Scripture Daily

Context No. 796 of 4322 · Genesis

Context · Reflection

Genesis 35:9-15: in context

9God appeared to Jacob again, when he came from Paddan Aram, and blessed him. 10God said to him, “Your name is Jacob. Your name shall not be Jacob any more, but your name will be Israel.” He named him Israel. 11God said to him, “I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company of nations will be from you, and kings will come out of your body. 12The land which I gave to Abraham and Isaac, I will give it to you, and to your offspring after you I will give the land.” 13God went up from him in the place where he spoke with him. 14Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he spoke with him, a pillar of stone. He poured out a drink offering on it, and poured oil on it. 15Jacob called the name of the place where God spoke with him “Bethel”.

Jacob has come the long way home, twenty years and two wrestling matches later, and God meets him again at Bethel, the very place where, as a frightened young fugitive, he had once seen a ladder into heaven and made his first bargain with God. This time God appears not to a runaway but to a returning man, and blesses him, and gives him the thing that had been confirmed once already at the river: your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel. I am God Almighty, he says; be fruitful, a nation and a company of nations will come from you, and kings from your own body, and the land I gave Abraham and Isaac I give to you.

The renaming is the heart of it. Jacob had spent his whole life living up to his name, which means the one who grabs the heel, the supplanter, the man who got ahead by cunning. It was an accurate name; he had earned it, grasping his brother's heel at birth and his blessing later by fraud. And God takes that name away. He does not simply forgive the old Jacob; he renames him, hands him a new identity, Israel, that is no longer defined by his history of grasping. Jacob marks the spot with a stone pillar, pours out oil and wine on it, and calls the place the house of God. He arrived at Bethel once as the schemer running from what he had done. He leaves it as Israel, called something new by the God who would not leave him as he found him.

God took the name Jacob had earned by his worst deeds and gave him a new one. What old label, accurate to who I used to be, am I still answering to, when God may have already renamed me?

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