Parashat VaYetse, Genesis 28:10–32:3
by Rabbi Russ Resnik 

A few days ago I was at the bedside of a 92-year-old Jewish friend who thought she was about to die. She was raised as an atheist, but in the last third of her life she’s had numerous experiences with God and is a convinced believer in the Creator, but not yet in his Messiah. “I know you want me to accept Yeshua before I go,” she said, “but I can’t lie. I can’t tell you I’ve had an epiphany with Yeshua when I haven’t.”  

I’ve heard that sort of thing before from Jewish friends who are open to Yeshua, but can’t cross the line into fully accepting him, because they just haven’t had the revelation that Yeshua-believers claim. I wouldn’t call it an epiphany; I’d call it an encounter, an undeniable, life-changing encounter with the God of Israel through Yeshua. That’s what happened to me and to many others who follow Yeshua today. We do well to share the story of Yeshua and his promise of salvation with our Jewish friends and family members, but we also do well to remember that only God can reveal that story to be true.  

The narrative of our patriarchs and matriarchs in Genesis, ancient as it is, is right up to date in this regard. Our forebears learn that beyond anything we can put together for our own lives, or try to convey to other lives, there’s one essential ingredient that we cannot create at all. That ingredient is an encounter with Hashem, the living God, an encounter that changes everything. That’s what Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah discovered, and in this week’s parasha Jacob discovers it too. Indeed, Jacob’s life is framed by two encounters that have a vital message for us and for the whole family descended from Jacob. 

The parasha opens with Jacob fleeing his family encampment and the wrath of his brother Esau.  

Yaakov went out from Be’er-Sheva and went toward Haran,
and he encountered a certain place. (Gen. 28:10–11a) 

Although most translations just say that Yaakov came to this place, translator Everett Fox better captures the sense of the original Hebrew vayifga with “he encountered.” The word makom or “place” appears three times in this one verse (Gen. 28:11), emphasizing that it is the place of encounter. In that place Jacob spends the night and dreams of a ladder or ramp joining heaven and earth, with the Lord himself “standing over against him.”  

Yaakov awoke from his sleep
and said:
Why,
Hashem is in this place,
and I, I did not know it!
He was awestruck and said:
How awe-inspiring is this place!
This is none other than a house of God,
and that is the gate of heaven! (Gen. 28:16–17) 

Yaakov realizes that he is in the presence of a power far beyond himself, and this realization prepares him for the long 20-year journey that lies ahead. This alone isn’t enough, though, because Yaakov will have a second encounter at the end of the 20 years. In the meantime, this story of transforming encounter presents two temptations: First, we might treat it as a nice tale, but believe that we can put together some kind of religious life or, as they say nowadays, some kind of spirituality, without it. Second, we might know we need such an encounter, and might even have had one ourselves, but believe that once is enough, and that’s all it takes. We might invoke that life-changing encounter with God for the rest of our lives without ever revisiting or refreshing it. Yaakov’s example teaches us differently. 

Yaakov’s first encounter prepares him to go forth, and carries him through all that befalls him, and finally back to the place he started. But at the end of our parasha, before he gets back to his starting point, “As Yaakov went on his way,/ messengers of God encountered him” (Gen. 32:2). Here’s the same verb in Hebrew as at the beginning of the story. The messengers are usually understood as angels, so “encounter” in this context implies something out of the ordinary, the heavenly realm breaking into the earthly. The messengers, however, only introduce the real encounter. A mysterious “man” wrestles with Yaakov through the night and finally, when he sees that he cannot prevail against him, touches the socket of his thigh and dislocates it. Before he departs, the man says to Yaakov,  

What is your name?
And he said: Yaakov.
Then he said:
Not as Yaakov/Heel-Sneak shall your name be henceforth uttered,
but rather as Yisrael/God-Fighter,
for you have fought with God and men
and have prevailed. (Gen. 32:28–29) 

As I write in my book Creation to Completion: “Apparently, the transforming encounter is not only for the young and adventurous, but also for the middle-aged (or beyond) and established. Whether we are caught up in youthful self-absorption or in the complacency of mature age, only a touch from God will really change us.” Yaakov’s first encounter ended with a note of self-reliance; he tells God, “If you do everything you promise, and bring me back here, then you’ll be my God.” The second encounter will end his self-reliance. In the first encounter Yaakov sees the God of his fathers Abraham and Isaac; in the second he sees a mysterious “man” who refuses to tell Yaakov his name. The first comes in a dream, the second in a night-long struggle. The second encounter is more profound. Yaakov had named the place of the first encounter Beth-El, house of God, but the second he names Peniel/Face of God, 

for: I have seen God,
face to face,
and my life has been saved. (Gen. 32:31)  

Commentators have different theories and explanations about the mysterious man, but to Yaakov it is clear: he has encountered the divine and he knows who’s boss. He will bear in his flesh from then on a reminder of the divine encounter. And the Children of Israel—called by this name for the first time here in this passage—are to remember this divine encounter, and especially the brokenness that it entails, from then on as well. 

The sun rose on him as he crossed by Penuel,
and he was limping on his thigh.
—Therefore the Children of Israel do not eat the sinew that is on
the socket of the thigh until this day,
for he had touched the socket of Yaakov’s thigh at the sinew. (Gen. 32:32–33)  

Here is a remez, a powerful hint, that the Children of Israel, like our father Yaakov, need the transforming encounter with the God of our fathers to be made whole. And this wholeness entails an impairment of our natural strength and self-reliance. Just as Yaakov, who is himself Israel, is fully brought to God through such an encounter, so must his descendants be, as the prophet foretold:  

“And I will pour out on the house of David
and on those living in Yerushalayim
a spirit of grace and prayer;
and they will look to me, whom they pierced.”

They will mourn for him
as one mourns for an only son;
they will be in bitterness on his behalf
like the bitterness for a firstborn son. (Zech. 12:10 CJB) 

This is where we fit in as followers of Messiah Yeshua. In him we have had an encounter with the God of Israel that changes everything. But the story ultimately isn’t about our individual encounter—it’s about the meeting between the one whom we pierced and all the Children of Israel. We can’t produce that encounter, any more than I could produce the needed “epiphany” in the life of my elderly friend, but we can be faithful to it in two ways:

• Like Yaakov, we continue to bear the sign of that encounter in our own lives—a sign that we don’t depend on ourselves but on the power of the risen Messiah whom we proclaim.
• We bear this sign within and among our people, the whole house of Israel. For Yaakov the encounter comes on the margins, isolated from his family and possessions, but it brings him back to his people and to his destiny among them.

The first encounter comes after the sun has set; the second concludes with the rising sun. Yaakov’s wrestling match with the mysterious “man”—which he calls a face-to-face meeting with God—leaves him lame, but brings the sunrise of promised salvation to all his descendants.  

Shabbat Shalom! 
Rabbi Russ  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

All Scripture references from The Five Books of Moses, The Schocken Bible Volume 1, translated by Everett Fox, except as noted.