“Isn’t he rightly named Jacob?”

Jacob is already in his nineties in Genesis 32:24 when out of the darkness a man grabs him and they’re into a wrestling match that lasts all night. No matter how hard Jacob struggles he cannot throw the other man to the ground, but nor can he ease up the slightest bit either, because the other man is his equal. For hours they wrestle, neither of them gaining advantage over the other. 

Even when the man damaged Jacob’s hip Jacob still refused to release his grip. Just as the sun was coming up, the man told Jacob to let him go – but Jacob wouldn’t let him go “unless,” he said to the man, “you bless me” (26). Not, take note, “OK, I’ll let go if you let go” in a bargain that benefitted both of them. That wasn’t Jacob’s style at all. When the man asked to be let go it gave Jacob the advantage at last and a chance to bargain to his own benefit, and he grabbed it, because that’s what Jacob had always done. 

Even before he was born Jacob was wrestling with his twin brother Esau, causing Rebekah his mother to wonder what on earth was going on inside her (25:22-23). And when Esau was born first, imagine her surprise seeing the little hand of Jacob grabbing on to his brother’s heel. 

And that’s how Jacob got his name (25:26): Jacob meant “heel grabber,” and it described Jacob’s character to a tee. He caught Esau’s heel to slow him down and impede his progress, as if he was consciously thinking he could race Esau down the birth canal and be the first one born instead. 

But that was Jacob, and in the custom of the day that initial show of his character sealed his name as a self-promoting heel grabber. His name alone, therefore, was a clear warning to anyone who had dealings with Jacob that here was a con artist supreme who’d grab whatever means he could to gain advantage for himself. And “Isn’t he rightly named Jacob?” Esau moaned in Genesis 27:36, because, unfortunately, Jacob had been living up to his name all too well.    

But this, take note, is the character of the man who became the father of ISRAEL, as we find out back at the wrestling match in Genesis 32:28, because in answer to Jacob’s demand for a blessing, the blessing he received was a change in his name from Jacob to Israel, and the reason given in Genesis 32:28 was because “you have wrestled with God and humans and you have prevailed.” But was “Jacob the wrestler – a good thing?”….(next blog)