Comentário sobre Gênesis 32:26

ויגע בכף ירכו HE TOUCHED THE HOLLOW OF HIS THIGH — The upper thigh-bone that is sunk in the hip is called כף because the flesh on it (on this bone) has the form of the hollow part of a pot-ladle (כף).

AND HE SAW THAT HE PREVAILED NOT AGAINST HIM. Ye angels of His, ye mighty in strength, that fulfill His word.⁶⁹Psalms 103:20. Because of this⁷⁰Although the angel’s strength was superior to Jacob’s, he was restrained by G-d from harming him. the angel could not prevail against him to harm him for it was not permitted to him to do other than that which he did to him, namely, to disjoint the hollow of his thigh. Now the Rabbis have said in Bereshith Rabbah:⁷¹77:4. “He touched all the righteous people who were destined to come from Jacob. This refers to the generation of religious persecution.”⁷²This refers to the religious persecution during the reign of Emperor Hadrian, 117-138 Common Era. The purport of this Midrash is that this entire event constitutes a hint to his generations, indicating that there will be a generation from the seed of Jacob against whom Esau [Rome] will prevail to the extent of almost uprooting his seed. This occurred in one generation during the period of the Sages of the Mishnah, which was the generation of Rabbi Yehudah ben Baba⁷³In Sanhedrin, 13 b, it is recounted how this Sage suffered martyrdom for the sake of ordaining his disciples, an act which the Romans had forbidden. and his companions.⁷⁴Possibly a reference to the Assarah harugei malchuth, the Ten great Rabbis who endured martyrdom rather than abide by the Hadrianic regulations. As they said:⁷⁵Shir Hashirim Rabbah 2:18. “Rabbi Chiya bar Abba said, ‘If a person were to tell me, “Give your life for the sanctification of the Name of the Holy One, blessed be He,” I would give it, providing only that they slay me immediately. But in the generation of religious persecution I could not endure!’ And what did the Romans do in that generation? They would bring iron balls and heat them in fire and then place them under their arm-pits and cause their death.” And there are other generations in which they have done to us such things as these and even worse, but we have endured and it has passed over us, just as it is hinted in the verse, And Jacob came in peace.⁷⁶Further, 33:18.

כי לא יכול לו, the angel did not succeed in preventing Yaakov from crossing and fleeing.

לא יכול לו, seeing that most of Yaakov’s striving was oriented toward G’d and heavenly concerns. Both his thinking and his conversation had G’d and His will as its focus.

וירא כי לא יוכל לו, that he could not force him to the ground.

וירא כי לא יכול לו, “when the man realized that he could not overpower him, etc.,” actually, he could have overpowered Yaakov, seeing that he was an angel disguised as a human being, איש; however he had not received permission to do this. All he had been allowed to do was to dislocate Yaakov’s hip joint. This injury too was intended to serve as a warning to the Jewish people in the future that there would arise a descendant of Esau, the Roman Empire, who would threaten to totally annihilate the people.

נגע ב־ ist immer ein ungehöriges Anrühren: נוגע בטומאה בקדש usw. Häufig auch: ein heftiges, feindliches Anpacken, so (Job 1, 19) von dem Sturm, der das Haus an allen vier Seiten packte und umriss: .ויגע בארבע פנות הבית ותקע — von ,יקע schwebend werden, daher הוקע schwebend machen, henken. — כף הירך ist der starke Fleischmuskel, welcher das Schenkelbein regiert und den festen Stand und Gang auf der Erde bedingt. Der Gegner wollte Jakob von der Erde aufheben und ganz niederwerfen. Das, sah er, gelang ihm nicht. Da packte er ihn an den Hüftballen und, indem Jakob sich ihm widersetzte, wurde der Muskel von seinen Bändern losgerissen, so, dass er fortan den Fuß nicht mehr regieren konnte und Jakob dadurch hinkend wurde. Also: während des ganzen nächtlichen Kampfes bemüht sich Jakobs Gegner, ihm den Boden völlig unter den Füßen zu entziehen, ihm die Existenz auf Erden überhaupt streitig zu machen. Das gelingt nicht; wohl aber gelingts ihm, ihm die materielle Kraft zu schwächen und ihn zu hindern, sich seiner natürlichen Anlagen und Kräfte zum festen Fortschritt auf Erden zu bedienen.

וירא, “the angel saw;” (realised)

ותקע AND WAS STRAINED — It was violently torn from its joint. Similar in meaning is (Jeremiah 6:8) “Lest My soul be alienated (תקע) from thee” — i.e. removed from thee; and in the Mishna, לקעקע בצתם, which means to remove violently (לשרש) their roots.

ותקע, was dislocated, separated. We find the word as having a similar meaning in Jeremiah 6,8 פן תקע נפשי ממך; “lest My essence not become separated from you (Israel).” Whereas in the words ירך the emphasis is on the first syllable, in verse 33 in the word הירך the emphasis is on the letter ר, seeing that there it is used as a noun, whereas here it appears in an adjective mode. Whenever ירך appears in a construct form (Exodus 40,24, i.e. as something subordinate, its stress is on the first syllable) Also the kametz changes to a segol, as the word in unadorned mode is yarech and not yerech. [the author quotes parallels from the word gezel and gazel, respectively, claiming that the unadorned noun for robbery is gazel not gezel. He makes the same claim for the words geder and gader (fence) respectively. [In modern Hebrew the latter is accepted whereas “robbery,” גזל, does not appear with a kametz, but the difference between the construct mode and the unadorned noun is merely that the latter has a chataf segol instead of a regular vowel segol. Ed.]

ויגע he informed him that in the future, i.e. כף ירכו, many of his offspring would become guilty of sins against G’d. While this troubled Yaakov he momentarily digressed from his concentration on G’d so that the angel could inflict an injury upon him during his lapse of concentration.

ויגע בכף ירכו, he hinted to him that whereas Esau would not be able to overpower him, danger lurked for him from another source, that someone of his own children would cause him grief. He referred to his daughter who would be raped by an uncircumcised gentile. This is why he injured his כף ירכו, the word כף being feminine. Yaakov understood all this from what the angel had done, but he may not have understood how this hint applied to his daughter until it happened. He may have thought that she would either take sick or die. The entire episode must be viewed as a dream he had, even though on the morrow he found himself limping. This was a sign from G’d, a reprisal of a kind, for the doubts he had expressed about the various promises G’d had made him. G’d now punished him by making him unable to rely on parts of his body that he was in the habit of relying on. True, Yaakov trusted G’d with all his heart, but he was in a constant state of worry that the promises he had received would not come true due to some sin he had committed. Considering that G’d’s promise had been repeated on different occasions, proving that in the interval Yaakov had not forfeited his claim to them, he should no longer have doubted that G’d would not keep His promise for whatever reason. His servile behaviour towards Esau, including the many times he called him adoni, “my lord,” implied a lack of trust in the validity of G’d’s promises to him. Neither should he have sent him such an elaborate gift, nor should he have prostrated himself before him repeatedly. By doing so he committed a sin and G’d punished him in this life by afflicting his body, retribution already for planning to do this. If you prefer, you may understand this story as something taking place while Yaakov was awake but that he day dreamed the event and that the man appeared to him in this dream but that was a figment of his imagination. Similar events occurred in Joshua 5,13 although the conversation between Joshua and the angel sounds very real. In Judges 6,11 a similar wakeful encounter with someone perceived as an angel in human guise happened to Gideon, and there are more such instances in the Scriptures. In fact, we could also understand the encounter between angels and Avraham, and between Lot and the angels in such terms. However, the difficulty with such an interpretation in our example is the physical contact not only described in the narrative, but the evidence of an injury sustained by Yaakov which could hardly have resulted from some hallucinatory encounter. It is difficult to reconcile the Torah’s historical note that in commemoration of Yaakov’s injury the Jewish people do not eat the organ of an animal that corresponds to the one which was injured in Yaakov’s body during that encounter.

ויגע בכף ירכו, “he ‘touched’ his thigh-joint.” He intended thereby to cause Yaakov to fall to the ground, in the manner of two people wrestling, when each one attempts to first force his opponent to the ground. Some commentators claim that the angel tried to inflict a disabling blow on Yaakov, one that would disqualify him from performing service on the altar, as a penalty for his having taken the birth right from Esau, i.e. Esau’s privilege to perform such service for G’d. on the altar. Prior to the building of the Tabernacle all such service was performed by the firstborn of each Jewish household.

כי לא יוכל לו “that he could not overpower Yaakov;” the words: לא יוכל, must be understood in the sense that Moses used them before taking leave from his people, when he said: in Deut. 31,2: לא אוכל עוד לצאת ולבא, “I cannot any longer lead you in war,” where he was physically fully able, but G-d had forbidden him to do so. The author cites more examples of the word יכול occurring in that sense.

ותקע, we find the word used in a similar meaning in Jeremiah 6,8 פן תקע נפשי ממך, “lest My essence be removed from you.”

ויגע, “the angel touched in a manner which twisted (his hip joint);

בכף ירכו, “his hip joint;” he tried to dislocate his hip joint, hoping that this would cause him to fall down.

ותקע, “he succeeded in dislocating it.” This is one of the words which can be interpreted in two opposite ways depending on the context in which they appear. A well known example is the root דשן, which can mean “to saturate,” i.e. to heap more and more of a substance onto something, but it also appears as removing excess ashes from the altar. (Compare Exodus 27,3) The root תקע is more familiar to us as meaning to firmly establish something, such as the pegs holding a tent to the ground it is on. Compare Genesis 31,25, ויעקב תקע את אהלו בהר, “and Yaakov placed his tent firmly on the mountain.” Compare Leviticus 6,3, Psalms 80,10, and Psalms 52,7. In our verse it describes the angel’s attempt to uproot Yaakov.

כף ירך יעקב, “the hip joint of Yaakov.” The angel succeeded to injure Yaakov despite G-d’s assurances to him that “I will protect you wherever you go;” because Yaakov allowed himself to be frightened of Esau in spite of G-d’s assurances. [This was a lack of faith in G-d’s promise. Ed.] We find something similar with Moses, whom the angel injured and almost killed. (The incident at the inn on the way to Egypt) He had been assured of G-d’s support (Exodus 3,12) but displayed fear of Pharaoh, and refused the mission to become the leader of the Jewish people and to return to Egypt. (Exodus 3,13) He had asked G-d to send anyone but him.