Jacob III: Jacob returns to Canaan (Genesis 32-36)

[Gen. 32]

Nearing his old homeland, Jacob sends ahead messengers to meet his brother Esau and announce his approach. They return, saying, "Esau's coming to meet you with 400 men."

Jacob figures that this is it: my brother's going to kill me. So he divides his people and livestock into two companies, hoping that if one's annihilated the other can still escape. And he sends several packets of servants and animals out in front of him to meet with Esau on the way to offer themselves up as presents.

Following at the rear, Jacob makes a night crossing of a ford of the Jabbok River. Sending over his wives and possessions first, Jacob is completely alone when he's beset by a single man with whom he ends up wrestling all night long.

As the dawn breaks, this mysterious wrestler "touch[es] the hollow of Jacob's thigh", which - just by touching it - somehow puts the thigh out of joint. Hmm.

"Let me go," the Mysterious Wrestler says, "for the day is breaking." "No," Jacob says, "you must bless me first."

Huh.

"Well, what's your name?" the Mysterious Wrestler asks. "Jacob," Jacob answers. "No," the Mysterious Wrestler says, "your name will now be Israel, since you have wrestled with God and man and prevailed."

Sure, why not?

"Great," Jacob/Israel replies. "So, uh, what's your name, then?"

"Why do you ask my name?" the Mysterious Wrestler retorts, then gives Jacob/Israel a quick blessing and takes off. However, Jacob/Israel is aware that this wrestler was God.

And since God touched Jacob on the hollow of his thigh, Jews henceforward are never allowed to eat the hip-sinew of animals. (Of course, since God and Jacob were wrestling all night it seems that he must have touched Jacob pretty much all over, right?)

But the thigh business, as inexplicable and pointless as it is, hardly seems the weirdest thing in this weird story. I mean, for what reason would God want to wrestle with Jacob, to whom he's promised a great nation? What would it have meant if Jacob had lost? How does a wrestling bout manage to go on all night long? Why did they wait till morning to speak to each other? And wouldn't some of Jacob's people have come back over the river looking for him that night? You know, once a few hours had gone by, and the master of the house hadn't followed them across a shallow ford?

I really can't say the first thing about what this story is supposed to be telling me. It frankly seems pretty completely meaningless. --Okay, so you have to wrestle with God before you can found a mighty nation. Is that it? A few chapters back, we also learned you have to be willing to give up that mighty nation altogether if God asks you to (ie, murder your son Isaac).

But what is the meaning of this wrestling match? I mean, if it's to be seen as a metaphor. What is Jacob's struggle in life? That his uncle is a deceptive bastard? And does it matter that Jacob himself is a deceptive bastard, in the way he's dealt with his brother Esau?

I dunno. Help me out, because I'm getting nothing from this wrestling story.

[Gen. 33]

Coming off his all-night wrestle, Jacob crosses the river just as Esau and his men are appearing in the distance. Jacob arranges his wives and children in the order in which he prefers they be slaughtered, then walks up to his brother, bowing to the ground seven times in succession (which sounds like an awfully tiresome display for Esau to sit through).

But Esau, for some reason, is overjoyed to see his brother Jacob - whom 20 years before he had vowed to kill. Jacob, even more curiously, now calls himself Esau's "servant". Now, I don't understand this reversal. Years ago, Jacob cheated his brother out of his birthright and then out of a blessing from his father which would have made him lord over the whole sibling brood. But then Jacob skipped town and now returns oblating himself the ground, giving up vast gifts of livestock, and calling himself the servant? What was the point of all of Jacob's earlier scheming if it so readily came to nothing?

I'm telling you, these stories just don't add up. They persistently fail to make simple human sense. Characters are inconsistent, and their motivations are often opaque or self-contradictory over time. To be fair, it's hard to notice this at first because the writing in the Bible is so hideously dull. But take a longer look... tease the narrative strands loose from the soporific babble... and beneath the bad writing I promise that you will find many a bad story lurking beneath.

Anyway.

Esau proposes to lead Jacob to where he now lives, a place called Seir; but Jacob begs off, saying he's afraid that his suckling animals may die unless he leads them very slowly. "So you head on first; I'll be right behind you." And as soon as Esau's gone, Jacob bolts in a different direction to a place called Succoth, run by a fellow named Hamor.

Huh?

[Gen. 34]

King Hamor's son Shechem, smitten by Jacob's only daughter Dinah, rapes her, then asks his dad to use his influence to arrange a marriage. And why not? This young Shechem seems like a well-enough mannered fellow.

(Why did Jacob move down to Succoth again?)

So King Hamor and son Shechem approach Jacob, and Jacob can barely hold back his own sons from tearing these guys apart because they're all so hopping mad. But Hamor puts on generous airs and proposes that Jacob's sons marry from among his own daughters too - that they all have a great big feast and everybody can live happily thereafter in Succoth side-by-side.

Jacob's boys get sly about this thing, and they say, well, Mr. Hamor, we can't let our sister marry an uncircumcised man. So since you fellows want to show your good intentions and be gracious to us and all - how about you round up the men in your town and all of you cut up your dicks according to Yahweh's specifications? So Hamor heads back to town and orders every man therein to chop up his genitals.

Three days pass. The men of the town, as the Bible succinctly puts it, are "sore". So incapacitated are they, in fact, that Jacob's sons Simeon and Levi are able to stroll into town and run every single one of them through with their swords. Then Jacob's other sons plow through town, collecting all livestock, women, and children to keep as their own.

Simeon and Levi were apparently acting on their own recognizance in this, since their father Jacob is distraught. "You've made me odious to my neighbors, and if the Canaanites and Perizzites gang up together against us, we won't stand a chance."

"What?" they reply, "should we have just stood by and let our sister be raped?"

Touche. On the other hand, if we were to punish all rapes by killing every man who lives in the rapist's hometown.... Ah, I don't know. Something tells me it wouldn't pan out well.

[Gen. 35]

God tells Jacob to pack up and move to the area near Bethel, where he had dreamed of the ladder and erected a pillar so long ago (and where it seems like he would have returned in the first place, right after leaving Laban, right?). Jacob tells his people that they'll need to get godly, and so give up their idols and earrings. As they proceed to Bethel, God keeps "a terror" on the surrounding cities to prevent them from avenging the recent massacre.

Upon arriving at Bethel, Jacob sets up a new altar and changes his name to Israel for good. Roaming further into the surrounding lands in search of a place to settle, Rachel goes into labor with a second son (Jacob/Israel's twelfth) whom she dies delivering. He is given the name Benjamin.

Apropos of nothing, we're told that Jacob/Israel's son Reuben sleeps with his dad's concubine Bilhah, "and Israel heard of it." Yikes.

Continuing to wander, Jacob/Israel encounters his father Isaac at his homestead at Mamre (Hebron) just in time for the old patriarch to die at age 180 - and be buried by his sons Jacob and Esau. No word on what Esau had to say about his brother giving him the slip back there at the ford of the Jabbok river.

[Gen. 36]

And then a "phone book" chapter. Some genealogy, plus a list of Esau's "chiefs" in the land of Seir, and of other people who lived near Esau, and of kings who ruled in nearby Edom, and etc., and etc., and etc., and etc.

And etc., and etc., and etc.

And etc.


[I guess "and etc." is redundant, eh? Since "et" is "and" in Latin. Thus, "and et cetera" means "and and so-on".]