Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 255 · September 12
Except Thou Bless Me
“And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.”
"And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me."
That line ends up on wall plaques and in sermons about holy stubbornness. The message is that you should hold on and never let go, and refuse to release God until He gives in. Put that plainly, and it turns prayer into a contest of who can grip the hardest. Anyone who has held on for years and received nothing knows how much that teaching hurts in the middle of the night.
So look at who is doing the gripping. Jacob has a long record of getting blessings by grabbing them, and his brother Esau's summary is unkind but accurate: "Is not he rightly named Jacob? for he hath supplanted me these two times: he took away my birthright; and, behold, now he hath taken away my blessing." Now Jacob is hours away from meeting that brother again. He has sent gifts ahead in wave after wave, and his family is already across the river. And "Jacob was left alone."
Then read the order of what happens. Before any blessing, "he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint." Jacob is injured first. Then comes the new name, Israel, then the blessing, and then the line Genesis gives us as the sun comes up: "as he passed over Penuel the sun rose upon him, and he halted upon his thigh." To halt there means to limp. Hosea adds something Genesis leaves out: "he had power over the angel, and prevailed: he wept, and made supplication unto him." There were tears in that grip.
So be careful of anyone who sells you this scene as a method for getting what you want. Jacob did get his blessing, and he walked away limping, with a new name from God: "as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed." Ask God for His blessing, and be ready for Him to change you while He gives it. The limp was part of the gift, because the man who walked away from that river was no longer the grabber he had been, and God made a whole people out of him.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 255 is Answered Before Calling (Isaiah 65:24).