Parashat Vayishlach Genesis 32:4-36:43
Dear TBE Community,
Arguably, Jacob’s struggle with a divine figure on his way back to the Land of Canaan—and his resulting additional name, Israel—is the most famous episode in Parashat VaYishlach. Dreamlike and surreal, yet also clear and firm, like all visions, this nocturnal encounter lends itself to many interpretations of what it represents: an inner struggle, Jacob overcoming his fears, a refined and more layered personality expressed in the need for a second name (the first name, Jacob, is not discarded); the cost one pays for intimate knowledge of oneself and of the Divine.
This passage can also be understood as the fulfillment of a promise and a spiritual itinerary coming full circle.
On his journey to his relatives in Paddan-Aram, when Jacob flees Be’er Sheva in fear of Esau’s revenge, he dreams and encounters God. He sees angels ascending and descending a ladder and declares that the place where he slept is holy—so holy that Jewish tradition identifies it with Mount Moriah and the Temple Mount—mirroring his words that this is Beth El, the House of God. (Beth El, in fact, also gets a new name; the place was formerly called Luz—which, as a Spanish speaker, always throws me off thinking this Luz, too, means “light”).
It is noteworthy that in Parashat VaYetze, Jacob does not embrace God right away. Instead, he makes a conditional vow:
Jacob then made a vow, saying, “If God remains with me, protecting me on this journey that I am making, giving me bread to eat and clothing to wear, and I return safe to my father’s house—then Adonai shall be my God” (Genesis 28:20–21).
Only upon his return, when he has another encounter with the Divine, will Jacob truly commit to Adonai, the God of his father and grandfather: When Jacob comes back from the east, a solid twenty years later, he once again fears meeting his brother, whom he is set to encounter before crossing into the Land of Canaan. And again, he has a nocturnal encounter—dream, vision, or meeting with an ish, a “man,” a word that often connotes an angel, a divine messenger, or God. But this time it is far from peaceful. Instead of contemplating angels floating up and down a ladder, Jacob wrestles until dawn and is injured.
Jacob was left alone. And a figure wrestled with him until the break of dawn. When he saw that he had not prevailed against him, he wrenched Jacob’s hip at its socket, so that the socket of his hip was strained as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for dawn is breaking.” But he answered, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” Said the other, “What is your name?” He replied, “Jacob.” Said he, “Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with beings divine and human, and have prevailed” (Genesis 32:25–29).
After that encounter, Jacob crosses the first river, the Jabbok, meets Esau in a peaceful, dignified reunion, and later crosses a second river, the Jordan. It is in the Land of Canaan—not at the banks of the Jabbok—that Jacob’s transformation is completed, and his itinerary comes full circle:
God appeared again to Jacob on his arrival from Paddan-Aram. God blessed him, saying, “You whose name is Jacob, you shall be called Jacob no more, but Israel shall be your name.” Thus, he was named Israel. And God said to him, “I am El Shaddai. Be fertile and increase; a nation, yea an assembly of nations, shall descend from you. Kings shall issue from your loins. The land that I assigned to Abraham and Isaac I assign to you; and to your offspring to come will I assign the land.” God parted from him at the spot where God had spoken to him; and Jacob set up a pillar there, a pillar of stone. He offered a libation on it and poured oil upon it. Jacob gave the site where God had spoken to him the name Beth El (Genesis 35:9–15).
This is a second—and arguably lesser-known—version of how Jacob receives his name. Not after wrestling all night with God, but simply by returning to the land and to the place where he once slept as a young man and vowed to accept Adonai as his God—if God would protect him, which God did. Besides his love for Rachel, this may be the first authentically sincere action attributed to Jacob: having indeed returned safely, he keeps his vow and, as the third and last patriarch, is blessed with the ancestral covenant.
And as he did twenty years earlier, he erects a stone pillar, anoints it, and names the place the House of God—the House of the God of Israel. With this act, the narrative of the children of Israel enters new terrain, new dimensions.
Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Julia Knobloch