Jacob wrestled with the angel and told the angel "I won't let you go until you bless my soul.?

Question

How did Jacob keep the angel from leaving. The angel had much more strength than Jacob. How did Jacob keep the angel from leaving.

Answer 1

you do not know!
(:-o)

Answer 2

This is what you wrote.
Jacob wrestled with the "angel" and told the "angel" "I won't let you go until you bless my "soul".?

You must be careful of how you use the Word of God. If you mislead someone by changing the Word it can have adverse effects on that person or persons. It goes hard against you with God.

Genesis 32:24-30 Go there and read.

It does not say that Jacob wrestled with an angel but with a "Man". What Man? Jesus.
(note the Capital "M" in Man)
It does not say, I won't let you go until you bless my soul.

It says, I will not let thee go, except Thou bless me. (note the capital "T" in Thou)

Notice that the Word here does not say that Jacob physically wrestled with the Man. It appears to me that wrestled could mean debated.

It also speaks of the Man touching the hollow of Jacob's thigh. In this time this was how men sealed their word with each other. Today we do it with a hand shake.

Can you imagine what it must have been like to have God touch your flesh body with His Hands.

Jacob gets his name changed to Israel in these verses. The name Jacob means contender while Israel means the prince that prevails with God.><>

Answer 3

Jacob was not wrestling with just an angel - it was an unknown "man", who in fact was the Lord. There are many instances in the Old Testament in which Jesus Christ, who is God incarnate, appeared to men even though He was not yet born as a man. As God, He was able to do that in order to pre-figure His incarnation.

The wrestling with Jacob was in itself a prophetical type of the incarnation of the God-man Jesus Christ, since God and man were locked together in an unbreakable bond.

So it is not as if Jacob had power over God (or the angel of the Lord, if you want to think of it that way) to keep Him from leaving. He had no intention of leaving anyway, since His presence was to pre-figure His incarnation in that way. The fact that Jacob did not have the strength to hold Him on his own is shown by the fact that where God touched him, he had an indentation on his hip and walked with a limp afterwards - symbolizing that he was forever changed by his encounter with the living God.

Answer 4

Gen 32:24-32 - (Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible)
What was the success of the engagement. 1. Jacob kept his ground; though the struggle continued long, the angel, prevailed not against him (Gen_32:25), that is, this discouragement did not shake his faith, nor silence his prayer. It was not in his own strength that he wrestled, nor by his own strength that he prevailed, but in and by strength derived from Heaven. That of Job illustrates this (Job_23:6), Will he plead against me with his great power? No (had the angel done so, Jacob had been crushed), but he will put strength in me; and by that strength Jacob had power over the angel, Hos_12:4. Note, We cannot prevail with God but in his own strength. It is his Spirit that intercedes in us, and helps our infirmities, Rom_8:26.

You can check out my source for a full answer.

Answer 5

Actually, Jacob was wrestling with God, and of course, God had the upper hand the whole time. :-) God bless!

Genesis 32:22-32

22But during the night Jacob got up and sent his two wives, two concubines, and eleven sons across the Jabbok River. 23After they were on the other side, he sent over all his possessions. 24This left Jacob all alone in the camp, and a man came and wrestled with him until dawn. 25When the man saw that he couldn't win the match, he struck Jacob's hip and knocked it out of joint at the socket. 26Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is dawn."
But Jacob panted, "I will not let you go unless you bless me."

27"What is your name?" the man asked.

He replied, "Jacob."

28"Your name will no longer be Jacob," the man told him. "It is now Israel,[b] because you have struggled with both God and men and have won."

29"What is your name?" Jacob asked him.

"Why do you ask?" the man replied. Then he blessed Jacob there.

30Jacob named the place Peniel--"face of God"--for he said, "I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been spared." 31The sun rose as he left Peniel,[c] and he was limping because of his hip. 32That is why even today the people of Israel don't eat meat from near the hip, in memory of what happened that night.

Answer 6

The whole moral of that story wasnt about anything except absulute submission.

Sometimes we submit willingly and sometimes we submit after waking up the next morning in a gutter and having no recollection of what we have or have not done.

Jacob had a few lessons yet to learn and this was one of them. Jacob was not a perfect person by any definition. God said that he chose Jacob because he chose him, no other reason needed.
That being said, Jacob needed a lot of cleansing so to speak. and it took him most of his adult life to learn to fully submit to God and his will for him.

Answer 7

Jacob came close to killing the flesh of the angel, the angel had to "reach back" (obtain power) to shrink his thigh, ending the fight!

Answer 8

I cud be, that, he decided to tell the angel the story of his life...sounds to me like the had pricked the angels interest, and curiosity

Answer 9

Strenghthened by the Lord

Answer 10

he kept the faith. He knew the angel could bless him and would bless him.

Answer 11

Perhaps this commentary will shed some light on this:

“A man” appeared to him in his loneliness; one having the bodily form and substance of a man. Wrestled with him - encountered him in the very point in which he was strong. He had been a taker by the heel from his very birth, and his subsequent life had been a constant and successful struggle with adversaries. And when he, the stranger, saw that he prevailed not over him. Jacob, true to his character, struggles while life remains, with this new combatant. touched the socket of his thigh, so that it was wrenched out of joint. The thigh is the pillar of a man’s strength, and its joint with the hip the seat of physical force for the wrestler. Let the thigh bone be thrown out of joint, and the man is utterly disabled. Jacob now finds that this mysterious wrestler has wrested from him, by one touch, all his might, and he can no longer stand alone. Without any support whatever from himself, he hangs upon the conqueror, and in that condition learns by experience the practice of sole reliance on one mightier than himself. This is the turning-point in this strange drama. Henceforth Jacob now feels himself strong, not in himself, but in the Lord, and in the power of his might. What follows is merely the explication and the consequence of this bodily conflict.
And he, the Mighty Stranger, said, Let me go, for the dawn ariseth. The time for other avocations is come: let me go. He does not shake off the clinging grasp of the now disabled Jacob, but only calls upon him to relax his grasp. “And he, Jacob, said, I will not let thee go except thou bless me”. Despairing now of his own strength, he is Jacob still: he declares his determination to cling on until his conqueror bless him. He now knows he is in the hand of a higher power, who can disable and again enable, who can curse and also bless. He knows himself also to be now utterly helpless without the healing, quickening, protecting power of his victor, and, though he die in the effort, he will not let him go without receiving this blessing. Jacob’s sense of his total debility and utter defeat is now the secret of his power with his friendly vanquisher. He can overthrow all the prowess of the self-reliant, but he cannot resist the earnest entreaty of the helpless.
Gen_32:28-30
“What is thy name?” He reminds him of his former self, Jacob, the supplanter, the self-reliant, self-seeking. But now he is disabled, dependent on another, and seeking a blessing from another, and for all others as well as himself. No more Jacob shall thy name be called, but Israel - a prince of God, in God, with God. In a personal conflict, depending on thyself, thou wert no match for God. But in prayer, depending on another, thou hast prevailed with God and with men. The new name is indicative of the new nature which has now come to its perfection of development in Jacob. Unlike Abraham, who received his new name once for all, and was never afterward called by the former one, Jacob will hence, be called now by the one and now by the other, as the occasion may serve. For he was called from the womb Gen_25:23, and both names have a spiritual significance for two different aspects of the child of God, according to the apostle’s paradox, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” Phi_2:12-13. “Tell now thy name.”
Disclose to me thy nature. This mysterious Being intimates by his reply that Jacob was to learn his nature, so far as he yet required to know it, from the event that had just occurred; and he was well acquainted with his name. And he blessed him there. He had the power of disabling the self-sufficient creature, of upholding that creature when unable to stand, of answering prayer, of conferring a new name, with a new phase of spiritual life, and of blessing with a physical renovation, and with spiritual capacity for being a blessing to mankind. After all this, Jacob could not any longer doubt who he was. There are, then, three acts in this dramatic scene: first, Jacob wrestling with the Omnipresent in the form of a man, in which he is signally defeated; second, Jacob importunately supplicating Yahweh, in which he prevails as a prince of God; third, Jacob receiving the blessing of a new name, a new development of spiritual life, and a new capacity for bodily action.