This week in class, we learned about the encounter between Yaakov and the man who came and attacked him in the middle of the night. When Yaakov heard that Esav was coming to meet him and his family, Yaakov immediately evacuated his family. Once he had taken them to the safe side of the river, he returned to the other side to fetch some jars that he left behind. On his way, he was attacked by a mysterious, unnamed man. They wrestled until dawn, when the man mysteriously said that he had to leave. He blessed Yaakov and changed his name to Yisrael. Who, then was the man? According to Rashi, the man was the angel or guard of Esav who came to physically injure or kill Yaakov on Esav's behalf. When the angel realized that he could not overcome Yaakov, he chose to bless him and let him know that in the future, G-d will change his name to Yisrael, so as to remove any shadow of trickery which led him to gain leadership of the ethical monotheist nation. The angel said he had to leave at dawn because he had to "report" to heaven to sing the morning songs. Radak has a different opinion all together. He says that the man was not an angel, but some sort of manifestation of G-d who came to teach Yaakov that he can defeat Esav in a direct encounter. When it was all over, G-d vowed to change Yaakov's name at the proper moment.
These two explanations are all fine, but I have one further question: Was this encounter physical or spiritual? When I thought about this situation, I thought of it both a spiritual/mental and physical struggle where Yaakov's consciousness and physical power won. This scenario can be compared to the final battle in the "Eragon" series. The evil king fights with Eragon by first attacking his mind and then by throwing physical obstacles at him. The combination of the two would be overwhelming to most people. To relate this back to the case of Yaakov, maybe the angel was attempting to take over his mind while simultaneously attacking his body. I was wondering what the rest of you think about this situation and what kind of fight it was.
As far as the physicality/mentality of the fight goes, I think that it might have been interesting had the fight been fought both in the mind and with the body. It would certainly account for the flesh wound that יעקב received. Contradicting the רמ"בם when he says that angels (and pretty much any other metaphysical occurrence) are only in the mind: we know that angels can take the shape, appearance, and composition of human beings, so why could this angel have not, as רשי says, fought physically with יעקב? And as far as the mental part of ti is concerned, if we take רשי's opinion, the man WAS an angel or some other similar supernatural being. Why could he have not fought mentally as well? All in all, I think that though it might not be safe to say that this is what happened, it is possible that it COULD have.
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