Chapter 7: From Deceiver to Believer: The Story of Jacob's Redemption
Chapter 7
As we continue our journey from Garden to Garden City, we skip ahead a couple of chapters from where we left off last week. Last week, we met Jacob and Esau, Abraham's grandsons. What we learned is that no matter how God's rescue plan to redeem creation is being threatened, God will bring it about. Even though people plotted and schemed, God still brought about His purposes, despite people's bad choices.
Where we left the story last week, Jacob had deceived his father, deceived his brother, and stolen the blessing Isaac had intended for Esau. This so infuriated Esau that Jacob had to flee. Jacob fled out of the land of promise, leaving Canaan. He slept at a place called Beth-El and had this vision of God and His angels coming up and down from a ladder. God Himself passed the covenant blessing on to Jacob, promising to give him the land, the people, and the blessing originally promised to Abram.
When Jacob woke up, he made a vow:
Genesis 28:20-22 CSB
Then Jacob made a vow: "If God will be with me and watch over me during this journey I'm making, if He provides me with food to eat and clothing to wear, and if I return safely to my father's family, then the LORD will be my God. This stone that I have set up as a marker will be God's house, and I will give you a tenth of all that you give me."
Notice: Jacob did not yet share the faith of Abraham – he did not trust God or believe Him. Instead of trusting God, he bargained with Him. "If you keep me safe and make me prosper while I am fleeing from Esau, then I will worship you and give you a tenth of my possessions." This is important background against which the following story is set. In the passage we are reading today, we meet Jacob many years later. Jacob is about to come back into the promised land. During the years Jacob has been in exile, God has been working on his heart. Jacob, the deceiver, had been deceived by his uncle Laban. Laban cheated Jacob by marrying off the wrong daughter to him and forced Jacob to work for another seven years to marry Rachel. Through all this, God had been working behind the scenes. He had blessed Jacob, given him wealth and children. Now He calls Jacob back to the promised land. The sojourn outside of Canaan was finished, and his time had come to return home.
Genesis 32 (CSB)
Jacob went on his way, and God’s angels met him. When he saw them, Jacob said, “This is God’s camp.” So he called that place Mahanaim. Jacob sent messengers ahead of him to his brother Esau in the land of Seir, the territory of Edom. He commanded them, “You are to say to my lord Esau, ‘This is what your servant Jacob says. I have been staying with Laban and have been delayed until now. I have oxen, donkeys, flocks, and male and female slaves. I have sent this message to inform my lord, in order to seek your favor.’ ”
When the messengers returned to Jacob, they said, “We went to your brother Esau; he is coming to meet you—and he has four hundred men with him.” Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed; he divided the people with him into two camps, along with the flocks, herds, and camels. He thought, “If Esau comes to one camp and attacks it, the remaining one can escape.”
Then Jacob said, “God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, the Lord who said to me, ‘Go back to your land and to your family, and I will cause you to prosper,’ I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant. Indeed, I crossed over the Jordan with my staff, and now I have become two camps. Please rescue me from my brother Esau, for I am afraid of him; otherwise, he may come and attack me, the mothers, and their children. You have said, ‘I will cause you to prosper, and I will make your offspring like the sand of the sea, too numerous to be counted.’ ”
He spent the night there and took part of what he had brought with him as a gift for his brother Esau: two hundred female goats, twenty male goats, two hundred ewes, twenty rams, thirty milk camels with their young, forty cows, ten bulls, twenty female donkeys, and ten male donkeys.
He entrusted them to his slaves as separate herds and said to them, “Go on ahead of me, and leave some distance between the herds.” And he told the first one, “When my brother Esau meets you and asks, ‘Who do you belong to? Where are you going? And whose animals are these ahead of you?’ then tell him, ‘They belong to your servant Jacob. They are a gift sent to my lord Esau. And look, he is behind us.’ ” He also told the second one, the third, and everyone who was walking behind the animals, “Say the same thing to Esau when you find him. You are also to say, ‘Look, your servant Jacob is right behind us.’ ” For he thought, “I want to appease Esau with the gift that is going ahead of me. After that, I can face him, and perhaps he will forgive me.”
So the gift was sent on ahead of him while he remained in the camp that night.
During the night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two slave women, and his eleven sons, and crossed the ford of Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, along with all his possessions.
Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he could not defeat him, he struck Jacob’s hip socket as they wrestled and dislocated his hip. Then he said to Jacob, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
“What is your name?” the man asked. “Jacob,” he replied. “Your name will no longer be Jacob,” he said. “It will be Israel because you have struggled with God and with men and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he answered, “Why do you ask my name?” And he blessed him there
. Jacob then named the place Peniel, “For I have seen God face to face,” he said, “yet my life has been spared.” The sun shone on him as he passed by Penuel—limping because of his hip. That is why, still today, the Israelites don’t eat the thigh muscle that is at the hip socket: because he struck Jacob’s hip socket at the thigh muscle.
Jacob is on his way back to the promised land, knowing things have not gone well with his brother since he left. He sends messengers ahead of him to Esau to tell him about what has happened to him, so that Esau might forgive him. The messengers go and come back, reporting that Esau is coming with a small army of 400 men. Jacob is greatly afraid and distressed, feeling completely helpless, knowing that what is about to happen will have a massive impact on his life.
When faced with this situation, Jacob does two things. First, he goes into strategy mode: he separates all his people, flocks, camels, and herds into two different groups so that if Esau comes to kill him, at least half of the people can flee. Second, he turns to God, showing that God has succeeded in working on the heart of the schemer. Sometimes it takes a disaster to turn us to God, and Jacob was no exception. At first glance, it looks as if Jacob is a changed man, but it turns out that he still doubts God. Even after everything God had done for him, Jacob stubbornly refuses to bow to the Lord.
Ironically, the deceiver is holding true to his word - he will not accept God until God brings him back to his land safely. God had already shaped and changed Jacob during his time away from Canaan, but the process was not complete at this stage. This is the way God works - he has a plan for our lives and changes us gradually, one step at a time. For Jacob, everything that had happened up until this stage had been to prepare him for an encounter with God himself.
Jacob Wrestles with God
Jacob had sent all these gifts ahead of him to Esau. Finally, he was left alone, stripped of everything in which he could place his confidence. He had no wealth around him. His flocks, camels, and herds had been sent off. He had no family around him. Those wives, servants, and children born to him had crossed the river. Jacob was left alone. But it was finally here, alone in the darkness, that God could do the heart-changing work that Jacob so desperately needed.
We read this strange story of how Jacob wrestles with this man. At first, Jacob doesn’t know who this person is. Maybe it is Esau, maybe it is an assassin. Whoever it is, it is clear that his assailant is powerful. Jacob later realizes that this is God himself who had come to wrestle with him. How is it that Jacob almost overpowers this supernaturally strong man? How is it that, in wrestling with Jacob, God almost loses? Why is it that God attacks his chosen one, the one on whom the promise rests?
Because this is a struggle not just for Jacob as a man, but for Jacob as a chosen, elect, promise carrier. God could easily overpower Jacob as a man. He could easily have zapped him and blasted him from heaven, but God was not interested in a slave with no agency. He was fighting for Jacob’s heart. And the heart is far more powerful than the body.
An amazing thing happens during this wrestling match. Jacob finally comes to terms with who he actually is: He has been a wrestler from birth. He grabbed his brother’s heel even before he was born. He wrestled Esau’s birthright from him by tricking him with food. He wrestled the blessing out from Isaac by pretending to be Esau. He wrestled riches out from under his uncle Laban through his cunning and scheming. Now he was trying to wrestle his way out of Esau’s bad books by sending wave after wave of riches and gifts to his brother, to overpower him with kindness.
Wrestling can make you wealthy and successful in this life. But for God to redeem Jacob’s heart, Jacob had to understand who he truly was: He was a scheming, deceiving wrestler. He had to realize that his real fight was with God, not with Esau. If Jacob wanted to enter into the promised land, he had to sort things out with God!
Look at what happens: God asks Jacob “What is your name?”. In other words, he forces Jacob to admit: “I am Jacob”, “I am a deceiver.”
Isn’t this exactly how God deals with us? Does not our conversion, our relationship with him, our very eternal life, in fact, depend on this very same thing? For us to be saved, for us to have any sort of relationship with God, we must first come to terms with who we really are inside.
Who am I really?
An idolater? A blasphemer? A Sabbath breaker? A dishonorer? A murderer? An adulterer? A thief? A liar? A coveter?
It was not until Jacob was brought to the end of his strength, the end of his cleverness and deviousness, and cunning, that he could be blessed. He had to be brought to a place of total vulnerability and total dependence. Similarly, it is not until we can come face to face with who we really are that we can truly turn to Jesus for salvation.
Once Jacob admits his flawed identity, he is blessed and given a new identity. God says to him, "No longer will you be Deceiver; instead, you will be Israel." For Jacob, his new identity radically changes his life.
Genesis 33:18–20 (CSB)
After Jacob came from Paddan-aram, he arrived safely at Shechem in the land of Canaan and camped in front of the city. He purchased a section of the field where he had pitched his tent from the sons of Hamor, Shechem’s father, for a hundred pieces of silver.
And he set up an altar there and called it El-Elohe-Israel
El-Elohe-Israel is translated as “God is the God of Israel.” Finally, God had become the God of Jacob, the God of a man who had been renamed Israel.