Member-only story
In Genesis chapter 32 Jacob wrestles with God. There is some vagueness here and some interpretations are that it was an angel, the angel of the lord or Yahweh himself. Jacob renamed the area where he wrestled as ‘place where I faced God’ so I’m going to go with that interpretation.
The text is translated as
24 So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 25 When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. 26 Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”
So we take from this that the match was going for a long time and God couldn’t gain an advantage so it looks like he did some magic, touching the hip so that it basically pulled a muscle or spasmed and then Jacob asked for mercy.
However I recently watched a lecture that suggested that the hip was often used as a euphemism for groin in the bible.
This scholar suggests that perhaps God cheated and Yahweh grabbed Jacob by the balls, which is something I’ve had done to me in a fight…
