Abstract: The story of Jacob's fight with an unidentified attacker (Gen. 32:23-32) poses a multitude of questions which the plain text leaves unanswered. 1. Why did Jacob take his family and possessions across the river, after having received the message that his brother was approaching with a small army? A river is, after all, a natural line of defense and was therefore an advantage which should have been maintained. 2. Why would Jacob have remained alone in the middle of the night? 3. Who was this unnamed opponent? At the outset he is called a man (v. 25) but in the course of the story he turns into an angel. This is manifested by Jacob's demand for a blessing from him prior to his release. 4. What was the attacker's objective? We are left wondering whether he wanted to kill, rob, or in some other fashion hurt Jacob. 5. Why did the first appearance of dawn disturb the fighting man/angel so much? 6. If we deal with an angel, how is it possible that a heavenly being would find himself unable to defeat a human opponent? Not only was he apparently unable to pin Jacob down, he was even unable to detach himself from Jacob's grip and to disappear the way he had come. 7. The angelic wrestler then predicts the change of name from Jacob to Israel which takes place later. He does not actually effect this change. For this he would have needed to say Yikare shimkha which he does not say. He uses the expression Ye-amer shimkha which connotes the prediction of a later event (Compare the use of this expression with Isaiah 62:4 and Hosea 2:1). What is the connection between the night fight and the anticipated change of name? 8. The story ends with the words: And for him [Jacob] the sun shone, as he crossed the river ... to rejoin his encampment. The peculiarity of the words for him deserves our attention and will help in the clarification of the event. Various answers have been offered by traditional commentators to some of the questions enumerated above. None seems to answer the full range of these questions and therefore fail to create a complete picture of what took place during this eventful night. This may be the reason that prompted Maimonides in The Guide For The Perplexed to declare that the wrestling match between Jacob and his unidentified attacker was not a reality, but rather, what he calls a prophetic vision. (1) It is regrettable that Maimonides did not elaborate and explain what, in his opinion, the message of this vision was. We, the readers, are therefore challenged to explore this point by ourselves. In her book Wrestling with Angels (2) Naomi Rosenblatt assigned to this unnamed intruder the role of Jacob's father, Isaac, the enmity of his brother, Esau, and several other fears and memories assaulting Jacob. She thereby brilliantly reduced Jacob's adversary to a symbol of emotional regrets and fears and paved the road towards a better understanding of this episode. However, the Bible was written long before Freud and the ensuing psychological insights. The peshat [plain meaning] of the Torah is addressed to an all-inclusive audience of its time, and cannot be expected to build on broadbased psychological meanings. While there can be little doubt that allegoric writing is used in biblical stories, it can only be to a point where the average reader can instinctively absorb it with ease. It is for this reason that I propose that the two adversaries in this fight are the symbolic representatives of two inner voices in Jacob: One that advocates the entry into the land which had been promised to his forefathers and to which he felt entitled; the other which advocates a prosperous life on the other side of the border, thereby avoiding the dreaded warfare with his brother. A short review of the life of our protagonist will help us understand these contradictory feelings. Jacob had labored long and hard to reach the prosperity now in evidence. …
Publication Year: 2010
Publication Date: 2010-04-01
Language: en
Type: article
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