Last Updated on September 30, 2024 by Kittredge Cherry
When Jacob wrestled with the angel in the Bible, they embodied the struggle between sexuality and spirituality. Queer Bible scholars and religious leaders have grappled with the story and artists have created many homoerotic images of the scene over the centuries.
It is suitable to consider this story on the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels, which falls on Sept. 29 in western Christianity and Nov. 8 in Eastern Christianity. The story of Jacob wrestling from Genesis 32 will be read at many churches worldwide on Oct. 19, 2025 and Aug. 2, 2026.
Many have interpreted the story as a struggle between material and spiritual needs, but it is especially powerful for queer people who are trying to reconcile their sexuality and their faith. Jacob refused to give up the fight until he forced a blessing out of God. Like Jacob, LGBTQ people can also win God’s blessing by continuing to wrestle with our faith, regardless of those who condemn as sinners.
Jacob, ancestor and namesake of the Israelites, is also less traditionally masculine compared to his twin brother Esau, so some LGBTQ people identify with him that way too. While Esau was hairy and loved to hunt, Jacob was a smooth-skinned mama’s boy who liked to stay home cooking with his mother.
The story is told in the book of Genesis in the Hebrew scriptures. It begins when Jacob is alone one night. A mysterious stranger comes to him. Scripture refers to the stranger as a man, God, and an angel (Hosea 12:4). He wrestles with Jacob until dawn. Then the angel wants to leave, but Jacob insists, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.”
The angel gives him a new name and identity as Israel, which can be translated as “one who has prevailed with God.” Jacob asks to know the angel’s name, but he just gives a blessing and leaves. Alone again, Jacob marvels, “I have seen God face to face and lived.”
Queer understandings of Jacob’s story are covered in depth in the book “Jacob’s Wound: Homoerotic Narrative in the Literature of Ancient Israel” by Chicago Theological Seminary professor Theodore Jennings.
Jacob is honored in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. For Christians, some see the pre-incarnate Christ himself as the mysterious stranger who wrestled with Jacob.
The story raises intriguing questions. What was the nature of the “wrestling” that went on all night long? Whether or not there was an erotic interaction, the friendly conclusion affirms that God wants to relate to human beings as equals. God rewards those who challenge God.
Jacob wrestling with the angel in queer prayer and poetry
The story of Jacob wrestling with the angel is the basis for a controversial prayer for “unexpected intimacy,” intended to be recited after anonymous sex, in a Jewish prayer book or siddur from a historic LGBTQ synagogue in San Francisco. The prayer by Andrew Ramer is included in “Siddur Shaar Zahav: The All-Inclusive Siddur.”
The prayer begins, “In the dark, in a strange place, our father Jacob encountered a stranger with whom he grappled all night.” It asks God “who created passion and wove it throughout creation” to turn the encounter into a mutual blessing “that allows us to both touch and see the Divine.”
A notable nude and rather homoerotic “Jacob and the Angel” was sculpted by Hendrik Andersen (1872-1940), lover of famed British-American novelist Henry James.
Jacob wrestling with the angel inspired the poem “Fighting with Angels” by Jim Wise. He considers himself “something of a UCC Old Catholic spiritual pilgrim” because he attended seminary under sponsorship of the United Church of Christ and was ordained in an Old Catholic jurisdiction. The following poem comes from his “Queer Psalter” collection, currently a work in progress.
Fighting with Angels
by Jim Wise
The sky is cold and empty
but the streets are full of angels,
terrifying beauty, forbidden to touch
but begging to be touched,
wanting to be feared,
needing to be loved.
The sky is cold and empty
but the streets are full of angels
spoiling for a fight.
When Jacob wrestled
with that desert seraph
he met on the sands,
was he aroused by the
angel’s angry touch?
Was the angel?
How else explain a
sweaty wrestling match
that went on all night?
We are all of us Jacob.
We have all found ourselves
in a desert fighting angels.
Jacob fought an angel
and became someone else.
He was given a new name
because his old name
could no longer contain him,
because he was no longer the
man he was before the struggle.
He was given a new name
because he earned it.
Jacob fought an angel
and though he could
not beat God’s champion,
he refused to be beaten by God.
And what else could God do
but be impressed.
For more poetry by Wise, click here.
A queer look at angels
Michaelmas, also known as the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels, is a good time to consider the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel. Some see Saint Michael the Archangel as a gay icon. Gay theologian Donald Boisvert concludes his chapter on Michael the Archangel in “Sanctity and Male Desire: A Gay Reading of Saints” with this prayer:
“Blessed Michael the Archangel,
favorite of the deity, carrier of light, stand by our side.
Be our breastplate in times of doubt and uncertainty,
when the world would rather we not exist.
We know we have been blessed with a holy purpose.
Cover us with your strong and gentle wings.
Shelter us under your noble and manly cloak.
Lead us in our battle against the fear
and hatred of sexual difference.
And may your angelic face
smile upon us forever.”
___
Related links:
“Wrestling with God” at the Queering the Church Blog is a queer reflection on Jacob and the angel.
“The scared and the sacred – Wrestling with identity” by Kieran Bohan (A Brave Faith blog)
“Jacob and the Angel” sculpture by Jacob Epstein (Tate.org)
תפילת משיח קשת בענן (Rainbow Christ Prayer in Hebrew)
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To read this post in Italian, go to:
Giacobbe e l’angelo: una lotta omoerotica? (gionata.org)
___
Top image credit:
“Jacob Wrestling with the Angel” by Leon Bonnat (1876) Wikimedia Commons
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This post is part of the LGBTQ Saints series by Kittredge Cherry. Traditional and alternative saints, people in the Bible, LGBT and queer martyrs, authors, theologians, religious leaders, artists, deities and other figures of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people and our allies are covered.
This article was originally published in October 2019, was expanded with new material over time, and was most recently updated on Sept. 30, 2024.
Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
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This is a reply to Rob T. Jackson Jr since the system doesn’t allow a direct reply. The people of Sodom are assumed to have practiced virtually all sins, but the Bible never mentions “anarchy, rape and murder”. What it does mention is the men of the town trying to have sex with angels in the physical form of men, hence homosexual sex (at no point does it mention rape or attempted rape), which is why Sodom became associated with homosexual sex and the term “sodomy” reflects that. But no one has ever claimed that homosexual sex was the only sin in the town.
Claiming that Jacob wrestling with the angel somehow justifies sodomy is one of the biggest leaps of logic on this site, and it has a lot of competition for that distinction. Nowhere does the text imply anything remotely of the sort, and the plain meaning of the rest of the Bible condemns sodomy (stated even more bluntly in the writings of the mystic-saints such as St. Hildegard von Bingen, St. Catherine of Siena, etc).
Excuse me but the word sodomy is completely manufactured. The reason Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed was do to anarchy, rape and murder. Not so called sodomy or consensual sexuality. No one really knows what happened between Jacob and his angel for certain. However the biblical account of this story is choppy and contains much missing detail.