Hosea 12:4

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

"Yea, he had power over the angel ..."; Genesis 32:34 has, "There wrestled a man with him"; and some have tried to make a contradiction out of this; but that very passage makes the supernatural identity of the wrestler absolutely certain. The fact of his being introduced first as "a man" is exactly in harmony with the way angels were usually introduced in the Old Testament, as for example the angels who spent the night with Lot (Genesis 19:5). Angels customarily appeared as men, their full identity being apparent afterward. Thus, Lot "entertained angels unaware" (Hebrews 13:1).

Mays, whose critical comment on this passage denied the validity of Jacob's weeping, as mentioned here, wrote: "The weeping is possibly Hosea's embellishment; the Genesis story knows nothing of it."[9] Aside from the uncertain placement of the expression "he wept" which might very well have been Hosea's allusion to the weeping that Jacob was said to have done upon that very same day and in connection with that very event (Genesis 33:4), the matter of Hosea's inspiration should also be considered, making the information (if it pertains here) to be supplementary to the Genesis account.

"He found him at Bethel, and there he spake with us ..." Jacob's experience at Bethel was God's renewal of the Abrahamic covenant with Jacob; and it corresponds in all of its essential details exactly with the promise to Abraham. Here again the prior existence of Genesis, and the absolute familiarity with it on the part of both Hosea and his hearers is undeniable. It included the promise that God would give the land of Canaan to the Jews, and that in Jacob and his seed "all the families of the earth should be blessed." The Israelites of the northern kingdom, however, had construed this promise as unconditional, whereas, in truth, it was contingent upon their fidelity to the holy Covenant God made with the people when they were brought up out of the land of Egypt. "There at Bethel, Jehovah had spoken to Jacob, and through him to his descendants."[10] "Hosea here regarded the promises of God to Jacob as made to the people of Israel, which in fact they chiefly concerned."[11] Hindley is doubtless correct in seeing the purpose of Hosea's mention of the event at Bethel as that of reminding Israel that the true God of Israel was inseparably linked to that place, instead of the vulgar bull-gods which they were worshipping there instead of Jehovah. "It was to link Jacob's vision at Bethel with Jehovah's name and title,"[12] next mentioned in Hosea 12:5, below.