ordinary angel
merely, we have, as regards this opinion, only the choice between
accusing the prophet Hosea, who brought in the angel, of an
Euhemerismus, or of raising against sacred history the charge that it
cannot be relied on, because it omitted so important [Pg 124] a
circumstance. The name Israel, by which, "at the same time, the
innermost nature of the covenant-people was fixed, and the divine law
of their history was established" (_Delitzsch_), is, in that case, a
falsehood. Jacob has overcome omnipotence, and, in this one adversary,
all others who might oppose him,--as he is expressly assured in ver.
29: "Thou hast wrestled with God and _with men_, and hast prevailed."
Can God invest a creature with omnipotence? Jacob would certainly not
have gone so cheerfully to meet Esau, if in Him over whom he prevailed
with weeping and supplication, he himself had recognised only an angel,
and not Jehovah the God of hosts, as Hosea, in ver. 6, calls the very
same, of whom in ver. 5 he had spoken as the angel. The consolatory
import of the event for the Church of all times is destroyed, if Jacob
had to do with a created angel only. With such an one, Jacob had not to
reckon on account of his sinfulness, and it is just the humiliating
consciousness of this his sinfulness which forms the point at issue in
his wrestling. Moreover, with such a view, the New Testament Antitype
would be altogether lost. Jesus, the true Israel, does not wrestle with
an angel,--such an one only appears to strengthen Him in His struggle,
Luke xxii. 43--but with God, Heb. v. 7.--The occurrence would,
according to this opinion, furnish a strong argument for the worship of
angels: "He wept and made _supplication_ unto him," Hos. xii. 5
(compare Deut. iii. 23). The [Greek: agonizesthai en tais proseuchais],
mentioned in Col. iv. 12, in allusion to our passage, would, in that
case, besides God, have the angels for its object.

If an ordinary angel were here to be understood, we must likewise
believe that an angel is spoken of in Gen. xxxv. 9 seq. For, of the
same angel with whom Jacob wrestled, Hosea says that Jacob found him in
Bethel: "And he wrestled with the Angel and prevailed, he wept and made
supplication unto him; he found him in Bethel, and there he spake with
us." (_Tarnov_: "_Nobiscum qui in lumbis Jacobi haerebamus._") Then, it
must have been a common angel, too, who appeared to Jacob in Gen.
xxviii. 10 ff.; for chap. xxxv. 9, compared with v