The prayer does operate at another,
deeper level in the narrative, a level that ties Jacob’s request for divine
assistance to a history of his deceptions guided by God. Four specific
occurrences draw the reader’s attention. First, the word usually translated
‘staff’ ( מקל ) in v. 11 has important resonances. Frolov notes that this word
appears in the entire Hebrew Bible only 18 times, one-third of which are
located in Gen 30:37–43, the perplexing story of Jacob’s attempt to manipulate
the breeding of Laban’s flocks with rods.(מקל) According to Frolov, this
semantic overlap highlights the “unfinished” nature of Jacob’s return. But
another possibility exists: the word is reminiscent of the successful deception
of Laban, perpetrated jointly by Jacob and YHWH. Placed in the context of
Jacob’s prayer, the line “with my staff ( במקלי ), I crossed this Jordan” may
be heard by YHWH on two different levels: (1) the once destitute Jacob has
grown exceedingly wealthy through YHWH’s fidelity to the promise, and (2) the
method by which YHWH has demonstrated this fidelity in the past was by using
deception.
A second example builds on this same
previous deception. The word meaning ‘deliver’ ( נצל ) in Gen 32:11 is the same
root that appears in 31:9, 16 with the meaning “snatched/stripped away” in
reference to God’s giving to Jacob at Laban’s expense by ensuring the success
of Jacob’s plan with the rods. Thus, in his prayer, Jacob makes certain that
his request resonates with the divine ear through a meaningful wordplay.
Brueggemann sums up the essential message: “As God has ‘snatched’ property for
Jacob from Laban, so Jacob prays to be ‘snatched’ from the power of Esau.”
Two final examples are perhaps even
more germane to the present discussion in that they recall Jacob’s original
deceptions in Gen 25:27–34 and 27:1–45, of which Esau was the victim. At the
beginning of 32:11, Jacob makes a statement that most translations construe
with regard to his ‘unworthiness’ before God. In the Hebrew, however, the
resonances are much richer. The word usually translated ‘unworthy’ comes from
the root ,קטן which I argued in chap. 2 means ‘little, younger’. Genesis 27:15
and 42 employ this same root to identify Jacob as the younger son of Rebekah. One
should thus not take Jacob’s statement that he is קטן as an admission that he
is undeserving but, rather, as a reference to Jacob’s age in relation to Esau.
This one word conjures up YHWH’s original election of Jacob prior to birth
(25:23), along with the deceptions that ensued as a result, and solicits YHWH’s
help in line with that election. Just as YHWH had chosen and watched over Jacob
earlier, despite his being קטן , so now Jacob asks that YHWH again take account
of him as קטן and protect him from his older brother, from Esau.
Last, Jacob’s double mention of the
word ‘hand’ ( יד ) in v. 12—asking for deliverance “from the hand of my
brother, from the hand of Esau”—recalls the frequency with which this word
occurs as part of Jacob’s deceptions of his brother. Turner provides an
excellent list:
This request is somewhat ironic, since
the ‘hand’ motif has been used to good effect previously when Jacob had been
acting against Esau. Jacob’s hand gripped Esau’s heel (25.26), his hands were
covered with goats’ skins (27.16), the savoury food and bread were given into
his hand (27.17), and Isaac believed Jacob to have the hands of Esau
(27.22–23). (Turner, Genesis, 141)
In the past, Jacob’s “hand” had
deceptively triumphed over Esau with God’s help; now Jacob asks that God make
certain that Esau’s hand does not triumph over him.
This analysis of Jacob’s prayer,
imploring God for assistance through appeal to a joint history of promise and
deception, shows that the prayer functions on two levels of meaning. On one
level, Jacob seeks to persuade God to deliver him from Esau for the sake of the
ancestral promise, lest it be decimated in one fierce attack by Esau and his
band. On a more subtle, deeper level, Jacob uses words connected with his past
tricks, of which YHWH has been a part, to provide concrete examples of
occasions on which YHWH deceives for Jacob’s betterment. When read in tandem,
Jacob’s prayer creates for the reader a tension and an expectation: will God
answer Jacob’s prayer, and if so, how? At this stage, however, all the reader
can do is wait alongside Jacob in the hope that God will in some way hear his
prayer and deliver him from the presumed wrath of Esau. As the text continues, the
initial tension over whether God intervenes is quickly replaced by a new
tension centered on how God sets out to deliver Jacob. This divine
assistance comes in a much more foreboding form than Jacob or the reader could
anticipate: an encounter with the divine that quickly takes on a terrifyingly violent
tenor. What kind of deliverance is this that includes God’s assault on the
bearer of the promise? (John E. Anderson, Jacob the Divine Trickster: A
Theology of Deception and YHWH’s Fidelity to the Ancestral Promise in the Jacob
Cycle [Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2011], 144-46)
