Have you ever met people like this, where every interaction ends up a wrestling match?
It’s amazing what you can tell about a child’s personality right from the start. Are they neat or messy? Analytical or creative? Quiet or noisy? From the very moment of Jacob’s birth, he let people know what he was about. Genesis 25:26 explains his arrival: “Afterward his brother came out, and his hand took hold of Esau’s heel; so his name was called Jacob.” Watch out when dealing with this fellow! Jacob means “heel-catcher, or supplanter.” The dictionary says, “The plantar fascia is a long, thin ligament that lies directly beneath the skin on the bottom of your foot. It connects the heel to the front of your foot.” Thus, “to supplant” is defined as being, “to take the place of another, as through force, scheming, or strategy.” This is the objective of the wrestler: to lift the plantar surface of the opponent’s foot off the mat, thus gaining an advantage over him. Jacob’s whole life was a series of wrestling matches. He wrestled with his brother in the womb, but Esau came out first, in spite of Jacob’s efforts to hold him back. As we noticed in our last lesson, he wrestled with Esau over the birthright honors, and seemed to gain the advantage. But did he? As we will see, he had to flee, leaving his father’s wealth and the firstborn privileges behind. He will wrestle again over Isaac’s patriarchal blessing, but again with dubious results. Finally, there would be the Big Match, the final midnight wrestling with a Man at the fords of Jabbok. What a story that will be! Jacob will be renamed that night, no longer Mr Heel-Catcher. But of course, there’s a little (or a lot) of Mr Heel-Catcher in all of us. That same Man will teach us the cure: “Learn from Me,” He says, “for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Mt 11:29).