Genesis Genesis 32:1-32
At the night-ford of the Jabbok, the grasper meets the One he cannot supplant. A wordplay triangle, a saturating face-motif, and the new name Israel — he strives with God and prevails, blessed and limping at the dawn.
Genesis 18:1-15
Yahweh comes to the door of Abraham's tent at midday and eats a meal of fine flour cakes and curds under a tree. The Hebrew names the visitor singular; the eyes see three men; the speaker is Yahweh; two leave for Sodom as angels. Sarah laughs inside the tent and the divine voice draws the laugh into the open. The vocabulary of her cakes is the vocabulary of the altar that does not yet exist; the formula of her birth-promise is the formula Elisha will speak to the Shunammite; her inner question about pleasure (ednah) is preserved by the Hebrew and erased by the Greek. At Mamre God comes to a domestic table and names the time of Isaac's life.