"And the sun rose upon him before his time." Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Genesis 32:32) preserves one of the tenderest details in the whole Jacob cycle: the sun itself rearranged its schedule for the wounded man crossing Peniel.
The rabbis built this reading on a careful parallel. Years earlier, when Jacob was fleeing from Esau toward Beersheba, the sun had set before its time so that Jacob would have to sleep on the rocky ground at Bethel — the night of the ladder, the night of the angels ascending and descending. Heaven had shortened his day to give him a vision.
Justice in the light
Now, twenty years later, limping home with a hip out of joint, Jacob needed the opposite kindness. The sun rose early so that he could see his way, so that he could find Esau and his brothers in daylight rather than in the shadows. Heaven was balancing its books with him.
The Targum's detail is small but the theology is large: the cosmos pays attention. What the sun takes from you in one season, it returns to you in another. Jacob left Beersheba in premature dark and arrived at Peniel in premature light, and in between he had learned to walk with a limp.
The takeaway: the Holy One remembers what He owes you, even in the motion of the sun.