He Was Limping

The account of the night at the Jabbok ends with a single sentence about the morning. It is easy to read past it on the way to the meeting with Esau in the next chapter of Genesis. But it tells us what Jacob carried away from the place where he saw God face to face.

Genesis 32:32 And the sun rose upon him as he passed over Penuel, and he was limping upon his thigh.

A Word That Keeps Going

The Hebrew word for “limping” is tsolea. Like ha-goel הַגֹּאֵל gaw-al' in Genesis 48:16, it is a participle. As we saw in Chapter 2, a Hebrew participle has no tense of its own. It shows someone in the middle of doing something, in a state that goes on.

So the text is not reporting that Jacob limped once, for a few steps, and then walked normally. It describes a state that continued. He went on limping. The narrator then adds why Israel kept a custom about it.

Genesis 32:33 Therefore the sons of Israel do not eat the sinew of the thigh-vein which is upon the hollow of the thigh, until this day; because he touched the hollow of Jacob's thigh, in the sinew of the thigh-vein.

The touch on the hollow of the thigh was remembered “until this day” in the practice of the nation that bore Jacob’s new name; the mark was not passing.

The old man who sat up in bed in Genesis 48 to bless Joseph’s sons, and who spoke of “the messenger who has redeemed me from all evil,” was the same man who had limped away from Peniel. When he named the One who redeemed him, he was speaking of One who had left His touch on his body.

Not a Trophy

There is a way of telling this story that makes Jacob the hero of the night. He wrestled with God and prevailed; he would not let go until he was blessed; he came away with a new name. All of that is in the text. The name itself says it: “you have striven with God and with men (ish אִישׁ eesh), and have prevailed” (Genesis 32:29).

But the text also records what Jacob carried away, and it is not a prize. Champions leave a contest holding something up. Jacob left limping. The mark left on the man who held on all night was not a trophy. It was a sign that nothing had been won by his own strength.

When the night turned, the opponent “saw that he did not prevail against him,” and then He touched the hollow of Jacob’s thigh, and the joint was strained (Genesis 32:26). One touch was enough to strain Jacob’s hip. What he still did was hold on, and what he asked for was not victory but a blessing: “I will not let you go, except you bless me” (Genesis 32:27). The blessing, when it came, came from the other: “he blessed him there” (Genesis 32:30).

Hosea’s account says the same thing in other words. The prophet writes that “he strove against an angel and prevailed,” and then he says how: “he wept and sought his favor” (Hosea 12:5). Jacob prevailed, and his prevailing was weeping and asking for favor. A man who weeps and pleads for favor is not a man who has overpowered his opponent.

So the two pictures do not contradict each other. Jacob prevailed, and Jacob limped. He prevailed in the only way the text describes: by holding on to the One who had touched his thigh and asking Him for a blessing. And the limp tells anyone who sees him walk that the strength in that night was not Jacob’s.

The Man Who Grasped the Heel

Jacob’s first name came from the heel. He was born “his hand holding the heel of Esau” (Genesis 25:26), and Hosea recalls it in the line just before the wrestling: “In the womb he grasped his brother’s heel.” Years later Esau said of him, “he has supplanted me these two times: he took my birthright; and behold, now he has taken my blessing” (Genesis 27:36).

At the Jabbok Jacob was still holding on, but now he held on to God, and he held on with a strained hip and with tears. Jacob did not walk away with something he had taken. He walked away with a name he had been given and a blessing he had asked for, and with a limp that he did not choose.

What the Limp Says About Taking Hold

This is not only a detail of Jacob’s biography; it bears on how a person takes hold of the Redeemer. Jacob’s “I will not let you go” is often turned straight into a command: take hold of God, and do not let go. But the night at the Jabbok itself shows something about where the strength for taking hold comes from. What remained to Jacob afterward was a limp. The strength for taking hold did not come from the man. The one who held on was a man whose hip the other had already strained, and whose blessing the other had to give.

Gathering the Night

Between his fear of Esau and the morning at Penuel (the text spells the name both Peniel and Penuel for the same place), a man took hold of Jacob in the dark and wrestled with him through the night, body against body, until a touch strained his thigh. Jacob held on, asked for a blessing, and received it with a new name; he named the place the face of God and said his soul was delivered. Hosea later called the same opponent God and malakh, and Jacob walked away limping.

That is a great deal to have happened to one man. Many people in the Old Testament heard God speak, and many saw Him appear in some form. But how many are recorded as having touched Him, body to body, as Jacob did?