The Prayer of Jacob
Gustave Doré, 1866 · Genesis 32:11
The passage
Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau: for I fear him, lest he will come and smite me, and the mother with the children.
Genesis 32:11
About this plate
Night, by water. Jacob kneels on a low bank right at the edge with both arms thrown up over his head and his face lifted. Behind him the ground rises, and on the ridge a loaded camel stands against a torn sky with a figure beside it. More camels and people are strung out along the top in silhouette, some lying down, resting. The cloud is split and lit from behind. The whole shape of him is doubled in the water below.
Everybody else in this plate is settling down for the night. The camels are loaded, the servants are lying on the slope, the caravan has stopped. Dore puts one man down at the waterline, apart from all of it, with his arms up.
The verse is not a general prayer. It names the person he is afraid of: deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau. Then it says what he thinks will happen, which is that Esau will come and smite him, and the mother with the children. He is praying about his family being killed in the morning.
The reflection is as clear as the man. Jacob spends this night wrestling with someone he cannot name.
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