Hosea

Hosea son of Beeri prophesied in the northern kingdom of Israel in the 8th century BCE, in the decades before the Assyrians destroyed Samaria in 722 BCE. His book is best known for its opening chapters, in which his marriage to an unfaithful wife, Gomer, becomes a picture of Israel's unfaithfulness to God.

The verse cited on this site is Hosea 12:4. Recalling the patriarch Jacob, Hosea says that he had power over the angel and prevailed, that he wept and made supplication. Genesis 32 calls Jacob's night-time opponent only "a man," though Jacob says he has seen God face to face. Hosea's line is one of the earliest interpretations that the wrestler was an angel, and later Jewish and Christian readers followed it.

Hosea is among the earliest of the writing prophets, and most scholars accept him as a historical figure whose words were edited later in Judah.