We Who Wrestle with God: Perceptions of the Divine

When Abram and Lot part ways after leaving Egypt, Lot finds himself at a literal and moral crossroads. He chooses the wrong path by heading in an unholy direction—toward Sodom, an evil city—and is consequently taken captive. The local kings go to war (the first war in the Bible), suggesting that they are no longer allowing themselves to be guided by the spirit of God. Abram himself takes up arms, showing that God sometimes calls people to fight for the right. After the war in concluded, Abram acts virtuously by refusing to take part in war spoils.

Abram continues his upward progression toward likeness to God, and he marks this by a solemn ritual sacrifice. Peterson repeats his claim that work is itself a sacrifice in which one bargains with the future and receives payment in due time. Cain rejects such an idea of sacrifice, while Abram embraces it and reaps its rewards: the birth of a son to his elderly wife and the promise of a continuing dynasty. The role of procreation here shows that sex is not for personal gratification only but is ordered to the wider world, to community and the future.

In Peterson’s analysis, Abraham and Sarah’s story argues for the normativity of monogamy. Abram’s behavior is that of a “wise father” who is “playing the long game” by behaving in a morally responsible manner with regard to his wife and children (272). His sacrifice is rewarded by “reproductive success” in the long term, as his family line flourishes.

Biological realities also demonstrate the desirability of long-term rather than short-term mating strategies, as sex evolved “to protect life against parasites” and to encourage commitment and enduring relationships (274), according to Peterson. When sex is “devoted to God,” a “spirit of true play” and enjoyment emerges (278), contrasted with the “upheaval” of nervousness and duplicity that surrounds sex in present-day society.

Abram’s covenant with God is renewed, accompanied by a change of name to Abraham (“father of many nations”). This change signals the transformative nature of the covenant and the upward direction of Abraham’s spiritual journey. To seal the covenant, God prescribes circumcision for Abraham’s male descendants: a sacrifice symbolizing the “acceptance of mortal fragility” and unselfconsciousness before God (282), as well as a “transcendent unity” within society.

Like her husband, Sarai undergoes a change of name and identity, becoming Sarah (“princess”), symbolizing her status as mother of a great nation. Despite her advanced age, God blesses her with a son, Isaac.

A generation later, Isaac’s son Jacob marries Rebecca, and the couple gives birth to twins, Jacob and Esau. They are the center of the next strand of the story.

The twin brothers, Jacob and Esau, continue the theme of the struggle of hostile brothers established with Cain and Abel. The bookish and devious Jacob convinces the wild outdoorsman Esau to give up his birthright in exchange for a meal. Later, the boys’ mother, Rebecca, arranges to have Jacob pose as Esau so that their dying father, Isaac, gives him a blessing.

With Esau deeply angry with him, Jacob flees and works as a shepherd for his uncle Laban in the land of Haran, the “land of decision” established in Abram’s story. There, Jacob dreams of a ladder ascending to heaven, accompanied by the voice of God promising the land of his forefathers to him and his descendants. In this way, and sealed by a new covenant with God, Jacob leaves his devious ways behind and aims upward to a life of godliness in line with his ancestors.

Now, Jacob embarks on a series of adventures: He labors for several years for Laban to earn first Rachel’s hand in marriage and then Leah’s (polygamy is accepted in this era of biblical history). There follow parallels with the story of Abraham and Sarah: The infertile Rachel asks Jacob to conceive a child with their maid. Then, God allows Rachel to have her own child with Jacob, Joseph, who will become another important patriarch and ancestor of Christ.

Having acquired wealth through shepherding, Jacob makes his way back to his homeland, sending a peace offering ahead to Esau. One night during the journey, Jacob has a mysterious experience: He wrestles with a man until daybreak, and at the end of the fight, the man blesses him and changes his name to Israel (“he who wrestles with God”). Jacob is convinced that he has wrestled with God, seeing him face-to-face and prevailing (although sustaining a slight injury to his thigh).

Later, God formally reiterates the name change and promises Jacob lands and illustrious descendants. This experience marks Jacob’s change of identity into a man seeking to do right. Peterson stakes a claim that both Abraham and Jacob illustrate the need for moral regeneration and rebirth; as well, Jacob’s story shows that we must all “wrestle with God” in order to achieve this new identity.

Peterson backtracks to pick up the story of Abraham and Sarah. They are visited by three strangers, and they extend hospitality to each. The strangers turn out to be angels sent by God, and they assure Sarah that she will bear a child, despite her old age and infertility. Sarah is skeptical and laughs, but Abraham upbraids her for her lack of faith.

The couple, with Lot, turn their attention to the evil city of Sodom. Abraham bargains with God to spare the city if only 10 righteous men are found there. When Abraham, Lot, and two of the angels arrive in the city, the citizens ask to sexually assault the men of their entourage, showing the “dangerous fallenness” of the city, the antithesis of Abraham and Sarah’s hospitality.

Peterson digresses into a discussion of the importance of hospitality in ancient Middle Eastern culture, arguing that it had a sacred function and served a high ethical ideal enshrined in the Bible. Sodom’s lack of hospitality shows the city’s “complete moral collapse.” At the same time, hospitality brought with it certain risks and dangers if strangers were allied with hostile foreigners.

To illustrate these points, Peterson recounts a biblical seminar that he organized in Miami, Florida, where hospitality reigned and added to the mutual respect of the participants and the fruitfulness of the discussion. Peterson also witnessed the opposite of hospitality in political circles in Washington, DC, where “cross-party collaboration” was distrusted and hostility prevailed.

Returning to the biblical narrative, Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed by fire and brimstone. Lot escapes, but his wife and kinsfolk are affected by “false nostalgia” and look back, with fatal consequences. This theme will reemerge in the story of Moses.

Sarah miraculously conceives a son, Isaac. God tests Abraham by commanding him to offer his son in sacrifice. Abraham prepares to follow through but is prevented at the crucial juncture by an angel. Although God’s demand seems perverse to us, it illustrates the idea that “all things, no matter how valuable, must be offered up to God” (308). This is echoed later, in the gospels, where Christ commands his followers to forgo family in favor of following him. Peterson stakes a claim that such a command is deeply practical inasmuch as it is a “simple matter of priority: what is first must come first, no matter what and no matter who” (311). Peterson further relates this idea to the need for parents to let go of their children rather than protectively coddle them to show their own moral virtue.

God is, among his other manifestations, the spirit that demands a person “to go all in, to risk everything” (313)—as seen in the sacrifice of Christ, God’s own son. Yet the paradoxical import of the story of Abraham and Isaac is that if someone is willing to sacrifice everything to God, God will not ultimately demand the sacrifice.

Peterson sums up the story of Abraham and his family: a sequence of journeys that leads upward to spiritual and moral maturity and redounds to the future—a life that “all of us could and should live” (315).

In the book of Exodus, the Israelites are living in Egypt. While, for a time, they thrived due to Joseph’s service to the government, the tide has turned, and the succeeding pharaoh sees the Israelites as a threat. He reduces them to slavery—another example of the resentful spirit of Cain—and orders Israelite male children killed.

Peterson points out the resentment against the Jewish people for their success that will continue throughout history, as well as the common mythic trope of the world-redeeming hero endangered at birth—a trope that reflects reality in an ancient world in which infanticide was common.

In Exodus, the prophet Moses is born to an Israelite mother and hidden for safekeeping during the infanticide. Pharaoh’s daughter discovers Moses and raises him as her own son, while his true mother becomes his nursemaid—details that also reflect common mythic themes. When Moses has grown up, he witnesses an Egyptian beating an enslaved Hebrew and kills the perpetrator—an early manifestation of his standing on the side of the oppressed. Fearing Pharaoh’s vengeance, he flees Egypt, becoming a shepherd in Midian. There, he marries Zipporah, the daughter of the priest Jethro, and settles into a happy and productive life.

While tending his flocks near Mount Horeb (Mount Sinai), Moses has an experience of the divine, in which God calls to him in the midst of a bush that burns yet is not consumed. God reveals himself as being itself (“I AM THAT I AM” [332]) and announces an imminent deliverance of the Israelites from slavery.

Peterson draws inferences from God’s self-definition and his call to Moses to aid in the Israelites’ deliverance. Moses’ communion with God is inherently a deep encounter, in which Moses enters sacred territory that transforms him and produces awe. Moses is invited to become a committed leader and to take his place in the tradition of his ancestors.

God’s self-definition as pure being implies that he is what is most real and that those who ignore his spirit do so at their peril. God is the spirit that unites and the ultimate principle that brings all things together and orients all human action. God’s proclamations of his uniqueness and constancy emphasize his central and all-powerful nature.

Warning Moses that Pharoah will be intransigent, God grants the prophet the ability to perform magic with his shepherd’s staff—an object that becomes a symbol of the “cosmic center” uniting heaven and earth. When Moses doubts his abilities as an orator, God promises to guide his speech and partners him in his mission with his more fluent-tongued brother Aaron. Peterson interprets this sharing of mission as “the first indication of the principle of subsidiarity,” which he defines as “the distribution of responsibility down the social hierarchy to every level of community” (344) (See: Index of Terms).

Moses and Aaron return to Egypt. Moses presents the plea for the Israelites’ freedom that God gave him, which is essentially a plea for the freedom to worship rightly. Peterson emphasizes that the call to freedom is a call to virtue, not to “anarchy or hedonism.” It is a “voluntary striving upward” that is reflected in the US Declaration of Independence.

Pharaoh’s heart is hardened against Moses’ request, thus showing a tendency common among of tyrants to “double down,” symbolized in the text by the hardness of stone. Pharaoh increases the Israelites’ workload, thus showing his immaturity, impulsiveness, and self-worship.

Moses presents his plea a second time, this time casting down his staff, which transforms into a serpent. When Pharoah remains opposed, Moses causes the rivers of Egypt to turn red with blood. There follow plagues of frogs, lice and flies, and a famine. Then, Egypt’s firstborn sons are put to death, while the Israelite firstborn sons are “passed over”—the source of the Passover ritual.

At last, Pharoah is convinced that “he is powerless before God” (357), and he sends the Israelites packing. As the Israelites depart, Moses assures them of the promised land that awaits them.

Instead of arriving in the promised land at once, the Israelites wander in the desert for 40 years. Peterson explains this anomaly in terms of a moral truth: When we throw off tyranny, we do not gain freedom all at once because tyranny’s effects still have to be overcome. On the way to freedom, we often have to experience uncertainty, lack of direction, and chaos. Thus, the Israelites have been demoralized by the habits of slavery and must be taught freedom in a long and difficult process.

The Egyptians chase after the Israelites but are drowned in the Red Sea, which had earlier become dry land for the Israelites to pass through. This illustrates that those who walk through life “courageously and in good faith” reach their destination (370), while those possessed by selfish tyranny will be destroyed. Later, Moses performs a miracle by removing the bitterness from water and thus making it drinkable, showing again the rewards of righteousness.

Despite this miracle, after a few months in the desert, the Israelites lose heart and complain and even long for their past in Egypt. Peterson sees this as weakness and reluctance to undergo sacrifice and adventure toward the goal of reflecting the image of God.

To satisfy the discontented Israelites, God provides the Israelites manna (a miraculous food from heaven) and quail to eat, reminding them of the need for both heavenly and material nourishment. Later, Moses strikes the rock of Horeb with his staff and miraculously produces water—driving home the identification of Moses with this life-giving element.

Also using his magic staff, Moses helps the Israelites repel an attack of the Amalekites, a passing tribe. In all this, Moses is assisted by Aaron and other relatives, emphasizing the importance of subsidiarity to get a job done.

Moses has been appointed judge of the Israelites, who are “fractious” and unwilling to govern themselves and have therefore delegated authority to their leader. Moses, in turn, becomes susceptible to the temptations of power, risking returning the Israelites to the very tyranny they fled. Peterson argues that these tensions illustrate the need for a morally responsible, self-governing populace organized according to the principle of subsidiarity.

Moses prepares the people to undergo a transcendent experience of the divine at the top of Mount Sinai, with God warning Moses that the people will perish if they look directly at him. Peterson explains this with reference to the need to purify the soul of imperfection and sin in order to encounter God and the need to shield oneself against the overwhelming psychological impact of encountering something “profoundly important.” Atop the mountain, Moses experiences a “profound, even revolutionary moment of insight” (388), which Peterson links with the human evolutionary breakthrough from “procedural knowledge” to abstract thought.

At this point, Moses receives the Ten Commandments from God; the stone tablets are sealed up in the Ark of the Covenant, symbolizing the new harmony between humanity and God. Peterson sees in the commandments a structure embodying a number particular, culture-specific rules clustering around a single, universal “Great Commandment” to love God and neighbor. The Ten Commandments set the pattern for social arrangement as well as individual psychological wholeness for members of the Israelite community, with a special emphasis on sacrifice as a way to maintain oneness with the divine.

While Moses is communing with God on Mount Sinai, the people turn toward idolatry, asking Aaron to fashion a golden calf for them to worship. In punishment, the Levites (the priestly class) kill several thousand of the unfaithful Israelites.

In Peterson’s interpretation, this episode represents a fall into a “corrosive populism” in which actions are based on the tyranny of the mob instead of truth, ending in a repressive authoritarianism. In response to the people’s infidelity, God sends them forward into the promised land but does not accompany them, sending an angel instead; this illustrates that “[w]hen sin is practiced, good recedes” (409).

The Israelites mourn because of God’s departure, but Moses negotiates with God, and God rewards the prophet’s faith by granting a private revelation. When Moses descends the mountain, his face is suffused with the divine brightness, and he must therefore veil his face before the people (an episode that prefigures Jesus’ transfiguration in the gospels). Moses and the people plan the building of the holy tabernacle (a tent-like structure for worship) as Exodus ends.

Peterson continues with commentary on the ensuing biblical books: Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Leviticus includes instructions by God to the Israelites about worship and other rituals. In reward for following his laws, God promises protection and well-being; he promises punishment if the laws are ignored. Peterson sees these instructions as aimed at communal cohesion in alignment with the moral law. This justifies God’s dire warnings, which some interpret as “jealousy, anger, rage, and cruelty” (418).

The book of Numbers provides technical details about the administration of the promised land, laying the groundwork (according to Peterson’s claim) for modern government statistics and social organization.

The Israelites are now nearing the promised land, both geographically and in a moral and spiritual sense. Indeed, according to Peterson, sustained moral striving is identical with “success” and an upward trajectory that can defeat, at least partially, some of the evils of mortal existence like sickness and death—as can be seen in recent technological advancements.

The Israelites send scouts ahead of them to search the new land, but the scouts report that the land is inhabited by dangerous “giants.” This causes the Israelites to become demoralized, a change of attitude that Peterson characterizes as a loss of faith and “destruction of the ideal” traceable to Cain’s sin (433).

God deals with the people’s faithlessness by reiterating his laws and adding a new one, relating to the keeping of fringes on garments. Peterson relates this rule to the psychological and social relationship that exists between center and fringe, in which there is a balance between stability and experimentation. To illustrate this further, Peterson takes a detour into the book of Ruth, in which a non-Israelite outsider (Ruth) is incorporated into the Israelite community and plays a major role in its history.

Returning to the Exodus narrative, a new challenge arises when Korah, a Levite priest, stirs a populist rebellion against Moses’ rule. However, the criticisms of Moses do not stick due to the prophet’s clean record, and Korah and the rebels are swallowed up into the earth. Peterson draws lessons from this episode. The marginal must stay in its place and not try to usurp the center, and a subsidiary social structure is preferable to “false egalitarianism.” God-directed virtue and accomplishment speak for themselves and will not be undone by fringe revolutionary movements that claim superior virtue and the will of the people.

When the Israelites run short of water and complain, God instructs Moses and Aaron to draw water from the rock of Meribah with Moses’ staff. They do so, but in the process, Moses gives a display of force and compulsion, ascribing the miraculous act to himself instead of to God. In punishment, God bars Moses and Aaron from entry into the promised land. Although seemingly harsh, Peterson justifies this judgment as a necessary check on arrogant power.

Now stripped of his power, Aaron dies. Joshua and Caleb emerge as the Israelites who maintain faith, with Joshua taking over leadership from Moses and leading the Israelites through the last stage of the journey.

Dissatisfied with their food and leadership, the Israelites begin again to complain. God punishes them by sending a plague of venomous serpents, resulting in many deaths. When Moses prays to God for rescue, God instructs Moses to set up a bronze serpent on a pole, which will heal the Israelites of the serpent bites when they look at it.

Thus, instead of banishing the snakes, God fortifies the Israelites to face them. Alluding to the mythic archetype of the “dragon fight,” Peterson interprets this episode as indicating the need to confront dangers directly rather than avoiding them. Later, in the New Testament, Christ compares himself to the bronze serpent as a savior “lifted up” in crucifixion to heal the sins of others. Like the serpent, the crucified Christ represents the “terrible things about human existence that must be looked upon—even accepted gratefully and welcomed” (449).

In the latter part of Numbers, the Israelites engage in numerous battles against neighboring peoples in their fight to gain the promised land. The battle against the Midianites includes a killing of the conquered in order to protect against their continuing influence. Peterson puts these cruelties, much criticized by latter-day commentators, in context, concluding that questions of the morality of war are part of “the dreadful necessity of wrestling with God” (457).

At the beginning of Deuteronomy, Moses appoints Joshua to take his place, writes a song summing up his work and recalling God’s promises, and dies.