— No, but I am expected in heaven to sing the praises of the Almighty.

— You have friends up there, said Jacob, unperturbed. Let them sing.

— They will sing without me today. But that means that I shall never again sing with them. Tomorrow they will tell me: You didn’t come yesterday, you are no longer one of us.

— You talk too much, said Jacob. The angels who visited Abraham blessed him before they took their leave. Do as they did.

— Impossible. It’s not the same at all. They came for that purpose. I did not.

— Then you are not leaving.

Faced with Jacob’s stubborn insistence, the angel changed the subject and began to speak not of blessings but of divine mysteries. Said he:

— The angels who revealed God’s mysteries were exiled for one hundred and thirty-eight years—would you wish me to share their fate?

Jacob could have replied that the condition he had set was not related in any way to theosophy, but he was in no mood to argue:

— Either you bless me or I shall not let you go.

— So be it, said the angel, resigned. I shall reveal to you that which should not be revealed. And if God asks me why, I shall answer that a prophet’s injunction takes precedence over all others.

Israel is decidedly no longer the sentimental and disoriented Jacob we have known until now. He has learned to be tough and resolute. To defeat his foes and command the respect of the angels. Oh yes, he could contemplate Peniel and remember it with pride.

• • •

And yet. A few short hours later he was trembling again as he faced Esau. His old fear come back? His old guilt feelings? That would have been only human. His victory over the angel had not solved his problems with man. Human problems can be resolved only on a human level. Angels might conceivably want to give in to man, but man does not. As far as Esau was concerned, Jacob continued to be Jacob and not Israel.

But there is something else. In the beginning the text speaks of man first and then of God so as to underline Jacob’s progress. Jacob has just understood a fundamental truth: God is in man, even in suffering, even in misfortune, even in evil. God is everywhere. In every being, not only in the victim. God does not wait for man at the end of the road, the termination of exile; he accompanies him there. More than that: He is the road, He is the exile. God holds both ends of the rope, He is present in every extremity, He is every limit. He is part of Jacob as He is part of Esau. And when Jacob knelt before Esau, it was not only to plead for mercy but also to discern and recognize God’s will in Esau’s. But there he went too far. To acknowledge that an enemy is carrying out God’s will is one thing, to humble oneself before an enemy is another. God may be the enemy, but the enemy is not God.