“Turned into Another Man”

Baba Ramdev, Photo by Sam Panthaky/AFP.

Parashat Vayishlach, Genesis 32:4–36:43 

Rabbi Russ Resnik                 

A little old Jewish lady decides to make the long journey to speak with a holy man in India. She flies into New Delhi and takes a train to a small town in the mountains, where she catches a rickety old bus for another leg of the journey. At the end of the bus line, she hires a porter to schlep her bags as she walks the last few miles. Finally, she arrives at the ashram and demands to speak with the guru right away. His attendants turn her down—the guru is thronged by admirers—but she is so insistent that they finally let her in on one condition: she can only speak three words. “Fine,” says the old lady. When she comes before the holy man, she looks up at him and says, “Sheldon, come home!” 

People of all sorts long to escape the commonplace and be transformed into someone more holy. What they often discover, however, is that such a change can only come from an encounter with something—or someone—beyond themselves. The Torah speaks of just such encounters.

Thus, our last parasha opened with Jacob departing from the land of promise. As night falls, the text says literally, “he encountered the place” (vayifga bamakom; Gen 28:11). Jacob spends the night in that place and has a vision of a ladder joining heaven and earth. He recognizes that in reality he has encountered God, sometimes named in rabbinic literature as HaMakom, or the Place. This encounter with HaMakom prepares Jacob for the journey that lies before him. At the end of the parasha, as Jacob is about to return to the land, we see the same verb: “And angels of God encountered him” (Gen 32:2). Now he will be prepared to return to the land from which he departed decades before.

“Encounter” in these contexts implies something out of the ordinary, the heavenly realm breaking into the earthly. Jacob is not equipped for his departure or his return without this heavenly breakthrough.

We see the same verb in the story of King Saul. Samuel anoints him as king and sends him back to his father’s house to await the time of his public revelation. Samuel tells Saul that he will “encounter a band of prophets . . . Then the Spirit of the Lord will come upon you, and you will prophesy with them and be turned into another man” (1 Sam 10:5–6).

“Turned into another man . . .”—this is the appeal of Jacob’s story. We might believe there is a transformed world waiting, the restored Creation of which the Scriptures speak. But like Jacob—and Sheldon—we desire transformation for ourselves. In the end, we learn that only a divine encounter will make us different people.

More than the other patriarchs, Abraham and Isaac, Jacob is like us. Abraham, despite the flaws that Genesis honestly reports, appears on the scene as a visionary from the very first, a pioneer of faith in the one true God. Isaac is more passive, but he never veers from the faith of his father Abraham. Jacob, in contrast, is the patriarch with whom we can most identify, the Everyman of Genesis. Like us, he is a person in process. His potential for greatness is evident, but nearly always mixed with qualities that are more ordinary.

Thus, for example, Jacob has the greatness to recognize and desire the spiritual legacy of his father Isaac, unlike his brother Esau who despises his birthright (Gen 25:34). But he gains the birthright ignobly, taking advantage of Esau’s shortsightedness to buy it for a bowl of lentil stew, and colluding with his mother’s deception to gain Isaac’s blessing. It will take twenty-two years serving the wily Laban to transform Jacob into the man who can return to the Promised Land and take up the legacy of his forefathers. We may sympathize with his trials at the hand of Laban, but we realize that they are necessary—just like the trials that mold us.

In Parashat Vayishlach, however, we learn that such trials do not give the final shape to Jacob, but the divine encounters do. This parasha is a tale of homecoming. Jacob discovers that you can come home again, but you cannot come home unchanged. The Jacob who returns is different from the Jacob who departed:

So Jacob remained all by himself. Then a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn. When He saw that He had not overcome him, He struck the socket of his hip, so He dislocated the socket of Jacob’s hip when He wrestled with him. Then He said, “Let Me go, for the dawn has broken.”

 But he said, “I won’t let You go unless You bless me.”

 Then He said to him, “What is your name?”

“Jacob,” he said.

Then He said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but rather Israel, for you have struggled with God and with men, and you have overcome.” (Gen 32:25–29 TLV)

Jacob undergoes two changes on his way home. His hip joint is dislocated, and his name is changed. Over the centuries commentators have discussed whether Jacob’s injury is permanent, but it’s clear that God touched Jacob and left a mark on his soul that he would never forget.

Jacob’s renaming has also evoked endless discussion, along with a variety of different translations, such as that of Everett Fox:

Then he said:

Not as Yaakov/Heel-Sneak shall your name be henceforth uttered,

but rather as Yisrael/God-Fighter,

for you have fought with God and men

and have prevailed. (Gen 32:29)

Likewise, Ramban (Nachmanides) sees Jacob’s new name as the opposite of his old one:

Thus the name Ya’akov, an expression of guile or of deviousness, was changed to Israel [from the word sar (prince)] and they called him Yeshurun from the expression wholehearted ‘v’yashar’ (and upright).

Jacob’s new name, like his injury, proclaims the transforming encounter with the divine. Jacob experiences two encounters—one as a young man setting out on his journey with nothing, and one as a mature man surrounded by possessions and cares, dependents and responsibilities. Apparently, the transforming encounter is not only for the young and adventurous, but also for the middle-aged (or beyond) and established. Whether we are caught up in youthful self-absorption or in the complacency of mature age, only a touch from God will really change us.

“Turned into another man.” The earliest stories of Genesis hint at the hope of new birth that is central to the work of Messiah and the writings of the New Covenant millennia later. Jacob is the Everyman of Genesis, and his story reminds us that we all must be changed by a divine encounter to find our place in the renewed Creation. Our Messiah taught, “Amen, amen I tell you, unless one is born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3 TLV). And Jacob’s story reminds us that this new birth is not a one-time encounter, but one that is to be renewed throughout our lives.

Only an encounter with God can bring the transformation that prepares us for a lifetime of faithfulness. May we remain open to divine encounters that may await us, and may we embrace them as essential stages of our journey.  

Adapted from Creation to Completion: A Guide to Life’s Journey from the Five Books of Moses, Messianic Jewish Publishers, 2006.