Between Wrestling and Embracing

The Opportunity Jacob Missed

Lover, Katarina Nedeljkovic (2018)

There’s a moment in the Torah portion of Vayishlach read this Shabbat that I’ve been coming back to all week.
It’s not Jacob wrestling with the angel, though that dramatic midnight struggle gets all the attention. It's what happens afterward, in the daylight.

Jacob has spent the night struggling with an anonymous being - an angel or his fear or himself. He comes out limping, but also with a new blessing, and a new name. No longer Jacob, he stands as Israel. It’s as if the Torah is saying: he has finally done the inner work he needed to do.

And then Esau appears and he is still Jacob.

Esau doesn’t look like the enemy Jacob has been preparing for.
He runs, he hugs, he kisses, he cries.
It is one of the most disarming moments in the Torah.

And Jacob receives the embrace. He bows, they weep, they exchange words of peace.

But here’s the part that breaks my heart:
When Esau says, “Come with me. Let’s walk together,”
Jacob says no.

He gives good reasons—practical, responsible reasons.
The children are tired. The flocks need slow walking. You go ahead. We'll catch up. But they don't.

After twenty years of anticipating the worst in his brother, Jacob simply doesn’t have room yet to imagine the best. He has wrestled with fear, but he has not yet practiced trust. He has prepared himself to survive Esau’s anger, but he has not prepared himself to receive Esau’s love.

Jacob missed the opportunity to let this moment of grace overwrite the story of injury. To believe that reconciliation is not only possible, but real. To let the embrace mean more than the struggle.

We pride ourself on being the people Israel - the ones who wrestle. But when the drama and the dust give way to a quieter encounter, we learn it takes great courage just to walk alongside someone who was once an enemy

Jacob wasn’t ready for that. But we might be.