/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.20212777]

how should I interpret Jacob wrestling the Angel?
What's the best one in your opinion

[Anonymous No.20212784]

>>20212777
Why not ask in a bible thread?

[Anonymous No.20212789]

>>20212784
I don't like the one that is up at the moment.
If you want to turn the thread into a Bible discussion feel free to do so.
t. Op

[Anonymous No.20212819]

>>20212777
Forget that, see his son's story instead.

[Anonymous No.20213121]

He wrestled God anon....

[Anonymous No.20213149]

>>20213121
what does it mean

[Anonymous No.20213175]

>>20213149
Sometimes things just happen without some profound hidden meaning.

[Anonymous No.20213191]

>>20213149
sometimes niggas just be wildin

[Anonymous No.20213223]

Like that bit in Exodus where God leaps out of an alleyway and tries to kill Moses. But relents when Moses's foreign wife grabs a rock and hacks off their son's foreskin and throws it at Moses's feet. It's just a thing that happened, no need to overanalyze it.

[Anonymous No.20213412]

>>20212777
Don't we all, even the "best" among us, struggle against God? Against our very own best interests we wrestle. To a point He is at least relatively gentle with us. He doesn't want to do any more damage than He knows to be necessary to teach us our proper orientation. Some of us require more than others, and some just never seem to learn regardless. Who knows? But we all struggle with God, in some manner or another. We are retards but He still loves us.

[Anonymous No.20213419]

>>20213412
Okay and what about >>20213223

[Anonymous No.20213422]

>>20212777
Why not ask in a bible thread?

[Anonymous No.20213511]

>>20213419
If you make a covenant with God you'd best follow your end, especially when you are His primary representative to all humanity.

[Anonymous No.20213564]

>>20213223
I’ve read exodus and I don’t remember this? What chapter/verse?

[Anonymous No.20213569]

It's super boring how Christcucks reduce all Biblical KINO to variations of:
>It's a metaphor for God's love
>It's about how you should obey God

[Anonymous No.20213576]

>>20213564
4:24-25

[Anonymous No.20213589]

>>20213569
I was just thinking this, when reading this >>20213412
IMO, it’s more like God had respect for a man who had the audacity to struggle all night against divine power just to have his own way.
God picked his people by the stubbornness and ability to thrive and survive.
I think that is why it seems to jarring to us now that the Jews clearly all act deceitfully, and selfishly all throughout the Old Testament. That was the game and the rest lost.

[Anonymous No.20213607]

>>20213589
Then you haven't read anywhere near enough of the OT. God abhors the deceits and self motivations, and demonstrates again and again that there is no thriving or surviving in man's ways.

[Anonymous No.20213609]

>>20212777

[Anonymous No.20213626]

>>20213576
Thanks. Just reread it. Think I blocked it out, to be honest. The study bible I have says that Hatan means bridegroom, as when Zipporah performs the circumcision and touched Moses’ “feet” (which is apparently a euphemism for genitalia?) and calls him a bridegroom of blood, but Hatan also means protect- so it could be come weird pun and propaganda for circumcision.
>cut the skin or god will jump out of nowhere and kill you

[Anonymous No.20213656]

>>20213607
God abhors the deceits and self motivations used against him and other Jews, not other people. You miss my point. Yes he punishes them from not being pious enough, but he also punished them for not wiping out every man woman and child in certain regions.
Clearly nothing to do with the the god’s love Christian bullshit.

[Anonymous No.20213686]

>>20212777
He literally wrestled that Angel. Jacob had the spiritual strenght to seize forces with a being of that category.

[Anonymous No.20213689]

>>20213656
>God abhors the deceits and self motivations used against him and other Jews, not other people.
jew, i invite you to read a book
The Book you mock
that will be your undoing

[Anonymous No.20213696]

>>20213656
>genociding a people with ingrained culture of child sacrifice and ritual prostitution of women is bad
Pretty loving to try to put a stop to children being born and raised into evil cultures.

[Anonymous No.20213736]

>>20213689
Whatever, retard. I know what Jews actually are, by being real about what the OT clearly shows us.
I’m not the one all loved up on “god’s chosen” and the “ elect” conflation because some platonic pastiche told me to play nice.
Retarded pleb.

[Anonymous No.20213752]

>>20213656
For this passage the interpretation I like the most is of St. Augustine, it goes somewhat like this:

"Jews believing and Jews unbelieving: when were they first condemned? In the first of them, in the father of them all, in Jacob himself, who is also called Israel. Jacob means "footer" or "heel"; Israel means "seeing God." When Jacob returned from Mesopotamia with the children, an angel wrestled with him; the angel represented Jesus Christ. And when the angel wrestled, though he was stronger than Jacob, it seemed that he succumbed to him, so that Jacob looked like a winner. Similarly, Jesus Christ also succumbed to the Jews: they took over when they killed him. He was defeated by overwhelming force, but just when He was defeated, He won for us. What does it mean that when He was defeated, He overcame for us? When He suffered, He shed the blood for us with which He atoned for us... And yet Jacob, who struggled, recognized that there was a mystery in this. The man wrestling with the angel overcame him, and when he said: Let me go, then the one who had the upper hand said: I will not let you go until you bless me.. O great mystery! When defeated, He blesses; endured - liberates."

[Anonymous No.20213760]

>>20213752
meant to quote >>20212777

[Anonymous No.20213765]

>>20213686
>the angel gave its all

[Anonymous No.20213777]

>>20213736
The OT and NT both are clearly stating the Jews are bad, but (You) are just as bad. The prophets came over and over stating "You are all bad".

[Anonymous No.20213850]

>>20213760
thank you I liked this very much, I must read Augustine now.
beautiful

[Anonymous No.20214029]

>>20212777
struggle snuggle

[Anonymous No.20214388]

>>20213777
>>20212777
>Consecutive sets of 777
checked and blessed

[Anonymous No.20215405]

>>20212777
Hosea ch 12 also mentions this event. Jacob epitomizes the people of Israel. First, he struggles against and overcomes his own kin (Essau, Isaac, and Laban), other peoples and their gods (Genesis 35:2), and finally a divine being. This symbolizes their struggle against God and other peoples and then prevailing.

Got this info from my Harper Collins study Bible. The Jewish Study Bible surprisingly didn't provide much information on this.

[Anonymous No.20215423]

>>20212777
>>20213777
>>20214388

[Anonymous No.20215429]

>>20212777
Literally just testing his might. He renamed him after he won as reward. Probably did it because Jacob was so worried about his brother killing him.

[Anonymous No.20215437]

>>20215429
Also it was god himself not an angel. He literally names him “he who wrestles with god”

[Anonymous No.20216433]

>>20213412
What are you talking about? Clarify what you mean, struggle against God? What?

[Anonymous No.20217081]

>>20213736
dumb nigger

[Anonymous No.20217124]

>>20213589
>>20213656
>>20213736
This anon is actually right and the christfags are dumb niggers

[Anonymous No.20217177]

>>20212777
foreshadowing what the people will do after exodus and before going into the promised land. The Jews rebelled against Moses and God 3 times, (or 2, cant remember). They were on the verge of being destroyed by God and only saved by Moses' negotiations.

Two ways of struggling against God: one violent and self-serving, the other, more subservient and selfless. It just shows that either way, life itself is a struggle with God.

In the end, punishment (or trade-off) is handed out even if the person struggling seems to win(Jacob is shown as a winner but remains lame, Moses saves the people but dies before seeing the promised land by the will of God). This latter part can be conceived of as a sacrifice.

At least that is what I got from it.

[Anonymous No.20217339]

>>20217124
stupid nigger

[Anonymous No.20217393]

>>20213569
Couldn't agree more. There's so much awesome stuff in the Bible that gets reduced to banal Sunday school drivel.

>God fought the primordial fire breathing sea monster Leviathan, which means you should say prayers before dinner

[Anonymous No.20217411]

>>20212777
A few observations, though I don't know how much they'll help.

1) If I'm recalling correctly, the word used is "man" (probably Hebrew "ish"?), and not "angel". Jacob, at least initially, thinks he's fighting another man.

2) Everett Fox's literal translation points out that the word for "face", in both literal and idiomatic usages, clusters all around this passage and immediately after it, when he meets with Esau. Contextually, Jacob is preparing to meet his brother, and organizes his family under the suspicion that Esau will try to kill him. After the wrestling passage, Esau, contrary to every expectation, is as kind as could be, and Jacob, if I'm recalling, says seeing him is like seeing the "face" of God. This might make us wonder whether or not it was Esau who Jacob grappled with, and whether it was Jacob's persistence and prowess in fight (which Esau respects) that turned Esau's heart.

[Anonymous No.20217491]

>>20217411
Hosea 12:4 says that Jacob struggled with an angel and prevailed, which is probably an early interpretation of the Genesis 32 episode. Traditionally, Christians interpeted it as Jacob fighting God's angel, which is why he says he's seen the face of God. The rabbinic interpretation is that he fought Esau's guardian angel who attacked at night to not reveal himself and incur retribution against Esau. The main academic view is that the story has Jacob literally wrestling YHWH, which is what the text seems to say at face value: “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” referring to the sight of God's face being fatal for mortals (Exodus 33:20). Another view, as you said, is that it was Esau attacking Jacob.

To me, the events match best with it being YHWH, who appears as a man a few times in the Hebrew Bible (e.g. Genesis 18). He doesn't say his name when Jacob asks, drawing attention to it being the divine name YHWH, Jacob nevertheless later states explicitly that he saw God's face because he realised it was indeed YHWH. The man also gives him the name Israel, which YHWH does elsewhere (Genesis 35:10). When he receives the name Israel, the man says "for you have striven with God and with men" which refers to both the immediate fight (struggling with God appearing as a man) and the wider story of Jacob, both literally and as the nation of Israel, who obviously face lots of strife with God and men.

The angel interpretation may have come from a uneasiness with such an anthropomorphic God, exile-era writings like Ezekiel have God as something totally beyond human experience. It reminds me of the Olympian gods in Homer who appear in human guises, eat, drink, and get into fights. But later Greek philosophers were uneasy with this view and tended to think of them as more ineffable and less human.

[Anonymous No.20217572]

>>20213149
Wrestling with God is like rendering moral judgment on the color of your mailbox, or contemplating why men and women are split into their respective dyads, or why pain exists.

These things just are, and you are a consequence of them. So accept it or be destroyed.

[Anonymous No.20217580]

>>20212777
chance the rapper's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE0C_nruO3U

[Anonymous No.20217585]

>>20212777
he should've gone for a double leg

[Anonymous No.20217595]

>>20213569
tbf on the love point, even though most normals probably dont think of it this larger way, but it is usually considered as such in higher theology, capital L love is a pretty interesting fundemental force as a universal mover.

[Anonymous No.20218829]

>>20212777
He was praying.

[Anonymous No.20218839]

>>20217491
>exile-era writings like Ezekiel have God as something totally beyond human experience.
Common misunderstanding, God appears as a man in Ezekiel as well (Ez 1:26, 3:23), though His glorious chariot-throne depicted in detail often takes away from this fact. Apostolic Christians interpret all of these theophanies as God the Son, aka "[...] the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD" (Ez 1:28), or, as St. Paul puts it, "The Son is the image of the invisible God" (Col 1:15).

[Anonymous No.20219115]

Job’d

[Anonymous No.20219430]

>>20213609
I like this idea but you packed a lot of info in this image which ultimately says literally nothing to support the connection. This is typical pseud shit where you just try to flood people with information in an obscurist way so they're forced to do the mental legwork of making the connections which aren't actually there.
>Jacob's Ladder stands up and God is at the top of it
>just like how our spine stands up and the brain sits at the top
This is the only direct connection you've made, when the same could be made with trees:
>tree trunk stand up and monkey sit atop it, dont u see?

[Anonymous No.20219463]

>>20213752
lol you got preemptively called out for this shit >>20213569
Augustine has some based writings like how Pride is the most fundamental sin from which all else flows, but he's also almost single-handedly focused on this pathological rereading of scripture with Jesus and Love(tm) inserted into every single line. David fucks his general's wife and then sends him off to die so they can keep fucking, and somehow this is an allegory for Jesus's wife (God's message) getting fucked by Jews while Christ himself is sentenced to die. Absolute shlock.

[Anonymous No.20219470]

>>20219463
Meant to write:
>...he's also almost single-handedly responsible for the rest of Christianity becoming focused on this...

[Anonymous No.20219797]

>>20212777
>And there was one that wrestled with him until daybreak ·who, seeing that he could not master him, struck him in the socket of his hip, and Jacob's hip was dislocated as he wrestled with him. ·He said, "Let me go, for day is breaking.'' But Jacob answered, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." ·He then asked, "What is your name?" "Jacob," he replied. ·He said, "Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have been strong against God, you shall prevail against men." Jacob then made this request, "I beg you, tell me your name," but he replied, "Why do you ask my name?" And he blessed him there.

It’s ritual combat, much like Samson or Hercules wrestling their respective lions. In Hindu tradition, Shiva as the supreme principle is depicted as one-legged (Ekapada) which then multiplies into one thousand legs (Sahasrapada). Ganesha, the lord of initiation, the one who is multiple, in addition to often being depicted as standing on one leg, is usually depicted with one tusk. Likewise, In the Greek Tradition, Hephaestus, the God of celestial fire, is lame in one leg. In various initiatic organization, like Freemasonry, there are rituals where one covers on leg and leaves the other exposed. The one-leggedness is a symbol of the Axis Mundi.

What we’re seeing is Jacob being initiated. His hip is dislocated, making him “one-legged” (not literally for the autistics reading) and he is given a new name. He is reborn as Israel.

[Anonymous No.20220180]

>>20212777
why did jesus curse the fig tree? it was literally out of season. no figs in the winter jesus, you should know this

[Anonymous No.20220206]

>>20219430
Pineal gland nigga

[Anonymous No.20220207]

>>20212777
after his fight Jacob was renamed Israel. Israel can mean two things: he who fights for God, and he who fights against God. this perfectly captures the nature of both Jacob and the tribe of Israel as a whole. read both Kings and Chronicles. Israel fought both for the Lord and against Him and were rewarded and punished in their turn. Jacob exemplified their contradictory struggle

[Anonymous No.20220428]

>>20220180
simping for a fig tree

[Anonymous No.20221493]

>>20212777
I'm partial to this analysis.

[Anonymous No.20221494]

>>20217572
what a fascist

[Anonymous No.20222878]

>>20219463
>what is exegesis
In Scripture there's 3 meanings: literal, moral and allegorical. In this specific episode, it's not entirely clear what is the allegorical and specially the moral meaning of it. Imo St. Augustine has the best interpretation of the allegorical meaning here. The moral one tho it's not clear for me yet.
This is Holy Scripture, it's deep and it takes your whole life to study it. The work thank God has been done by the Holy Fathers.
Also:
>but he's also almost single-handedly focused on this pathological rereading of scripture with Jesus and Love(tm) inserted into every single line
This is what the Church teaches us, the OT is to be read in the light of the New, that is, Christ's Gospel. Is this news to you somehow?

[Anonymous No.20222891]

>>20222878
In Scripture there's 3 meanings (not the best word, but couldn't find another. English is not my 1st language)*

[Anonymous No.20222898]

>>20212777
Dude just really liked fighting. He sized the angel up and said let's go. Simple as.

[Anonymous No.20222916]

>>20212777
who's a heel and who's a face tho

[Anonymous No.20222927]

>>20222916
The little Jew was the face and the biblically accurate angel was the heel.