<b>Genesis 32. "Jacob wrestled the angel, and the angel was overcome."</b>

Jacob is now returning to the place he fled back in G29. Fearful of his brother's 20-year-old rage, he lowers himself in his messages to Esau, calling himself Esau's servant and Esau his lord, and so on, and practically begging for forgiveness. I wonder, now... Jacob seemed so in control back when he was working for Laban, when he was doing a good job and working hard and honestly. Then Laban tried to trick him out of his wages, and he reciprocated with a similarly dirty trick, and now it seems like all he is is fearful.

Fearful of Laban catching up and taking his daughters back by force.

Fearful of Esau killing him and his wives and their children.

Was paranoia a fine-print clause in Isaac's blessing? Was it in God's?

When the messengers returned to Jacob, he discovers that Esau's coming with a 400-strong army to 'meet' (eradicate?) him and his group. Jacob then divides his own men and beasts into two groups... not to have the option of a pincer attack, but to be able to run away at 50% strength if attacked. Rebekah may be a strategist, and Jacob may have inherited some of that, but he's clearly not a fighter and has no idea what to do with an army in battle. He even has cows; he could use them to stampede through the middle.

Ah well. Not every story is the Three Kingdoms.

So after dividing his group in two, Jacob prays to God, saying that all he had when he went over to Laban was his staff, and now he has so much. The staff is significant because it's the sign of a shepherd, or something silly like that. When we read ahead, in G38, Judah's also a shepherd, and has a staff which he uses in his pledge to Tamar.

After praying, Jacob sends ahead several groups with gifts to Esau, hoping that they would gradually break his anger as though his anger were a wave and each gift a new beach.

And then he sends his family ahead, and remains alone.

Jacob wrestling with God at night strikes me as kind of cool, in a way, like, 'whoa, that's cool.' The word struggle always reminds me of the 'sixth pillar of Islam', the idea of spending every day combatting the evil within you, and with that context (though it's entirely inappropriate, seeing as it came well after Genesis) I have this image in my mind of God being some sort of evil that Jacob is trying to remove from his life. Of course, there's also the idea of your body fighting off alien substances...

Question: why does God decide to leave at daybreak? Is something special going on? Does he need to get home to bed before his wife wakes up? Etc.

Jacob says he won't let God go before God blesses him, and that's just silly. If it's a deity that you can defeat in physical contest, why would you need a blessing from him? More like he needs a blessing from you. Jacob, you should take over. Though, God did have that cool hip thing. Seems like a good technique to use on Esau, see if you can't spend some skill points in God's training center to learn it.

And God changes Jacob's name to Israel and now fast-forward a few thousand years and we've got some tiny country in the Middle East causing a huge amount of distress to everyone who pays attention to it.