Patristic Wisdom: Looking to the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

After rising up that night, he took his two wives and the two maidens and his eleven children, and he crossed over the ford of Jabbok. And he took them and crossed over the brook and carried across all his things. Jacob remained alone, and a person wrestled with him until the morning. He saw that He could not prevail against him, and He touched the broad part of his thigh, and the broad part of Jacob’s thigh became numb when He wrestled with him. And He said to him, “Send me away, for the dawn has come.” He said, “I will not send You away, if You do not bless me.” He said to him, “What is your name?” He said, “Jacob.” And He said to him, “No longer will your name be called Jacob, but your name will be ‘Israel’ because you prevailed with God, and you are mighty with people.” Jacob asked and said, “Reveal to me Your name.” And He said, “Why do you ask My name?” And He blessed him there. And Jacob called the name of that place “Form of God,” for “I saw God face to face, and my life was spared.” (Genesis 32:22–30 LXX)

A man, Scripture says, wrestled with Jacob. If he is a mere man, who is he? Where did he come from? Why does he struggle and wrestle with Jacob? What had come between them? What had happened? What was the cause of so great a conflict and struggle as that? Moreover, why is it that Jacob proves to be the stronger even to the holding of the man with whom he was struggling? And why still, because the morning star was rising, is it he who, on that account, asks a blessing from him whom he held? It can only mean that this struggle was prefiguring that future contention between Christ and the sons of Jacob, which is said to have had its completion in the Gospel. For Jacob’s people struggled against this man and proved to be more powerful in the conflict, because they obtained the triumph of their own unrighteousness over Christ. Then, on account of the crime they had perpetrated, they began to limp very badly in the gait of their own faith and salvation, stumbling and slipping in their course. Though Jacob’s people proved superior by their condemnation of Christ, they still need His mercy and still need His blessing. Now, this man who wrestled with Jacob says to him. “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name.” And if Israel is a man who ‘sees God,’ then the Lord was showing in an elegant manner that he who wrestled with Jacob was not only man, but also God. Undoubtedly, Jacob saw God with whom he wrestled, though it was a man whom he held in his grip. That there might not remain any doubt, he himself gave the interpretation when he said: “For you have prevailed with God, and with men you are powerful.” That is why this same Jacob, understanding now the meaning of the prefiguration and realizing the authority of him with whom he had wrestled, called the name of the place where he had wrestled “Vision of God.” Furthermore, he added his reasons for giving his interpretation of God: “I have seen God face to face, and my soul has been saved.” For he saw God with whom he wrestled, as though he were wrestling with a man; but while as if victor he held the man, as an inferior he asked a blessing of him, as one would of God. Thus he wrestled with God and with man. Now if this struggle was then prefigured and has been actually fulfilled in the Gospel between Christ and Jacob’s people—a struggle in which the people proved superior, yet were found to be inferior because of their guilt—who will hesitate to acknowledge that Christ in whom this figure of a struggle was fulfilled was not only Man but also God, when that very figure of a struggle seems to have proved that He is both God and Man?

Novatian, On the The Trinity 19.8–14