Vayishlach

 

A People by Any Other Name
David H. Aaron

Toward the end of my comments on Parashat Vayeizei, I noted that the collator of the Genesis stories had before him a real challenge. How could he take this cluster of ancestral legends about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and end up with a people called Yisrael? In Parashat Vayishlach this thematic problem is solved with remarkable literary ingenuity. The core story involves Jacob confronting Esau more than twenty years after absconding with the blessing Esau was to receive from Isaac. We, the readers—and Jacob, the character—expect Esau to kill his twin brother upon meeting him. In preparing for the meeting, Jacob divides his camp into two parts, a strategy he hopes will allow at least one cluster of his progeny to survive a confrontation with Esau's retinue. On the night before their encounter, Jacob remains alone by the edge of the river where they crossed into Canaan. There he encounters a"man." I'm going to render here a brief passage from Genesis 32, which is drawn from a core motif that we'll later consider as it appears in a story in the Book of Judges: (1)

Jacob remained alone. A man [ish] struggled with him until dawn. He realized that he could not overpower him, so he struck at his hip-joint, dislocating it during the struggle. [The man] said,"Let me go, for dawn has arrived!" [Jacob replied],"I will not let you go until you bless me." He asked him,"What then is your name?""Jacob." He said,"You shall no longer be called Jacob, but rather Yisrael, because you have struggled [sariyta] with gods and with men and prevailed." Jacob said,"Tell me your name." [The man] replied,"What do you mean by asking for my name?" He then blessed him. (Genesis 32:25–30)

This is the core element of the story, adopted by the redactor from either another piece of literature or a widely known motif within the culture, as I shall demonstrate in a moment. At the very moment in our narrative that Jacob is supposed to confront Esau in battle, he is instead portrayed as fighting with an unnamed man. This is what makes Jacob's inquiry as to his identity so very compelling. Twenty years have passed since the brothers have seen one another. Would they recognize each other in the dark of night? Should Jacob not assume that his attacker is, indeed, Esau? Whom else would he expect to attack him at this place and at this time?

There are a number of difficult idioms in this passage, and various translations have a variety of takes on the best rendering. For instance, after Jacob says,"Tell me your name," the Hebrew reads lamah zeh tishal lishmi, which is rendered by the Jewish Publication Society (JPS) translation,"You must not ask my name!" The Revised Standard Version (2) reads,"Why is it that you ask my name?" JPS simply has him make a statement, and RSV makes it a simple question. I have written,"What do you mean by asking for my name?" by which I'm hoping to convey that the character is challenging Jacob, as he finds his question either insolent or indicative of ignorance (that is, he should recognize him—why doesn't he?). But I cannot be certain my rendering is any better than the other two published translations. In a moment we'll see how the very same phrase is engaged in Judges, but even with the two instances together, the exact intent remains ambiguous.
           
In seeking the name of this night adversary, Jacob is mimicking his own father's question as to who it was who brought him food for a blessing. And just as was the case then, Jacob once again seeks a blessing, for if this is, indeed, Esau, he will finally be the recipient of the blessing with which he absconded by virtue of prevailing in hand-to-hand combat. The writer has taken advantage of every possible ambiguity and tension within the core narrative. The contextual adaptation of this motif is masterful.
           
The man is not Esau. The story, placing Jacob along a riverbank at night is probably playing off an ancient custom regarding the presence of river demons at nightfall. The author uses this unusual circumstance to his great advantage, for this"person" ends up blessing Jacob in a most unconventional manner: he changes his name. That takes place in verse 29. The mystery man refuses to provide his name to Jacob and departs. The material that follows, including verses 31–33, entails folk material about the name of the place and is added by the redactor to close off the unit. The passage includes the notion that Jacob thinks of his adversary as having been a deity, again echoing those traditions about night river demons.

As noted, in Judges 13 we also read of an encounter between an unsuspecting man and a divine being—albeit, one explicitly identified as such by the narrator. Only, the Judges passage is something of a parody, making fun of the dullard Manoah, who is to be the father of Samson. Manoah seeks to detain the angel with food, but the angel refuses, because naturally angels do not consume food! The point is that Manoah fails to perceive the unusual nature of his guest. The narrative runs like this:

For Manoah did not know that he was an angel of Yahveh. So Manoah said to the angel of Yahveh,"What is your name? We should like to honor you when your words [regarding the birth of a child] come true." The angel said to him,"What do you mean by asking for my name, for it is wondrous [peli]?" (Judges 13:16–18)

Clearly this is the exact same scene, only it is occurring in two discrete stories. The response of the angel is identical in both stories, although other details differ. The Genesis story refers to the unnamed wrestler as a man directly, whereas the narrator in Judges informs the reader that this is an angel. And as noted, the goal in the Judges context is to make fun of Manoah, who does not even know an angel when one is staring him in the face. In contrast, Jacob is fighting with this aggressor at night, and we would not expect him to recognize him as other than a man. After all, Jacob holds his own in this physical struggle, something one would not expect to do with an angel. Combat with a mysterious adversary rather than the adversary Jacob and we, the readers, anticipate (namely, Esau), ends up being a struggle over peoplehood. One could not be sure which of Isaac's sons would become Israel, but with this story, it is clear that it will not be Esau, who is later designated father of the Edomites.

A single motif is used here for two very different stories. This provides us a rare window into the compositional methods of the Torah writers. While it is possible that one story borrowed the motif from the other, I would suggest it more likely that both writers drew from a common cultural paradigm. The core element is easily summarized: an unexpected encounter with a mysterious"person" results in a blessing of some sort. When that person's name is sought directly, he refuses disclosure and departs. The identity remains undetermined, but the blessing's content comes to fruition. Just how much of either story derives from some other source beyond this core element cannot be established. But what is so marvelously exposed is the artistry of the authors. They use a single motif to very different ends: in one context, they use it to transform Jacob into Israel; in the other context, they use it to announce that a heretofore barren woman will give birth to the great Samson. Notice how a writer might have used the same motif to have Isaac's birth announced back in Genesis 18, but there a different narrative structure was engaged. And also notice that nothing intrinsic to the motif dictates the kind of story for which it can be adapted.
           
This is not the only time we have this particular window into the compositional methods of the Torah writers (for many more examples, see my book, Etched in Stone(3)), but it is a particularly wide window. It should be altogether clear that authors worked from deep within their cultures, using imagery that, on the one hand, would be familiar to readers, and yet, on the other hand, could be employed creatively to yield meanings that a reader would not readily expect. In"The Decay of Lying," Oscar Wilde has Vivian say,"Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose." (4) Our biblical authors understood this deeply. Their literature would, indeed, anticipate and shape Israelite identity through stories for millennia to come.

(1) I am not using the standard, published translations so that I might highlight certain characteristics of the Hebrew.

(2) The Revised Standard Version of the Bible, National Council of Churches of Christ in America.

(3) David H. Aaron, Etched in Stone: The Emergence of the Decalogue (New York: T & T Clark), 2006.

(4) Oscar Wilde,"The Decay of Lying," in The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (London: Hamlyn, 1963), p. 836.  (Return)

David H. Aaron received his doctorate from Brandeis University and ordination from the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati. He is professor of Hebrew Bible and History of Interpretation at HUC-JIR, Cincinnati. His most recent book is Etched in Stone: The Emergence of the Decalogue (T & T Clark, 2006).