Genesis 32:24-32

Jacob Wrestles
24Then Jacob was left alone, and a man (A)wrestled with him until daybreak.
25When he saw that he had not prevailed against him, he touched the socket of his thigh; so the socket of Jacob's thigh was dislocated while he wrestled with him.

26Then he said, "Let me go, for the dawn is breaking." But he said, "(B)I will not let you go unless you bless me."

27So he said to him, "What is your name?" And he said, "Jacob."

28(C)He said, "Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but [a]Israel; for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed."

29Then (D)Jacob asked him and said, "Please tell me your name." But he said, "Why is it that you ask my name?" And he blessed him there.

30So Jacob named the place [b]Peniel, for he said, "(E)I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been preserved."

31Now the sun rose upon him just as he crossed over (F)Penuel, and he was limping on his thigh.

32Therefore, to this day the sons of Israel do not eat the sinew of the hip which is on the socket of the thigh, because he touched the socket of Jacob's thigh in the sinew of the hip.

I keep wanting to read this passage over and over again. There are so many things that I keep thinking about. My thoughts go something like this. They really wrestled all night? Who just all of a sudden decides to have a wrestling match with a stranger instead of sleeping at night?

I haven't found an answer to these questions yet but I have found other interesting insights. I find it amazing that a human being was said to be able to wrestle with God and prevail. I wonder if this statement indicates more than just that nights events. I wonder if Jacob had wrestled emotionally with the will of God. We know from previous chapters that he wrestled psychologically with his brother and with his father inlaw. I wonder what Jacob was thinking when he realized he had seen God face to face and that he had wrestled with God. I think that I would be scared yet I wonder if we sometimes wrestle with God.

There have been people who report that they resisted God's irresistible love and grace before they decided to believe in Him as the one and only true God. If we do wrestle with God, do we feel that fear that we would expect Jacob felt when wrestling with God physically or does it not seem as real since it is in our hearts and minds? If we do wrestle with God, in some sense of the word, how do we know if we prevail as Jacob was said to have or if God prevails. Since this is an emotional matter I would imagine that it would be hard to tell. I still wonder though, how do we know when or if we wrestle with God and who is winning.

This question can be easily dismissed if you believe that God is a mythical creature created for the amusement in stories in the Bible. What if that assumption is wrong? What if He does live and is a divine being that we can talk with and wrestle with in a way not unlike the way Jacob wrestled with Him? I can only conclude that if we wrestle with God we should, as the Israelites did for generations, commemorate the occasion with the way we live our lives.

I was able to write this as a class assingment for my English 336 Scriptural Litterature class. I just praise the Lord for a class like this one.