Parashat Vayishlah: Our Enemies are our Angels

God takes different forms on this earth. When Avraham interacts with God’s messengers in the world, they are visitors, wandering strangers who are in need of hospitality. The face of God in the world for Avraham is the face of hospitality, of hesed, of people in need of help.

For Yaakov, on the other hand, God’s face is the face of his enemy, his brother Esav, with whom he has struggled all his life. Yaakov struggles with an angel on the night before he meets Esav, and the next day, when he meets Esav, Yaakov says: “seeing your face is like seeing the face of God” (33:10). Avraham sees God in the face of his guests, while Yaakov sees God in the face of those he struggles and fights with.

We have different opportunities for seeing God every day. Is God in the face of the person on the street corner looking for some help? Can we also see God in our competitors, in those with whom we have trouble, who irritate us, those with whom we struggle and have conflict? Yaakov could not have finished growing up without this confrontation with Esav. Those we fight with help us in some way; they, too – no, they, especially – are angels sent from God to help refine us, to teach us where we are wrong, where we have work to do. Our enemies are our angels.

We have a tendency to think that God resides only in the pretty places in life, in the flowers and the trees and in the moments of peace and love. But Yaakov, the scrappy third in line, is a struggler, and for him, God appears also in the struggles and the fights, also in the face of the brother who swore to kill him.