Chiselers

"Chiselers"
Genesis 32:22-31

Because Jacob's story is written up in the Bible, we make an automatic assumption that he must have been an OK kind of guy.  Isn't getting into the Bible better than getting into "Who's Who?"?  But the truth of the matter is that Jacob is an out-and-out scoundrel.  He is a shyster and chiseler of the first order.  He is an unscrupulous rascal who would stoop to any level to get what he wanted.  He was a cheat, who took advantage of his own family more than any others.

People in ancient Israel were named according to some personality or physical trait, and Jacob was given the right name.  His meant, "a heal", "a cheat", or, "a trickster."  It is fabled that the Greek god, Prometheus, was such a trickster that he changed into any person he chose to be.  He changed into so many different people, he eventually forgot who he was.  Jacob never forgot who he was, but he played out his conniving and manipulating like an expert, double-talking Prometheus.

Reading through Jacob's story, one would be hard put to find any kind of confession of faith on his lips.  His story begins in the 25th chapter of Genesis, and the first time he even prays is at chapter 32.  In this prayer, he has the sense of himself that he hasn't a leg to stand on before God other than a promise God made to him long ago.  That's the thing that makes the whole story of Jacob so odd—in spite of it all, he was blessed by God.


From the very first, Jacob had been wrestling with someone.  And I mean from the very first.  In chapter 25 of Genesis there is the story of Jacob wrestling with his twin brother Esau in their mother's womb.  Mothers who have carried active babies know what Rebecca was going through, maybe only partially.

Rebecca had been unable to have children, so her husband Issac prayed to God on her behalf.  With such a violent pregnancy, she probably wished that her husband had kept his prayers to himself.  At one point she screams, "Why should something like this happen to me!?" (25:22)  It certainly must be a question that has echoed across the ages by most women living through a tough pregnancy.  When the twin boys were finally born, Esau came first, but Jacob was holding on to his brother's heal as a close second.  (25:22-26)

The sibling rivalry was to continue, as Jacob cunningly wrestled away Esau's rights of the first born.  Taking advantage of Esau's hunger after a long hunting trip, Jacob demanded those rights of the first born from his brother for a bowl of red bean soup.

Then, with the less-than-scrupulous help of his mother, Jacob duped his father into thinking he was actually Esau.  The ailing and sightless Issac knew none the better, and gave his last will and testament—the fatherly blessing reserved only for the first born—to Jacob.

Esau, once he found out what his no-account brother had done, was livid, and vowed to kill Jacob the moment their father died.  When Rebecca heard of Esau's vow, she quickly sent Jacob off to uncle Laban's, nearly 400 miles away.  Now you might think Jacob would give up his wrestling ways now that he and Esau had put some miles between each other.  Not so.  This kind of rivalry must have run in the family.  No sooner does Jacob arrive at uncle Laban's then they start making deceitful deals with each other—mostly about Jacob's desire to marry Laban's daughter, Rachel.

Jacob and Laban continued their conniving and contriving ways with each other for over 14 years, until Jacob had, according to Laban's son's telling of it, "got all his wealth from what our father owned" (31:1).  Jacob the shyster had taken his own uncle for everything he had.  When Jacob saw that the handwriting was on the wall—that his days were AGAIN being numbered—he took all he had accumulated and headed for home.


It does not appear to be a very edifying story.  What I mean is, if Jacob, as the result of duping his brother, his blind old father, and his uncle Laban, had fallen on evil times, if he had been ostracized by his family and friends and sent off into the wilderness somewhere to suffer the pangs of a guilty conscience and to repent of his evil ways, then of course the moralists would have an easy time with this story.  As a man sows, so shall he reap.  Honesty is the best policy.  But this is not the way things fell out at all.

On the contrary, far from suffering for his dishonesty, Jacob clearly profited from it.  Not only was the blessing his, not to mention the birthright, but now he had tremendous wealth.  There are certainly no signs in this story that Jacob's conscience troubled him in the least.

The first Christian emperor was Constantine, who in 311 A.D. stopped the pagan persecutions and granted enormous favors to the Christian church.  Yet as a Christian, Constantine ruthlessly suppressed non-Christians, coerced the faithful, and even murdered some of his own family.  As if to take no chances on less than a thorough conversion, Constantine postponed baptism until the moment before his death.

Like Constantine, the story of Jacob's life, to this point almost seems to be saying "dishonesty is the best policy."  I do not mean extreme dishonesty such as larceny, blackmail, or perjury.  I mean Jacob's kind of dishonesty, which is also apt to be your kind and mine.  This is a policy that can take a person a long way in this world, if that is our wish.

This is not a very noble truth about life, but I think that it is a truth nonetheless.  It has to be faced, just as this ancient cycle of stories faced it.  It can be stated quite simply:  the shrewd and ambitious person who is strong on guts and weak on conscience, who knows very well what he or she wants, and directs all their energies toward getting it—the Jacobs of this world—all in all, those kinds of people do pretty well.  Again, I do not mean the criminal actions of a person, that might break the law to get what they want.  I mean the person who stays just within the shadows of the law and who from time-to-time simply manipulates that law a little for their own purposes.

There was a cartoon that showed a guy in prayer.  He was saying, "God, can you help me but sort of make it look like I did it all myself?"  That was Jacob, only he never took the time to ask God to help him that much.  He just went ahead and grabbed what he wanted along the way.

There is no law against taking advantage of somebody else's stupidity, for instance.  The world is full of Esaus—suckers, that is—and there is no need to worry about giving a sucker an even break.  Chances are that he will never know what hit him anyway.

And the world has its share of people like Issac (Jacob's father), of people who cannot help loving us no matter what we do.  The Jacobs of this world will use and abuse that love pretty much as they please, knowing perfectly well they will be loved anyway.

Only, what does it all get Jacob?  The Jacobs of our world are not going to be ostracized by too many people, and may not even be too strongly criticized.  The world may see him as a "good guy."  This policy of dishonesty where necessary can get the Jacobs a great deal:  the invitation, or the promotion; the job; the pat on the back, and the admiring wink.  But it also gets him something that he does not expect:  a confrontation with God.


Jacob was on his way home.  He had overstayed his welcome with uncle Laban, his father Issac had died, and it was time to take possession of the land that God promised to Abraham, to Issac, and now to him.  When he reached the river Jabbok, which was the last border to cross before entering the land of promise, he, in an act of cowardice, sent his family, servants, and livestock ahead of him to face his brother Esau first; but he remained behind to spend the night safely on the near shore alone.

And then it happens.  Out of the deep of the night a stranger leaps.  He hurls Himself at Jacob, and their bodies are lashed together in a struggle through the darkness.  It is terrible enough not to see your attacker's face, and the stranger's strength is more terrible still, the strength of more than a man.  All through the night they struggle until just before morning, when it looks as though Jacob is going to come out on top, again—as he usually does; as he would expect he would.  The stranger cries out to be set free before the sun rises.

Then, just as suddenly, all is reversed.  The stranger merely touches the hollow of Jacob's thigh, and in a moment Jacob is lying there crippled and helpless.  The sense we have, which Jacob must have had, is that the whole struggle was from the beginning fated to end this way.  That the stranger had simply held back until now, letting Jacob exert all his strength and almost win so that when he was defeated, he would know that he was truly defeated.  That he would know that not all his shrewdness, will, conniving, or brute force he could muster were enough to win this battle.

Only then does a hint of realization of who he is wrestling with begin to dawn in Jacob's mind.  At first, Jacob wrestled God as if God were an adversary.  When realization came with the light, he clutched to God for a blessing, for forgiveness, for life.  Jacob would not release his grip.  Only now it is not a grip of violence but of need, like the grip of a drowning man.

After asking—nay, demanding— of God a blessing, God asks Jacob his name.  As I mentioned before, the name had to do with the way a person was, what their character was.  For Jacob, to tell his name was to reveal to God, and to himself, all that he was, his whole shady nature.  Instead of hearing a name of honor, Jacob hears his name, and sees himself for who he really is and has become:  a heal, a cheat, a chiseler, and a swindler.  By saying his name, God is getting Jacob to make a confession of sin.

But God then takes the next step.  His sign of forgiveness is a new name:  "Israel" which means, "the man who struggles with God."  Something new opens up before Jacob, now Israel, that was not seen before.  In each relationship before, he was a struggler.  Now that he had been touched by grace, he saw the need for reconciliation.  He saw that there was great power in humbly reconciling with his brother.  When daylight finally came, the "Stranger" was gone.  And so was Jacob.  There only remained Israel.


Michelangelo is known, among his other artistic achievements, as a master with marble.  He often went directly to the marble quarries to select his own stones.  On one occasion he found a huge block of marble that had been discarded.  He purchased it at a minor cost and set to work with chisel and mallet.  The flawed portions in the block were removed or worked around, and the great sculptor took two years to finish the world-famous statue we know as "David."





















Jacob certainly was a chiseler in the negative meaning of the word.  Power, success, happiness, as the world knows them, are available to the Jacobs of this world.  But little do the Jacobs realize that God is also a chiseler of a different sort—the Michelangelo sort, who takes us with all our flaws, slowly and painfully begins to chip away, until God's work of art is done:  a person at peace with God and with his brother.  God is the one who chiseled away at Jacob all along, but put the finishing touch on him there by the Jabbok river.  God chiseled away all of Jacob's flaws, but then added one of His own, a mark, like some characteristic mark which was part of every piece God the Artist worked on.  For Jacob, it was the limp.  That way each piece that God works on would know who their Artist was.

Beware of the chiselers.  The Jacobs.  But also beware of The Chiseler, the great Artist who makes great works of art out of flawed stones, Israels out of Jacobs.  And remember the last glimpse we have of Jacob, now Israel, is a humbled figure, silhouetted against the brilliance of dawn, limping home.  He bore on his body the proud insignia of the defeat which was in truth victory, the victory of the human soul being chiseled by the touch of God.