Genesis 32:9

JACOB'S NEW NAME. -- Genesis 32:9-12; Genesis 32:24-30.

GOLDEN TEXT. -- And he said,. will not let thee go, except thou bless me. -- Genesis 32:26. TIME. --About B. C. 1739. PLACE. --Peniel, east of the Jordan, on the brook Jabbok. HELPFUL READINGS. -- Genesis 27:41-46; Genesis 28:13-15; Genesis 31:11-13; Genesis 32:1-8; Genesis 32:13-23; Hosea 11:1-3; Luke 18:1-8. LESSON ANALYSIS. --1. A Cry for Help; 2. The Struggle in the. Night; 3. A New Man with. New Name.

INTRODUCTION.

Twenty years at least have passed since the vision at Bethel; twenty years passed in Haran in the service of Laban; Jacob was now on his return to his father's house, attended by his two wives and. numerous family, also rich in cattle from his thrifty partnership with Laban. Never, during all this long period, had he seen his open-hearted brother Esau whom he had injured. But now, on the point of returning to his native country, the news was brought to him of his brother's approach with 400 armed men, which made. meeting inevitable. Jacob made all his dispositions and arrangements to prepare for the worst. He sent over the brook Jabbok, first, the part of his family which he valued least, and who would be the first to meet Esau; then those whom he loved most, that in the event of danger, they might have the greatest facility in escaping; then Jacob was left alone in the still, dark night. It was in this crisis, when he was still uncertain whether Esau still nourished the purpose to slay him, held twenty years before, when he was filled with anxiety and foreboding, that he sought in the night season communion with God, and enjoyed the remarkable vision that is the subject of this lesson.

Peniel, the place where this incident occurred, had its name handed down to the after ages. The place became the chief sanctuary of the Transjordanic tribes. Jacob was still on the heights of the hills east of the Jordan, beyond the deep defile where the Jabbok, as its name implies, "wrestles" with the mountains through which it descends to the Jordan. In the dead of night he sent his wives and sons and all that he had, across the defile, and he was left alone; and in the darkness and stillness, in the crisis of his life, in the agony and fear over the issue of to-morrow, there "wrestled" with him one whose name he knew not, until the dawn rose over the hills of Gilead.-- Stanley.

Taking all precautions to propitiate. brother whom he had so greatly offended, he spends the night at the ford of Jabbok, deep down where it enters the Jordan--a mental struggle from which he comes forth, no longer Jacob, "the Supplanter," but Israel, "a Prince of God." It is not necessary to materialize the scene, for the soul is the true sphere of that wrestling which secures spiritual blessing. Nor does even the halting on his thigh involve any physical struggle, though it implies miraculous agency. Its lesson is only an enforcement of what had preceded;--that human policy is no safe reliance, but that he must trust in God. He must be made to feel, too, that he to whom he looks as his Protector, and on whose promises he relies, is pure and holy, and has no pleasure in deceit. The mighty struggle was that of God with the still resisting evil of his nature,--a struggle which cannot be spared to any one who is destined to high spiritual ends, and conscious of being so. His whole past had been, from first to last, more or less. web of craft and contriving. He had striven with men, and might flatter himself that he had overreached them; but he has now to contend with God. The agony was long and terrible,--through the darkness of the night till the dawn--but it was the wrestling of the new higher life with the old and evil; the agony of repentance and new birth, and from it he emerged. new man with. new name. It was needed that he should have such. preparation to enter aright on his great inheritance, from which now only the Jordan divided him.-- Geikie.

I.. CRY FOR HELP.

9.. God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, the Lord.

In order to see the force and fitness of this prayer the circumstances must be kept in mind, The "Lord," Jehovah, the God of the covenant made with Abraham, renewed with Isaac and with Jacob, who had promised to Jacob at Bethel that he should be protected in Haran and led back to his father's house, directed him to return and he had gone thus far, in obedience to the command, on the route to Canaan. Now the tidings had come that Esau, the brother whom he had overreached and supplanted twenty years before and who had determined on his death, was marching upon him with 400 men. Incapable of making. defence, he appealed to the God of the covenant for his protection. It will be observed that Jacob pleads his petition and enforces his prayer by declaring that he was involved in the danger that threatened him by obeying the divine command. It was the Lord who said to him, "Return unto thy country, and to thy kindred, and. will deal well with thee."