Technical Terms
When 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. Genesis 32:25 NASB
Socket of his thigh – The enigmatic Hebrew phrase bekaph yereko raises some interesting technical questions. If we try to figure out just where the mysterious man struck Jacob, we could suggest the usual interpretation, that is, the bowl-shaped socket in the hip where the bones from the leg are attached. But anatomically this presents a problem since the same words are used to describe the place where offspring come from, and the last time I looked, it wasn’t from the connection between the thigh and the hip. Some commentators have suggested that this is metaphorical, a symbolic representation of the place of power and strength. They contend that the location mimics the place of the sword held in readiness. But again, how does this align with the statement that “out of the loins” Jacob’s offspring arise? Perhaps we’re just to squeamish to imagine other interpretations. Or perhaps the ambiguity is intentional. Or maybe it doesn’t matter.
There’s a part of me that would love to think the Genesis account is tongue-in-cheek sexual inuendo. Other stories in Genesis seem to be similar and Hebrew, in general, uses metaphors and inuendo when it comes to sex. But maybe that’s just the Western prurient interest of growing up semi-Victorian. I doubt the nomads of the desert in the 15 Century BCE were quite so prudish. Maybe they all knew the score—and it didn’t really matter that much, because the real story was about power, identity and lineage.
Frederick Buechner’s remark about this story may be all we really need to know:
“He merely touches the hollow of Jacob’s thigh, and in a moment Jacob is lying there crippled and helpless. The sense we have, which Jacob must have had, that the whole battle was from the beginning fated to end this way, that the stranger had simply held back until now, letting Jacob exert all this strength and almost win so that when he was defeated, he would know that he was truly defeated; so that he would know that not all the shrewdness, will, brute force that he could muster were enough to get this. Jacob will not release his grip, only now it is a grip not of violence but of need, like the grip of a drowning man.[1]
“Not a blessing that he can have now by the strength of his cunning or the force of his will, but a blessing that he can have only as a gift. Power, success, happiness, as the world knows them, are his who will fight for them hard enough; but peace, love, joy are only from God.”[2]
Can we read past the technical terms and find something important even in this ambiguous phrase? Or are we stuck in our own worldly paradigm so that the sub-plot (perhaps the real plot) gets lost.
Topical Index: bekaph yereko, socket of the thigh, power, blessing, Genesis 32:25
[1] Frederick Buechner Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons (HarperOne, 2006), p. 7.
[2] Ibid.
