Gods Sidekick
Please don't say it's a metaphor, because then the Bible as a factual book will be a fallacy, God could be a metaphor for life and living.
Genesis 32:30
And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.
and
John 1:18 and 1 John 4:12
No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known.
No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
I miss Pluto
Not so weird and definitely not a contradiction.
Jacob did see God face to face and did live. But Jacob did not see God in His true and glorious form. God came to Jacob in the form of a mortal man and wrestled with Jacob all night. Now it may be ME that is weird, but I see a little irony in that. Jacob - who once donned a disguise to lie and deceive and gain what was not his right to have now meets God in disguise who is there to bestow something to Jacob that he has not earned nor deserved.
They did literally wrestle, but the wrestling IS a metaphor for how Jacob was living his life - spiritually wrestling with God.
But for one of us mortal human being to see the full Shekinah glory of God - well, God, Himself said that was not possible. Only to Moses - who had his eyes closed tight and his face buried in a cleft of a mountain side did God reveal only a portion of His true glorious Self and even in that, Moses was physically altered because of the encounter.
".....it's your nickel"
Iain Lawrie
I agree with Jayne . Let me also say, Jesus is God and he was seen by plenty of people. So clearly when it says that no one has ever seen God, it's speaking about God in all His glory and not God in human form. Also, may I point out that, whilst the scripture you are looking at is meant litteraly, figures of speech, including metaphor is fairly regularly in scripture.
"I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly."
in all your ways acknowledge Him, and he will make your paths straight.
Many are the afflictions of the righteous; But Jehovah delivereth him out of them all.
I miss Pluto
Very true. The Bible, while literal Truth, is full of all kinds of figures of speech. Personifications, similes, metaphors, and more.Originally Posted by 14390876
And these literary devices do not weaken the Truth just because they aren't literally true - instead they were meant to bolster the Truth.
".....it's your nickel"
Nothing to add except to say that I totally agree with Jayne and 14390876.........
Friendly troublemaker
Just because I love throwing a wrench into the works:
Posting Freak
As if God was not awesome enough already, this serves to further demonstrate how insignificant I am as a human. One day, though, one day ..............
Citizen
**
all words are metaphors.
"literal truth" ? literal is to limited to hold all of the truth. human language is limited, it is the "glass through which we see darkly"
Deadpan Snarker
Hosea 12:5 says he wrestled with an angel, not God.
Hear the word of the Lord, O nations, and declare it on the islands from afar, and say, "He Who scattered Israel will gather them together and watch them as a shepherd his flock."
Jeremiah 31:9
Newbie
So what do you think Jesus meant when He said "If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father"? Does God have a "face"? Is He a man? I think you're oversimplifying things by constraining the word to mean something it doesn't.
Treasure Hunter
**
The other thing to note is that Jacob said this. The angel never said his name/who he was.
"Anyone who does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother!"
~Matthew 12:50~
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