Genesis 32

Notes

1. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 36, 74

   The Masoretic text numbers this verse 32:1; the KJV, the RSV, the LXX and the Vulgate print it as 31:55, so the English 32:1–32 is the Masoretic 32:2–33 throughout. The Masoretic division joins Laban's leaving to the chapter of Jacob's camps: Laban returns "to his place" (מְקוֹמוֹ), and in v. 3 Jacob names a place of his own. "His sons and his daughters" are Jacob's children and wives, whom Laban has just claimed as his own: "the daughters are my daughters, and the sons are my sons" (31:43; 31:28).

2. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 62, 128

   מַלְאֲכֵי אֱלֹהִים "messengers of Elohim" last appeared at Bethel, going up and down on the ladder as Jacob left the land (28:12); they meet him again as he comes back to it. The capital is by reference within the scene, as ruled for 28:12 and for this verse and the next (128d). פָּגַע "encounter" is the verb of 28:11, where Jacob "encountered the place." In v. 4 Jacob sends מַלְאָכִים of his own to Esau. The one word, "messengers" (62), lets the reader hear that the envoys of Elohim come to Jacob before Jacob's envoys go to Esau; "angels" (KJV, RSV) here and "messengers" in v. 4 would part them.

3. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 17, 18, 128

   מַחֲנַיִם "Mahanaim" is the dual of מַחֲנֶה "camp," "Two Camps." Jacob sees one camp, Elohim's, and gives the place a name with two in it. Rashi: two companies of messengers, those of outside the land who had brought him this far and those of the land who came to meet him. The chapter then fills the dual with Jacob's own camps: he halves his people "into two camps" (v. 8), and he prays, "now I have become two camps" (v. 11). The name cannot carry "camp" in English (17), so it is printed in its familiar form (18) and the pun is in this note. Mahanaim is later a Levitical city of Gad (Josh 21:38) and David's refuge from Absalom (2 Sam 17:24); "the dance of the two camps" (מְחֹלַת הַמַּחֲנָיִם) is in Song 7:1. Names table.

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4. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 22, 34

   Jacob calls Esau "my lord" and himself "your servant," and keeps the third person through the message (22). The blessing he took from Esau said "be master over your brothers" (27:29), and the oracle said "the elder shall serve the younger" (25:23); his message turns both round. In v. 6 the same word עֶבֶד is "slave," among the goods he owns: the split by construction (34) sets the servant who speaks beside the slaves he owns. אָחַר piel is "delay" (24:56), used here without an object: he has been held back, or has held himself back, until now.

5. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 39

   וַיֵּצֶר לוֹ is impersonal, like "it flared for Cain" (4:5): the space closes in on him. The root is that of צַר "narrow," the "narrow place, where there was no way to turn" of Balaam's donkey (Num 22:26), and of צָרָה, the noun Jacob uses when he looks back on this night from Bethel: "the El who answered me in the day of my צָרָה" (35:3). The KJV "was greatly afraid and distressed" turns the place into a feeling; the concrete word is kept (39). Genesis Rabbah 76:2 and Rashi split the two verbs: he feared that he would be killed, and it was narrow for him that he might kill others.

6. Decision↩ Back to the text

   Expected: "I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth" (KJV) / "I am not worthy of the least of all the steadfast love and all the faithfulness" (RSV)

   Rulings 26, 39, 2

   קָטֹנְתִּי is the verb "be small" (2 Sam 7:19, "and this was yet small in your eyes"), and מִכֹּל is the מִן of comparison, "smaller than all," that is, too small for them. It is not partitive: Jacob is not speaking of "the least" of the loyalties, and the verb is not negated. The KJV and RSV supply both the negation and the superlative. The plural הַחֲסָדִים is the acts of loyalty "that you have done" (עָשִׂיתָ), deeds that can be counted, as the bloods of 4:10 are blood that has been shed, so ruling 26 does not turn them into a singular, and the plural is printed (39): "the loyalties of Adonai" (Ps 89:2; Isa 63:7; Lam 3:22), "the sure loyalties of David" (Isa 55:3). חֶסֶד is "loyalty" (123a) and אֱמֶת "truth" (125k); the pair "loyalty and truth" of 24:27, 49 is here parted by "all" and its first member made plural. Jacob crossed the Jordan with a stick and nothing else (28:10–11); he comes back as two camps (see the note at v. 3).

7. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 39

   אֵם עַל־בָּנִים "mother upon sons" pictures the mother struck down over her children, the whole household at once. Hos 10:14 uses the phrase of a sacked city, "mother upon sons dashed in pieces," and Deut 22:6 forbids taking "the mother upon the sons" from a nest. The sons are Jacob's own; he fears for himself and for them in one breath. יָרֵא is the verbal adjective, "fearing" (124f), so the fear is a state he is in, not an act.

8. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Rulings 6, 10

   The infinitive absolute is kept: "doing well I will do well" (compare "eating you may eat," 2:16). Jacob quotes the promise of v. 10 with the verb doubled, and with it the words to Abraham at the Akedah, "like the sand that is on the lip of the sea" (22:17); to Jacob himself the promise was "like the dust of the land" (28:14). לֹא יִסָּפֵר מֵרֹב "not numbered for abundance" is the phrase said to Hagar (16:10), and the verb is that of the stars Abram was told to number (15:5). The מִן of מֵרֹב gives the cause.

9. Reading↩ Back to the text

   Ruling 18

   רְחֵלִים "ewes" is the word of Rachel's name, as at 31:38, where Jacob tells Laban that in twenty years "your ewes and your goats have not miscarried."

10. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "with their colts" (KJV, RSV)

    Ruling 2

    בְּנֵיהֶם is "their sons," the young of the camels. בֵּן keeps its home gloss, as with "a son of the herd" (18:7) and "a foal, son of she-donkeys" (Zech 9:9). The masculine suffix with female camels is common in Hebrew and decides nothing. The KJV and RSV "colts" names an age the Hebrew does not.

11. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 8

    "He" is Jacob: v. 21 repeats the words with the name, "look, your servant Jacob is behind us." The drover's answer to "To whom are you?" is "To your servant, to Jacob": Jacob names himself as Esau's servant even in the mouths of his slaves.

12. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "I will appease him with the present" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 2, 20, 39

    אֲכַפְּרָה פָנָיו is the piel of כָּפַר with "his face" as its object. In the priestly law the piel is the verb of atonement (Lev 16; Exod 30:15–16), and its noun כֹּפֶר is the ransom paid for a life (Exod 21:30; 30:12). Akkadian kuppuru is to wipe clean, and a face wiped is a face cleared of anger: "a wise man will atone it," the king's wrath (Prov 16:14). The lexicon gives the piel "atone," to be fixed at Leviticus, and it is printed here in the older English sense of the word, to set two parties "at one," to reconcile (Shakespeare, Richard II 1.1, "Since we cannot atone you"). The KJV and RSV "appease him" drops the face. It is kept (39), because the verse turns on it four times: Jacob will atone Esau's face, the gift goes before Jacob's face, then he will see Esau's face, and perhaps Esau will lift Jacob's face, that is, accept him (נָשָׂא פָנִים; see the note at 4:7). Verse 22 adds a fifth, and the night adds Peniel, "face of El" (v. 31). In 33:10 Jacob tells Esau, "I have seen your face as one sees the face of Elohim." "Cover," a common paraphrase here, is כָּסָה's (123f).

13. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 132

    אַחֲרֵי־כֵן is the construction "after that" (132; 15:14; 25:26), with כֵּן pointing back to what has just been said: first the gift, after that the face.

14. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 6, 39

    עַל־פָּנָיו "on his face" is "ahead of him": the gift goes before Jacob, as he planned in v. 21 ("going before my face"). "Face" is kept for the chain of v. 21, where "his face" was Esau's, so the gift that is to atone Esau's face passes over in front of Jacob's. וְהוּא, the pronoun set before "lodged," marks the contrast: the gift goes on, and Jacob himself stays behind in the camp.

15. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 74

    The eleven are the sons born in Harran (29:32–30:24); Benjamin is not yet born (35:18), and Dinah (30:21) is not counted. Genesis Rabbah 76:9 and Rashi ask where Dinah was: Jacob shut her in a chest, so that Esau would not set eyes on her, and was punished for keeping her back by what befell her at Shechem (Gen 34).

16. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 17, 18, 24

    יַבֹּק "Jabbok" (yabbōq) sounds with what happens at it: וַיֵּאָבֵק "and he wrestled" (v. 25, wayyēʾābēq), and יַעֲקֹב "Jacob" (yaʿăqōb). The place, the struggle and the man share their sounds. "Jabbok," "wrestled" and "Jacob" cannot carry the play and keep the home glosses (17), so it is in this note. The Jabbok runs west through Gilead into the Jordan and was the border of the Ammonites (Num 21:24; Deut 3:16). מַעֲבַר "ford" is from עָבַר "pass over," the verb of vv. 11, 17, 22–24 and 32: Jacob, who "passed over this Jordan" with a stick (v. 11), passes over again. Names table.

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17. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 46, 74, 18

    The man is not named, and the narrator does not say who he is. Jacob says that he has seen elohim face to face (v. 31). Hosea reads the night: "in his strength he strove with elohim; he strove with a messenger and was able; he wept and pleaded with him" (Hos 12:4–5). Genesis Rabbah 77:3 and Rashi make him the guardian prince of Esau; Targum Pseudo-Jonathan and Targum Neofiti have a messenger in the likeness of a man. Justin Martyr reads him as the Word before the incarnation (Dialogue with Trypho 125–126), and Charles Wesley's "Come, O thou Traveller unknown" ("Wrestling Jacob") hears in his refusal to give his name the name of Love. "A man" (אִישׁ, the core gloss) keeps the narrator's word and decides between none of these (46). The verb אָבַק occurs only here and in v. 26. Menahem ben Saruq derived it from אָבָק "dust," the dust two wrestlers raise; Rashi takes it from the Aramaic for "fasten," the hold of two who grip each other to throw one another down.

18. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 8, 39

    The end of the verse sorts the pronouns: the man saw that he was not able for Jacob, and touched Jacob's thigh. לֹא יָכֹל לוֹ "not able for him" is the verb of v. 29, "and you have been able" (וַתּוּכָל), and of Hos 12:5. כַּף הַיָּרֵךְ "the palm of the thigh" is the hollow of the hip, where the thigh-bone sits; כַּף is any flat or hollow, of the hand or the foot (8:9). יָקַע is to be wrenched out of joint, and of a soul, torn away: "lest my soul be wrenched from you" (Jer 6:8; Ezek 23:17–18). The thigh is the seat of the oath and of offspring (24:2; 46:26).

19. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 17, 18

    יִשְׂרָאֵל "Israel" is explained by שָׂרִיתָ "you have striven." As a name it is a verb with El as its subject, "El strives," like Ishmael, "El hears" (16:11); the explanation turns it round and gives Jacob the striving, with El as the one striven with. The verb שָׂרָה occurs only here and in Hos 12:4. English cannot keep "Israel" and "strive" together (17), so the pun is in this note. The LXX has ὅτι ἐνίσχυσας μετὰ θεοῦ "for you have been strong with God"; the Vulgate quoniam si contra Deum fortis fuisti quanto magis contra homines praevalebis, "if you have been strong against God, how much more will you prevail against men." Philo and many of the fathers read the name as "a man seeing God" (אִישׁ רֹאֶה אֵל); Jerome (Hebrew Questions on Genesis) rejects that and hears שַׂר "prince." "You have been able" (וַתּוּכָל) answers v. 26: the man was not able for Jacob, and Jacob has been able. The name is given again at Bethel (35:10), and unlike "Abram" after 17:5, "Jacob" stays in use. Names table.

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20. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "with God and with men" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 38, 129, 1, 46

    אֱלֹהִים here has no agreeing verb, and Adonai is not named in the scene of the night (vv. 23–33). So the capital that reference gave at vv. 2–3 (128d) and in Jacob's prayer (v. 10) is not given here, and the word stays lowercase (38; 129n). Lowercase holds open what the text holds open: Elohim himself, a divine being such as the "messenger" of Hos 12:5, or the elohim who stand beside "men" in a merism of heaven and earth. Targum Onkelos reads "for you are a prince before Adonai and with men"; the LXX and the Vulgate have "God." The same holds at v. 31, "I have seen elohim face to face," where the object has no agreement either. The WPRB keeps "elohim" in both places, as its divine-names table requires.

21. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Ruling 74

    The same question is put to Manoah by the messenger of Adonai: "Why is this, that you ask for my name? It is wonderful" (Judg 13:18). Here the question has no answer, and a blessing comes in its place.

22. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 17, 18

    פְּנִיאֵל "Peniel" is "face of El," and Jacob gives the reason: he has seen elohim "face to face" (פָּנִים אֶל־פָּנִים; Exod 33:11; Deut 34:10). The name takes up the faces of vv. 21–22: he set out to see Esau's face and sees this one first, and in 33:10 he tells Esau, "I have seen your face as one sees the face of Elohim." In v. 32 the place is פְּנוּאֵל "Penuel," the form of Judg 8:8–17 and 1 Kgs 12:25; both spellings are printed as the text has them. To see Elohim and live is the fear of Exod 33:20 and Judg 13:22. Names table.

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23. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "my life is preserved" (KJV, RSV)

    Rulings 2, 57

    וַתִּנָּצֵל is the niphal of נָצַל, whose hiphil is "snatch" (v. 12, "snatch me from the hand of my brother"): to be pulled out of a grasp. A bare "my soul has been snatched" would read in English as the soul seized and carried off, the reverse of the sense, so "out" is supplied (57). Jacob prayed to be snatched from Esau's hand, and is first snatched out at Peniel. נֶפֶשׁ keeps "soul"; the WPRB has "life" (its mechanical rule 4).

24. Reading↩ Back to the text

    Rulings 74, 2

    The sun "came in" as Jacob reached Bethel (28:11), and it shines forth for him as he leaves Penuel: the two nights frame his years away. Rashi reads לוֹ "for him" as "for his sake," to heal his limp, citing Mal 3:20, "the sun of justice, with healing in its wings." זָרַח is the verb of the sun's coming up (Eccl 1:5; Judg 9:33) and of Adonai, who "shone forth from Seir" (Deut 33:2); "rise," the expected word, is קוּם's. He limps "on his thigh," the thigh of v. 26.

25. Decision↩ Back to the text

    Expected: "the sinew which shrank" (KJV) / "the sinew of the hip" (RSV)

    Rulings 1, 25, 39

    נָשֶׁה occurs only here. Arabic nasā is the sciatic nerve, which runs down the hip and thigh, and m. Hullin 7:1 lays down the law of the גִּיד הַנָּשֶׁה for the hindquarter of every clean animal, in the land and outside it. The versions read a verb: the LXX has τὸ νεῦρον ὃ ἐνάρκησεν "the sinew that went numb," the Vulgate nervum qui emarcuit "the sinew that withered," hence the KJV "which shrank," from נָשָׁה "forget" (Manasseh, "Elohim has made me forget," 41:51). Rashi derives it from נָשָׁה "slip": it slipped from its place. The noun is printed, with the anatomy the cognate gives (25); the verbal readings are in this note. "He touched" is the man of vv. 25–26. "Therefore" is עַל־כֵּן (128i); "the sons of Israel" is the first use of the new name for the people.