The Empty Place
Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. Genesis 32:24 NASB
Until daybreak – Someone confronts Jacob in the night; someone who isn’t supposed to be there. Or is he? Does Jacob go back across the ford of Jabbok because he “knows” (in some Hebraic way) that there is someone he must fight? The text says “a man,”—‘ish—but this isn’t any ordinary man. In fact, if the Hebrew word ‘ish is understood as it is used, not as the lexicons suggest, then this isn’t a “man” at all, because ‘ish isn’t a word for a male human being. ‘ish is a word about the sum total of all the relationships that constitute the identity of a person. It’s not about height, weight, hair color, ethnicity or any static attribute. It’s about how we belong to others and ourselves. It’s about what makes us self-conscious. Ya’akob wrestles with identity, and in the process, he is given a new identity in a new name. What comes to Ya’akob, on the wrong side of the place of pouring out, is his old persona, ready to fight him ‘ad alot hashshahar.
This is a curious phrase. It is usually translated “until the breaking of the dawn,” and perhaps that is how we must understand it. But there is something a bit more mysterious here, just as mysterious about the “man” whom Yakob fights. The first two words, ‘ad alot, are not particularly difficult. An adverb and a verb, ‘ad alot, is “as far as” or “until” plus “to ascend, to cause to rise, to lead up.” Clearly temporal, the phrase must mean that the fight continued until a time of ascent. But what time is that? The problem is with the noun, shahar. Victor Hamilton notes: “A masculine noun generally denoting the breaking of the day, that time just prior to sunrise. Some have taken a clue from the Ras Shamra texts in which šḥr refers both to the common noun “dawn” and to the name of a deity, Dawn. Šaḥar, along with šalim, is born to a woman who has been impregnated by the god El (UT16: Text no. 52). The suggestion is then that there are (veiled) references to this Canaanite deity in the ot, albeit in a demythologized fashion.”[1]
Does Ya’akob wrestle with more than a man? Does he wrestle with the left overs of pagan gods, the ones who come at night and fight with men until the ascent of Dawn? Is this perhaps his last battle with the household of Laban? Or is it an inner struggle like the one in the Garden two millennia later? Isn’t YHVH present in those battles? Isn’t the sweat of drops of blood a sign of the beckoning of one choice versus the duty of another? I wonder if you and I don’t also wrestle with the god Dawn, that temptation of the yetzer ha’ra to return us to the “safer” life where we were in charge. Perhaps this is “veiled” mythology. The story is strange enough to be so. But there is something happening here that turns Ya’akob from one way of living to another; from mastery to submission, from ascendency to suffering, from self-reliance to trust in the unseen God.
What do you make of the strange request, “Let me go for ascends hashshahar,” that is, “Let me go for the god Dawn approaches”? Is the Canaanite deity, the practice of placating to gain advantage, now left behind? Is Ya’akob finally free of his addiction of control? Perhaps the story is just too strange for us to understand, but it might not be too strange to feel.
Topical Index: dawn, hashahar, Genesis 32:24
[1] Hamilton, V. P. (1999). 2369 שָׁחַר. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, Jr. & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, (electronic ed.) (917). Chicago: Moody Press.
NOTE: From Today until December 12 I will be completely unavailable – no phone, no internet, no connection of any kind. Please me patient until I return. Skip
In a distant past I left all I knew behind, I separated myself from my family, my friends, all I owned and had built for myself to become free. In my leaving I also wrestled, with myself. Is there a possibly that the person or man that Jacob wrestled with was in fact Jacob? Couldn’t he be the man that he met and struggled with sort of like the yetza hara?
When I finally left and struggled to become free I was and am now not the same in many ways. I had always kind of identified with Jacob in his struggle in my mind.
I think there is a real place for allegory here, and also a place where we can all, as fellow humans, identify with Jacob, but maybe not so many of us with Israel (yet). But there is one thing without doubt. The fight was real, as testified by the limp. There was a Someone on the other end of that fight; that fight where Israel stood, con
quered and conquering, and worshiped his Overcomer, Who blessed him with the name that honored his overcoming of himself.
I wrestle too, but I do not think, even in my darkest days where I suffered from the perception of abandonment, that I was wrestling ‘just’ with myself, nor do I think, looking back, that I was ever alone, either, in that wrestling. This most strange of all amalgamations, where, after Yeshua ascended for the purposes of somehow spreading His presence among all of us simultaneously through the agency of the Holy Spirit, we now share in His Life (don’t know what I just said there – I am just trying to quote), is so intimate, but at the same time, so subtle, so as to not disturb the agency of our free wills, we can mistake it for ourselves, or not see it at all.
Like I think C.S. Lewis tried to say once, we can enjoy talking about ghosts, but we all hush if we think we hear a footstep in the hall.
I still struggle with the desire to control. I like my ducks lined up in rows from now until next year (and beyond, if that were possible)… and G-d is breaking me of that, in a place where each day is reliance on Him (give me this day Your bread). For me this struggle never seems to end, and I don’t really know what to do with it. I guess, like Ya’acob, I keep fighting so that one day I, too, may leave that addiction to control behind.
I used to piously proclaim that the only thing I can control is my attitude. Only recently have I come to the conclusion that I am not even ringmaster of my own circus.
Hi,
I seem to know well about the gods that come in the night and pose havoc with personal identity issues. The daybreak most often occurs when I invoke Messiah’s help to disperse those gods, forces, ideas, annoying irksome entities that vex! Collectively, I think we are all describing facets of the wrestling match we share in common, but can only meet our respective opponent head-on in God’s strength! God bless you today in your endeavors!
David R
Three days? Completely unavailable for ONLY three days? Seriously? I was hoping you would take until the new year, at least. Takes a while to reboot. Take care of yourself, first Skip, you can’t give from an empty basket. That’s written somewhere.
Ah, the “addiction of control”, every man’s problem. And for the person pursuing the will of god, a daily battle. And Hashem’s goal for every believer? To take us “from mastery to submission, from ascendency to suffering, from self-reliance to trust in the unseen God.” May the Spirit work in each of our lives to conform us to the image and the obedience of Messiah.
hello bro. Skip, i thought you would be gone for a longer time, we will miss our daily contact with you through you posts, but as you cross the brook, may you also the blessed with a spritual name change , and be bless beyond measure. “HAPPY TRAILS” SHALOM.
Is this a metaphor? That he possibly fought with himself and his controlling emotions to submit to God?