Is a philosophy of history recoverable in the story of Jacob at the Jabbok (Gen 32.23–33)?

Before answering that question with more questions, the text! The one given below comes from Alter (Genesis, 1996). The verses in bold are those passages thought to have been added by a later redactor to the Yahwistic text. For the reasons underlying this understanding of the existence of at least two (actually three) main layers in the story, see the commentaries (for instance Westermann, Genesis 12-36: a commentary, 1985). The detail of the argument is important but would be a little overwhelming here and superfetatory (as befits a Jacobian twin). Let lineaments suffice. The Yahwist is thought to be re-using older, undatable, material (layer 1), namely a local folktale of a universally known type regarding a spirit or troll of the river, to which the name of Jacob was not yet attached. Indeed, the Jabbok/Jacob pair is a less than perfect metathesis, since the `ayin of Jacob is in the way. On the other hand, the better pair of words, hence their presumed original featuring in an old local folktale, is provided by the name of the river, יַבֹּק, and the wrestling, וַיֵּאָבֵק. The Yahwist (early or late Judaean, I vote for the latter, for reasons having to do with the late use of writing in the kingdom of Judah: so, –8th-7th c.) integrated the tale (perhaps already attached to Jacob by northern Israelite traditions, but not yet arranged in the larger-frame story as we have it now) in a larger cycle of longish stories concerning Jacob. Travels across and outside the “land” (from Bethel in the south to Gilead in the northeast), conflicts arranged in imbricated pairs (Esau/Jacob, Laban/Jacob, Leah/Rachel), and their resolutions, all of this book-ended by night visions of the “man” or Yahweh, no doubt the author is a story-teller and a thinker who is very skillfully using Israelite traditions about Jacob their ancestor. As said supra, the text in bold seems to be a more recent addition: it makes Jacob disabled in verse 26b, yet Jacob is able to wrestle his opponent until dawn. It also introduces the re-naming of Jacob as Israel (as a counterpart of Jacob’s question to his opponent) and gives it a strange, intellectual, explanation: “You have striven with God”. Theophoric names normally express a divine action, protection in this particular case, not an action by the name-bearer. Finally, it explains an otherwise unknown dietary rule and adds a “to this day” that looks more recent. Westermann notes that many flights of theological thinking are based on these putatively late insertions into the story and would like serious theology to take into account the layering in the text.

²³And he rose on that night and took his two wives and his two slavegirls and his eleven boys and he crossed over the Jabbok ford. ²⁴And he took them and brought them across the stream, and he brought across all he had. ²⁵And Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn. ²⁶And he saw that he had not won out against him and he touched his hip-socket and Jacob’s hip-socket was wrenched as he wrestled with him. ²⁷And he said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” ²⁸And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob”. ²⁹And he said, “Not Jacob shall your name hence be said, but Israel, for you have striven with God and men, and won out.” ³⁰And Jacob asked and said, “Tell your name, pray.” And he said, “Why should you ask my name?” and there he blessed him. ³¹And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, meaning, “I have seen God face to face and I came out alive.” ³²And the sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel and he was limping on his hip. ³³Therefore the children of Israel do not eat the sinew of the thigh which is by the hip-socket to this day, for he touched Jacob’s hip-socket at the sinew of the thigh.

Now for the philosophy of history that one can dream up from this text: A weakening of what passed for known, self- and once-revealed being: god(s) identifiable and localizable, worshippable and bankable (politicizable, meaning whose temples, tithing, or sacrificial systems, and scriptures, could be domesticated or tandem-ridden by priesthoods and kings)? To or towards something inherently weaker, limping, unassured. Acquiring the means to control destiny, namely birthright, women and reproduction, capital, and finally land (though it is just marked by cultic stones, made palatable by yahwist apparitions to the hero, but still called Canaan in this fictional arrangement by an author or framer who is quite familiar with the end of both monarchies of Israel and Judah), acquiring all of this can’t be the center of one’s devotion. I hope that this is what my imaginary ancient hearer/reader was thinking (by this I mean the –5th c. post-exilic reader, say in the late, Ezra-ic or post-Ezra period), in a tiny part of the vast Persian empire. My imaginary Judaean reader, in a small corner of the vast Eber-Naharaim satrapy, one of twenty-three, would be reading the latest installment of the struggles for survival of an ancestral Jacob as a story in which land, livestock, and reproduction of self have to be waged. Only through these repeated contractual arrangements with Esau, Laban, and the divine troll at the crossing of the stream, is there hope to get beyond trickery and reach something like the grace of a new morning, diminished, limping but alive, and more importantly not a twin or mirror image anymore, but self-knowing and with a passable name, en route to something one could call one’s home or land. A passable name, that is an identifier and most ancient guarantee of the bona fide claim to ancestral lands that were now part of an immense empire.

Or am I fooling myself and is the story playing a trick on us, namely that the radical weakening of political control presented in such stories as Gen 22 and 32 (binding of Isaac scene, and Jacob at the Jabbok) can become the source of even harsher, absolute, and uncompromising type of land power?