Hebrew Exegesis/second sermon

I decided to make my second sermon on the same topic as my exegetical paper. I was torn which to post first, as the sermon was frankly better than what I wrote down, and I don't think my paper has been graded yet (although it's already turned in). So I decided to do the sermon, as the paper was 15 pages long. Maybe I'll do it later. Here's the gist!

Gen. 32:22-33

That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maidservants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions.
So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”
But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” The man asked him, “What is your name?” “Jacob,” he answered. Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome.” Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.” But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”
The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip. Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip, because the socket of Jacob's hip was touched near the tendon.

Did you hear about the new translation of the Bible that suggest that only men can make beverages like coffee or tea?

"Hebrews."

Yeah, that’s pretty bad. But the Hebrews liked puns. :)

Let me try again: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was... Hebrew. By that I mean that the guy, that guy who was the Word incarnate, Jesus, well he was Hebrew, spoke Aramaic, read the Old Testament in Hebrew. The whole nine yards. And that the Word, when it was written down, it was in the language Hebrew. And the word was written for a Hebrew people, a group dependent only marginally literate. As such they needed their Word to tell a story, to paint a picture with the Word. Let me tell you a story.

It’s a dark and windless night; still dripping and cold from the swirling water of the Jabbok, Jacob struggles up the steep bank. Alone at last, his family safe on the other side, and away from whatever is lurking in the darkness. The crickets stop chirping, and even the water is hushed. A cloud sweeps over the moon and stars blot out. It is inky-black, and he is not alone. A moment, a crunch of sand, and he hears the whisper of flesh just before he raises his arms in defense. Suddenly he is engaged, wrestling for his life. It feels like a man, but who is it? A bandit? Is it Esau, come to get him? Or given where he is, here at the ford of the fabled Jabbok, is it a river god—or a demon? Is it angel? Is it an angel—if so, which one? The angel of death? Esau’s guardian angel, here to avenge his master’s stolen birthright? Is it Michael, comforter and helper? Is it someone else entirely?

Maybe it doesn’t matter, for the fight is still going on. Move for move, hand for hand—and suddenly, things get worse. Our Bible tells us that it is the man who saw he couldn’t prevail over Jacob, but that might not be quite true, for the original Hebrew tells another story.
See, in the Hebrew, most of this story is told without names or identifiers; its mostly undifferentiated masculine pronouns. In the Hebrew, the text reads “and when he saw that he could not prevail over him, then he struck him in the hollow of his thigh, and Jacob’s thigh was wrenched—or dislocated—as he wrestled with him.” To make matters worse, we don’t know who that first “he” is; maybe it’s the man, maybe it’s Jacob, but maybe it doesn’t matter. Cause it’s Jacob who gets hurt. Suddenly—POW!—his hip gives way. I should probably reveal at this point in the story, that ‘hip’ or literally “hollow of the thigh,” just might also mean ‘loins’.

They’re really close in proximity.

So here’s Jacob, struggling away, when suddenly he’s struck…in the tender bits…or if not the tender bits, then the bits next to the tender bits, which can be just as bad. And technically ‘wrenched’ is more literally translated ‘dislocated’…but the image of Jacob’s dislocated loins is pretty disturbing, and I’d rather not comment on it.

Let’s recap: It’s dark, it’s lonely, and Jacob is wrestling with someone when something goes terribly wrong and he’s got this searing pain shooting through his leg. Kind of like a schoolyard fight—it doesn’t matter who hit who first, someone is gonna lose an eye. Or in this case, leg.

So here’s Jacob, good ol’ tenacious Jacob, hanging in there, not winning but not giving up either. He can’t pin the guy now, or throw him, or do any ninja counter moves, because, well, he can’t really move the lower half of his body. But he’s hanging on with his arms, he’s got his hands wrapped around this guys’ neck and he is not letting go. Because if he gives up, who knows what might happen? He might be robbed! He might be killed! His family might be robbed and killed! So Jacob does the only thing left to him, which is hang on for dear life. And the man-demon-robber-angel-God person can’t seem to shake him. For all their grappling, Jacob is still there, bruised, probably bleeding, but still hanging on. He’s still there. And there, on the horizon, is light. The sky starts to grey a bit, and you can just see the outlines of shapes, shadows.

Somewhere, faintly, softly, a dove coos to greet the dawn.

And then suddenly, this person, this wrestling maniac asks to go free. “Because dawn is breaking”. What?? WHY? He’s WINNING, and HE’S asking to go? At least, we’re pretty sure it’s the other man, even though in the Hebrew, it’s all just a bunch of undifferentiated masculine pronouns. It reads, “and then he said, Let me go free, for dawn is breaking, and he said Not unless you bless me, and he said what is your name, and he said Jacob.” You can work backwards to figure out that it’s the assailant who asks to go free, but the text doesn’t exactly tell us that. The Hebrew text leaves it open. We’ve had to add our interpretation to the text. But ok, we’ll run with our traditional interpretation; the assailant asks to go free. Because of the dawn.

Why the dawn? Why not “cause I can’t get your grubby hands off from around my neck?” IS it a demon, who loses his power with the sun? IS it an angel, with a heavenly appointment to keep? Or is it God, whose face will kill you? Despite all of this, because I think Jacob has been thinking about all these possibilities, he doesn’t let go. Let me say it again—Jacob doesn’t let go, even when offered the chance.

Think about that temptation: your adversary, who really, rightfully has you beat, offers YOU the chance to honorably end the battle, offers you mercy by asking to let HIM go and walk away free. “Send me away already, let’s go our own ways” is what I hear, his opponent tempting Jacob to just let go of the fight, give up, take his losses and move on. Just give up. It’s easier. You can’t win, buddy! You’ll never pin him! Look at you, you can barely stand! But Jacob, good ol’ tenacious Jacob, knows better. Because Jacob has figured out one thing: this is no ordinary man. It’s not Esau. It’s not some shepherd or vagabond. It’s something…else. And he needs a promise that it’s not going to eat him or something if he lets him go.

“I won’t let you go unless you Bless me!” Bless me! And if you know who Jacob is, you remember where he came from, he’s been fighting for a blessing all his life. Despite the fact that his mother was told, “the elder shall serve the younger”, Jacob thought he had to live up to his name. That he had to buy his brother’s birthright. That he had to steal his father’s blessing. That he had to trick his uncle to get wives, get cattle. If we know Jacob, at every turn this guy has sought to be blessed—and now he hangs on for the same reason.

“What’s your name?” “Jacob”. “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel. For you have struggled with beings divine and human, and have endured.” That sounds a bit different than our interpretation, but that’s an accurate translation. In this one sentence, at least in the Hebrew, we learn a lot. Here the name Israel means, “God struggles or Struggles with God”. And that reminds us of the word of wrestle, which sounds like the word for Jacob, which sounds like the word for Jabbok. I told you the Hebrews liked puns.

“For you have struggled with ‘elohim’”. Not God...exactly. Elohim is technically a plural word, and it might mean angel, it might mean a god, it might mean gods or The God, Yahweh. The text simply doesn’t tell us—not even later, when Jacob says “I have seen the face of elohim and lived.” The dawn has not spread, It is still night, and the only person we can see clearly is Jacob. Is Jacob. We know, I think we can intuit, that the other person is Divine, somehow, but the Hebrew text doesn’t tell us right out…because the Hebrew wants us to wrestle. The Hebrew text wants us to identify with Jacob, to put ourselves in his shoes. I know, I know, I keep coming back to the Hebrew. But it’s like the original language is trying to tell us something, like English just can’t quite do the words justice. It’s like the stories were written for a pre-literate society, who needs to hear pictures painted with words. It’s like we still need the Hebrew for a fuller understanding in English.

When we step back and look at this story, what happens? If we take out all the English interpretations we’ve added, and the intentional ambiguity in the Hebrew, what do we know? We know that Jacob is caught, alone, in a wrestling match with the unknown. We know he gets hurt—badly. We know he hangs on. We know that surprisingly, miraculously, he is offered mercy. He is blessed. And his new name commemorates his struggle. A struggle that truly is with God. A struggle that is ours.

The Hebrew is intentionally ambiguous to the point that we can’t know for certain anything except what happens to Jacob—much like in our own lives, we can’t really know much more than what happens to us. We can’t truly ever know who our assailant is—is it a man? A devil? An angel? God? Christ? All we know is that we’re wrestling, and that we’re going to get hurt, just like Jacob. We know that we’re blessed with a new name, one that commemorates that God Struggles with us, even when we’re hurt.

And we can know that we do not need to win the battle, simply endure it, and we shall be blessed. If we remember Christ as our model, we see this again.

"It is finished," he said, then enduring no more--only this time, we are the ones who are blessed.

Amen.