there contrasted with the angels. In ver. 12,
we read: "And behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it."
In ver. 13, there is another sight: "And behold Jehovah stood by him
and said, I am Jehovah, the God of Abraham thy father, and the God of
Isaac; the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy
seed."

[Pg 123]

This passage is also in so far of importance, because,
agreeably to what has been remarked in p. 119, it follows from it that
even there, where Jehovah simply is mentioned, the mediation through
His Angel is to be assumed.

* * * * *

He with whom Jacob wrestles, in Gen. xxxii. 24, makes himself known as
God, partly by giving him the name Israel, _i.e._, one who wrestles
with God, and partly by bestowing a blessing upon him. Jacob calls the
place _Peniel_, _i.e._, face of God, because he had seen God face to
face, and wonders that his life was preserved. The answer which Elohim
gives here to Jacob's question regarding His name, remarkably coincides
with that which in Judges xiii. 17, 18, is given by _the_ Angel of the
Lord to a similar question. In Hosea xii. 4 (comp. the remarks on this
passage in the Author's "_Genuineness of the Pentateuch_," vol. i. p.
128 ff.), he who wrestled with Jacob is called Elohim, as in Genesis;
but in ver. 5, he is called [Hebrew: mlaK], a word which is more
distinctly defined by the preceding Elohim; so that we can,
accordingly, think only of the Angel of God. As it was certainly not
the intention of the prophet to state a new historical circumstance,
the mention of the Angel must be founded upon the supposition, that all
revelations of God are made by the mediation of His Angel,--a
supposition which we have already proved to have its foundation in the
book of Genesis itself.

_Delitzsch_ says, S. 256, "Jehovah reveals Himself in the [Hebrew:
mlaK], but just by means of a finite spirit becoming visible, and
therefore in a manner more tolerable to him who occupies a lower place
of communion with God." And similarly, _Hofmann_ expresses himself, S.
335: "It is quite the same thing whether it be said, he saw God, or an
angel, as is testified by Hosea also; and nowhere have we less right to
explain it as if it were an appearance of God the Son, in contrast with
the appearance of an angel."

But since it is an essentially different matter, whether Jacob wrestled
with God Himself, or, in the first instance, with an