Hosea 12:4

Yea, he had power over the angel, and prevailed,.... This is repeated in different words, not only for the confirmation of it, it being a very extraordinary thing, and difficult of belief; but to

Yea, he had power over the angel, and prevailed: he wept, and made supplication unto him: he found him in Bethel, and there he spake with us; Yea, he had power over the angel - the uncreated "angel

He; your famous progenitor of whom you boast. Had power; behaved himself as a prince with God, . Over; with: the angel was willing to be conquered, or Jacob could not have gotten the victory. The angel; called God, , and, , is Jehovah, Lord of hosts. He was no created angel, but the uncreated Angel Christ, the Messiah, eternal God by nature and essence, angel by office and voluntary undertaking. And prevailed; got the victory, went out of the field a conqueror, but not by such arms and methods as you use. You are conquered by man because of your sins, he conquered with God by faith and prayer. He, not the angel, as some through mistake, but your father Jacob, wept: by this we know he prayed with tears, though the story say not so, with sense of his own unworthiness, with earnestness for the mercy he desired, and apprehensive of the majesty of him with whom he wrestled. But you, quite contrary, proud as if worthy, regardless of the best part of the blessing, and earnest only for the meaner part, seek it not of God, but idols. And made supplication unto him: it is Christ who is here intended; it was no mere creature, Jacob might not have prayed to such, but it was the Creator of angels and the Redeemer of man, the blessed Jesus, to whom every knee ought to bow, . He, God, found him, Jacob, full of weariness, fears, and solicitude on his journey to Laban, ,20, when prayers obtained a blessing; but with this, and more directly, when on his return after this wrestling bout, , &c., God appeared to him, , and blessed him. Beth-el; formerly called Luz, but by Jacob new named and called Beth-el, . There he, God, spake, renewed his promise and confirmed the blessing, with us: by the current of the words in their grammatical order it should be, he spake to him; but it is, not without good reason, changed to the plural first person, us, as posterity were in Jacob’ s loins, and blessed with him. Yet more, where God appeared to Jacob he commanded him to build an altar there to God, to restore religion and reform his family from idolatry, which he did, . But you, children of this Jacob by natural descent, are of another and far different humour; though you have been called and exhorted to leave your idols, yet these two hundred years you have kept them, and will, I see, keep them: this is your sin, and in it you are obstinate, and I will punish such a Jacob as you.

Hosea 12:4 Yea, he had power over the angel, and prevailed: he wept, and made supplication unto him: he found him [in] Bethel, and there he spake with us;Ver. 4. Yea, he had power over the angel] That Angel of the covenant, Malachi 3:1, the Angel of the great council (μεγαληςβουληςαγγελος), as the Seventy render Isaiah 9:6, the Lord Christ, who redeemed Jacob from all evil, Genesis 48:16, and is called Elohim in the former verse. Jacob is reproved for asking his name, an argument of his majesty. God, as he surmounteth all creatures, and hath no parallel, so he surpasseth all notion, and is above all name. The Africans call him Amon, that is, Heus, tu, cluis es? Our best eloquence of him is a humble silence: or if we say anything, to say as in the next verse following, Jehovah, God of hosts, Jehovah is his memorial. And prevailed] Sept. εδυνασθη. He had power, or got the better, Christ yielding himself overcome by the prayers of the patriarch: "for the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much," saith St James. There is a kind of omnipotence in it, saith Luther, of whom also that saying passed among his friends, Iste vir potuit apud Deum quod voluit, That man could do what he would with God. The reason whereof is given by St Jerome, in these words, Deus ipse qui nullis contra so viribus superari potest, precibus, vincitur; that is, God himself, who is otherwise insuperable, may be overcome by prayers ( Invictum vincunt vota precesque Deum); provided that men persevere in prayer as Jacob did, holding out till the morning light, and growing more resolute toward the latter end than he had been before. He wept and made supplication] Jacob did (not the angel, as Mercer and Drusins would carry it). His wrestling was by weeping, and his prevailing by praying. “ Verbum, preces, et lachrymae, Miserae arma sunt Ecclesiae. ” We read not till this text of his weeping for the blessing (no more we do of the earthquake in Hezekiah’ s days, till Amos 1:1 Zechariah 14:4-5), but this we know, that ardent prayer is a pouring out of the soul to God, not without a shower of tears, or at least a storm of sighs. And as music upon the water sounds farther and more harmoniously than upon the land, so prayers with tears are more pleasing to God, and prevalent with him. Christ could not but look back to those weeping women that followed him to the cross, and comfort them. Tears of compassion and of compunction, when men love and weep, as Mary Magdalen did, are very acceptable to God, who puts them into his bottle as precious.

(3, 4) Had power.—Should be, strove. Prayers and tears were the weapons used in the memorable struggle for pardon, reconciliation, peace in the self-conquest as well as the God-conquest which was achieved. “At Bethel He (Jehovah) found him (Jacob)” not once only, but on repeated occasions (Genesis 28:11; Genesis 35:1),and in the subsequent history of the children of Israel.

Verse 4. He had power over the Angel] Who represented the invisible Jehovah. He wept, and made supplication] He entreated with tears that God would bless him; and he prevailed. The circumstance of his weeping is not mentioned in Genesis. He found him in Beth-el] It was there that God made those glorious promises to Jacob relative to his posterity. See Genesis 28:13-15.

4. he had power over] Rather, he contended with.he wept, &c.] (The subject is Jacob, not the angel.) This feature is not given in Genesis 32; it is however well adapted to the hortatory object of Hosea. The Septuagint has, ‘they wept’, &c. he found him in Beth-el] (The subject is Jehovah.) Two visions of Jacob’s are recorded in explanation of the name Bethel (Genesis 28:10-22; Genesis 35:9-15). They proceed from different documents, and either of them may have been current in the circle to which Hosea belonged; the latter is of course pure conjecture. The Septuagint strangely has, ‘They found me in the house of On’ (i.e. Aven or Beth-aven instead of Bethel, comp. Hosea 4:15). there he spake with us] i.e. ‘in the loins of Jacob’ (Horsley, &c.); comp. the twofold use of ‘Israel’ in Hosea 12:12-13. But this spoils the consistency of the historical picture. The Peshito, Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, and probably the Septuagint (πρὸςαὐτοὺς), read with him, i.e. with Jacob. (This is better than assimilating the pronoun in the preceding clause, with a few Hebrew MSS.)

He wept and made supplication unto Him - Jacob’s weeping is not mentioned by Moses. Hosea then knew more than Moses related.

2. The southern kingdom was equally guilty. Controversy — See on Hosea 4:1. Judah — Some substitute “Israel.” Also, which is in the English translations, is not in the original (see on Hosea 5:5).