It is almost like a mystical poem, barely coherent, barely intelligible, not only to the reader but even to the protagonists. Why did the nocturnal visitor attack poor Jacob whose very name he claimed not to know? Because he was Jewish? Or because he was alone and far from any inhabited place? And why was the stranger so intent on learning the identity of his victim? If he didn’t know it, why not have inquired before assaulting him? And if he did know it, why did he ask? And why would he not disclose his own identity to Jacob? Of the two, Jacob was the “Jew,” yet it was the stranger who answered questions with questions. Until he ran out of them and then he changed the subject—and Jacob let him! And why did Jacob hold him back when logically he should have shouted with joy that finally he was rid of him? And how did the nocturnal visitor, with the advent of dawn, turn into . . . God, in the eyes of Jacob?

This is one of the most enigmatic episodes in Jacob’s life and even in Scripture. One that ended well for him, since it brought him a new dimension—secret and sacred—a dimension he seemed to need.

For indeed, of the three patriarchs, Jacob is the least interesting. His life up to that point lacked greatness. There was nothing exceptional about his problems, his preoccupations. Abraham had been the pioneer, the conqueror, the founder of a dynasty; Isaac had been the survivor, the inspired poet. They both had the kind of charisma that Jacob evidently did not possess. Compared to his predecessors, Jacob seemed a personality of no real stature, with a mediocre, or at least commonplace, destiny. Without his adventure and metamorphosis at Peniel, he would have gone through history as a melodramatic and moving figure, but one lacking majesty and a sense of tragedy, a stranger to the events and conflicts of which legends and epic poems are made.

The portrait as drawn in the Bible—before Peniel—is striking in its pallor. It depicts a man straightforward but unimaginative, honest but anxious to avoid risks. An introverted, frustrated man, given to fits of temper, leading a marginal life. A weakling, manipulated by others. Everyone made him do things—and he obeyed. Such was his nature. Incapable of initiative, he could never make up his mind. His mother—Rebecca—gave him the idea of disguising himself as Esau, to deceive his father in order to exact blessings meant for another; she was the one who taught him the necessary gestures and answers. He cried but he obeyed. And it was Rebecca who, once the act was played, advised him to go away for a while, to take refuge with his uncle Laban, and again it was she who gave him his instructions for the journey, including whom not to marry. Naturally, he promptly fell in love with the first girl he met—Rachel—and blushing like a shy adolescent, wanted to marry her on the spot. Yet somehow he ended up marrying her sister. Doubly unhappy, he loved someone he could not marry and was loved by someone he had married without love. He did not complain about it, not too much, anyway.