Karlo Broussard – Catholic.com
Genesis 32:24 tells us about “a man” who wrestled with Jacob all night. But verse 28 seems to identify the “man” as God. The “man” tells Jacob that Jacob’s new name will be Israel because Jacob had “striven with God.” Jacob seems to believe he wrestled with God, for he says, “I have seen God face to face” (v. 30)
And Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and Jacob’s thigh was put out of joint as he wrestled with him.
Genesis 32 :24-32
Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.”
But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.”
And he said to him, “What is your name?”
And he said, “Jacob.”
Then he said, “Your name shall no more be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.”
Then Jacob asked him, “Tell me, I pray, your name.”
But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the name of the place Peni′el, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.”
The sun rose upon him as he passed Penu′el, limping because of his thigh. Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the sinew of the hip which is upon the hollow of the thigh, because he touched the hollow of Jacob’s thigh on the sinew of the hip.
So how does Jacob wrestle with God if God is immaterial? Is this a gotcha moment for the atheist?
– No, it’s not! There are several ways we can respond to this challenge.
According to St. Thomas Aquinas:
A man is said in the Scriptures to see God in the sense that certain figures are formed in the senses or imagination, according to some similitude representing in part the divinity. So, when Jacob says, “I have seen God face to face,” this does not mean the divine essence, but some figure representing God (ST I:12:11 ad 1).
Aquinas then explains this event as a form of prophecy—it’s possible that Jacob didn’t actually physically wrestle with a material figure. Rather, he experienced a vision in which he wrestled with a man and he received what Aquinas calls the “prophetic current”.
Another response that makes the “Does God have mass?” question irrelevant is that the “man” was not God, but an angel—a created intelligent being that’s pure spirit.
It’s not uncommon for the Bible to speak of an action as being performed by someone even though the action was really performed by a representative.
There’s yet another possible response, which is very ancient: the “man” is a pre-incarnate Christ.
It differs from our first response in this article only in that it specifies God the Son as the one who acts in and through the temporary material form that he creates and manipulates to wrestle with Jacob.