Passage: Genesis 32 (ESV Bible Online).

Later in Jacob’s story it is shown that he has not only prospered to become a great company, but enough to become “two companies.”  Yet that claim is ambiguous because it also reveals what is stated in the beginning of this chapter in Genesis: that Jacob’s camp is accompanied by a camp of angels (the chariots of fire that Elijah will later see; divine bodyguards).

But another way the divine and human correlate is that Jacob’s struggles with men are revealed to be struggles with God.

The same night he arose and took his two wives, his two female servants, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok.  He took them and sent them across the stream, and everything else that he had.  And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day.  When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him.  Then he said, “Let me go, for the day has broken.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”  And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.”  Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.”  Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him.  So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.”  The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.  Therefore to this day the people of Israel do not eat the sinew of the thigh that is on the hip socket, because he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip on the sinew of the thigh (vv. 22-32).

Jacob gets attacked by a stranger in the dark (in the ancient world there would be a good chance that the dark would be pitch black).  Who could it be?

Laban his father-in-law could have broken his covenant with Jacob and come up from behind him.

Laban manipulated and exploited Jacob for years, impoverishing his own daughters in order to remain in charge of his extended family as a greedy patriarch. Yet when Jacob, at the advice of his wives, fled from him, Laban pursued to make self-righteous accusations.

Maybe he has crept up behind in the dark.

Esau had a grudge against Jacob and was coming with 400 spears to meet him. Did Esau sneak ahead in the dark to personally attack Jacob?

Or what about Isaac? While Isaac had thought he was soon to die when he had blessed his son, he had not accurately predicted the end of his health. He was still alive. As a blind man, what better opportunity to attack Jacob except in the middle of the night. Make no mistake, Isaac had mistreated Jacob his entire life, siding with Esau over against God’s declared will and Esau’s own character.

So who was it?

It was all of them!

“Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.”

God is telling Jacob that all his life his struggles with all his enemies (including his wives who used him to compete with each other and to trade, and his sons later) was all a big wrestling match with God.

This has to be important.  He actually names His nation after this truth.