Page:A critical and exegetical commentary on Genesis (1910).djvu/513

 We. (Heid. 168$3$) calls attention to a trace of it in ancient Arabia. For primitive parallels, see Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 419 ff., Folklore in OT, 142 f. The precise meaning of is uncertain (v.i.).

In its fundamental conception the struggle at Peniel is not a dream or vision like that which came to Jacob at Bethel; nor is it an allegory of the spiritual life, symbolising the inward travail of a soul helpless before some overhanging crisis of its destiny. It is a real physical encounter which is described, in which Jacob measures his strength and skill against a divine antagonist, and 'prevails,' though at the cost of a bodily injury. No more boldly anthropomorphic narrative is found in Genesis; and unless we shut our eyes to some of its salient features, we must resign the attempt to translate it wholly into terms of religious experience. We have to do with a legend, originating at a low level of religion, in process of accommodation to the purer ideas of revealed religion; and its history may have been somewhat as follows: (1) We begin with the fact of a hand-to-hand conflict between a god and a man. A similar idea appears in Ex. 4$24ff.$, where we read that Yahwe met Moses and 'sought to kill him.' In the present passage the god was probably not Yahwe originally, but a local deity, a night-spirit who fears the dawn and refuses to disclose his name. Dr. Frazer has pointed out that such stories as this are associated with water-spirits, and cites many primitive customs (Folklore, 136 ff.) which seem to rest on the belief that a river resents being crossed, and drowns many who attempt it. He hazards the conjecture that the original deity of this passage was the spirit of the Jabboḳ; in which case the word-play between and may have greater significance than appears on the surface. (2) Like many patriarchal theophanies, the narrative accounts for the foundation of a sanctuary—that of Peniel. Of the cultus at Peniel we know nothing; and there is very little in the story that can be supposed to bear upon it, unless we assume, with Gu. and others, that the limping on the thigh refers to a ritual dance regularly observed there (cf. 1 Ki. 18$26$). (3) By J and E the story was incorporated in the national epos as part of the history of Jacob. The God who wrestles with the patriarch is Yahwe; and how far the wrestling was understood as a literal fact remains uncertain. To these writers the main interest lies in the origin of the name Israel, and the blessing bestowed on the nation in the person of its ancestor. (4) A still more refined interpretation is found, it seems to me, in Ho. 12$4. 5$: 'In the womb he overreached his brother; and in his prime he strove with God. He strove with the Angel and prevailed; he wept and made supplication to him.' The substitution of the Angel of Yahwe for the divine Being Himself shows increasing sensitiveness to anthropomorphism; and the last line appears to mark an advance in the spiritualising of the incident, the subject being not the Angel (as Gu. and others hold), but Jacob, whose 'prevailing' thus becomes that of importunate prayer.—We may note in a word Steuernagel's ethno-*