Chapter xxxii., v. 1. Who are the 'Angels of God?'
Verses 24 to 30. If any meaning is intended to be conveyed by; these verses, it is that the omnipotent and infinite God and his creature Jacob wrestled all night, and that in the morning God, finding that Jacob was as strong and clever at wrestling as himself, unfairly puts Jacob's thigh out of joint; notwithstanding which, Jacob refused to let let go his hold of God Almighty until he had given him his blessing. I will not comment on this, because, to Freethinkers, the matter is too absurd, and, to Believers, too outrageous for remark.
On verse 32, the Rev. Dr. Giles remarks, 'This reference to a custom still existing among the Israelites, seems decidedly to indicate a later date than that of Moses. No one has ventured to assert that the Mosaic Law was observed by the Jews before it was instituted by Moses. Now, the words of the passage before us seem to show that the Israelites had, for a long time, abstained from eating the sinew which shrank. Moses, being conscious that this custom was ordained by himself, could hardly have used such language, or have claimed such great antiquity as the words seem to indicate.'
Verse 3 to 22, and chap, xxxiii., v. 1 to 15. Read this account attentively, and then ask yourselves which of the brothers was the more worthy of the promise—Esau, cozened out of his birthright, swindled out of his father's blessing, yet forgetting and forgiving when he had the power to crush and punish; or Jacob, the cheater, the liar, and the coward.
Chapter xxxiii., v. 19: In the Douay, instead of 'a hundred pieces of money,' we are told that Jacob gave the children of Hamor 'a hundred lambs.'
Verse 20 is thus translated; 'And raising an altar there, he invoked upon it the most mighty God of Israel.'
Whether Douay or Protestant translation be correct, it is quite certain that Jacob was a little too fast—there was no [————] (al alei ishral)—Jacob was not called Israel until chap, xxxv., v. 10—so that the 'El-elohe-Israel' of our version, and the 'most mighty God of Israel' of the Douay, are both out of place unless Jacob used the words in the spirit of prophecy, which will explain many difficult passages.
Chapter xxxiv. Upon this chapter Voltaire indulges in criticism more pungent than before:—
'Here our critics exclaim in terms of stronger disgust than ever. What! say they, the son of a king is desirous to marry a vagabond girl; the marriage is approved; Jacob, the father, and Dinah, the daughter, are loaded with presents; the King of Sichem deigns to receive those wandering robbers, called patriarchs, within his city; he has the incredible politeness or kindness to undergo, with his son, his court, and his people, the rite of circumcision, thus condescending to the superstition of a petty horde that could not call half a league of territory their own! And, in return for this astonishing hospitality and goodness, how do our holy patriarchs act? They wait for the day when the process of circumcision generally induces fever; when Simeon and Levi run through the whole city with poignards in their hands and massacre the king, the prince his son, and all the inhabitants. We are precluded from the horror appropriate to this infernal counterpart of the tragedy of St. Bartholomew, only by a sense of its absolute impossibility. It is an abominable romance; but it is evidently a ridiculous romance. It is impossible that two men could have slaughtered in quiet the whole population of a city. The people might suffer, in a slight degree, from the operation which had preceded; but, notwithstanding this, they would have risen in self-defence against two diabolical miscreants; they would have instantly assembled, would have surrounded them, and destroyed them with the summary and complete vengeance merited by their atrocity.
'But there is a still more palpable impossibility. It is that, according to the accurate computation of time, Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, could be only four or five years old; and that, even by forcing up chronology as far as possible in favour of the narrative, she could, at the very most, be only eight. It is here, then, that we are assailed with bursts of indignant exclamation. What! it is said, what! is it this book—the book of a rejected and reprobate people—a book so long unknown to all the world—a book in which sound reason and decent manners are outraged in every page—that is held up to us as irrefragable, holy, and dictated by God himself? Is it not even impious to believe it? or could anything less than the fury of cannibals urge to the persecution of sensible and modest men for not believing it?'