Monday 14 September 2015

(Another) Letter to Jacob (Gen 32 &33)


Dear Jacob,

I am writing again to you because I am interested in your wrestling with God and with your ongoing relationship with your brother who you have cheated out of your birthright.

As I write this I have in mind the description of you given by Peterson Toscano who has done work on gender variant characters in the bible and a performance he gives looking at yourself and Joseph given as in the person of Esau. That means I have a clear picture of you in my mind as a slightly effeminate but clearly virile man who has a very manly brother who would not necessarily been out of place in the American programmes such as Bonanza.

As I read through the account of you preparing to meet Esau again and your wrestling with God it strikes me you were scared and realised that if you stood a chance it had to be via strategy rather than strength. Yet your wrestling with God clearly shows that you did have strength too and were not as effeminate as descriptions of your upbringing might suggest.

Reading this and seeing the description of angels again I am getting even more convinced that angels are people.

Did you send some of the gifts initially just to buy safe passage or was it because you felt some guilt of the way you had cheated him out of safe passage. As I read it I cannot help but think of the way that people are condemned for paying traffickers for safe passage when they are desperate to get to freedom. In that situation if that is your only way to safety would you not take it? Whilst I do not support traffickers in any way I do not find what our government are doing in judging whether to allow migrants (who they do not regard as refugees) in on the basis partly of their income. I read your story and you are clearly not a refugee, but you are a migrant, one of many in this book of the Hebrew bible.

Did you worry that some big mistake in your strategy had occurred when you heard Esau was coming along with what was effectively an army? It made me think what strategies are the families who are currently seeking refuge in Europe taken when faced with military force against them?

The second set of gifts you send ahead of you to try and ensure peace were obviously not initially planned. I think it is interesting that via these gifts you are effectively put in the position of giving Esau something of what you stole from him back.

When you send your wives and female servants ahead of you it is interesting because it appears that at that stage you are not differentiating between any of the mothers of your children.

I wonder what it must have been like for you after you had sent everything on ahead of you. When you wrestled with God were you using the skills you had gained growing up with Esau as kids? I suspect you may have learnt how to wrestle reasonably for your own survival.

I find it interesting that God was trying to overpower you and in the end it was your hip which went, yet you still carried on and the man had to ask you to let him go.

How did you feel you when God told you your name would change? You were obviously scared having come face to face with God. I find that interesting that whilst it was you at the end of the fight who had the winning position you say God spared you. Was it the recognition that anything could have happened to you, yet you survived?

The limp is interesting because you are left disabled and in your society disability seems to be really negatively viewed. Yet, your disability and imperfection came to be celebrated. Is this the sign that disability can sometimes be part of a blessing from God? If so that confuddles my head somewhat on one level because we view disability so negatively, as your society did in many ways.

You must have been exhausted when you saw Esau coming. I find it interesting the way you ordered your children and their mothers. It seems there was a clear order of dispensability as far as you were concerned and it was to do with the mother of the child rather than their age.

You must have been surprised by Esau’s reaction. It seemed that Esau wanted to be positive and protect you but you did not want to accept anything from Esau as you did not trust him.

I am not sure how I would have reacted in your situation. I would probably have been wary too.

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