What you quoted does not align with what you said. The text specifically says that a man appeared (not “someone who appeared to be a man.”) Jacob then wrestled with this man. It then says that the man blessed him, saying that, since Jacob had struggled with both man and God, he deserves the name “Israel.” Then Jacob assumes that the man he wrestled with was in fact God.
At no point does our omniscient narrator tell us that the being was in fact God. There is no reason that Jacob’s “struggle with God” had to be at that particular moment, and not his struggles before that.
Yes, you are free to assume, as Jacob did, that the man was in fact God. But even the NIV does not state this definitively. It just tells us that Jacob believed that he was God and has the man make a statement that might mean he is God. Since the original Hebrew is ambiguous, it seems the translators sought to preserve this ambiguity.
And @Thing_Fish: there were already three men who spoke to Abraham, and two who were explicitly not God who went to Sodom and Gomorrah. Plus, I mean, pretty much the entirety of the Bible has God acting through men. You needed Noah to build the ark. Moses had to do what God commanded with the plagues and parting the Red Sea. Joshua had to conquer Palestine. Judges like Gideon and Samson had to fight the Philistines. David had to become king and rule Israel’s armies. Solomon had to build the temple. You also have the priests, the prophets, and even the Godly rulers.
I could go on and on. The omnipotent God of the Bible often relies on men. I see no contradiction in the person Jacob wrestled also being one of those men. In fact, unless you believe God actually is a man (Jesus), then I would see that as the only consistent interpretation.
As Jacob said, man can’t see God’s face and live. That’s confirmed by Moses in the rest of the Torah, all of which was compiled by the same people.
So your theory is that this wasn’t a supernatural being, but just some random dude passing by who enjoyed wrestling and handing out nicknames? If so, why would this story even be in the Bible? The point is that it’s supposed to be God changing Jacob’s name, not some Bronze Age Hulk Hogan. Seriously, I have never heard that idea before. Is it your own, or did you get it from somewhere else?
I mean, I suppose theoretically it could have been a human person who was “moved by the holy spirit” to go wrestle Jacob and then tell him his name was changed, but if so, so what? How would that change our theological understanding of anything? The point of the story is still that God is communicating with Jacob, exactly how He is doing so isn’t relevant.
I am not aware of any traditional Jewish commentator who expresses any doubt whatsoever that this is a divine being; see my above citation to Bereshit Rabbah, which is cited approvingly by Rashi. You seem to think that “the text specifically says that a man appeared”. It doesn’t, because it’s not in English. It refers to this being as an “ish”, which usually means “man” but which the Torah often uses to refer to an angel, as for example in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah where the “men” displayed obvious supernatural powers. As you point out, God frequently talks to and commands people in the Bible, but in no case does he ever invest humans with the kind of superpowers displayed there. The angels say “we are about to destroy this place”. Neither Moses nor any of the other prophets ever claim personal responsibility for any of the miracles associated with them.
The Talmud (Chullin 91b) says that from the morning liturgy, we know that each morning the angels “open their mouths in song and in hymn”. That is why this angel told Jacob to let him go because dawn was breaking; he had to go join the heavenly choir. If your theory is that this was an ordinary man, why do you think it was that he expected Jacob to accept “because dawn is breaking” as a reason to let him go? And why would Jacob demand that the man bless him before being released?
And as has already been pointed out, Hosea describes this scene again in language which unambiguously makes it clear that it was an angel he was fighting. Saying that it wasn’t an angel requires an extremely tortured reading of the text; what do you think you gain by reading it in that way?
My understanding is that this is a combination of ancient myths preceding the Torah, in one of which “Jacob” is a moon-god, who wrestles with the god of the sun, which is why the wrestling match ends at sunrise. As Judaism got recorded, these myths all got tied in together, some of them remaining in the Jewish religion, others dropping out. They don’t all make sense because they were originally separate stories about different gods.
Or he just didn’t want Jacob to see his face if it all is really an euphemism/or he is an angel? (though wrestling in the dark has to be very difficult).