BIBLICAL WRESTLING MATCHES

 The text for today’s commentary is Jacob’s travels with angels, specifically as he escaped from his father-in-law, Laban, toward Shalem, a city of Shechem, which is in the land of Canaan, known also as “Salem” wherein Melchizedek was king in the days of Abraham. “Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him. “And when Jacob saw them, he said, ‘This is God's host’” (Gen 32:1-2). Hence, Jacob was accompanied by angels when he engaged with Esau. 

Esau, according to ancient Jewish writings, was the angel Uriel in the flesh, born in the womb of Rebecca, and that Jacob was “The Angel of God,” Israel, also born in the same womb in competition with his heavenly rival. Although God had a great purpose for both of those “Angels,” perhaps their roles were more symbolic. Who knows what God’s motives are? 

In an earlier commentary, I made the hypothesis that Isaac was the son of God from the womb of Sarah, in that Abraham was laughably impotent and Sarah barren; that the conception of Isaac was when Abraham was away. (Later, I considered another possibility; that God made Abraham potent, and it was with His own “seed” and genes.) Again, who knows the miracles of God? Either way, both Esau and Jacob had the genes of God from Isaac and mitochondrial DNA from Rebeccah, so that they were at least symbolic of Uriel and Israel.  

Therein, I assume, as the writer of “The Prayer of Joseph,” that “Israel” (Sariel) was “The Angel of God,” with whom Jacob wrestled: 

 

24 And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. 

25 And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, He touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with Him. 

26 And He said, “Let me go, for the day breaketh.” And he said, “I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.” 

27 And He said unto him, “What is thy name?” And he said, “Jacob.” 

28 And He said, “Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but ‘Israel:’ for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed.” 

29 And Jacob asked Him, and said, “Tell me, I pray thee, thy name.” And He said, “Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after My name?” And he blessed him there. 

30 And Jacob called the name of the place ‘Peniel:’ “for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.” 

31 And as he passed over Penuel the sun rose upon him, and he halted upon his thigh. 

32 Therefore the children of Israel eat not of the sinew which shrank, which is upon the hollow of the thigh, unto this day: because He touched the hollow of Jacob's thigh in the sinew that shrank. (Gen 36)

 Before that, Jacob feared fighting his brother, Esau, his rival, between Laban’s homr and Salem. As it turned out, Esau would not be his adversary and peace between the two would prevail. Salem, many believe was two places — Salem in the heavenly Paradise where Melchizedek reigned and Jerusalem in Eden — the future Kingdom of David. If that is the case, then Jacob would be pursuing entrance to the Garden of Eden wherein Salem was in the midst of it, and in the Presence of God.  

To disallow entrance for the unworthy, if you remember, “He (God) drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the Tree of Life” (Gen 3:24). Angels were accompanying Jacob because he would be made worthy and when he wrestled with the “man” God, he was blessed. The Angel of God allowed Jacob victory. By grace, Jacob was allowed entry through the obstacles on his way — first Esau, then perhaps incarnated “Jesus” Himself, the “Face of God.” Jacob was allowed entry and past the Cherumbim in the guise of “Israel” and with the genome of Sariel.  

Some ancients believe that Jacob first encountered the incarnated angel, Uriel, as Esau with whom he shared brotherly love, although his adversary. If so, that love was what gained him entry to the east of the Garden.  

Many believe that Jacob did wrestle with Esau when he wrestled with The Angel of the Lord. They believe that that angel was the archangel, Uriel. As for myself, I do not believe that Uriel was The Angel of God whose face Jacob saw; I believe he wrestled with Jesus by another name which turned out to be his own, “Israel.” 

Esau and Jacob had wrestled in the womb, and that time, Esau had won the wrestling match and Esau obtained the birthright because of primogeniture. He was the first-born genes of Isaac whose genes were of God.  

Perhaps Esau and Jacob were the incarnations of the archangels, Uriel and Sariel! Of course, we will never know but that correspond quite well with the ancient beliefs. The name “Sariel” means “God Is My Ruler” whereas Uriel means “God Is My Flame.”  

Uriel is noted in scripture as The Angel of God that punishes, such as The Angel of Death of the Exodus. If that is true, then Uriel and Sariel are possibly the same Angel of the Lord whose roles are different — Uriel does the destruction for God and Sariel, the blessings. They may be one just as Esau and Jacob were one in the womb when Jacob grabbed the heel of his twin.  

Uriel is not mentioned by name in the Bible (but is in the Book of Enoch) because, I believe, that Sariel and Uriel were one angel who functioned according to the purpose of God, just as Jesus is both Savior and Punisher: 

 

18 He that believeth on Him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the Name of the only begotten Son of God... 36 He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him. (John 3:18, 36) 

 

Just as Jacob and Esau became one flesh on the road to Shechem, it may have been Uriel who wrestled with Jacob. It was Uriel, not as the punishing angel, but Uriel as The Angel of Blessings, Sariel. Note that Jacob got a new name, and it was not “Isuriel” but “Israel” because Sariel was the Angel of Peace and “Israel” the Prince of Peace. But you thought that Jesus was “The Prince of Peace.” In the Bible, preincarnate Jesus had many names, and “Israel” was one of the many!  

Jesus was of the house of Israel and of the gens of Israel (Jacob). Jesus is the Father of Israel and Israel, just as God is the “Father” and the “Son.”  

There were several archangels, and as many as eight are mentioned in literature. Personally, I believe that Nathaniel was an archangel sent in the time of Christ to introduce the Church and Jesus. I base that on the Words of Jesus when he saw Nathaniel, “Jesus saw Nathanael coming to Hm, and saith of him, ‘Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile’” (John 1:47)! 

Jesus saw him firstly under the fig tree. Perhaps it was the fig tree under which Eve was beguiled in the beginning (Gen 3:13). Perhaps Nathaniel had no guile because he was there to protect Adam and Eve from death as a guardian angel, and here he was with the guileless Jesus! 

Jesus called Nathaniel “an Israelite indeed.” Perhaps He did not mean a Jew but a blessed Angel beknown to Sariel; hence and “Israelite” in the manner of Jacob! He was an Is-ra-el.  

In “The Prayer of Josephus,” “the name “Israel” was understood to be derived from ‘ys r’h el ‘’ a man seeing God’” (fragment A, 3). Nathaniel had apparently seen God from under the fig tree and Jesus had seen him there as well. If Nathaniel was an apostle, he may also have been an angel sent from God to deliver the message of the gospel! 

Now, the point to this commentary is that Jesus was perhaps both Uriel and Sariel, and that each were a different personality of God when mankind was encountered.  

That Jacob was Israel, and that Israel is Jesus is in the fleshes of the two: firstly, The Angel of God, Sariel, dislocated the socket of Israel’s thigh presumably to identify him outwardly as Israel, and that was symbolic, perhaps, of Jesus himself who is identified as “Israel” (Sariel in the flesh):  

 

“For true and righteous are his judgments: for He (the Lord) hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand” (Rev. 19:2) 

 

The “great whore,” called Babylon, was neither Babylon nor Rome but wicked Israel. God would judge the whoredom of Israel, the nation. That personality of Jesus fits “The Angel of God” Sariel quite well. Israel will judge Israel fairly. But John saw another vision: 

 

15 And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. 

16 And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, King Of Kings, And Lord Of Lords. (Rev 19:15-16) 

 

John saw the punishing Angel, Uriel. As it turns out Uriel and Sariel are both Israel, now called “Jesus.” Jesus is the Punishing Angel of God as well as the Angel of Mercy who blesses mankind by grace.  

That “personality” of Jesus called “Uriel” has a name written on His thigh — “King Of Kings and Lord Of Lords). Jacob wrestled, it seems, with Uriel inside but Sariel physically. Inside, Jacob was “Sariel” and outwardly he was “Uriel.” Both together may have been the “King Of Kings and Lord Of Lords” that was revealed to John. 

Note that these hunches are based on scripture but the esoteric aspect of them on insight from ancient sacred literature from men who had the same thoughts that I have had.  Regardless of any mistakes herein, there is no malice intended. However, it is obvious to any reader that something supranatural was going on when those two brothers wrestled in the womb and when Jacob wrestled with God in the flesh. 

 

 

 

 

ABOUT GLORY

Many struggle with the concept of glory. I asked a preacher one day, a doctor of theology, a simple question; What is glory? His answer was a confused look, and his response was “Well, glory.” Apparently, professors of divinity at Chicago Theological Seminary had not taught about such an important topic is gloriousness. 

Because Jesus said, “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). There is a symbiotic relationship between sin and glory, is there not? Sin is missing the mark of a glorious condition. “Glory,” is essentially excellence or splendor, both characteristics of a Perfect God.  So, what does glory have to do with people? 

“God created man in His own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.  And God blessed them...” (Gen 1:27-28). Therefore, man was created glorious like God! Image in that passage is literally “shade” (Strong’s Definitions) so therefore man is a “shadow” of God. The image was not the flesh but the bodily shaped living soul of the man whose kind from which everyone descended. In other words, the species of human beings was originally like God inside. His “blessing” was identifying them with His ID (“id” in analytical psychology). 

The “shadow” in analytical psychology is “the thing a person has no wish to be.” That is not from a Christian source (Karl Jung), but after sin, indeed, nobody wants to be that “awful thing.” From Strong’s Greek Lexicon, the word hagios means “awful thing.” Pertaining to the birth of Jesus, Matthew wrote, “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost” (Mat 1:18). 

“Holy” in that passage is “hagios,” meaning that Jesus was the child of the “awful thing,” specifically pneuma (ghost); hence an “awful spirit.” Jesus was the child of an awful Spirit, and He was “cloned,” so to speak, in the Image of God; not that God is awful, but mankind, since original sin, has considered Him so! 

God is glorious and whatever the substance of Adam’s flesh, his soul was the glorious shadow of God. Scripture confirms that conclusion: Pertaining to the sixth day when Adam was made (read that “mankind,” both male and female), it is written, “God saw every thing that He had made, and, behold, it was very good (maod tob)” (Gen 1:31). It was “exceedingly good” in the sense of fertility (Gesenius’ Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon). Both Adam and Eve had superb genetics for reproduction. With that said, glory has much ado with genetics!  

God was glorious because He generated Adam, and Adam was glorious because he generated Eve from the Good Seed that God had imbued in him. God had made Adam “the awful thing” a “perfect thing” with the same Spirit as Himself. As such, Adam was of God (wo-God) and Eve was of Adam, or “woman.” Adam and Eve were of one flesh, and both were of one “awful thing” — the Holy Breath (pneuma) of God. 

Jesus, for the remission of sins, “breathed on them, and saith unto them, ‘Receive ye the Holy Ghost” (John 20:22). Jesus breathed that “awful Ghost” into those who followed Him. 

Therefore, from the perspective of the world, the Holy Ghost is an “awful thing,” which is obvious to most Christians, but to God, the Holy Ghost is a “splenderous thing”! It is the glorious “Shadow” of God. Christians know that when they sin, indeed God shadows them, and guilt ensues. Guilt is the tool that God uses to correct the sin within. 

Sinners — everyone — because all have sinned, “come short of the glory of God.” As glory is “exceedingly good fertility,” then glory is genetic. It is coming short of the image of God generated in Adam, who was glorious himself — with the image of God within.  

Now for more on the spiritual “shadow.” Physical things (Col 2:16) “Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ” (Col 2:7). First among those things is meat. The flesh of man was a “shadow” of the forthcoming body of Christ. The “shadow” is not Jung’s “awful thing” within, but God’s glory that is manifested in the body (flesh) of Jesus. There is some “Thing” in Jesus that was in God. Of course, it was that “awful thing,” the Holy Spirit, but there was some “thing” in the flesh of Jesus as well. 

God identified His new creature as “Adam” and his name was his kind. Likewise, Eve was of the same kind with dependence on the first kind; hence the female gender is “woman.” God identified them with a code to differentiate them. That code was “Adam’s kind” from God’s “Supreme Kind.” The Supreme Identity is JHWH, “I AM THAT I AM” an acronym from the Hebrew Yod He Waw He. As it turns out, the elements in the DNA of mankind almost contains “God” in its content — “JHWG.” It makes sense that before sin, that Adam’s identifier encoded in his chromosomes would be identical to God’s. Sin could have made JHWG come short of JHWH. (See the text below; Adolph Tan, 2014)

Therein was man (Adam) after sin, coming short of the glory of God! No longer would the new “existence” “be as God” (Gen 3:5) but only desire to be God. Thusly, Adam missed the mark of God which is “sin.” Thereafter, as David wrote about himself, he was “shapen in iniquity” (Psalm 51:5), or literally, genned with depravity (Strong’s Definitions). That original sin wherein Adam came short of the previous glory with which he was endowed, was passed along by the genesis of Adam from generation to generation.  

“Gloriousness” is essentially like God in genome and Spirit, or in identification and desires. 

King David wrote some psalms that have been found since canon was determined. One of particular interest is, “O Lord, cleanse me from the evil leprosy and do not let it again return to me” (Psalm 51:5). 

Leprosy is dead and dying flesh. Evil leprosy would be the depravity of the dead flesh. Hence, “evil leprosy” of which David wrote is the degeneration of man’s once glorious condition — Good flesh and Good Spirit — the flesh with the Identity of God within. “Evil leprosy” is the glorious image of God that has gradually degenerated through the generations.  

David wrote this as well, “In a great voice glorify God; in the congregation of the many ones proclaim His Glory” (Psalm 154”1). I am doing that as I write.  

To be glorified, requires that God be glorified. The mark of God is His Glory. That is who He IS! He is not an “awful thing” but a “Perfect thing”! He is the Image in which Christians are His “shadow.” Proclaiming the Glory of God is done in remembrance of Him (Luke 22:19) — that we should be like Him in the body and blood, both of which contain what? The genome of God in Jesus.  

The flesh is weak because it is no longer glorious. It has become the “awful thing” and misses the glory of God. The Spirit is willing because it is endeavoring to be like God despite the depravity (degenerate) flesh.  

So, be like God as best you can; that is to love one another as God loves us. That is to be the nature of the renewed creature!