The river Yavok (Jabbok), near Mount Gil'ad (Gilead) on the northern border of the Beney Amon (Ammonites), flowing into the river Yarden (Jordan), also called Wadi Zarqa = "blue river".
Genesis 32:23 (22 in the Yehudit); Numbers 21:24; Deuteronomy 2:37 and 3:16; Joshua 12:2; Judges 11:3, and many others.
The root, however, was probably Ya-avok (יאבק), with an additional Aleph, because there is no two-letter root to explain it as Yavok. This would give the root Avak (אבק), which means "dust"; though there is a second Avak (אבק), found in Genesis 32:25, and nowhere else. When Ya'akov wrestles with the unnamed night-spirit, the verb used, oddly in the Niphal/passive form, is Ne'avek (נאבק) - which makes for the splendidly poetic phrase Ya'akov ne'avek. It may be that this verb was used because wrestling in this manner on the ground throws up lots of dust, and therefore it is the same root, avak = dust; but that is a very distant possibility, and another root with another meaning is needed.
The place where this event happens is named Penu-El, which means "the face of El"; but the name is really a description of what he saw there rather than the name of the place itself. In fact it is clear that the events take place on the opposite side of the river Yarden from Machanayim, that Machanayim means "two camps" precisely because it is divided, like London by the Thames, or Buda and Pest by the Danube, in "two camps" by the river, and that the river in question is not the Yarden itself, but a tributary of the Yarden, namely the Yavok.
The other outstanding question about this episode is, who exactly did Ya'akov wrestle with (and note en passant the verbal pun on Ya'akov/יעקב and Yavok/יבק/יאקב)? The river-god of the Yavok may well turn out to be the answer, and Yavok would then mean "the stream of wrestling".
All of which then helps us answer the other question, hinted at above but not stated: why was it called Yavok by the Beney Yisra-El, but the Zarqa by everybody else?
By a strange irony of history, the river is indeed now Avak (אבק) - as dry as dust! Though like any wadi it comes back to life in the late autumn, when the first rains begin to fall. I can’t help but wonder if that were not also the case then, and if the wrestling-match - always linked to the choice and coronation of a king, and that event always connected to the new year, which in the Middle East fell in the autumn as it still does today - were not in some way connected to the rites of Shemini Atseret, or their ancient equivalent: the annual rain-petition ceremony. Why was Ya'akov wrestling, after all - other than the metaphorical inner wrestling that belongs to an age of post-Freudian psychology? It followed a land treaty with Lavan through which he acquired a kingdom, and all the detail of the events describe a coronation ritual of the priest-king who ruled the earthly kingdom of the fertility god and goddess, so prayers for rain are certainly appropriate if the ceremony took place in the Fall.
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