The Sages famously teach that as Yaakov left home and arrived at the site where he dreamt his famous dream, God had the sun set early so that Yaakov would sleep at that site. Now, twenty years later, God “returned” the daylight by having the sun rise early that morning for Yaakov at Penuel.
What deeper message might this account, of the early sunset and sunrise, seek to convey?
We find in Parashat Vayishlach the story of Yaakov’s encounter with a mysterious assailant in Penuel the night before his reunion with Esav. Yaakov wrestles with the attacker throughout the night, and ultimately prevails. The Torah writes at the conclusion of this narrative, “The sun shone for him as he passed Penuel” (32:32). The Gemara in Masekhet Chulin (91b) comments that God at this point “returned” to Yaakov the daylight that He had “withheld” many years earlier, when Yaakov first left Eretz Yisrael to Charan. The Sages famously teach that as Yaakov left home and arrived at the site where he dreamt his famous dream, God had the sun set early so that Yaakov would sleep at that site. Now, twenty years later, God “returned” the daylight by having the sun rise early that morning for Yaakov at Penuel.
What deeper message might this account, of the early sunset and sunrise, seek to convey?
There is perhaps nothing in the world that can be anticipated with more assurance and certitude than the cycle of the sun’s rise and descent. While other natural forces seem to occur arbitrarily, at least to some extent, the astronomical cycle can be predicted with absolute certainty. In the story of Yaakov’s exile from and return to Eretz Yisrael – which is often viewed as a symbolic precursor of his descendants’ exile and redemption – even the sun’s rise and setting did not occur at the anticipated times.
For Yaakov, even the most predictable phenomena in life did not unfold as planned. This might symbolize the fact that in the history of Am Yisrael, and perhaps in the lives of individuals, as well, few events, if any, can be predicted with certainty. Rarely do life’s events unfold according to plan, or follow the person’s carefully designed schedule. In Yaakov’s case, this was shown in the extreme, in the delay of nature’s most unfailingly predictable events. These deviations are perhaps meant as models of the unexpected twists and turns that individual life and our national history so often take.
Sometimes we confront an unexpected “sunset,” problems and hardships that we could not possibly have foreseen beforehand. In other instances, we are treated to an entirely unanticipated “sunrise,” good fortune from an unexpected source or turn of events. The story of Yaakov teaches that while we must work, plan and prepare as best we can, and attempt to steer our lives in the proper direction, we must also accept the reality that some things cannot be planned, that, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse, even the most predictable aspects in life cannot always be predicted.