Fear, Prayer and the Name Israel

Angels framed Jacob’s exile at both ends. Leaving the land he saw them on the ladder at Bethel (28:12); returning, they come to meet him. These are the only two places where Jacob sees a company of angels, and between them lie the twenty years with Laban.

Mahanaim, God’s host or camp, later became a city of Gilead. Saul’s son Ishbosheth was made king there (2 Samuel 2:8), and David fled there from Absalom (2 Samuel 17:24). The place-name outlasted the vision by centuries.

“Messengers” is malakhim, the same word as the “angels” of verse 1. God’s messengers met Jacob; now Jacob sends his own. Esau is already in Seir, though Genesis describes his move there only in 36:6–8, after this; the order of the account is not strict chronology.

“My lord” and “thy servant” are what the blessing of 27:29 had reversed: “be lord over thy brethren”. “I have sojourned” is garti; the rabbis noted that its letters add up to 613, the number of the commandments, and read it as Jacob saying he had kept them all while living with Laban.

Jacob lists oxen, asses, flocks and servants, but not the camels he has, and names no number. The message says he wants nothing, only “grace in thy sight”. Chen, grace or favour, becomes the key word of the meeting in 33:8, 10 and 15.

Four hundred men is the size of the band David led as an outlaw (1 Samuel 22:2; 25:13). It is a raiding force, not an escort. The messengers bring back a number and no message, and the silence is what frightens Jacob.

“Afraid” and “distressed” are two verbs, and Rashi read them separately: afraid that he would be killed, distressed that he might have to kill. “Two bands” is machanot, camps, the plural of the word in Mahanaim: after seeing God’s two camps, Jacob makes two of his own.

“Escape” is peletah, a surviving remnant, the word Joseph will use in 45:7: “to preserve you a posterity... and to save your lives by a great deliverance.” Jacob plans for losing half his household.

This is the longest prayer in Genesis. Jacob quotes God back to God, but not exactly: in 31:3 God said “I will be with thee”, and Jacob renders it “I will deal well with thee”. He addresses God by the two generations before him, as God named himself at Bethel.

“I am not worthy of the least” is one Hebrew word, qatonti, “I am small”, too small for all the kindness shown. When he crossed the Jordan going out, he had a staff; he is camped now within a day of the same river with two camps behind him.

“The mother with the children” is literally “mother upon children”, an idiom for a massacre that spares no one; Hosea 10:14 uses it of a mother “dashed in pieces upon her children”. Jacob names the danger twice, “from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau”.

“I will surely do thee good” doubles the verb. God never promised Jacob seed “as the sand of the sea”; he promised dust (28:14). Sand was the image given to Abraham on Moriah (22:17). Jacob reaches for his grandfather’s promise and claims it as his own.

“A present” is minchah, the word for tribute paid to a king, as Ehud brings “a present” to Eglon of Moab (Judges 3:15), and later for the grain offering. Minchah, present, and machaneh, camp, sound alike, and the next verses play the two words off each other.

Two hundred she-goats to twenty he-goats, two hundred ewes to twenty rams: ten females to each male, the proportion of a breeding herd. Jacob, the expert stockman, sends a gift built to multiply.

Milch camels with their colts were the costliest animals in the present, since camel milk fed a household. “Kine” are cows. Counted up, the gift comes to five hundred and fifty head without the colts, a fortune driven toward a brother.

“A space” is revach, room, breathing space, from the root of Rehoboth, the well of 26:22 where Isaac found room. Every drove goes separately, so Esau has to keep meeting generosity before he meets Jacob.

Three questions anticipated: whose art thou, whither goest thou, whose are these? The servant is to answer them in reverse order of importance, ending with the one that matters most, where Jacob is.

“He is behind us” is acharenu. Jacob came out of the womb holding his brother’s heel (25:26), and here he is again behind, sending gifts in front. Whether the Book of Genesis intends the echo is an inference; the placing is plain.

Every driver is given the same words, so Esau will hear the same sentence three times and more. The message is meant to wear down anger by repetition, each drove another arrival with the same apology.

“Appease him” is akhapperah panav, literally “I will cover his face”, from kipper, the verb that later means atonement. “Accept of me” is “lift up my face”. The word face, panim, comes four times in this verse, and in the next scene Jacob will see a face he did not expect.

“Before him” is literally before his face again. The present, minchah, goes over; Jacob stays in the camp, machaneh. He has done all the arranging he can, and the night is not yet over.

Eleven sons are counted; Benjamin is not yet born, and Dinah is not counted. A midrash says Jacob hid her in a chest so Esau would not see her. The Jabbok, now the Zarqa, runs in a deep gorge into the Jordan, and later marked the border of Ammon (Numbers 21:24).

The order is puzzling: verse 22 has Jacob crossing, verse 23 has him sending everyone across, and verse 24 finds him alone. He seems to have ferried the household over and come back, so that the river lies between him and all he owns.

“Wrestled” is yeavek, a verb found only here and in the next verse, perhaps from avaq, dust, grappling in the dust. Its sound joins three names, Yabboq the river, Yaaqov the man, and yeavek the struggle. His opponent is simply “a man”; Hosea 12:4 calls him an angel.

“The hollow of the thigh” is the hip socket. A touch, naga, is enough to put it out, which says something about who the opponent is. The thigh, yarekh, is the same part under which oaths were sworn (24:2 and 47:29).

“For the day breaketh” is given as the reason he must go, and it is never explained. The Talmud supposed it was the angels’ hour to sing before God at dawn. Jacob, who left his father’s tent with a stolen blessing, will not let go of this one without a blessing given.

At his father’s bedside Jacob’s answer to “Art thou my very son Esau?” was one word, ani, “I” (27:24). Here too the answer is a single word, but it is his own name, Yaaqov, the heel-grabber, and nothing more is added to it.

The King James takes the name from sar, prince: “as a prince hast thou power”. The verb is sarah, to strive, and the name itself, Yisrael, most naturally means “God strives” or “may God prevail”, with God as the subject. The name is given again at Bethel in 35:10.

“Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name?” is the question the angel puts to Manoah in Judges 13:18, “Why askest thou thus after my name, seeing it is secret?” The blessing is given, and the name is withheld.

Peniel means face of God. “No man shall see me, and live” (Exodus 33:20) states the fear behind Jacob’s relief; Gideon voices the same fear in Judges 6:22–23. “My life is preserved” is natsal, the verb of his prayer in verse 11, “deliver me”, answered from an unexpected quarter.

Peniel and Penuel are two spellings of one name; Penuel became a town Gideon later broke down (Judges 8:17). When Jacob left the land, he stopped “because the sun was set” (28:11). Now the sun rises on him as he returns. “Halted” is 1611 English for limped.

The sinew that shrank, gid ha-nasheh, is usually identified with the sciatic nerve, and Jewish practice still removes it from meat (Mishnah Chullin 7). No command is given here: Genesis records a custom and explains it by an event, the only food practice in the book traced to something that happened to a patriarch.