And he sent”     Gen 32:24-28      2-12-24

Have you ever felt utterly alone?    Such a moment is how this defining moment in the history of faith in the living God begins:

יותר יעקוב לבדו - "And Jacob was left alone"

Yaakov, is suddenly, for all his successes, finds himself utterly alone.   I hadn’t thought about it till sitting in services prepared to read this portion.   Suddenly, I felt utterly alone as well.  It would have been Linda’s and my 40th anniversary.    I was a bit overcome, and didn’t know if I’d really be able to speak.   I think scripture is like that sometimes.   It comes and finds you right where you are.   Yaakov was about to have an overwhelming encounter as well.   He was utterly alone.   He realized that all could be lost.  Everything.  

Yakov struggled for position even in the birth canal, he struggled with Esau for the family inheritance, ran from Esau under threat of murder, and struggled with Laban his uncle for his daughter’s hand in marriage (the beautiful Rachael), paying for it with fourteen years of labor (and an extra wife, Leah, whom he did not love!), he struggled to become wealthy, fled from Laban under threat of violence in Laban’s jealousy of his success and now, as this portion begins, he’s returning to try to reconcile with his brother, who has set out with small army to meet him:  his brother who was plotting to kill him the last time they saw each other, 20 years before.  

After all the gains his life of struggles has yielded him, now he knows he might lose everything.  He might die.   He has two wives, eleven children and such vast possessions that he sends a gift ahead to his brother of 550 livestock.     For all his strivings to succeed, to get on top, he is reduced to humility.   Earlier in this chapter he even coins a new word:   “katan” as a verb… “to be made small”.  

קָטֹ֜נְתִּי מִכֹּ֤ל הַחֲסָדִים֙ וּמִכׇּל־הָ֣אֱמֶ֔ת 

Gen 32:11  I have been made small - I am unworthy of all your Kindness, and your truthfulness, God.  

(one word k’tanti, “to be made small”

And now, all alone, this supernatural being with whom he wrestles gives him a great reward:   He renames him Yi-sra-el (ISRAEL)…   because his wrestling is over.   He can rest in God’s promise 

I don’t read in his story that he was particularly keen on becoming the man Abraham would have wanted him to be:  the man that carried God’s calling Abraham to be a blessing to the whole earth.  (Gen 12.1-3)  He was out for himself.  Now, in this passage, he could lose everything:  all of the things he worked so hard for and were not the core of that inheritance he stole from his brother, which was not money or property.   

God now says to him… (paraphrasing) “your whole life you’ve been wrestling.   But NOW something new… I am putting three words together and forming a new name for you:  a name that would live for 5700 years till this day:   

Y’ (future and past tense in one ***… “it has been and will be”) 

SAR “a prince, an overcomer” 

EL  “God”  

You have and will PRINCE / OVERCOME with God and Man 

Now EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED.   

The angel with whom he wrestled celebrated his tenacity in pursuing that blessing those twenty long years.   But what was missing from Jacob / Israel’s life was that humility in the moment of alone-ness, where Jacob says “I am so small, unworthy of your grace and for You being so true”    and transformed him from a mere follower (his name “Yakov” means “follower” or “heel”) into a great nation -

YI...SRA...EL.    

Regain your calling!  Regain your inheritance in the Lord!  

That’s what I hear in this passage

I’ve been asked about the grieving process a lot.   Not because I have any particular expertise or wisdom,  but because I’ve gone through it, just like so many others. but unlike others I am oblivious or busy enough to not dwell on how deep a loss I suffered.  Or I inherited the gift of humor and contentment from my parents. Or maybe just fortunate to be occupied with worthy occupations and responsibilities.   Or I am just a dummy. Not really, I know what I lost and the sting of it. But as CS Lewis wrote in "A Grief Observed", "how I feel about the loss of my wife is not of great importance to me, but what is sorely missed is her point of view"

I was gifted by my wife with an extraordinary sense of trust in God, that she carried with her to the end.   In the middle of her worst suffering at the end of her life, she said, “I’ve never had a moment of darkness”, never felt abandoned by God.   That really stunned me. I think it is because, and those of you who knew her can agree, she had built a remarkable resume in the Lord: a combination of faith applied towards in her accomplishments God called her to and a persistent devotional life.     So maybe I just don’t have a sense of loneliness, if I do have a sense of “only-ness” that honors her in knowing I won’t try to repeat or copy what we had.    

Jacob was not actually “left alone” for long, till a man, an angel, God Himself came to wrestle and change his life.  

---

*** prophetic perfect tense is a literary technique used in the Bible that describes future events that are so certain to happen that they are referred to in the past tense as if they had already happened.