The fact that Jacob tricked Esau out of his birthright and tricked Isaac into giving him the blessing reminds me a lot of Greek mythology and how heroes often resorted to trickery to get their way.

I wish people realized that addressing discrepancies like this is WAY more helpful than just throwing dogmas at you. Dogma only serves to crush.

“Give me some of that red stuuuff”. That was hilarious.

"We absolutely must negotiate with the text in order to understand it." WOW!

I really like this conversation. Someone felt confused and had questions, and Dan gave high quality answers. Usually the person Dan is replying to appears to be angry or deceptive or both. Not this time. More like this, please.

Loved the “now, this is gonna be uncomfortable for some folks” line. This type of empathetic recognition softens the landing for those newer to critical approaches to the Bible. I’d recommend using lines like this more often in your videos.

"These are our stories. They tell us who we are.". Worf, explaining Klingon lore to his son Alexander.

"Gimmie some of that red stuff!!" 😭🤣🤣🤣 1:19 I had to rewind that back a few times

This is so mentally refreshing. Having discussions about the Bible from a critical standpoint fills me with excitement about learning. Being blk and talking about these subjects has been a heartbreaking experience. The way ppl spread misinformation about their bias and harmful interpretation has been challenging for me to even be open. Thank you, Mr. McClellan. Everyone as well

He watched Mma the night before, got overexcited and wanted to test his wrestling abilities

The question the creator asks are the ones I got a whipp'n for asking as a child. I was told the word of God was mysterious and I couldn't understand those inspired words until the Holy Spirit conveyed the meaning to me. Hi Dan!

Anyone else want to see this lady on the Data Over Dogma podcast where she just asks honest questions like this and gets honest answers? Seems like there could be a really good conversation resulting from that.

Etiologies! Glad I learned a new word today for this concept! I’ve been realizing more and more that a lot of stories in the Bible are kind of answers to people who must’ve been asking questions like “why is this place called that?” “where did this group of people come from?” “how did we get here?” “why are we rivals with this nation?” etc. etc. and so these stories were created to answer such questions. Nice to know there’s a word for this!

God's a genie in a bottle, you gotta wrestle him the right way.

Jacob should hve got the title of an undisputed World Wrestling heavyweight Champion

I love the Bible and I love this discussion! Thank you for continuing to educate us. I know it’s upsetting to many people and their faith but personally I love learning more about the history and getting closer to the original meaning and context. It all starts to make so much more sense! 🙌 OP did a great job in posing questions here too!

Very interesting discussion. And I love that the young lady seeks to inquire and to challenge rather than blindly believe whatever she may have been told to believe.

I learned two things today. First, like Esau, I would do almost anything for a pot of good Texas Chili and have also said "Give me some of that red stuff". Second, Jacob was the first to go Super Saiyan, transform into Israel and could've taken on a tag team of God AND the angel Ditka. 😂

Interesting video Well explained and I admire the young woman for asking the questions

To me, it makes more sense to read the Bible as a collection of literary works that show how the writers and compilers interpreted life and how they blend their ideas of the divine into their interpretations.

I came across the same odd story growing up as a Christian and was also told it was an angel. Years later, I get curious and read through the Hebrew. I eventually came to thinking this story as almost a coming of age story. Jacob proves he is capable on his own terms. He had matured and had wrestled with the challenges of maturing and growing into a capable adult. Thus being able to be G-d’s friend, and not just another person who needs him constantly. (Completely a symbolic analysis - not a hard interpretation or anything of the sort.)

I wonder if that creator would be interested in a collaboration video where you talk through this stuff. She’s asking great questions.

Thanks for this video which explains in very clear terms why we set ourselves up for trouble when we view the Bible, or its parts, through twenty-first-century eyes. We also set ourselves up for trouble when we ascribe to the Almighty characteristics such as omniscience or omnipotence. After years of trying to understand and, more importantly, trying to explain so many passages that involve these assumptions, I've given up and find myself unwilling to ascribe ANY characteristics to the Presence. Even the name "God" has too many presumptions plastered on to it for my purposes. Sounds like I'm on a slow train to apophatism.

Answering these questions will help many who also cannot make sense of it. It made more sense to me when I thought of it as a 'Bronze Age' story about the creation of a nation.

Sometimes I wonder if I would have remained a Christian if I was told early on the bible was not inerrant.

She definitely makes a good argument, if this is the thing your basing your faith on and looking for a moral message that could be useful to a modern reader and fits naturally into the narrative context of modern Christianity. Meanwhile, Dan provides a good insight into the historical context of how it likely got into the Bible and what it most likely meant to it's original target readers. I'm not sure how much that changes the original point she was struggling with or how anyone would stand a good chance of deciphering that without either heavily researching it, being a theologist/historian or having one explain it to you.

Well done, gently explaining to this young one answers/plausible meaning to her legitimate queries. Her queries are valid. My knowledge is limited, so I thank you as well. Be well

I love this passage! If youre gonna follow God, you will need to do some wrestling.

One of the most important things I've learned from Dan is that my arguments with the Bible are mostly just arguments with modern Biblical dogma and that it's okay to look past the dogma and really scrutinize the source material.

Never in my life have I subscribed to someone so fast

Red lentil soup can be birthright level yummy.

Is it just me that wrestles with God all the time 😢 . I often find myself searching for answers over issues of life and on a few occasions it felt like God relented to accept my argument and opinion . Other times He silences me with a soft gentle word .

King Arthur saw the face of God and survived in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Read this story for the first time some months ago. I was amused at how BAM!, Jacob and God start wrestling without any lead-in. I was wondering if some nuances in the description had been lost in translation, or if it was intentionally humourous and the original audience would've gotten as much of a chuckle out of it as I did.

Awesome explanation, please do more videos like this

Anyone else find it *interesting* that the stranger MUST be gone by daybreak? I wonder if Jacob got a good look at his teeth! Neither she nor Dan mentions that the guy seeks to escape by striking Jacob's thigh, which is probably a euphemism for punching him in the balls...So, God cheats, and STILL can't win! I like to imagine this actually wasn't any sort of supernatural being, but a time-traveler who was just sight-seeing the era, when this wild guy just rolls up on him, starts demanding "blessings" and gets him in a headlock when he politely tries to excuse himself! Only when escaping this nutter and getting back to the present does he realize that he accidentally wrote himself into the Bible...

I need to hire you for family reunions! Fabulously done.

Dan can we get a book list of the most mindblowing books on religion you have read ?

The obvious conclusion is it was a handicap elimination match and Isreal defeated BOTH the angel AND God sequentially.

Chemosh would not have lost to Jakob. Chemosh would have simply eaten the smaller Jakob.

Hello Dan, thanks for your wonderful work! To add: Israel’s popular etymology translates indeed as “let El fight” (approximately). From what i have gathered and understood from elsewhere, this translation is built on a wordplay from the root ś-r-h: to beat, to fight, verb in the third person of the yiqtol imperfect conjugation in the form of the jussive mood (an injunctive therefore, or expressing a wish). But this root is apparently poorly attested in ancient Hebrew. This meaning is probably an intentional theological construction made by the writer of the verses of Genesis (32:22-29) to justify/explain the change of name of Jacob to Israel following a fight with God. Whether this change of name had to be introduced in relation with the "appropriation" of Israel/Samaria by Juda after 722 BCE, following its annexation in the Assyrian Empire and the substantial exodus of Samaritan people to Juda, remains an open question. The name Israel could in reality be built on other much better attested roots (ś-h-r-h, or y-š-r or even ś-r-'r) meaning respectively that El protects, that El is just, that El reigns /imposes itself. This would affect the interpretation of the theological consequences of the name Israel but would not fit the "purpose" of this writer. For more context it could also be interesting to consider the historical shift in what the word Israel denoted: starting with a people, then a territory, then a nation and finally the belonging (in the sense of membership, affiliation) constitutive of an identity. If I am not wrong, the first biblical mention of Israel as a nation and not as a territory, apart from Genesis 34:7 which is apparently widely considered an anachronism or a late gloss, is in Genesis 49:7. The earliest extra-biblical mention of Israel, on the stele of Merenptah (1200 BCE), does not apparently designate a region or a locality but a population living on the heights of Judea. As you say Dan, this section is full of etiologies!

I thoroughly enjoy you going through and explaining this kind of stuff this is so good. I love it so much. I might No longer identify as Christian but I do thoroughly. Enjoy theology like this. I am pagan. I am a daughter Freya and I am working on becoming a God's woman.

These videos are always fascinating. Always very cool 🤙

1:20 When I see chips and salsa at the potluck.

It’s true about negotiating with the text. Especially Evangelical seminaries or Bible schools do this - even those where you approach the text inductively. It’s because they hold the preconceptions of biblical inerrancy and the omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent nature of God. Thus, one devotes a good bit of energy explaining how and why there “seem to be these contradictions.” For my experience, this passage is explained as a Theophany/Christophany, the idea that God (or his supernatural representative) appeared in human form and interjected key lessons and concepts into humankind’s understanding of his character and plan of redemption. For example, that Jacob overcomes wouldn’t take away from God’s omnipotence. That he sees his face doesn’t take away from the idea that God’s holiness is so pure, no mortal can look on it and live. Instead, this instance is either an angel or an Old Testament era visitation from Jesus. As such, be it Jesus or an angel, the explanation is that they’d limit power and glory in the human form and that would shield other mortals from the deadly aspects of seeing God face to face. Side note: I think it’s cute how Moses was given horns when the old European cathedrals were built because the Hebrew word for “glory” was the same as horn(s). So when Moses came off the mountain after being with God, the Bible reads that his face still shown with glory, which could be interpreted as “horns.” They got it right for the Septuagint, but St. Jerome rendered it back to horns in his vulgate translation. LOL. Always cracks me up when some American tourist asks, “Wait. Why the heck is Satan on the Cathedral?” 😂

I cant wait for them to come out with X'men '97, that takes place right after the old television series ended...its going to be awesome!

I've seen like four different version of the story that I remember or saw online, one is an old man who might be a prophet, a generic angel, the/a devil, and God irl, also some versions saying that it was a dream/vision.

On a much deeper level this story is an allegory for the ancient mystery tradition everything from the "pillow of stone" (see philosophers stone, mithras born from a stone, Excalibur in the stone etc etc) and the ladder to Heaven is an allegory for the mysteries

The Uncanny X-men shirt!!! My fav!! ⚡️⚡️⚡️🌩️🌩️🌩️🌩️☀️☀️☀️

As baffling as this story is, I've always loved that Israel means "the one who wrestles with God." I come from a liberal Christian tradition, where we indeed wrestle with the Bible and Christian tradition, so this name is very meaningful to me. It's contrary to the fundamentalist "God said it, I believe it, that ends it" perspective. You call it "negotiation," I call it "interpretation," but it amounts to the same thing. And really both of them mean wrestling or fighting with the text/tradition/story - in short, wrestling with God. And it's in wrestling with God that we receive a blessing.

The real question is - why does God wrestle with Jacob?

simply amazing explanation~~well explained

I don't remember where I heard that this story was originally a fight against Shalem, the god of Dusk, and that's why he has to leave before dawn, because his brother Shahar (lit: Dawn) is gonna appear very soon. I don't know if this idea has some academic support.

Shawty had to get the context on who Jacob was

I just see it as being like the Greek gods, you can't see Adonai's "godly form", but he can take on human form when he wants to interact with us

In Genesis, there are several places where someone sees an Angel Of The LORD and they say that they saw the LORD. For instance, when Sarai is told that she shall give birth when she is presumed too old.

There is much more. Jacob was injured by the angel so he would be humbled before esau. The master of the universe needed to create a power imbalance when he met esau. This was the master's way of influencing the future engagement to promote reconciliation.

The more untangling of the biblical text I feel like I'm learning but then again getting more frustrated by the cryptic nature of the Bible. It seems it doesn't really say what it says in many instances, long held beliefs are put usunder because of 'negotiating with the text' and outright manipulation with the text over the centuries leaving us with a book that can't be trusted. But it does beg the question why the early followers like Peter be martyred for their faith if they weren't absolutely sure about Christ as Lord and Savior or maybe accounts such as his execution not trustworthy either.

This girl has the same question as me, the man did not told jacob his name because we cannot know God real NAME , God has secrets that human cannot know of, the same with mozes, mozes asked God the name of God, God answered I AM that I AM, I AM is a calling name of God. God appears in different forms, this is because we cannot see God face.

those who think of it as inspired are going to think of it as univocal? i know it is inspired and also know it isn’t univocal. that is why there are multiple authors, different perspectives on the same God. he didn’t do this to confuse us but to give depth to his character.

I've always felt that if we want a complete understanding of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, we should consult the wisdom and learning of our Jewish brothers and sisters. One viewpoint regarding Jacob's wrestling with an angel (or God or whomever) was that this being wrestled with Jacob to stop him from running away from his fears. The victory (stalemate) gave Jacob courage and his renaming was a mark of his becoming a kind of new man. This struggle may very well have been an internal one with Jacob wrestling with his competing notions of self-will (and independence) and his need to be subservient to G-d's will. The further meaning might very well be an explanatory note as to what the Jewish people would face and experience.

What a wonderful discussion. Loved listening to this. The questions were wonderful, and the answers were very clear and careful. Thank you so very much to both of you for this illuminating presentation. I do have one question. The word ideology is not clear. Is it ideology or etiology? Thank you for the illuminating discussions.

The video's host said that Hosea 12:5 says that Jacob wrestled "to" an angel, which should be "against", but if you look at Jeremiah 1:19 and 15:20, they say that Jeremiah will fight "to" the people and they will not prevail to him. They have different verbs, but they use "to" as "against."

I'm gonna make a Skyrim character, an argonian named Fights-with-God

5:09 I like to think that this could’ve been God’s way of possibly testing the perseverance of Jacob. Jacob wrestled with God and preserved, just as the nation of Israel constantly wrestled with God and (more or less) persevered, (Israel disobeys God but in the end reunites with Him.) It probably has no textual or historical support, but it’s just something I like to think about.

The outrage and anger in her voice 😂

I think there are a few additional subtle tropes and word-plays in Hebrew that influence the Jacob-story cycle writer placing the wrestling story at the Jabbok. Firstly, Jabbok means ‘Pouring out’ (as the river rapidly falls from a great height in the distance) and Jacob is going to be temporarily emptied of all his wealth when he is all alone on one side of the river having sent all he has ahead of him. He started his growth in wealth when he poured out water for Rachel’s sheep. ‘Jacob’ means literally ‘Grabber’ and wrestling involves grabbing your opponent. Jacob started wrestling in the womb and at birth with he grabbed his twin’s heel, as if a wrestling move. Secondly, in Hebrew Jacob and Jabbok are spelt with the same three consonants, but a different order: YKB and YBK. Just as Jacob reversed his disadvantage by swapping birth inheritance, swapping names and the hairiness of his arms, swapping the proportion of the livestock that were speckled and so his portion, and having the sisters Rachel and Leah swapped on him, so God (implies the writer) can easily reverse Jacob’s fortunes at the place where his name letters are jumbled.

Oof. If ever there came a moment in my life where I was confident enough to publicly declare some understanding of the Bible, I'd think twice, knowing that Dan would eventually come along to refute any premise and demonstrate just how far off the mark I was. So, I'm going to stay in my lane and not say a thing about anything about anything other than menu items at my favorite restaurants. I got that shit down pat!

In Genesis 32:25, Did God commits a foul on Jacob!? "When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man."

For some reason, this subject turns up a lot in classic art. Examples include Delacroix (1861), Gauguin (1888), and Maurice Denis (1893). Rembrandt also painted the scene in 1659. Gauguin’s is far and away the most adventurous, the most avant-garde, the most complex treatment of the subject-all for reasons that would take too long to explain in a KZfaq comment.

The challenge with the bible is when you are llimited to the Bible only for the source for truth about God

Another great video. I was having a conversation with a Christian friend about this very topic last night. Why did God show himself in the Old testament but not in the New testament?? My Christian friends told me that we couldn't answer that. God.. mysterious ways... I shared this video with him. He says he wants to debate Dan. No, he has no formal education in theology, Bible studies or anything. 😫

Just finished reading the apologists' comments. That's some mighty fine negotiatin' going on here! Lol BTW, does anyone know the name of this creator's channel? I love her take on the Bible. It's refreshing to hear common sense applied to texts that are thousands of years old - long before logic was widely practiced, as science was developed - 😮, yet still held by many as historical truths and a factual explanation for the creation of the universe.

I believe it's more of a metaphor

I heard also that Jacob was wrestling with an angel of God because the term Elohim can be used for angels of God or representives

I feel like this story is an argument against biblical innerancy and literallism. The Hebrew bible is full of examples of patriarchs and prophets arguing and negotiating with God, and you can read the whole thing as the authors wrestling with God in an attempt to understand their identity and their history.

Didn't Jacob injure his hip during the bout? And didn't they wrestle all night (if that is what you want to call it)? Maybe that's just the story Jacob told everyone... that he hurt his hip "wrestling" a guy all night, and the guy was very strong, evidently.

Thank you.

Big fan. Any thoughts you could share on “Piso Christ”? ❤️

"Jacob fights with God, and seems to win." If you are familiar with the Rabbinic literature, you know how funny - and true - that is! There is a story in the Talmud (I am very loosely paraphrasing) where Rabbi Eliezer is arguing with some others who all side against him. Rabbi Eliezer is convinced he is right and asks God for a sign to prove it. After several signs, finally God himself steps in and sides with our friend. The others' response is basically "so what!" They cite a verse from Deuteronomy saying that the Torah is no longer in heaven and so, apparently, not even Divine voices have any authority over it. God walks away, laughing to himself about how his children have defeated him.

The man (God)ask of Jacob name because God wants to see if Jacob is gonna lie, jacob is tricky but this time couldn't lie , then he told the man (God) his name. The man can called angel of God allso.

I don't think Dan goes far enough in explaining these writings. Jacob, for instance, need not be a real person. In fact, I don't think there is any 'real' evidence that he existed. These are stories/myths/accounts/et cetera that have a meaning beyond (or beside) the literal. One can tie them to other cultures creation myths, et cetera but I look on this as academic playtime. Scholars have one purpose and theologians have another. They often work together as is only natural. In my faith tradition, we believe that what is 'true' in the Scriptures is all that we find in it that aids us, leads us, to salvation. If there are contradictions in place names, time periods, persons, etc. it does not matter.

I would argue that it is possible to think the stories are inspired but not univocal.

The biggest problem with her, is that it seems she really wants a literal, explicitly stated meaning to it, taking the story as if she was watching Game of Thrones or something. That's not how it works.

It could still be univocal when you consider that Lord Jehovah was like a superhero, having a secret identity as El Shaddai, a mild mannered god who covered his loins with a cloth mantle and blended in with the other gods, the Bene Elohim, but appeared as Jehovah in a minotaur mask to hide his identity but otherwise naked so everyone could see his mighty phallus and know he was the granddaddy of all gods. He had the horns removed from his minotaur mask so he could assault people easier, giving them less to grab onto (maybe learning this when he attacked Jacob). In this way he also attacked Moses, and was going to kill him, holding a knife to his throat while Zipporah circumcised their son. That's why no one could see his face because his secret identity would be discovered. When Moses found him without his mask he ran away covering his face because Moses saw his member and thought: "I know that member. It's Lord Jehovah himself!" So if he saw his face he would be like: "what the...El Shaddai?! OMG! El Shaddai IS Lord Jehovah!" But this wasn't yet allowed.

*Laban, Elohim, Edom* The wrestling scene is sandwiched between struggles with Laban and Esau. Jacob/Israel compares seeing Esau’s face with seeing the face of Elohim in Genesis 33:10.

It's amazing how confident you can be when you don't have to consider the prophecy that drips from every syllable of the text. If it's just a "story", any interpretation delivered with confidence seems wise.

So what I got from this was God is John Cena?

This is a good example of how trying to take the Bible literally reduces the poetic and artistic value of the literature into just a stupid, nonsensical mess.

So if “Israel” means “fights with god” then why does it have Jacob win? Jacob could still fight with god, lose, AND still be called “fights with god”. That way, god does not get clobbered by a mere human and the name still sticks.

If a person wants to see the original video where the lady asked the questions how do you look it up

Who is the creator...the lady that is

This proves that god can become human as jesus

Vince McMahon also wrestled with God

So we have to negotiate... or wrestle... with the Bible? Interesting.

I enjoy these videos but underlying the explanation and underlying the questions are two entirely different presuppositions. The question is asked assuming the Bible is divinely inspired, true, a cohesive narrative, a book for humanity from god, etc. etc. The answer is given as a historical textual analysis of a man made mythology. Nothing wrong with either but Dan’s presupposition already innately undermines the assumptions of the questioner and more importantly the truth claims of the religion.

"I fought with God / And God won" Genesis 32:30

At this time, there are 320 comments, if someone else asked this question and I have missed it, I apologize. But I have 2 questions: In English, "I fight with X" can mean both "against" and "along side with". Plus you have said "Israel" means "fights with G-D" as in against. Is there a separate Hebrew for fighting against and fighting along side? And if Israel mean "fight against G-D", does that mean the Country of Israel was misnamed? Possibly even suggesting that as a name, "Israel" means "Fights against G-D and defeats G-D?" Please advise.

How about when God said there is no other God besides God and yet God calls Jesus God. Unto the son saith he , thy throne o God is for ever and ever.

My impression of God saying that you can’t see his face is that there are different degrees of God appearing to people, and since he controls life and death, he could probably also control how lethal his visage is. But essentially I see these things as part of how God can assume different forms. He can be a burning bush or he can be a column of fire or he can be the wind or he can be human, just a dude playing another dude, and if he’s “in disguise” then it seems reasonable that his appearance wouldn’t trigger the lethality. Another idea is to look at the idea that no one has seen God’s face and lived and say that essentially you’d have to be dead to actually see God, maybe every appearance of God in the Bible isn’t so much face-to-face as it is a face of God not “the“ face of God. I mean you are dealing with a being that can come into the world appearing like anything he wants… What exactly is the face of God for something that can have a face or not have a face whenever it chooses?