Genesis32chapter 32

Two things a reader of an English Bible has to be told fall in this chapter. The first is a seam of the reading cycle: the portion Vayetzei ends and the portion Vayishlach begins inside it, so the chapter is heard across two Sabbaths (src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts, the entries for portions seven and eight). The second is that the seam sits at a place where the Hebrew and the English verse numbers part company. The same file records that Vayishlach opens at Genesis 32:4 in a Hebrew Bible and at 32:3 in an English one, and the corpus fetched for this chapter numbers its commentary by the Hebrew count throughout, so every reference below runs one verse ahead of an English Bible. The chapter also carries the oldest food custom in Scripture. This site's own pages record that Israel does not eat the sinew of the hip, that Genesis gives this night as the reason, and that Jewish practice later worked the custom out in detail, the sinew removed by a trained hand before the meat is used, and honoured it as usage rather than as a command written in the Torah (src/app/featured/jacob-wrestles-the-angel/page.tsx and scripts/data/historical-context/ch2-genesis-late.mjs).

Rashi reads the chapter as a handover between two companies of angels and then as a night of fear honestly told. The angels who meet Jacob at the opening are "The angels who minister in the Land of Israel came to meet him in order to escort him into the Holy Land", on Genesis Rabbah 74:17, and the place name of the next verse he takes as the two camps of the escort leaving and the escort arriving, on Midrash Tanchuma, Vayishlach 3 (Rashi on Genesis 32:2:1 and 32:3:1, the Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A. M. Silbermann, 1929 to 1934, public domain). The messengers Jacob sends he takes as angels in the strict sense, on Genesis Rabbah 75:4. Jacob's own message he reads as a disclaimer of the blessing he had taken, a man saying that he had become a sojourner and no prince and that the blessing had not been fulfilled in him (Rashi on Genesis 32:5:1 and 32:6:1). The double word of the eighth verse he divides in two, "He was afraid lest he be killed, and he was distressed that he might have to kill someone", on Genesis Rabbah 76:2 (Rashi on Genesis 32:8:1). At the crossing he hands on the tradition that Dinah was not among the eleven children because Jacob had hidden her: "He placed her in a chest and locked her in so that Esau should not set his fancy upon her", and that Jacob was punished for keeping her from a brother she might have turned back to good (Rashi on Genesis 32:23:1). Of Jacob at the ford he says simply, "He acted as a ferry-man taking them from one side and setting them down on the other" (Rashi on Genesis 32:24:1). Ibn Ezra comments here at 32:1:1 and 32:20:1, and one further comment of Rashi at 32:15:1 stands without English in the corpus, so all three are citations.

The corpus records forty rabbinic locators on this chapter, thirty-eight of them Midrash and two Talmud. Bereshit Rabbah carries almost the whole chapter, and the run is nearly continuous: 74:16 and 74:17 at the meeting with the angels, 75:1, 75:5, 75:6, 75:7 and 75:12 through the message to Esau, 76:7, 76:8 and 76:9 through the prayer and the crossing, and 77:1, 78:1, 78:3, 78:4, 78:6 and 68:10 through the wrestling and the naming. Aggadat Bereshit is cited at 46:3, 54:2, 55:1, 58:3, 58:4 and 67:2, Midrash Aggadah at Genesis 32:16:1, 32:20:1, 32:22:1 and 32:24:1, Midrash Lekach Tov at Genesis 32:1:1, 32:19:1 and 32:21:1, Bamidbar Rabbah at 4:1, 15:12 and 18:21, and Bereshit Rabbati at Parashat Vayishlach 7 and 10. Sefer HaYashar is cited once, at the Book of Genesis, Vayetzei 5. The two Talmud locators stand at the new name and at the sinew, in the Hebrew numbering the twenty-ninth and thirty-third verses: Berakhot 13a:11 and Beitzah 12a:10. Rashi hands on further sayings with their locators, among them Genesis Rabbah 74:17, 75:4, 75:7, 76:2, 76:7 and 76:8 and Midrash Tanchuma, Vayishlach 3.