Jacob Wrestles with the Image of G-d

After more than fourteen years, two wives, two concubines, and eleven children, Jacob is ready to return home, but he is afraid that Esau, understandably, will not meet him with open arms. To protect his family, Jacob sends them to the far side of the river Jabbok. Left alone, he is attacked by an ish, While ish is commonly translated as man, most commentators understand this ish as a divine being, partly because the ish is so anxious to leave before the sun comes up, and partly because the ish gives Jacob a new name, Israel, which can be translated as “he struggles with G-d.” Some scholars, however, identify the ish as either Esau himself or his guardian spirit. When Jacob finally does encounter his brother the next morning, he greets him with the words, “To see your face, is like seeing the face of God” (Genesis 33:10).

When the being fell upon him
in the dark, each hold froze his body
in the attitude of prayer:
bent, kneeling, prostrate, prone.
Toward morning, they were locked like lovers,
front to back, and Jacob felt
G-d’s arms squeezing out the life
He'd once breathed into him. Wrenched
around at last, Jacob presumed
he’d won by his own human might
the chance to see G-d and to live.
Only when he made obeisance
seven times, approaching Esau
across the wilderness of wrong
did Jacob understand that glimpse
of the divine was granted to him
so that he might recognize
G-d’s image in his brother’s face.