
Our greatest victories are wrought out through pain, and purchased at the cost  of the humbling of the flesh. Jacob learned that the secret of prevailing with  God and man was not in the strength, but in the weakness and suffering of the  flesh. It must ever be so. The victor Lamb bears still the scars of Calvary, and  appears as one who had been slain.
Had Laban met Jacob that morning, he  would have pointed to that limp as an indication of God's wrath and displeasure;  but if he had looked into his face, he would have seen all its hardness and  cunning gone, and would have been arrested by the unwonted tenderness in his  voice.
The shrunken sinew counteracts pride. - So high a spiritual  achievement as to prevail with God might have tempted Jacob to arrogance and  self-esteem. But God anticipated the possible temptation by this physical  infirmity, which was constantly present to Jacob's consciousness.
The  shrunken sinew was the secret of victory. - Had it not been shrivelled by the  angel's touch, Jacob would have continued to resist in the pride of his  strength, and would never have clung convulsively to the angel, crying, "I will  not let thee go." It was only in that act that he became Israel, the  Prince.
The shrunken sinew makes us think little of this world and much  of the next. - From this moment Jacob takes up more of the pilgrim attitude. He  finds that for him, at least, the pace will have to be slower; but it is well,  for he relaxes his hold on the seen to entwine more tenaciously about the  unseen. "The days of the years of my pilgrimage " - such is his epitome of his  life.