Genesis 32:22–31
This passage from Genesis finds Jacob meeting God on the move. He is returning from the land of his father-in-law Laban with his wives, back to his ancestral home, where his brother Esau is. The language of movement surrounding his encounter with God is striking:
“The same night he got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. Jacob was left alone…”
I can’t read about them crossing the ford of the Jabbok this without imagining the Rio Grande upon our southern border, and the people who ford it at great personal risk. I can’t read of Jacob sending his wives and children ahead with everything he had without thinking of those who send family members ahead of them seeking better lives, and who are “left alone.”
Jacob is a migrant, a sojourner. He fears danger at the hand of Esau; he fears that his journey will end in violence.
Yet at the ford of the river, at the crossing into a new place, who does he meet—but God.
In this, one of the most famous scenes from Jacob’s story, he wrestles with God and earns his own name because of his dogged determination and his unwillingness to give up: “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
This dogged determination characterizes his journey, and the journey of many who insist upon their right to find a place for themselves with dignity. “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” Bless the humanity and dignity that characterizes every person. Bless the inherent rights of movement, of safety, of freedom, having basic needs met, of maintaining a connection to one’s family and culture: these are the rights named in the Migration With Dignity principles. When we demand those rights, for ourselves and others, we are demanding blessing, recognition of our human dignity. We are claiming the audacity of Jacob, who wrestled God.
Hannah Bowman is a member of the Episcopal Migration Caucus who lives in Los Angeles, the founder of Christians for the Abolition of Prisons, and the author of Abolition Ecclesiology: A Spatial Theology for a Church Against Prisons (forthcoming from Fortress Press in November 2026)