Wrestling with Scripture (and God)
Read the article here https://mbird.com/2021/01/wrestling-with-scripture-and-god/
The story of Jacob wrestling with an unnamed man at the ford of Jabbok might be one of the stranger episodes of the Old Testament. After sending his family across the stream, Jacob suddenly finds himself alone and wrestling with a stranger. The reader is never given any indication as to the motive for the struggle, or who initiated it. All we know is that they wrestle through the night, and the stranger, apparently frustrated at Jacob’s perseverance, knocks Jacob’s hip out of joint. But Jacob refuses to let his opponent go unless he first receives a blessing from him. The stranger grants Jacob a new name, “Israel,” for he had “‘striven with God and with humans, and … prevailed.'” Jacob demands to know the stranger’s name, but the stranger just asks Jacob why he wants to know, and proceeds to bless him. Jacob then renames the place “Peniel,” for he had “‘seen God face to face'” and still lived, suggesting that the stranger was in fact God incarnate………………….