Q&A: Jacob’s Struggle with the Angel: Maimonides and Nachmanides
Jacob’s Struggle with the Angel: Maimonides and Nachmanides
Question
Jacob’s struggle with the angel.
Maimonides holds that this event was a dream.
Nachmanides attacks him on this point: how could Jacob actually be injured if it was only a dream? Rather, the event must necessarily have taken place as a real struggle between them.
(As I recall, Maimonides’ son explains that there are dreams that have psychological effects or something like that.)
I don’t understand Nachmanides’ difficulty:
Even before accepting that this was a struggle with an angel,
in order to treat it as a truly real struggle with physical injury, you still have to make some kind of metaphysical leap—mystical, or define it here as a miracle. After all, we’re talking about a “struggle” with a metaphysical being.
And if you’re treating it in physical terms, what’s the problem with doing so within Maimonides’ picture, that it was a dream?
Just as you understand that a metaphysical being is capable of injuring, so too you should understand that a dream could be capable of doing that.
Do you have an explanation of Nachmanides? Do you agree with my argument?
Answer
Obviously, the Holy One, blessed be He, can send you a dream and cause you to be injured afterward. But that would not be an injury caused by the angel, only an injury that came after the encounter with him. (True, according to David Hume that’s what is called causality, but it’s clear that he’s mistaken. You need actual causation.) A metaphysical being can injure just as it can take something from one place to another, and so on. There’s nothing unusual about that, so long as you assume that it exists.