An earlier prodigal son?
James Cathcart
October 19, 2025
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Genesis 32: 22-31 (NIV)
22 That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23 After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. 24 So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 25 When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. 26 Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”
But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
27 The man asked him, “What is your name?”
“Jacob,” he answered.
28 Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”
29 Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.”
But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there.
30 So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”
31 The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip.
This week we are going to be reading the explosive, intimate, and challenging Parable of the Man with Two Sons that Jesus tells in the Gospel of Luke (often called ‘The Prodigal Son’). But before we get to it we are going to make a brief stop today in Genesis to meet another prodigal son: Jacob.
Jacob was likely an inspiration for Jesus’s character of the younger son. He is a youngest child and a renegade who chances his arm early in life before going out to make his own way in the world. In chapter 32 we join him as he is taking the long road home wrestling with his future and with God.
And that’s actual wrestling.
Let’s switch on the commentary:
“In the blue corner: ‘Jacob the Deceiver’, coming out swinging, oh yes this Jacob’s crackers! And In the red corner a Mysterious Stranger who eh… may be a divine manifestation of God… It certainly seems a mismatched fight, but Jacob’s got his game face on, this one’s set up to be a hum-dinger! Annnnnd the Mysterious Stranger goes in high. Jacob decides not to break with the habit of a lifetime and he goes low! Oh it’s a low blow.”
It’s a slog, neither of them can best each other, Jacob is on the back foot and gets a hip injury to show for it but he refuses to let go. Essentially — and bizarre as it is to say — he’s got God in a headlock.
This is the apotheosis of Jacob the self-made man always going his own way and getting one over everybody else. But this is a turning point. He’s got God in a headlock but it’s Jacob himself who is going to leave this encounter limping, renamed, and suddenly aware of how close he has come to death. God has spared him. He gets his blessing but the blessing comes through struggle, pain and transformation.
This encounter vividly depicts God willingly coming face to face — handhold to handhold — with the human spirit as it clings desperately to him, crying out for blessing.
Prayer:
Dear God
We cling to you
crying out for blessing
through the struggle and pain
and transformation.
Amen.
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