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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780060611743 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 05/08/1985 |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 144 |
| Sales rank: | 450,314 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.33(d) |
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Chapter One
The Magnificent Defeat
The same night he arose and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. And Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and Jacob's thigh was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, "Let me go, for the day is breaking." But Jacob said, "I will not let you go, unless you bless me." And he said to him, "What is your name?" And he said, "Jacob." Then he said, "Your name shall no more be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed." Then Jacob asked him, "Tell me, I pray, your name." But he said, "Why is it that you ask my name?" And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, "For I have seen God face to face, and yet my lifeis preserved." The sun rose upon him as he passed Peniel, limping because of his thigh.
When A Minister reads out of the Bible, I am sure that at least nine times out of ten the people who happen to be listening at all hear not what is really being read but only what they expect to hear read. And I think that what most people expect to hear read from the Bible is an edifying story, an uplifting thought, a moral lesson — something elevating, obvious, and boring. So that is exactly what very often they do hear. Only that is too bad because ifyou really listen — and maybe you have to forget that it is the Bible being read and a minister who is reading it — there is no telling what you might hear.
The story of Jacob at the river Jabbok, for instance. This stranger leaping out of the night to do terrible battle for God knows what reason. Jacob crying out to know his name but getting no answer. Jacob crippled, defeated, but clinging on like a drowning man and choking out the words, "I will not let you go, unless you bless me." Then the stranger trying to break away before the sun rises. A ghost, a demon? The faith of Israel goes back some five thousand years to the time of Abraham, but there are elements in this story which were already old before Abraham was born, almost as old as man himself. It is an ancient, jagged-edged story, dangerous and crude as a stone knife. If it means anything, what does it mean, and let us not assume that it means anything very neat or very edifying. Maybe there is more terror in it or glory in it than edification. But in any event, the place where you have to start is Jacob: Jacob the son of Isaac, the beloved of Rachel and Leah, the despair of Esau, his brother. Jacob, the father of the twelve tribes of Israel. Who and what was he?
An old man sits alone in his tent. Outside, the day is coming to a close so that the light in the tent is poor, but that is of no concern to the old man because be is virtually blind, and all he can make out is a brightness where the curtain of the tent is open to the sky. He is looking that way now, his bead trembling under the weight of his great age, his eyes cobwebbed around with many wrinkles, the ancient, sightless eyes. A fly buzzes through the still air, then lands somewhere.
For the old man there is no longer much difference between life and death, but for the sake of his family and his family's destiny, there are things that be has to do before the last day comes, the loose ends of a whole long life to gather together and somehow tie up. And one of these in particular will not let him sleep until be has done it: to call his eldest son to him and give him his blessing, but not a blessing in our sense of the word — a pious formality, a vague expression of good will that we might use when someone is going on a journey and we say, "God bless you." For the old man, a blessing is the speaking of a word of great power; it is the conveying of something of the very energy and vitality of his soul to the one be blesses; and this final blessing of his firstborn son is to be the most powerful of all, so much so that once it is given it can never be taken back. And here even for us something of this remains true: we also know that words spoken in deep love or deep hate set things in motion within the human heart that can never be reversed.
So the old man is waiting now for his eldest son Esau, to appear, and after a while he hears someone enter and say, "My father." But in the dark one voice sounds much like another, and the old man, who lives now only in the dark, asks, "Who are you, my son?" The boy lies and says that he is Esau. He says it boldly, and disguised as he is in Esau's clothes, and imitating Esau's voice — the flat, blunt tones of his brother — one can imagine that he is almost convinced himself that what be says is true.
The Magnificent Defeat copyright © by Frederick Buechner. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All Rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.