Jacob

===Journey back to Canaan===
[[File:Lutte de Jacob avec l'Ange.jpg|thumb|''Jacob Wrestling with the Angel'' by [[Eugène Delacroix]]]]
{{main|Jacob wrestling with the angel}}
As Jacob neared the land of Canaan as he passed [[Mahanaim]], he sent messengers ahead to his brother Esau. They returned with the news that Esau was coming to meet Jacob with an army of 400 men. With great apprehension, Jacob prepared for the worst. He engaged in earnest prayer to God, then sent on before him a tribute of flocks and herds to Esau, "A present to my lord Esau from thy servant Jacob."

Jacob then transported his family and flocks across the ford [[Jabbok]] by night, then recrossed back to send over his possessions, being left alone in communion with God. There, a mysterious being appeared ("man," Genesis 32:24, 28; or "God," Genesis 32:28, 30, Hosea 12:3, 5; or "angel," Hosea 12:4), and the two wrestled until daybreak. When the being saw that he did not overpower Jacob, he touched Jacob on the sinew of his thigh (the ''[[gid hanasheh]]'', גיד הנשה), and, as a result, Jacob developed a limp (Genesis 32:31). Because of this, "to this day the people of Israel do not eat the sinew of the thigh that is on the hip socket"<ref>''Bible'' {{bibleverse||Genesis|32:32|ESV}}</ref> This incident is the source of the [[mitzvah]] of [[Nikkur|porging]].<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|title=Porging|encyclopedia=Jewish Encyclopedia|location=[[New York City]]|year=1901–1906|author=Eisenstein, Judah David|url=http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=453&letter=P|access-date=2008-11-19|lccn=16014703}}</ref>

Jacob then demanded a blessing, and the being declared in Genesis 32:28 that, from then on, Jacob would be called יִשְׂרָאֵל, Israel (''Yisra'el'', meaning "one that struggled with the divine angel" (Josephus), "one who has prevailed with God" (Rashi), "a man seeing God" (Whiston), "he will rule as God" (Strong), or "a prince with God" (Morris), from {{lang-he|שרה|link=no}}, "prevail," "have power as a prince").<ref>''Strong's Concordance'' 3478, 8280.</ref> While he is still called Jacob in later texts, his name Israel makes some consider him the [[eponym]]ous ancestor of the [[Israelites]].

Jacob asked the being's name, but he refused to answer. Afterwards, Jacob named the place [[Penuel]] (''Penuw'el'', ''Peniy'el'', meaning "face of God"),<ref>''Strong's Concordance'' 6439.</ref> saying: "I have seen God face to face and lived."

Because the terminology is ambiguous ([[El (deity)#Hebrew Bible|"el"]] in ''Yisra'el'') and inconsistent, and because this being refused to reveal his name, there are varying views as to whether he was a man, an angel, or God. Josephus uses only the terms "angel", "divine angel," and "angel of God," describing the struggle as no small victory. According to Rashi, the being was the guardian angel of Esau himself, sent to destroy Jacob before he could return to the land of Canaan. Trachtenberg theorized that the being refused to identify itself for fear that, if its secret name was known, it would be conjurable by incantations.<ref>Trachtenberg 1939, p. 80.</ref> Literal Christian interpreters like [[Henry M. Morris]] say that the stranger was "God Himself and, therefore, Christ in His preincarnate state", citing Jacob's own evaluation and the name he assumed thereafter, "one who fights victoriously with God", and adding that God had appeared in the human form of the [[Angel of the Lord]] to eat a meal with Abraham in Genesis 18.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Genesis Record: A Scientific and Devotional Commentary on the Book of Beginnings|url=https://archive.org/details/genesisrecordsc00morr|url-access=registration|author=Morris, Henry M.|publisher=[[Baker Book House]]|location=[[Grand Rapids, Michigan]]|year=1976|pages=[https://archive.org/details/genesisrecordsc00morr/page/337 337], 499–502|isbn=9780801060045 |author-link=Henry M. Morris}}</ref> Geller wrote that, "in the context of the wrestling bout, the name implies that Jacob won this supremacy, linked to that of God's, by a kind of [[theomachy]]."<ref>{{cite journal|first=Stephen A. |last=Geller |year=1982 |title=The Struggle at the Jabbok: the Uses of Enigma in a Biblical Narrative |journal=Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society |volume=14 |pages=37–60 |url=http://www.jtsa.edu/Documents/pagedocs/JANES/1982%2014/Geller14.pdf |access-date=June 27, 2013 |url-status=bot: unknown |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140814005141/http://jtsa.edu/Documents/pagedocs/JANES/1982%2014/Geller14.pdf |archive-date=August 14, 2014 }}  Also in: {{Cite book|first=Stephen A. |last=Geller |chapter=2 – The Struggle at the Jabbok. The uses of enigma in biblical religion (pp. 9ff.) |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2z_YYiKNJygC&q=%22THE+STRUGGLE+AT+THE+JABBOK+The+uses+of+enigma+in+biblical+religion%22&pg=PA9 |title=Sacred Enigmas. Literary Religion in the Hebrew Bible |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2z_YYiKNJygC |year=1996 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |location=London |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=2z_YYiKNJygC&dq=%22in+the+context+of+the+wresding+bout,+the+name+implies+that+Jacob+won+this+supremacy,+linked+to+that+of+God's,+by+a+kind+of+theomachy%22&pg=PA22 22] |isbn=978-0-415-12771-4 }}</ref>

In the morning, Jacob assembled his four wives and 11 sons, placing the maidservants and their children in front, Leah and her children next, and Rachel and Joseph in the rear. Some commentators cite this placement as proof that Jacob continued to favor Joseph over Leah's children, as presumably the rear position would have been safer from a frontal assault by Esau, which Jacob feared. Jacob himself took the foremost position. Esau's spirit of revenge, however, was apparently appeased by Jacob's bounteous gifts of camels, goats and flocks. Their reunion was an emotional one.
[[File:Francesco Hayez 061.jpg|thumb|left|''Esau and Jacob reconcile'' (1844) by [[Francesco Hayez]]]]

Esau offered to accompany them on their way back to Israel, but Jacob protested that his children were still young and tender (born six to 13 years prior in the narrative); Jacob suggested eventually catching up with Esau at [[Mount Seir]]. According to the Sages, this was a prophetic reference to the End of Days, when Jacob's descendants will come to Mount Seir, the home of Edom, to deliver judgment against Esau's descendants for persecuting them throughout the millennia.<ref>''Bible'' {{bibleref2|Obadiah|1:21}}</ref> Jacob actually diverted himself to Succoth and was not recorded as rejoining Esau until, at [[Machpelah]], the two bury their father Isaac, who lived to be 180, and was 60 years older than they were.

Jacob then arrived in [[Shechem]], where he bought a parcel of land, now identified as [[Joseph's Tomb]]. In Shechem, Jacob's daughter Dinah was kidnapped and raped by the ruler's son, who desired to marry the girl. Dinah's brothers, Simeon and Levi, agreed in Jacob's name to permit the marriage as long as all the men of Shechem first [[circumcision|circumcised]] themselves, ostensibly to unite the children of Jacob in Abraham's [[Covenant (biblical)|covenant]] of familial harmony. On the third day after the circumcisions, when all the men of Shechem were still in pain, Simeon and Levi put them all to death by the sword and rescued their sister Dinah, and their brothers plundered the property, women, and children. Jacob condemned this act, saying: "You have brought trouble on me by making me a stench to the [[Canaanites]] and [[Perizzites]], the people living in this land."<ref>''Bible'' {{bibleverse||Genesis|34:30|NIV}}</ref> He later rebuked his two sons for their anger in his deathbed blessing (Genesis 49:5–7).

Jacob returned to Bethel, where he had another vision of blessing. Although the death of Rebecca, Jacob's mother, is not explicitly recorded in the Bible, Deborah, Rebecca's nurse, died and was buried at Bethel, at a place that Jacob calls ''Allon Bachuth'' (אלון בכות), "Oak of Weepings" (Genesis 35:8). According to the Midrash,<ref>[[Genesis Rabba|Bereshit Rabbah]] 81:5.</ref> the plural form of the word "weeping" indicates the double sorrow that Rebecca also died at this time.

[[File:Metz Der Tod Rahels.jpg|thumb|''The death of Rachel after the birth of Benjamin'' (c. 1847) by Gustav Ferdinand Metz]]
Jacob then made a further move while Rachel was pregnant; near [[Bethlehem]], Rachel went into labor and died as she gave birth to her second son, [[Benjamin]] (Jacob's twelfth son). Jacob buried her and erected a monument over her grave. [[Rachel's Tomb]], just outside Bethlehem, remains a popular site for pilgrimages and prayers to this day. Jacob then settled in [[Migdal Eder (biblical location)|Migdal Eder]], where his firstborn, [[Reuben]], slept with Rachel's servant Bilhah; Jacob's response was not given at the time, but he did condemn Reuben for it later, in his deathbed blessing. Jacob was finally reunited with his father Isaac in [[Mamre]] (outside [[Hebron]]).

When Isaac died at the age of 180, Jacob and Esau buried him in the [[Cave of the Patriarchs]], which Abraham had purchased as a family [[Grave (burial)|burial plot]]. At this point in the biblical narrative, two genealogies of Esau's family appear under the headings "the generations of Esau". A conservative interpretation is that, at Isaac's burial, Jacob obtained the records of Esau, who had been married 80 years prior, and incorporated them into his own family records, and that Moses augmented and published them.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Genesis Record: A Scientific and Devotional Commentary on the Book of Beginnings|url=https://archive.org/details/genesisrecordsc00morr|url-access=registration|author=Morris, Henry M.|publisher=[[Baker Book House]]|location=[[Grand Rapids, Michigan]]|year=1976|pages=[https://archive.org/details/genesisrecordsc00morr/page/524 524–25]|isbn=9780801060045 |author-link=Henry M. Morris}}</ref>