Jacob wrestling with the angel

Hebrew Bible

The Masoretic Text reads as follows:

The account contains several plays on the meanings of Hebrew names—Peniel (or Penuel), Israel—as well as similarity to the root of Jacob's name (which sounds like the Hebrew for "heel", עָקֵב ʿaqeb) and its compound. The limping of Jacob (Yaʿaqob), may mirror the name of the river, Jabbok (יַבֹּק Yabboq), and Nahmanides (Deut. 2:10 of Jeshurun) gives the etymology "one who walks crookedly" (עָקֹב ʿaqob) for the name Jacob.

The Hebrew text states that it is a "man" (אִישׁ, LXX ἄνθρωπος, Vulgate vir) with whom Jacob wrestles, but later this "man" is identified with God (Elohim) by Jacob. Hosea 12:4 furthermore references an "angel" (malak). Following this, the Targum of Onkelos offers "because I have seen the Angel of the Lord face to face", and another Targum reads "because I have seen the Angels of the Lord face to face". The Septuagint preserves the Hebrew text both in 32:24 where Jacob wrestles with "a man" (ἄνθρωπος), and after the man's reply where Jacob calls the place Peniel (Hebrew for "Face of God"), and has "God" in Gen 32:30 where Jacob says "For I have seen God face to face." Among early Christian translations, the Vulgate follows Hebrew אִישׁ "man" in 32:24 as vir "man", and Hebrew רָאִיתִי אֱלֹהִים פָּנִים אֶל־פָּנִים "I have seen Elohim face to face" in 32:30 as vidi Deum facie ad faciem "I saw God face to face". The Syriac Peshitta like Latin and Greek follows the Hebrew with first "man", then "face of God" in Genesis, but then in Hosea 12:4 preserves the Hebrew "angel".--

Interpretations

The identity of Jacob's wrestling opponent is a matter of debate: he is named variously as a dream figure, a prophetic vision, an angel (such as Michael and Samael), a protective river spirit, Jesus or God.

Jewish interpretations

In Jacob's opponent is described as he, which means 'angel': "Yes, he had power over the angel, and prevailed: he wept, and made supplication to him: he found him in Bethel, and there he spoke with us". The relative age of the text of Genesis and of Hosea is unclear, as both are parts of the Hebrew Bible as redacted in the Second Temple Period, and it has been suggested that he may be a late emendation of the text, and thus represents an early Jewish interpretation of the episode.

Maimonides believed that the incident was "a vision of prophecy", while Rashi believed that Jacob wrestled with the guardian angel of Esau (identified as Samael), his elder twin brother. Zvi Kolitz (1993) referred to Jacob "wrestling with God".

As a result of the hip injury Jacob suffered while wrestling, Jewish law prohibits eating the he (sciatic nerve), which passes through the hip socket, requiring it to be removed from meat through the process of nikkur, as mentioned in the account in .

Christian interpretations

The interpretation that "Jacob wrestled with God" (glossed in the name Isra-'el) is common in Protestant theology, endorsed by the Protestant reformers Martin Luther and John Calvin (although Calvin believed that the event was "only a vision"), as well as later writers such as Joseph Barker (1854) or Peter L. Berger (2014). Other commentaries treat the expression of Jacob's having seen "God face to face" as referencing the Angel of the Lord as the "Face of God".

The proximity of the terms "man" and "God" in the text in some Christian commentaries has also been taken as suggestive of a Christophany. J. Douglas MacMillan (1991) suggests that the angel with whom Jacob wrestles is a "pre-incarnation appearance of Christ in the form of a man".

According to one Christian commentary on Jacob's words 'I saw God face to face', "Jacob's remark does not necessarily mean that the 'man' with whom he wrestled is God. Rather, as with other, similar statements, when one saw the 'angel of the Lord', it was appropriate to claim to have seen the face of God."

Other views

]]

In an analysis of the Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch's 1968 book Atheism in Christianity, Roland Boer says that Bloch sees the incident as falling into the category of "myth, or at least legend". Boer calls this an example of "a bloodthirsty, vengeful God ... outdone by cunning human beings keen to avoid his fury".

The wrestling incident on the bank of a stream has been compared to the stories in Greek mythology about Achilles' duel with the river god Scamander and Menelaus wrestling with the sea-god Proteus.

Rosemary Ellen Guiley gives this summary: :"This dramatic scene has spurred much commentary from Judaic, Catholic, and Protestant theologians, biblical scholars, and literary critics. Does Jacob wrestle with God or with an angel? ... There is no definitive answer, but the story has been rationalized, romanticized, treated as myth, and treated symbolically."

In arts

Visual arts

One of the oldest visual depictions is in the illustrated manuscript the Vienna Genesis. Many artists have depicted the scene, considering it as a paradigm of artistic creation. In sculpture Jacob Wrestling with the Angel is the subject of a 1940 sculpture by Sir Jacob Epstein on display at the Tate Britain. Paintings include:

File:Jacob and Angel, Kells.jpg|Depiction on a high cross in Kells, Ireland (10th century) File:Rembrandt - Jacob Wrestling with the Angel - Google Art Project.jpg|Rembrandt (1659) File:Eugène Ferdinand Victor Delacroix 061.jpg|Eugène Delacroix (1861) File:Lutte de Jacob avec l'Ange.jpg|Eugène Delacroix (1861), (detail) File:Jacob Wrestling with the Angel by Leon Bonnat.jpg|Léon Bonnat (1876) File:Jacob and the Angel by Gustav Moreau.jpg|Jacob and the Angel by Gustave Moreau (1878) File:Leloir - Jacob Wrestling with the Angel.jpg|Alexander Louis Leloir (1865) File:Paul Gauguin 137.jpg|Paul Gauguin (1888), Vision after the Sermon showing the episode envisioned by Breton villagers. File:Wutenberg Bibel 1558.jpg|Jacob struggles with the angel, Gutenberg Bible (1558) File:(Narbonne) Paysage avec la lutte de Jacob avec l'Ange - Pierre Patel - Musée des Beaux-Arts de Narbonne.jpg|Landscape with Jacob Wrestling the Angel by Pierre Patel (17th Century) File:Bartholomeus Breenbergh - Jacob worstelt met de engel - SK-A-1724 - Rijksmuseum.jpg|Jacob Wrestling with the Angel by Bartholomeus Breenbergh (1639)

In music

The Latin text of Genesis 32:30 'Vidi dominum facie ad faciem; et salva facta est anima mea' (I have seen the Lord face to face) was set for the third nocturn at Matins on the second Sunday of Lent and was a popular medieval telling of the story of Jacob's encounter with the angel. It is set as the tenor (upper voice) text of Guillaume de Machaut's multi-text-layered Motet Vidi dominum (M 15; I have seen the Lord) simultaneously with two secular French texts: "Faux semblant m'a decü" and "Amours qui ha le pouvoir." Machaut musically contrasts God's blessing in the Latin text with the disappointments of secular love in the French texts. Charles Wesley's hymn "Come, O Thou Traveller Unknown", often known as "Wrestling Jacob", is based on the passage which describes Jacob wrestling with an angel. It is traditionally sung to the tune of St Petersburg. U2's Bullet the Blue Sky, the 4th track on their 1987 album The Joshua Tree includes the lyric "Jacob wrestled the angel and the angel was overcome." The lyrics of Isaac, a song featured on Madonna's Confessions on a Dance Floor album, contains many allusions to the book of Genesis and references Jacob's encounter with the angel in the line "wrestle with your darkness, angels call your name". Noah Reid released his song "Jacob's Dream" as the second single of his 2020 second album. The song uses the metaphor of wrestling with angels to explore that "blessings are hard to come by and they cost you something," as Reid told Indie88. Mark Alburger's Israel in Trouble, Op. 57 (1997) includes the story in movement VIII. On his way.

In literature and theatre

The motif of "wrestling with the angels" occurs in several novels including Hermann Hesse's Demian (1919), Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle (1948), and Margaret Laurence's The Stone Angel (1964). In T.H. White's The Once and Future King, the Wart is described as knowing that the work of training a hawk "had been like Jacob's struggle with the angel".

In poetry the theme appears in Rainer Maria Rilke's "The Man Watching" (), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Evangeline," Herman Melville's poem "Art," and Emily Dickinson's poem "A little East of Jordan" (Fr145B, 1860).

In theatre, wrestling with the angel is mentioned in Tony Kushner's play Angels in America (1990); the version depicted in its miniseries adaptation is the 1865 version by Alexander Louis Leloir.

Gustave Dore's image is reenacted in Jean-Luc Godard's Passion by a film extra dressed as an angel and Jerzy Radziwiłowicz.

Also Maud Hart Lovelace's Betsy's Wedding (1955), Stephen King's novel 11/22/63 (2011), Sheila Heti's novel Motherhood (2018) and David Fennario's play Balconville (1979). A short story in Daniel Mallory Ortberg's collection The Merry Spinster (2018) explores a version of the narrative as told from the perspective of the angel.

References

References

1. Nabulsi, Rachel. (May 2023). "Rudolf Otto and the Fearful Numinous: Jacob and Moses Wrestle with the Dangerous Divine; An Investigation of Genesis 32:22-33 and Exodus 4:24-26". [[SAGE Publications]] on behalf of Biblical Theology Bulletin Inc..
2. (2007). "The Oxford Bible Commentary". Oxford University Press.
3. ''[[Strong's Concordance]]'' [https://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=H6439&t=KJV H6439]
4. ''A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature'', ed. David L. Jeffrey (1992). p. 852 "WRESTLING JACOB The account of Jacob wrestling with the angel at the ford of the Jabbok River is replete with Hebrew puns (Gen. 32:24–32). Several of these relate to the root of Jacob's name, 'qb ("heel"), and its compound standing as a West Semitic diminutive of "The LORD will pursue" or "The LORD preserves"
5. ''A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature'', ed. David L. Jeffrey (1992). p. 852: "Jacob was forced to answer, Yaʿaqob, perhaps mirroring the name of the river, Yabbok, but meaning'crooked' (Nahmanides, Deut. 2:10 of Jeshurun, gives this etymology for Jacob, 'one who walks crookedly'; after the thigh wound delivered ..."
6. Meir Gertner, ''[[Vetus Testamentum]]'', International Organization of Old Testament Scholars, International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament 1960. Volume 10, p. 277: "In Genesis it is a 'man' with whom Jacob wrestled. Later in the story this 'man' appears to be identified with God (Gen. xxxii 29, 31). Talmud, Targum, Syriac and Vulgate take 'God' here to be an angel."
7. Anthony Hanson ''The Prophetic Gospel: Study of John and the Old Testament'' 056704064X 2006 Page 76 "The Targum of Onkelos offers 'because I have seen the Angel of the Lord face to face',14 and the Targum of Palestine 'because I have seen the Angels of the Lord face to face'.i5 No doubt this substitution was facilitated by Hosea 12.4, where
8. Septuagint Genesis 32:24 ὑπελείφθη δὲ Ιακωβ μόνος καὶ ἐπάλαιεν ἄνθρωπος μετ᾽ αὐτοῦ ἕως πρωί
9. Septuagint Genesis 32:30 καὶ ἐκάλεσεν Ιακωβ τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ τόπου ἐκείνου Εἶδος θεοῦ εἶδον γὰρ θεὸν πρόσωπον πρὸς πρόσωπον καὶ ἐσώθη μου ἡ ψυχή
10. Vulgate Genesis 32:24 ''remansit solus et ecce vir luctabatur cum eo usque mane''
11. Vulgate Genesis 32:30 '' vocavitque Iacob nomen loci illius Phanuhel dicens vidi Deum facie ad faciem et salva facta est anima mea''
12. (2001). "Martial Arts of the World: An Encyclopedia". ABC-CLIO.
13. (2004). "Psychology and the Bible: From Genesis to apocalyptic vision". Greenwood Publishing Group.
14. Marks, Herbert. (1995). "Biblical Naming and Poetic Etymology". Society of Biblical Literature.
15. "the word is regarded as a gloss by many writers" Myrto Theocharous [https://books.google.com/books?id=Q6aoAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA160 Lexical Dependence and Intertextual Allusion in the Septuagint of the Twelve Patriarchs]
16. (2006). "Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism". Oxford University Press.
17. (1997). "Common Ground: The Weekly Torah Portion Through the Eyes of a Conservative, Orthodox, and Reform Rabbi". Jason Aronson.
18. (1993). "Confrontation: The Existential Thought of Rabbi J.B. Soloveitchik". KTAV Publishing House.
19. (2006). "After Hardship Cometh Ease: The Jews as Backdrop for Muslim Moderation". Walter de Gruyter.
20. (2004). "The Essential Evangelical Parallel Bible: New King James Version, English Standard Version, New Living Translation, the Message". Oxford University Press.
21. (2008). "Genesis-Leviticus". Harper Collins.
22. (2009). "The Hebrew Folktale: History, Genre, Meaning". Indiana University Press.
23. (1992). "Hermeneutics, the Bible, and Literary Criticism". Springer.
24. (1854). "Seven Lectures on the Supernatural Origin & Divine Authority of the Bible. By J. Barker. Containing his reply to the Rev. Mr. Sergeant, etc". George Turner.
25. (2014). "Redeeming Laughter: The Comic Dimension of Human Experience". Walter de Gruyter.
26. (2008). "Genesis-Leviticus". Harper Collins.
27. MacMillan, J. Douglas. (1991). "Wrestling with God: Lessons from the Life of Jacob". [[Evangelical Press of Wales]].
28. (2023-03-25). "A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis : Skinner, John, 1851-1925 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive".
29. (2007). "Criticism of Heaven: On Marxism and Theology". Brill.
30. (2002). "The Hero and the Sea: Patterns of Chaos in Ancient Myth". Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers.
31. (2011). "Homer's Odyssey and the Near East". Cambridge University Press.
32. (2004). "The Encyclopedia of Angels". Infobase Publishing.
33. Horst Woldemar Janson, Anthony F. Janson (2004). ''History of Art: The Western Tradition'' "The Vienna Genesis ... (In the center foreground, for example, we see him wrestling with the angel, then receiving the angel's blessing.)" [full page illustration]
34. Dohna Schlobitten, Yvonne. (2020). "La lotta di Giacobbe, paradigma della creazione artistica". Cittadella.
35. "Sir Jacob Epstein: Jacob and the Angel". Tate.
36. [http://www.megalithicireland.com/High%20Cross%20Kells.htm "Irish High Crosses: Kells"]
37. Anne Walters Robertson (2002). ''Guillaume De Machaut and Reims: Context and Meaning in His Musical Works'', p. 163. "Drawn from the Genesis story of Jacob's wrestling match with the angel, ''Vidi dominum'' is a favorite phrase for theologians wishing to express their ecstasy at the moment of sight of God."
38. "The text of the tenor for Machaut's motet 15 comes from the third nocturn at Matins on the second Sunday of Lent. Its biblical provenance is Genesis 32: 30. Here Jacob, after having wrestled with the angel and received both a new name (Israel) and a divine blessing, exclaims: 'Vidi dominum facie ad faciem; et salva facta est anima mea' (I have seen the Lord face to face; and my life is preserved.) Kevin Brownlee, "Machaut's Motet 15 and the ''Roman de la Rose'': The Literary Context of ''Amours Qui a Le Pouoir/Faus Samblant M'a Deceü/Vidi Dominum*'', in Iain Fenlon, ed. (2009), ''Early Music History 10: Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Music'', p. 14. "The final lines of the paired poems, in which the speaker bemoans his ruin (triplum) and bad treatment (motetus) are opposed to Jacob's wrestling with the angel that lead to his blessing and re-naming as Israel...." Margaret Bent, "Deception, Exegesis and Sounding Number in Machaut's Motet 15," in Iain Fenlon, ed. (2009), ''Early Music History 10: Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Music'', p. 25.
39. "Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown".
40. "Noah Reid on Instagram: "Wrestlin with angels. Aren't we all. Jacob's Dream is out now, link in bio as the kids say."".
41. (12 March 2020). "Indie88 Premiere: 'Schitt's Creek' star Noah Reid shares video for single 'Jacob's Dream' {{!}} Indie88". Indie88.
42. "Longfellow: Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie, Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie".
43. "YouTube".
44. (November 8, 2011). "11/22/63". Scribner.