I Will Not Let Thee Go

Jacob is the one who cheated. His name means it, and his brother says so: "is not he rightly named Jacob? for he hath supplanted me these two times." He stole a birthright with a bowl of soup and a blessing with a goatskin, and ran for his life. And God chose him anyway, and met him twice on the road, once asleep and once in a fight, and gave him a new name and a limp. If you have ever wondered whether God works with the crooked, this is the story.

The ladder

He is running from Esau with nothing but a staff, and night falls in the open country, and he puts a stone under his head. "And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And, behold, the LORD stood above it, and said, I am the LORD God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac" (Genesis 28:12-13). The promise made to Abraham is handed, unearned, to a thief on the run. And a line for the road: "behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of" (28:15).

"And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not" (28:16). I knew it not. He had thought he was alone in a field. The ladder had been there the whole time. Jesus would one day tell Nathanael, "Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man" (John 1:51): the ladder was a Person, and it stood in a field in Bethel over a man who had not yet done one honest thing.

Two bands

Twenty years later he is coming home, rich, with two wives and eleven sons and a great deal of livestock, most of it got by out-scheming his uncle. And word comes that Esau is on the road to meet him with four hundred men. "Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed" (32:7). He does what Jacob does: he schemes. He splits the camp in two, so that if Esau hits one the other can run. He sends gifts ahead in waves. And then, for the first time in his life, he prays, and it is a real one: "I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies… for with my staff I passed over this Jordan; and now I am become two bands. Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother" (32:10-11). With my staff. He remembers exactly what he had when he left.

He sends everyone across the river, the wives, the children, the flocks. "And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day" (32:24).

Until the breaking of the day

A man. The text will not say more than that at first, and Jacob does not know. All night in the dark by the ford, a man who has spent his whole life getting the better of people, unable to get the better of this one. And then: "when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint" (32:25). A touch. Not a blow. One touch from the stranger and Jacob's hip is out of its socket, and Jacob understands, in that instant, that he had never been winning. The stranger had been letting him.

I will not let thee go. A crippled man, hanging on. Hosea, looking back, says what the hanging on was: "he had power over the angel, and prevailed: he wept, and made supplication unto him" (Hosea 12:4). He wept. The prevailing was weeping and begging with a dislocated hip. Then the question, which is the hinge: what is thy name? The last time Jacob was asked that, by his blind father, he had said "Esau." Now, lamed, in the dark, he says the true one. Jacob. Supplanter. Cheat. And on the confession the new name comes: Israel.

Augustine's question is the right one. Jacob asks the stranger's name and is not given it, "Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there" (32:29). But Jacob knew. "And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved" (32:30). And then the verse that is the whole story in one line: "And as he passed over Penuel the sun rose upon him, and he halted upon his thigh" (32:31). The sun rose on a man with a new name and a limp, and he would limp for the rest of his life.

The face of God

Then Esau. Four hundred men. And "Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him: and they wept" (33:4). The brother he cheated, running. And Jacob, who has just spent a night learning what it is to be met by someone stronger who chooses mercy, says to Esau the strangest and truest thing: "I have seen thy face, as though I had seen the face of God, and thou wast pleased with me" (33:10). He had seen the face of God the night before. It looked like a brother who should have killed him and wept instead.

Where this lands

God chose the cheat. Not the strong brother, not the honest one; the one whose name meant grabber, and He did not change the man by lecturing him. He met him in a field when he thought he was alone, and He met him by a river when he thought he was fighting a stranger, and He broke his hip and gave him a new name and let him limp. Hebrews remembers him at the very end, "when he was a dying… leaning upon the top of his staff" (Hebrews 11:21). The staff he crossed the Jordan with, still in his hand, because he never walked right again.

That is the shape of it for everyone who has ever hung on to God in the dark and said "I will not let thee go." He lets you wrestle. He could end it with a touch, and does, when the time comes, and the touch is not to destroy you but to take away the leg you were standing on. Then He asks your name, and waits for the true one. And the ladder Jacob saw, with the LORD at the top and the angels on it, came down and stood in the road, and asked to be held onto, and let Himself be prevailed over by anyone who wept and made supplication. He has the marks of that night in His hands. We have ours in the way we walk.

Related: Get Thee Out, Prayer, Repentance, and Servants and Chosen. Scripture from the King James Version, linked to BibleHub; the words of God are marked in gold, the words of Christ in purple.