Named by God in the Name of God

22 That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23 After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. 24 So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 25 When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. 26 Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”
But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
27 The man asked him, “What is your name?”
“Jacob,” he answered.
28 Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”
29 Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.”
But he replied, “Why do you ask my name?” Then he blessed him there.
30 So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”
31 The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip. 32 Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip, because the socket of Jacob’s hip was touched near the tendon.

This story in Genesis 32 is sandwiched between two threats. Jacob running away from his father-in-law, Laban(Gen 31), and Jacob running towards his estranged brother Esau (Gen 33).

Twenty years before the events of Genesis 32, Jacob cheated his brother Esau out of his birth right and blessings. Esau vowed to kill him: Jacob ran (Gen 27:41–45). He fled to his mother’s brother Laban. There the schemer Jacob met his match. For 20 years in matters of love, marriage, family, and business, Jacob and Laban try and best each other (Gen 29–31). Yet in it all God is with Jacob and blesses him. However, tensions get to breaking point and God tells Jacob it is time to leave and return home (Gen 31:3).

So . . . if Genesis 31 is about “yesterday” (Jacob fleeing a chasing Laban) AND if Genesis 33 is about “tomorrow” (Jacob fleeing but towards an approaching Esau) THEN Genesis 32 is about “night.”

If Genesis 32 described your life now – what would Genesis 31 (“yesterday”) and Genesis 33 (“tomorrow”) represent?

Genesis 32 is a pause in a frenetic and flawed life.

The Bible’s portrayal of Jacob is not flattering. His name means “one who grasps the heel” (Gen 25:21–26); a variation on “he deceives.” An audit on his character does not inspire:

The portrait [of Jacob] as drawn in the Bible – before Peniel – is striking in its pallor. It depicts a man straightforward but unimaginative, honest but anxious to avoid risks. An introverted, frustrated man, given to fits of temper, leading a marginal life. A weakling, manipulated by others. Everyone made him do things – and he obeyed. Such was his nature. Incapable of initiative, he could never make up his mind. . . . He accepted life as it came, preferring to follow rather than be followed.[1]

Yet in Genesis 32 there is a significant and profound change in Jacob. Everything turns on verse 24: “So Jacob was left alone . . .” The depth of Jacob’s aloneness is emphasised in several ways:

i. Night: It is night (v 22) – an image of Jacob’s spiritual state.

ii. Isolation: Jacob’s family and possessions are sent across the Jabbok (vv 22–23) – an image of Jacob’s isolation.

iii. Depth: Jacob is adjacent to the Jabbok[2] (v 22) – an image of the depth of Jacob’s spiritual encounter.

So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak (v. 24). Who precisely is in this fight? The way Genesis 32 begins gives us insight.

“Jacob also went on his way, and the angels of God met him. When Jacob saw them, he said, “This is the camp of God!” So he named that place Mahanaim.” (Gen 32:1–2)

“Mahanaim” means “Two Camps.” As Genesis 32 unfolds, there are a number of “two’s.”[3] Jacob splits everyone and everything into two camps. There are two brothers in play. There are two families. There will be two meetings (one with God and one with Esau). But in this fight, there is an unseen “two.” For not only are two men fighting, Jacob and the heavenly opponent, there are two Jacobs in this fight. Elie Wiesel puts it best:

Says the Midrash: God created the world so that day would be day and night would be night; then came Jacob and he changed day into night. Explanation: At Peniel, for the first time, Jacob behaved in the same way at night and during the day. That night the two Jacobs came together. The heroic dreamer and the inveterate fugitive, the unassuming man and the founder of a nation clashed at Peniel in a fierce and decisive battle. To kill or be killed. It was a turning point for Jacob. He had a choice: to die before dying, or to take hold of himself and fight. And win.[4]

The true fight of Genesis 32: “At Peniel, for the first time, Jacob behaved in the same way at night and during the day. That night the two Jacobs came together.”

Genesis 32 speaks to the fight between the private knowledge you have of yourself . . . the experience of others who encounter your public persona . . . and the revelation of what God thinks of you in it all. This is the fight between your private self and your public self. This is a fight about what’s true and what’s false. A friend of mine who has spent decades training Christian leaders, defines “tension” as the gap between private self that we know, and our public self that others know.

In the biography on Eugene Peterson, Peterson is quoted as lamenting, “I wish I was the person people think I am.” [5] Peterson is not alone. This kind of fight evokes all manner of laments and cries from the heart:

•  “I hope people don’t find out who I really am.”
•  “I wish I wasn’t the person people have experienced me as.”
•  “I am not worthy. I will be found out.”
• “I have a secret. If it gets out – I’m finished.”
• “I am unseen. I am unheard. I am unnoticed.”
•  David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this must die! He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.” Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man! (2 Sam 12:5–7)
• Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.    Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. (Psa 51:10-12)
• “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy” (Luke 15:21)
•  “I believe; help my unbelief.” (Mark 9:24)
•  “Even if all fall away on account of You, I never will.” (Matt 26:33)
•  “For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.” (Rom 7:19)                                                                  

This kind of fight needs divine intervention. Traditionally, the incident in Genesis 32:22–32 is incorrectly entitled “Jacob Wrestles a Man” or “Jacob Wrestles God.” But the biblical text words it around the other way, “. . . and a man wrestled with him [Jacob] till daybreak” (v. 24).

God initiates the fight, not Jacob. God starts the fight, not Jacob.

The spiritual implications of this are we do not have the luxury of being spectators of this incident. This image is a vision – if not a warning – which says, “You’re next!”

The spiritual reality of this encounter is that at some point this fight will be your fight.

God is spoiling for a fight, and you are his next opponent.

Consequently, the question is not “What do you wrestle with God about?” but “What does God wrestle with you about?” Hence, the place on which this all-night fight happens becomes holy ground. It is holy, mysterious . . . and alone. No-one else can take your place.

God wrestles you and there is no–one who can help.

Catherine of Siena (1347–1380) depicts such a space, “There is a room in each one’s heart where no man, no woman, no devil, no angel can go. Only you and God can go into that interior space.”[6] She is speaking of a principle that Jesus expressed, “But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen” (Matt 6:6).

The architecture of this room, the geography of this place, the colour of this night, the rules of this fight are best expressed in the words of Romans 8:35–39:

35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written:
“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Nothing can intrude or interfere in the work and love of God in your life: even when that work and love takes the form of God wrestling with you.

The fight in Genesis 32 is beyond comprehension. Details are scarce but enough is given to ignite the imagination and resonate with us. We know Jacob’s opponent is God – he empties himself so that it seems there is a draw. Jacob, whose name means “grasped the heel”, now “grasps God.”

God touches Jacob’s hip and wrenches it, yet Jacob will not let go. Both Jacob and God are immobilised. Or at least God lets Jacob believe that. Even with his hip wrenched Jacob clung on: in pain.

God fights us to bring the fight out in us.

God says “Let me go, for it is daybreak” (v 26) but Jacob states the price: a blessing. I wonder, what is the blessing that you will cling onto God for? According to Genesis 32, play plays along for “God loves to be defeated by His children.”[7]

When God asked Jacob, “What is your name?” (Gen 32:27), the answer was not so much social convention as much as spiritual confession: “Jacob. One who grasps the heel. Deceiver. Schemer. Trickster.”

Jacob’s answer had the double meaning of “This is my name” and “This is my character.” In saying his name and all that it meant, Jacob was baring his soul, admitting his character flaws, and surrendering to an inescapable declaration of hidden agendas, tendencies, and sin.

As one commentator puts it, Jacob now agrees with his brother’s bitter statement after being deceived by Jacob:[8] “Isn’t he rightly named Jacob?” (Gen 27:36).

In answer to God’s question – “What is your name?”, what answer would you give? And what is confessed and revealed by your answer?

Upon hearing Jacob’s answer, God pronounces his judgement on the matter. “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome” (v 28).

Note the DNA of this statement. “No longer . . . but . . . You have struggled . . . and have overcome.” The blessing, the reward, a new name “Israel.” One who strives with God. Specific to Jacob and general to us all: one who strives with God.

The DNA of Genesis 32:28 is reflected in the DNA of Romans 8:35–39, “We are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”

Such victory is centred on God and is because of God and the way he fights with us, the way he names us. The outcome of God wrestling with you and you staying in the fight is the gift of a new name.

A Name of Grace.

The gift of a new name serves as a commentary on the work of God in our life. The gift of a name is a theme which runs throughout the whole of Scripture.

We see the gift of a new name to the world most majestically in the Christmas story:

She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.
All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).(Matt 1:21–23)

The Bible starts and finishes with the dynamic of the gift of a name. The creation account (Gen 1–2) is replete with naming. Then by the time we come to this story of Jacob, the practice and significance of naming is well established. By the end of the Bible, this spiritual practice has taken on tremendous meaning and promise. With Genesis 32 in mind, this fight and gift of a new name in the first book of the Bible is seen in the last book of the Bible (Revelation).

There the risen and ascended Christ addresses the church of Pergamum which is confronted with Satanic presence. Jesus makes a promise to the members of that church:

To everyone who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give a white stone, and on the white stone is written a new name that no one knows except the one who receives it. (Rev 2:17)

All of the Biblical testimony concerning the God wrestling with us and the gift of a new name lands here. George MacDonald (1824–1905) in reflecting on Revelation 2:17 wrote this about the gift of a new name:

The true name is one which expresses the character, the mature, the being, the meaning of the person who bears it. . . . Who can give a person this, their own name? God alone. For no one but God sees what the person is, or even, seeing what they are, could express in a name-word the sum and harmony of what He sees. . . . To whom is this name given? To the one that overcomes. When is it given? When they have overcome.[9]

In commenting on this verse from Revelation 2, MacDonald brings together the two spiritual principles:

i. the private place where God confronts you (c.f. Gen 32:22)

ii. the new name, God has for you (c.f. Gen 32:28)

MacDonald continues:

And for each God has a different response. With every person He has a secret – the secret of the new name. In every person there is a loneliness, an inner chamber of peculiar life into which God only can enter. . . . a chamber into which no brother, nay, no sister can come.
From this it follows that there is a chamber also . . . a chamber in God Himself, into which none can enter but the one, the individual, the peculiar person – out of which chamber that person has to bring revelation and strength for their brethren. This is that for which they were made – to reveal the secret things of the Father.[10]

With this new name, God reveals a new depth of meaning in your life. Your new name is your meaning. Your new name is your vocation in Christ.

Your Name of Grace describes who you are in Christ and what you are called to in Christ:

A fundamental theme that runs through the Bible is “called by name.”. . . What it amounts to is: I am not one in a crowd for God, I am not a serialised number nor a catalogued card; I am unrepeatably unique, for God “calls me by name.” This reality I may certainly characterise as my “personal identity”, or my “personal orientation in life”, or my most profound and true “self.” Biblically, however, I prefer to call it my “personal vocation.”
The personal vocation then, it is important to grasp, is not just some abstract personal ideal. No, it is a person – the person of Christ Jesus himself in a deeply unique way. For me, then, I can in very truth speak of “my Jesus”, thus transforming my whole Christian life into what I was always taught it to be but never shown how: in very truth, a maturing, profoundly interpersonal love relationship between Christ Jesus and me – one opening out, surely, onto my social responsibilities and commitments in Christian witness and mission.
Now we can begin to appreciate in real depth why the personal vocation is the unique God-given meaning in a person’s life. Because for God the Father there is no “meaning” outside Christ Jesus . . . In a marvellous hymn of cosmic sweeping dimensions, St Paul proclaims that everything has been created in, through and for Christ Jesus; that everything has been recreated, renewed and reconciled in, through and for Christ Jesus (Col 1:12-20). Christ Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega of all creation and of all recreation; he is the only “meaning” there is for the Father.[11]

To begin the process of hearing your name, consider who God is to you when you are at your most spontaneous. What aspect of God’s character are you instinctively drawn to without much thought or reason? Your answer is the gateway to hearing your name.

Alternatively, simply read aloud the Beatitudes (Matt 5:3–10). Listen as you read. Which description grips your heart? Which name resonates with you? Jesus is naming his community now and the community which he is forming. He is naming you now and the person he is creating you to be.

Yet, for all this, the stuggles in life and faith can leave us wondering if God missed naming me while everyone else has been so honoured. Take heart. Read on from Genesis 32 and you will observe a curious thing after Jacob received the reward of a new name. He limps away known as Israel but the Bible immediately starts referring to him as Jacob again.[12]

Has not the change taken place? Or if it did – has it not lasted?

For the rest of Genesis, he is mainly called Jacob; only as an old man is he increasingly referred to as Israel. And throughout the rest of Scripture – in the prophets for example – he is still referred to Jacob as much as Israel.

What is that about?

Don’t forget – the wounds of Christ were part of the proof of the victory of Christ (John 20:24–29). I guess it takes a while to learn to walk with a limp. It takes a while to get places. It takes a while for people to know and recognise you with your new name.

It takes you a while to learn to live according to your new name.

But with this new name – God has revealed a new depth of meaning in your life.

Your new name is your meaning.

Your vocation.

In Christ.

Some days it feels like, in that fight, you did not overcome. Some days it feels like you lost and are losing.

But that is a lie.

Above all trust in the slow work of God
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability –
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually – let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try and force them on,
As though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
Gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
That his hand is leading you,
And accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
In suspense, and incomplete.

(Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.)[13]

Geoff New is Dean of Studies/Acting Principal at the Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership (Dunedin) where he teaches preaching, pastoral care, and Christian Formation. He is a trainer for Langham Preaching in South Asia and also leads Kiwimade Preaching. His most recent book is Echoes: the Lord's Prayer in the Preacher's Life(2020).

[1] Elie Wiesel, Messengers of God: Biblical Portraits and Legends (Simon & Schuster: New York, 1976), 110–111.

[2] An eighty-kilometre river which cuts deep gorges into the landscape.

[3] Bruce K. Waltke with Cathi J. Fredricks, Genesis (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 441.

[4] Wiesel, Messengers, 124.

[5] Winn Collier, A Burning in My Bones (Colorado Springs: WaterBrook, 2021).

[6] Joseph A. Tetlow, S.J. and Carol Atwell Ackels Finding Christ in the World: A Twelve Week Ignatian Retreat in Everyday Life (Boston: Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies, 2017), 2.

[7] Wiesel, Messengers, 93.

[8] Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 333.

[9] George MacDonald, Creation in Christ ed. Rolland Hein (Wheaton: Harold Shaw Publishers, 1976), 237. For the purposes of this artcile, inclusive language has been used. In the original, “man” is used by MacDonald for people.

[10] MacDonald, Creation in Christ, 239.

[11] Herbert Alphonso, The Personal Vocation: transformation in depth through the spiritual exercises (Rome: Centrum Ignatianum Spiritualitatis, 1990), 19, 34–35.

[12] Wiesel, Messengers, 133.

[13] Michael Harter SJ (ed), Hearts on Fire: praying with Jesuits (St Louis: Institute of Jesuit Resources, 1993), 58.