Torah describes Jacob’s flight from his twin brother Esau as one long day.

Jacob impersonates Esau and steals his brother’s birthright blessing. Esau is so angry he wants to kill Jacob. Jacob’s mother advises him to flee to Haran and stay with his uncle until Esau calms down.

So Jacob leaves home in Beersheba and heads towards his uncle’s place in Haran. Along the way, Torah says, vaifga bamakom, vayalen sham, ki va hashemesh: he encountered the place, and slept there, because the sun was setting (Gen 28:11).

Twenty years later, when Jacob leaves Haran, and learns that his brother is heading out to meet him, he wrestles with a mysterious stranger all night. Using ambiguous pronouns to describe the encounter, Torah suggests that the stranger may be identical with Jacob himself. After Jacob succeeds, Torah says, vayizrach lo hashemesh, the sun shone for him (Gen 32:32).

The sun sets on Jacob’s life and then it rises again.

One midrashic commentator says that sunset and sunrise are metaphors describing Jacob’s emotions. When he runs from his brother’s threat in Beersheba, he is distressed, as if in darkness. When he heads home, he is lit up with joy. The prophets Jeremiah and Malachi spark this interpretation, by the way they describe the Babylonian exile and return. When we left for exile, our sun was setting amid shame and destruction (Jer 15:9). But we returned healed, under the sun of righteousness (Mal 3:20).

Other commentators suggest that sunset and sunrise are spiritual metaphors. Sunset describes Jacob’s early seeking, when he withdraws into himself to find God in dreams, under cover of darkness. Sunrise describes Jacob’s mature spirituality. After he wrestles with the stranger and declares, “I have seen the face of God,” he himself is the sun that shines with God’s luminous presence. These commentators take inspiration from a Torah story in which Joseph tells Jacob a dream he has about the sun (Gen 37:9), and Jacob thinks the sun represents him.

Both of these interpretations affirm that Jacob’s twenty years in Haran represent the dark night between sunset and sunrise.

Jacob spends a long metaphorical night in Haran. There, Jacob enters into an arranged marriage and a marriage of love, fathering twelve children. First, he works as an indentured apprentice. Then, he becomes a master sheep-breeder. Finally, he amasses enough wealth to support his large family. And then, with the support of both his wives, he leaves his father-in-law’s household.

These are the most productive years of Jacob’s life.

How could they be described as Jacob’s night?

My answer is inspired by the book Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, by Richard Rohr, a Catholic writer who draws on diverse spiritual traditions. In the first half of life, Rohr says, human beings try to learn how to be competent adults: to earn a living, run a household, establish a family, succeed in a cultural milieu, and create a circle of community. We try to set goals and problem-solve our way to meeting them. Support is available if we need it, with training in all kinds of skills: vocational, job search, home improvement, parenting, relationship, and time management.

At some point, however, each of us confronts a crisis – even those of us who live comfortable, first-world lives, as Jacob did in his context. We might confront a sudden rupture, such as grief, illness, job loss, or family breakup. We might enter into a gradual and welcome change such as retirement or grown children. In each case, we might appear to do a fine job coping with the changes; all our practical first-half-of-life skill sets keep on rolling. Yet something happens inside us for which our practical first-half-of-life skills are no help whatsoever.

We might – and these now are my own words, not Rohr’s – we might feel like a failure, though we don’t look that way to others. We might not even know what we are failing at. Because we are not failing at anything we can even name with our practical first-half-of-life vocabulary. We can’t set a goal, because we don’t know what goal to set. Our familiar sense of who we are and how we relate to our own thoughts and feelings has come unanchored. We may yearn for spiritual guidance and, using first-half-of-life problem solving skills, take all the right steps to get it.

But in this second-half-of-life no one can tell you exactly what your tasks are or how to complete them. Comparing the two stages of self-development is like comparing yoga and massage: the two healing modalities target the same muscles but yoga works by actively engaging the mind in the body’s process. You have to do the work yourself, without a precise template.

Now I understand why Torah and midrash describe Jacob’s productive years as his dark years. Jacob succeeds brilliantly at his first-half-of-life tasks, becoming a success by all public standards. But the conflict with Esau has thrown second-half-of-life questions in Jacob’s face long before he is able to recognize them. He tries to heal his wounded relationship by amassing wealth and competing with his uncle. Surprise – or not – it doesn’t work. Night comes to an end only when he actively wrestles with someone who has been a stranger to him, someone who is also indistinguishable from himself.

Guidance is available for second-half-of-life growth, but it is open-ended and metaphorical. You find hints in words like those of the prophet Hosea (11:7-12:12). Don’t be like Ephraim, he says, thinking the answer can be found in material things. Recognize that you need God’s presence to help raise you up. Listen and you will see that God calls to you with a roar. Let every possible side of your inner self hear the call: your own inner lion, your bird, your dove. Open to yourself in kindness and love. You did not plant your challenges inside yourself; like Jacob, you may have had to trick and struggle your way through your early life. But you too can find your angels, find your tears and find your path.

Today may feel like a very long day, but don’t despair. The sun will set, and the sun will rise, as surely as day follows night.

Image: Sérgio Valle Duarte, Night and day, Tribute to René Magritte 1996; Midrashic comments from Genesis Rabbah 68:10