And he said, Thy name shall not henceforth be called Jacob, but Israel; for thou hast wrestled with God, and with men, and hast prevailed.
Genesis 32 ends a long night by a river, where a man wrestles Jacob to the ground and leaves him limping. Jacob had schemed for blessing all his life, and now God gives him a new name and tells him he has prevailed — the question is how.
The scene is often read as Jacob fighting to get something out of God. Commentators read it the other way round: God came to break Jacob's trust in his own strength.
It is worth noting, though others have often noticed it, that Jacob's wrestling with the man is not to his honour. It was in fact the man, or God Himself, who wrestled with him. There was still a good deal in him that God had a controversy with, for Jacob's good, and not without his humiliation. In short, God was dealing with His servant. He was putting down his dependence on his own strength, devices and resources in every possible way. So, as the symbol of this, God touched the known sign of man's strength, and it shrank.
The new name comes only after Jacob answers the question "What is your name?" The order matters.
It was when he clung to the One who had defeated him, and admitted that his name was Jacob — meaning Supplanter — that God changed his name to Israel, meaning Prince of God. He was told that he had power not only with men but with God, and that he had prevailed. By changing his name God claimed Jacob as belonging now to Him.
The name he confessed was an accurate summary of his past. The name he received described nothing he had produced.
Take the history of Jacob. Without going into details, how well he deserved his name! Jacob — meaning the schemer, the supplanter, the cheat, the robber of his brother's birthright, the man who outwitted Laban over the cattle — and yet, out of such material, God could produce an Israel, "a prince … power with God and with men."
The verse joins two things: power with God and power with men. Older translations render it "as a prince you have power with God and with men," and writers ask where such power comes from.
And is not what follows interesting? He adds, "You have power with God and with men." You can have no power — divine power — except as you get it from God. Natural power — what use is that? It is a feeble, worthless thing. But you have no divine power with man unless you have power with God. And this is exactly the point for us. Look at the difficulties that trouble us on every side. Why can't we meet them? It is because we have no power with God. And how do I get power with God? It is when I am a poor crippled thing lying at His feet.
"Prevailed" cannot mean Jacob overpowered God. The moment God spoke the word explains it.
God said of Jacob that he would be named Israel because he had "striven with God and with men, and have prevailed." That does not mean he had defeated God in wrestling. He prevailed only when he was crippled, and so clung to the Lord in dependence. This dependence on God would enable him to prevail with men too. The same will prove true in the future day for the nation Israel. And it proves true for every believer today whom God has brought low to that place of clinging to Him in dependence.
Jacob asks God for His name and does not get it. Writers read that refusal as a real limit on what this night achieved.
Jacob is made to feel his weakness; he limps for the rest of his life. How many people go on limping all their days! In this way they keep a reminder that the flesh ought to have been humbled — and a reminder of the path of victory too. … But God did not reveal His name to Jacob, though he asked after it. He was not yet allowed the communion in the revelation of El Shaddai that he later enjoyed. There was faith, but not fellowship; the blessing of God, but His name withheld.
The new name did not make Jacob a new man overnight. The chapters after Peniel, the place where God met him, show it plainly.
At Peniel God meets him (His face hidden) to make him learn the strength that is perfected only in weakness. With his thigh out of joint he prevails and is blessed. The secret of strength is learned, and yet, strange as it may seem, the power he has with God he cannot yet find before man. He meets Esau with cringing servility… No part of his history is so dark and shameful as the part that follows this scene — and the words spoken in it are God's own: "as a prince he has power with God and with men, and prevails."
- God begins. Jacob did not start the wrestling. God came to end a man's reliance on his own strength, devices and resources.
- Weakness qualifies. The hip was touched, and only then could Jacob prevail — power with God is found "lying at His feet," crippled.
- Confession unlocks. He had to say "Jacob," the supplanter, before he could be called Israel. By changing the name, God claimed the man as His own.
- The reach widens. Power with God comes first; power with men follows from it, and never the other way round.
- The night was not the dawn. God blessed him but kept His own name back — faith without fellowship. The dark chapters that follow show a lesson learned long before it was lived.
And Jacob asked and said, Tell [me], I pray thee, thy name. And he said, How is it that thou askest after my name? And he blessed him there.
All night a stranger has wrestled Jacob and given him a new name. Now Jacob asks who the stranger is, and gets no name — only a question, and then the blessing he had chased since his youth.
One writer names the wrestler, and finds the same question asked again later in Scripture:
No doubt the mysterious wrestler was Christ — Jehovah. He would not tell His name. In those early days the system of Judaism, with its pictures of what was coming, had not yet been set up — let alone Christianity, where those pictures are fulfilled. Yet He still blessed Jacob. A little later, an angel foretold the birth of Samson to Manoah and his wife. Manoah asked the angel, "What is your name?" The angel replied, "Why do you ask my name, seeing it is secret" — or, as the margin of our Bible reads, "seeing it is wonderful." The truth comes out more fully there than in Genesis. "Wonderful" is just the word for Christ.
Older Bibles read "secret" in that answer to Manoah, with "wonderful" only in the margin. The ESV puts "wonderful" straight into the text.
Elsewhere Scripture calls this wrestler an angel. One writer shows what Jacob himself called Him:
Do you not know that Hosea says Jacob wrestled with the angel and prevailed? Yet Jacob called the place Peniel, because he had seen God face to face. And God had called his name Israel, a prince with God, because he had wrestled with God and with man and had prevailed.
Jacob comes away with a new name, a limp, and an unanswered question:
God makes Jacob feel his weakness; he limps all his life… As a prince he learns that he has power with God and with men, and had prevailed. His name was to be no more Jacob, the supplanter, but Israel, a prince of God. But God did not reveal His name to Jacob, though he asked after it. He did not yet have the fellowship he enjoyed later, when God made Himself known as El Shaddai. There was faith, but not fellowship; the blessing of God, but His name withheld.
The meeting began in the dark, and the visitor was gone by daylight:
God had indeed met Jacob, but He met him by night and not by day. When the day broke He had disappeared. In the same way, He blessed him in the end, yet He refused to tell His name at Jacob's request. Unknown He had come and unknown He departed.
The silence is not a refusal forever. It has to do with where Jacob was standing:
Jacob wanted to know the name of his opponent in the wrestling. The only answer he gets is a question: "Why is it that you ask my name?" Jacob would not learn that name properly until he was in the place of God's name, that is, Bethel, "the house of God." It is only in God's way that we really know God Himself. Jacob had begun the trip back to Bethel, but he was not there. Yet the Lord blessed him where he was.
Jacob had gone after this blessing before, and by the wrong route:
It was a case of seeking a right thing in a wrong way. He did not get the blessing then. Later he did get it from his father, but he only got it from God when he was afterwards brought face to face with Him.
The turning point was not harder effort but the end of it:
Then at once Jacob's attitude changed. Wrestling was now impossible for him, so instead he clung to his Conqueror. He stopped striving and took to trusting. He realised that the One who had overcome him had done so for his blessing, and that he was standing in the presence of God. The Stranger did not reveal His Name, but He gave Jacob the blessing he had wanted since his youth, then and there.
Commentators differ on how much Jacob understood that night. One writer reads the blessing itself as God showing Jacob who He was:
In blessing Jacob, the Lord shows Jacob who He was. Jacob himself says, "I have seen God face to face." What a wonderful secret for Jacob to carry with him through life! He had wanted to know the Name of the One who wrestled with him, and discovered that it was the Lord Himself.
- Weakness — Jacob stops wrestling only when his strength is gone; the limp is what makes clinging possible.
- Clinging — the blessing comes to the man who trusts his Conqueror, not to the man who outsmarts Him.
- Withheld — God gives the new name but keeps back His own; blessing comes without full fellowship.
- Bethel — the name waits for God's house, because we know God in God's way, not on demand.
- There — God blesses Jacob where he is, short of Bethel, and Jacob walks away knowing he has seen God face to face.