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To Correspondents

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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 20, 1866

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 28, No. 25.

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To Correspondents.

QUESTION. How was it that Jacob saw God face to face, see Gen. xxxii, 30, and yet God told Moses that no man should see him and live? Ex. xxxiii, 20. A. H. B. Oronoco, Minn.
ANS. The language referred to in Gen. xxxii, 30, is as follows; “And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel; for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.” It will be observed that this is the language of Jacob. It is true as the record states that Jacob said that he had seen God face to face; but it does not follow that it was the eternal God because Jacob called him God, as we have no evidence that he spoke from inspiration, or based his declaration on anything but his own understanding of the matter. There is, however, an inspired commentary on this event, and the person who is here called God, is there called an “angel.” See Hosea xii, 4. Here, speaking of this wrestling of Jacob, the inspired writer says, “Yea he had power over the angel, and prevailed.”
But it appears that it was customary in those days to apply the name God to the angel of the Lord. We have an instance in Judges xiii, 21, 22: “Then Manoah knew that he was an angel of the Lord. And Manoah said unto his wife We shall surely die, because we have seen God.”
Here, the very being whom Manoah knew to be an angel, he called God. How it became proper to call the angel of the Lord by the name of God, appears from Ex. xxiii, 21, where the Lord speaking to Moses of his angel, said, “MY NAME is in him.”
The expressions, then, about seeing God face to face, &c., apply to the angel of the Lord; and it is still true that the eternal God, has never been seen by mortal man; for no man could look upon him and live.