As I am neck-deep and months-in on a study of the holiness and goodness of God, I have become captivated by the name Israel.
I'm no Hebrew scholar (I simply know where to find them!) but I have found that the translation of this name that our Bibles have in the side notes isn't complete. Not anywhere close.
The man said, “From now on, your name will no longer be Jacob. You will be called Israel, because you have wrestled with God and with men, and you have won.”
In our footnotes, it usually says one meaning of the name Israel is “a man who wrestles with God.” This is like a mom saying, “We named him Bob because we thought it was a good idea” and then everyone going along thinking Bob meant “good idea.” I borrowed that from a group of scholars (see footnotes) who make a case that the meaning of the name Israel is not clear, but yet it's huge. “The meaning of Israel is not singular and distinct, but consists of many nuances and facets and bulges with theological significance.” Because it contains a mysterious verb that scholars do not know the full meaning of, this is the best-educated guess:
Israel means He Retains God, or slightly more elaborate: He Has Become A Receptacle In Which God Can Be Received And Retained. This most primary Biblical concept was obviously revisited in the story of the manger in which the Word was received.
Get that? A vessel in which God can be received and retained!
Maybe I'm just a Hebrew-geek, but the significance of this name blows my breath away.
Think of all that had come before Jacob's name change...the deception, the apparent loss of all he had strived so hard to contrive, estrangement from his family, the vision of the ladder to heaven, the Lord declaring the covenant to him, traveling alone in the desert, finding the love of his life, being tricked, striving to be successful (to make up for his “lost” inheritance of wealth and prestige).
And now, what he has dreaded has come upon him. The illusion of control is stripped away. Jacob must face the brother whom he defrauded. Instead, he meets God.
For Jacob, the prize he's kept his eye on has alway been the inheritance—the land, the wealth, and the promises.
But God was always focused on the DWELLING portion of His covenant. I will be your God, you will be mine, and I will DWELL with you. It's always about God's presence.
Ever since the goodness of God's immanent presence left Adam and Eve, God has had His eye on the real prize: a vessel that could contain—not constrain—the flow of His presence. He wants to reveal to the world His glory or His goodness, as He said to Moses much later.
God's goal has always been a vessel to receive His goodness and return it to Him in the form of worship, and nothing is lost in the transfer. This is what Jacob “won.”
The significance of this keeps me in a quiet place of pause...
Granted, Jacob-turned-Israel wasn't perfect from that time onward, but we see the evidence that God was with Him, never leaving Him. Israel (the country) followed the pattern of Israel (the man) until centuries later, Jesus would be the perfect model of God's presence, demonstrating it was possible with God's Spirit to transform mere vessels of clay into His spotless Bride.
Grace makes us into vessels to receive the flow of God's presence.
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Footnotes: See https://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Israel.html for more in-depth exploration into the meaning of the name, Israel.
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