Jacob becomes Isreal, Why? Bible Study Gen. 32-35

by What is Truth? 13 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  What is Truth?

  I have had a facination with this passage for some time since starting reading James Kugel's book "How to read the Bible" and I am curious to get your imput. It is Genesis 32: 24-32 where Jacob gets his name changed.

  I am most interested in how this story relates to the early dealings with Isrealite's God.

  Specifically, who is the person that Jacob wrestles with?

  What is the name of the person Jacob asks his name/

  What is the signifigance of Jacob's name change and the original meaning of Isreal?

  What is the signifigance with the dawn and why does it make the person so persistent to get free?

  What is the difference between Peniel and penuel?

  Why did the angel damage his joint?

  Excerpt from Insight books-

  Why did the angel with whom Jacob wrestled cause Jacob to limp?
  During the night that Jacob’s household crossed the Jabbok on the way S to meet Esau, Jacob had the most unusual experience of wrestling with an angel, and because of his perseverance his name was changed to Israel, meaning “Contender (Perseverer) With God; or, God Contends.” (Ge 32:22-28) Thereafter both names often appear in Hebrew poetic parallelisms. (Ps 14:7; 22:23; 78:5, 21, 71; 105:10, 23) In this struggle the angel touched the socket of Jacob’s thigh joint, and Jacob limped for the rest of his life—perhaps to teach him humility; a constant reminder not to be overly exalted because of his God-given prosperity or for having grappled with an angel. In commemoration of these momentous events Jacob called the place Peniel or Penuel.—Ge 32:25, 30-32.

  24 Finally Jacob was left by himself. Then a man began to wrestle with him until the dawn broke. 25 When he saw that he had not prevailed over him, he touched the socket of his hip; and the socket of Jacob’s hip was dislocated during his wrestling with him. 26 After that he said: “Let me go, for the dawn is breaking.” To this he said: “I am not going to let you go until you bless me.” 27 So he said to him: “What is your name?” to which he said: “Jacob.” 28 Then he said: “Your name will no longer be Jacob but Israel, for you have contended with God and with men and you have at last prevailed.” 29 In turn Jacob inquired: “Tell me, please, your name.” However, he said: “Why is it that you ask my name?” With that he blessed him there. 30 So Jacob named the place Pe·ni′el, for he said, “I have seen God face-to-face, yet my life was preserved.”
  31 And the sun rose upon him as soon as he passed by Pe·nu′el, but he was limping because of his hip. 32 That is why to this day the sons of Israel are not accustomed to eat the thigh sinew, which is on the socket of the hip joint, because he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip joint by the thigh sinew.

  Well, I am off to mid-week meeting I look forward to hearing more any more enlighted "insights" you may be kind enough to offer.

  Peace
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  Apognophos

  Welcome, What is Truth? (might that be a Pilate reference?). I too find this passage very interesting ever since I started looking outside the box (i.e., the publications) when reading about the Bible, though I haven't gotten to read the book you mention. I don't know what your feelings are regarding the divinity of the Bible. Personally I look at it from a secular perspective, as a fascinating body of ancient writings. From that POV, this story is clearly an etiological one, which was told to establish the origin of the name of the nation of Israel. I think that the detail of the angel touching the hip joint was specifically placed in there to remind Israelites that they are not to eat the thigh sinew.

  What's so interesting about this story is that the translation of Gen. 32:28 is actually uncertain. At first, and according to the NWT and other Bibles, it seems clear that Jacob is given the name Israel because he contends ("yisra", from verse 28's "sarita") with God ("El"). But whether one is a believer or not, it doesn't really make sense that a nation would call themselves "Contenders with God". That doesn't seem very respectful to God, does it?

  It turns out that a minority of Bible translations (including the KJV) render this verse as something like, "for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed. " Huh? Where did the "prince" or the "power" come from? Because the verb "contended with" is "sarita", and it only occurs this one time in the Bible, but it is connected to the noun "sar", which means prince. So for some Bible translators, this verse is saying, "You were like a prince with God" in the sense that Jacob is valued in God's eyes.

  So "Israel" is translated by some as "Prince of God", which might make more sense, and completely obviates the need to think of the Jews as contending with their God (though if you follow the Christian viewpoint of the matter, this would seem an appropriate name, but obviously the ancient Jews would not have thought of themselves this way). Since "sar" can mean "prince" as well as "contender" (striver, fighter, etc.), this is quite plausible.

  You might know that there are a lot of passages in the OT which are etiological or etymological. They are mostly lost in translation. Examples include "Isaac" (yitsaq) meaning "laugh" or "play": in one account, Abraham laughs at hearing that he will father a child in his old age; in another account, Sarah is the one who laughs; in another account, she observes Ishmael playing with the young Isaac. Sometimes the etymology is strained because it is a retroactive attempt to explain an origin which has actually been lost in time.

  So that might be the case here. "Israel" might not mean "prince of God" or "contender with God", and the connection of "sar" with "yisra" might be a stretch from the standpoint of retroactive etymology. But it's clear that the story is saying Jacob "contended" or wrestled with God; what else could the story be intending to give as the name's origin, right? Well, notice how Jacob makes a big deal out of seeing God's face, naming the place Peniel or Penuel. Some translators think that "Yisrael" actually comes from "ish-raah-el", "man has seen God".

  It could be that this account is a double play on words, offering two separate reasons for the name "Israel". But there's an even more interesting suggestion, albeit a somewhat blasphemous one to a modern believer. The suggestion is that Jacob actually fought with God here. This is not much stranger than how Abraham spoke with God as a man and shared a meal with him, or how Moses saw God's back on the mountain. Though Witnesses say that Abraham and Jacob saw an angel because "no one can see God's face and live", Jacob clearly thinks otherwise, as he announces that he saw God's face and lived.

  So I don't have any real answer for you, but I do have a lot of questions! A final note: this is one of two times that God changed Jacob's name to Israel. He does so again in chapter 35 when Jacob is at Bethel.

  P.S.: Yet more suggestions about how to translate "Israel": "God reigns" (where "sar" is not a prince in the lower sense of being subordinate to a king, but simply refers to a noble ruler); "God perseveres" (since the verb translated "contend" is a synonym for "persevere").
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  BackseatDevil

  OR... Jacob spent the night getting drunk, stumbled out to nowhere to scream at the wind and curse the sand, tripped and hurt his hip.

  Don't get me wrong, I like his version better... but please, we've all been there.
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  What is Truth?

  @Apognophos

  Thankyou, it is nice to come to where we can discuss subjects that don't have to have the preapproved watchtower stamp, with people not under their mind numbing perspective.

  Yes I thought of Pilate while in my search.

  Eccelent response, I think this passage so interests me for the different view of the Hebrew God or angels to the rest of the Bible out of Genesis. I agree that the hip joint is an etiological reference. That is new to think of Jacob as a "Prince of God". Whatever the original intention of this passage I believe is lost to time and editing. Rereading these stories about Jacob with cleareer eyes is proving quite interesting like seeing the Face of God and at the second time he is renamed you mentioned at Ch. 35 also giving the naming of Bethel where he set up a pillar to El.

  I liked your answer, and your's too BackseatDevil
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  Phizzy

  Thanks for your input here Apog, very interesting, and thanks for the thread WIT?, I have long found this and other passages in Genesis strange, at least until I gained an appreciation for the Hebrew language and the literature of the time.

  What is obvious is that this is a very old tale, and because the name Israel was actually long in use, the Yahwist priests could not retroactively get YHVH into the name.

  Which means that the God that chose Israel and his offspring as his chosen people was El not the later Yahweh.
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  Apognophos

  I think this passage so interests me for the different view of the Hebrew God or angels to the rest of the Bible out of Genesis.

  Well, it's true that later writers in the Bible don't see God as someone who could possibly appear in the flesh before man. But there's all kinds of contradictions on the question of whether God ever interacts with man face to face. The usual suggestion by scholars is that the earlier writers had a more primitive conception of God as a powerful man. Examples:

  - The God of the creation account in Genesis 2:4 forms man out of the ground and plants a garden. He forms the animals afterward and brings them to Adam to be named. He walks through the garden every day, inspecting His handiwork.

  - The God of Genesis 18 shares a meal with Abraham. At first it's hard to understand why there are three men; the Society claims these must be angels since God cannot be seen by man, and because there are three of them. But the account itself makes things clear when the "two men" go down into Sodom without him, and the man who stays behind with Abraham is explicitly stated to be Jehovah (verse 22). This makes sense because God will appear before Abraham, father of the Jews, but he would not lower himself to enter into a city of men.

  Besides the fact that these accounts may have been written earlier than other parts of the OT, I think there was a feeling that the patriarchs of Israel were such special, holy men themselves that they were worthy of interacting with God in this manner. The general tone of the OT is that man is unworthy and far beneath God, and that things have gotten worse over time. So it makes sense that only the forefathers of Israel were fit to see him and interact with him. Maybe Moses was the last man to be worthy enough to see God. The Bible itself isn't sure:

  - Moses either can and does (Ex. 33:11) or does not and cannot (Ex. 33:20!) see God's face and live.

  It's suggested that the part at the end of Ex. 33 where Moses can only see God's back in passing was added to negate the earlier part where he seems to be speaking directly to God. But here's the real kicker, a scripture that Witnesses never read: Genesis 24:9-11. Here it is from the NWT:

  "And Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and seventy of the older men of Israel proceeded to go up, and they got to see the God of Israel. And under his feet there was what seemed like a work of sapphire flagstones and like the very heavens for purity. And he did not put out his hand against ["harm", rNWT] the distinguished men of the sons of Israel, but they got a vision of the true God and ate and drank."

  This is clearly describing God standing before them in a purified space on the physical top of the mountain.

  Which means that the God that chose Israel and his offspring as his chosen people was El not the later Yahweh.

  Yes, well as you probably know, the interesting thing is that there's a specific place in the Bible where the difference in names is explained, Genesis 6:2, 3 (NWT):

  "And God went on to speak to Moses and to say to him: 'I am Jehovah. And I used to appear to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as God Almighty [El Shaddai], but as respects my name Jehovah [YHWH] I did not make myself known to them.'"

  The Society has to really stretch to explain this one, saying that God's name's meaning was not demonstrated to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but only when he delivered Israel from the Pharaoh using Moses. But it's clearly an insertion that was intended to bridge the gap between the accounts where the patriarchs speak to El (Elohim, El Shaddai, etc.) and the later accounts which use the name YHWH all over the place as the name of God.
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  Apognophos

  Although this is not on the subject of Genesis 32, but rather Exodus 24, I really wanted to share this further research I just did. The Society has only made a couple attempts in the last 50 years to explain the statement that 74 men saw God on the mountain. Here's the oldest one I can access in the Library:

  *** w69 11/1 p. 650 pars. 3-5 Acquaint Yourself with God and Keep Peace ***
  
  4 After the making of the covenant with Jehovah God over animal victims of sacrifice, Moses and his brother and two of his nephews and seventy other men of the nation went up into Mount Sinai. Exodus 24:9-11 tells us: “Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu and seventy of the older men of Israel proceeded to go up, and they got to see the God of Israel. And under his feet there was what seemed like a work of sapphire flagstones and like the very heavens for purity. And he did not put out his hand against the distinguished men of the sons of Israel, but they got a vision of the true God and ate and drank.”
  5 Actually those seventy-four men saw no shape or form of God. What they saw in vision was an awe-inspiring display of the glory of the “God of Israel.” Under the glorious manifestation of Him, or, as we would say, “under his feet,” those favored men saw something “like a work of sapphire flagstones and like the very heavens for purity,” or like the clear, blue sky without a cloud. Those men were on earth and below his “feet” in nice harmony with God’s own saying: “The heavens are my throne, and the earth is my foot stool.” How, then, could any man-made temple or church building contain such a dazzlingly glorious God as this? It really could not do so.—Isa. 66:1; Acts 7:48, 49.

  tl;dr: "They didn't see God, they were just looking up at the sky which was under God's feet." Okayyyyy....

  The Society took another stab at this later:

  *** w88 5/15 p. 22 Has Anyone Seen God? ***
  In what sense did Moses behold “the appearance of Jehovah”?
  Moses beheld “the appearance of Jehovah” when he, Aaron, and certain other men were on Mount Sinai. At Exodus 24:10, it is written: “They got to see the God of Israel. And under his feet there was what seemed like a work of sapphire flagstones and like the very heavens for purity.” But how did Moses and the other men get to “see the God of Israel,” since God had told him, “No man may see me and yet live”? Verse 11 explains, for it says: “He did not put out his hand against the distinguished men of the sons of Israel, but they got a vision of the true God and ate and drank.” So the appearance of God that Moses and the others saw was by means of a vision.

  It's interesting to note that no major Bible translations render it as "got a vision", but only as "saw", "beheld", etc. However the verb used, "chazah", can mean a vision, as in Isaiah 1:1. The finer points of how the verb is used in different places are beyond me, but I just wanted to point out that most Bibles make the "vision" seem much more direct. It's also not clear to me how a "vision of the true God" is clearly different, or safer for mortal men, than simply "seeing the true God".
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  What is Truth?

  Thanks Apognophos, I have read that 88 Watchtower and never could quite reconcile it, another incongruency I noticed early on.

  I really appreciate your comments Apog, and the vibrant community here.
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  Doug Mason

  What is Truth?

  For the Hebrews, a name was far more than a handle or a means of identification. It was the very being of that person; hence the need at times for a person's name to be changed.

  The Hebrews used several names for God, depending on the situation. For example, the people who wrote Genesis chapter 1 did not use the name YHWH until it was revealed to Moses at the "burning bush", whereas the writers of the Creation myth of Genesis 2 used the tetragram for God's name.

  The writers of Genesis 1 (written after Genesis 2, by the way) used God's name of "EL". Information is available on the sources of these names, and where the Israelites took their YHWH god from, but that's another issue.

  In many instances, the EL is incorporated into the names of people and of places (Bethel, meaning "house of God", incorporates the EL name, for example).

  Thus when Jacob encountered God his name was changed to include God's name - Israel. Knowing its origin will ensure that you will always spell it correctly.

  BTW. EL was the "super God" who had a pantheon of minor gods; YHWH was one of these minor gods - he was an angry warlike god. When the Israelites adopted YHWH as their god, they took EL's wife Asherah and gave her to YHWH. You will see references to Asherah in the Bible; the general populace worshiped her alongside YHWH, as archaeology confirms. It's just that the priests were against that arrangement - and it is their wriitngs that you read.

  Doug
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  smiddy

  Their is evidence of course that the early Hebrews , Israelites , Jews , were not monotheistic but rather polytheistic in their worship of God.

  So when we read the first five books of the bible written by Moses , and the later bible writers , which God are we talking about at any one time.?

  Just asking.

  smiddy