The answer is very definitely yes. The wrestling match is one of the strangest and most memorable events in the Bible—and, as with other strange, memorable events, full of deep meaning.

As befitting the Bible’s deliberate allusiveness, we are never quite explicitly told that Jacob wrestled with God. Instead, we are left to infer it afterward from a series of increasingly explicit facts, that (a) Jacob will not let the "man" go until he extracts a blessing (32:26-29; and of what strange "man" would Jacob ask a blessing?); (b) the "man" names Jacob "Israel," establishing that he is his master, as throughout the Bible those in authority name or rename those subordinate to them (32:28); (c) the name given can be rendered "wrestles with God" (32:28); and (d) he calls the place "Peniel: for I have seen God face to face" (32:30). The last two in particular make it very clear that Jacob believes himself—and the narrator clearly agrees with him—to have wrestled with God.

This was, clearly, the Angel of the Lord returned yet again, and, as Matthew Henry aptly quotes, of another appearance of this Angel, "Beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions: for my name is in him." (Ex 23:21)

But "wrestled with God": whatever can this mean? That is the real puzzle here. We can, it seems, dismiss the notion that this was a spirit or ghostly representation of the Lord, because the "man" is described as such, and the wrestling match put Jacob’s hip, his actual bone-and-sinew hip, out of joint. Besides, we have already seen many examples of theophanies in which God appears as a man; the clearest example is in Gen 18.

But wait, I hear someone reply, what if the wrestling, and the dislocation, and the limp were all metaphorical? The bout happened at night: perhaps Jacob merely dreamed them all? After all, the match ended with the morning light. Then we might say the wrestling was metaphorical or dreamed, and what really happened was earnest, struggling prayer or animated conversation with the Lord, or there was a dreamed contest. Does that not make more sense anyway?

My reply is that by now we must have learned that the Bible is full of things that strike the modern mind as odd. There is nothing in the text to suggest a metaphor shoehorned into an otherwise mostly straightforward, literal narrative. As to the dream hypothesis, he limped after the sun rose and, if it had been a dream, the dream would have ended; nighttime dreams of wrestling do not result in daytime limping. What I think is most likely is that Jacob actually did wrestle with God, and yet this match had a larger meaning both to Jacob and to the Lord.

The answer is very definitely yes. The wrestling match is one of the strangest and most memorable events in the Bible—and, as with other strange, memorable events, full of deep meaning.

As befitting the Bible’s deliberate allusiveness, we are never quite explicitly told that Jacob wrestled with God. Instead, we are left to infer it afterward from a series of increasingly explicit facts, that:

• (a) Jacob will not let the "man" go until he extracts a blessing (32:26-29; and of what strange "man" would Jacob ask a blessing?);
• (b) the "man" names Jacob "Israel," establishing that he is his master, as throughout the Bible those in authority name or rename those subordinate to them (32:28);
• (c) the name given can be rendered "wrestles with God" (32:28); and
• (d) he calls the place "Peniel: for I have seen God face to face" (32:30). The last two in particular make it very clear that Jacob believes himself—and the narrator clearly agrees with him—to have wrestled with God.

This was, clearly, the Angel of the Lord returned yet again, and, as Matthew Henry aptly quotes, of another appearance of this Angel, "Beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions: for my name is in him." (Ex 23:21)

But "wrestled with God": whatever can this mean? That is the real puzzle here. We can, it seems, dismiss the notion that this was a spirit or ghostly representation of the Lord, because the "man" is described as such, and the wrestling match put Jacob’s hip, his actual bone-and-sinew hip, out of joint. Besides, we have already seen many examples of theophanies in which God appears as a man; the clearest example is in Gen 18.

But wait, I hear someone reply, what if the wrestling, and the dislocation, and the limp were all metaphorical? The bout happened at night: perhaps Jacob merely dreamed them all? After all, the match ended with the morning light. Then we might say the wrestling was metaphorical or dreamed, and what really happened was earnest, struggling prayer or animated conversation with the Lord, or there was a dreamed contest. Does that not make more sense anyway?

My reply is that by now we must have learned that the Bible is full of things that strike the modern mind as odd. There is nothing in the text to suggest a metaphor shoehorned into an otherwise mostly straightforward, literal narrative. As to the dream hypothesis, he limped after the sun rose and, if it had been a dream, the dream would have ended; nighttime dreams of wrestling do not result in daytime limping. What I think is most likely is that Jacob actually did wrestle with God, and yet this match had a larger meaning both to Jacob and to the Lord.

The answer is very definitely yes. The wrestling match is one of the strangest and most memorable events in the Bible—and, as with other strange, memorable events, full of deep meaning.

As befitting the Bible’s deliberate allusiveness, we are never quite explicitly told that Jacob wrestled with God. Instead, we are left to infer it afterward from a series of increasingly explicit facts, that (a) Jacob will not let the "man" go until he extracts a blessing (32:26-29; and what "man" can do that?); (b) the "man" names Jacob "Israel," establishing that he is his master, as throughout the Bible those in authority name or rename those subordinate to them (32:28); (c) the name given can be rendered "wrestles with God" (32:28); and (d) he calls the place "Peniel: for I have seen God face to face" (32:30). The last two in particular make it very clear that Jacob believes himself—and the narrator clearly agrees with him—to have wrestled with God.

This was, clearly, the Angel of the Lord returned yet again, and, as Matthew Henry aptly quotes, of another appearance of this Angel, "Beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions: for my name is in him." (Ex 23:21)

But "wrestled with God": whatever can this mean? That is the real puzzle here. We can, it seems, dismiss the notion that this was a spirit or ghostly representation of the Lord, because the "man" is described as such, and the wrestling match put Jacob’s hip, his actual bone-and-sinew hip, out of joint. Besides, we have already seen many examples of theophanies in which God appears as a man; the clearest example is in Gen 18.

But wait, I hear someone reply, what if the wrestling, and the dislocation, and the limp were all metaphorical? The bout happened at night: perhaps Jacob merely dreamed them all? After all, the match ended with the morning light. Then we might say the wrestling was metaphorical or dreamed, and what really happened was earnest, struggling prayer or animated conversation with the Lord, or there was a dreamed contest. Does that not make more sense anyway?

My reply is that by now we must have learned that the Bible is full of things that strike the modern mind as odd. There is nothing in the text to suggest a metaphor shoehorned into an otherwise mostly straightforward, literal narrative. As to the dream hypothesis, he limped after the sun rose and, if it had been a dream, the dream would have ended; nighttime dreams of wrestling do not result in daytime limping. What I think is most likely is that Jacob actually did wrestle with God, and yet this match had a larger meaning both to Jacob and to the Lord.

The answer is very definitely yes. The wrestling match is one of the strangest and most memorable events in the Bible—and, as with other strange, memorable events, full of deep meaning.

As befitting the Bible’s deliberate allusiveness, we are never quite explicitly told that Jacob wrestled with God. Instead, we are left to infer it afterward from a series of increasingly explicit facts, that (a) Jacob will not let the "man" go until he extracts a blessing (32:26-29; and of what strange "man" would Jacob ask a blessing?); (b) the "man" names Jacob "Israel," establishing that he is his master, as throughout the Bible those in authority name or rename those subordinate to them (32:28); (c) the name given can be rendered "wrestles with God" (32:28); and (d) he calls the place "Peniel: for I have seen God face to face" (32:30). The last two in particular make it very clear that Jacob believes himself—and the narrator clearly agrees with him—to have wrestled with God.

This was, clearly, the Angel of the Lord returned yet again, and, as Matthew Henry aptly quotes, of another appearance of this Angel, "Beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions: for my name is in him." (Ex 23:21)

But "wrestled with God": whatever can this mean? That is the real puzzle here. We can, it seems, dismiss the notion that this was a spirit or ghostly representation of the Lord, because the "man" is described as such, and the wrestling match put Jacob’s hip, his actual bone-and-sinew hip, out of joint. Besides, we have already seen many examples of theophanies in which God appears as a man; the clearest example is in Gen 18.

But wait, I hear someone reply, what if the wrestling, and the dislocation, and the limp were all metaphorical? The bout happened at night: perhaps Jacob merely dreamed them all? After all, the match ended with the morning light. Then we might say the wrestling was metaphorical or dreamed, and what really happened was earnest, struggling prayer or animated conversation with the Lord, or there was a dreamed contest. Does that not make more sense anyway?

My reply is that by now we must have learned that the Bible is full of things that strike the modern mind as odd. There is nothing in the text to suggest a metaphor shoehorned into an otherwise mostly straightforward, literal narrative. As to the dream hypothesis, he limped after the sun rose and, if it had been a dream, the dream would have ended; nighttime dreams of wrestling do not result in daytime limping. What I think is most likely is that Jacob actually did wrestle with God, and yet this match had a larger meaning both to Jacob and to the Lord.