This Sunday’s Old Testament church reading , according to the Revised Common Lectionary used jointly by a number of Christian denominations, contains arguably one of the oddest passages in the Bible.

Amid a lengthy Genesis story about Jacob and his large entourage traveling to see his brother Esau, we reach the famous, but strange, tale of Jacob spending all night wrestling an unnamed and mysterious “man” who couldn’t defeat Jacob but who did knock Jacob’s hip from its socket. By the end of the passage, though, it is said that Jacob actually had “striven with God” and “seen God face to face, yet my life is preserved.”

As pure narrative, this interlude seems like a blind alley. It interrupts, but seems to have absolutely no thematic continuity with what comes before and after.

As m

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