I do not know why we need to do all this He, He, He stuff. We knew exactly that He was God.
Jacob's name was changed to Israel due to this quality that he possessed. He showed it in this wrestling match with God. All night he struggled. He wrestled with God all night long and would not let go until he received a blessing from God. Jacob was a character. Jacob was unusual. He had a tenacity. He had a fighting spirit, if you will. He had a desire to win, a desire to win in the Hebrew sense.
Now, this episode that we just read marks the turning point in Jacob's life and in his character. He is a changed man after this. This is what his name did. He changed his name and it marked a change in character. He went from heel catcher or supplanter, which is what Jacob means, indicating nefarious, underhanded dealings. If you go and read the chapters before this, he was always trying to trick Laban out of something. And his own brother Esau, his own father. He was a tricky man. But then God changed his name to prevailer, or overcomer with God.
Do you know what Israel actually means if you break it down into its etymological roots? Technically it means "God fights." But the way it has come to be understood was "fights God" or "struggles with God," "strives with God." It is not that he is fighting against Him. He is fighting with him because he wants what God is willing to give him. So he fights God. You have to get your mind into a kind of Hebrew way of thinking. But that is what it comes out as. It is folk etymology because it really should mean "God fights." But the way the Hebrews thought of it after this occurred was that you fight with God, meaning on His side, for Him, not against Him.
But anyway, it is also interesting that when God gives His little spiel about the name Israel, He says, "You prevailed with God and with men." He added, "and with men" in there. Now he did fight with a Man, but this was Jacob's character. Jacob fought with everybody. Jacob tried to prevail with everybody. That was just the kind of man he was. But it shows that Jacob had the same tenacity in overcoming and combating the ideas and plots and temptations of other people, as he did trying to be a warrior of God and overcome the spiritual things. So he was trying to overcome everything.
So, he is crossing over the ford of Jabbok.
We will not go into the rest of this, but we know that this was the pre-Incarnate Christ, and they wrestled all night, and Jacob would not let go unless Christ gave him a blessing. And finally, He did. But to mark the occasion, he ended up being crippled in his hip (being out of joint) for the rest of his life.
But the significant part for today is that he had an encounter with God at this point. And this encounter is representative of Jacob's full conversion. You could almost call it a baptism, here. If you will remember, he had just transported his family across the river, which is similar to what his descendants would do in crossing the Red Sea. And we found that in I Corinthians 10, Paul calls that a type of baptism when Israel crossed the Red Sea. Well, this was the night before Jacob, himself, was going to go over that river, and in a sense, you could say, this was a sign of his conversion.
And of course, this is signified, this change in status, in God changing his name from Jacob to Israel. He went from being a heel-catcher to one who prevails with God. So, he went from being ignoble, to being noble; from being a deceiver, to being one who has a relationship with God.
And we see that the river perhaps symbolizes Jacob's growth and his new spiritual life with God and Christ. We always have to remember that one of the more profound symbols of water is that of God's Spirit. And so now, Jacob, having gone through this encounter with Christ, has a new spiritual life. Return now to verse 30.
Finally Jacob demonstrates one more character trait that we need in the process of overcoming—endurance, persistence, stick-to-itiveness, enduring to the end. He never gave up. With his hip out of joint, and the pain coursing through his body, he still clenched with God until He would bless him. He struggled even with God to succeed, to prevail, to conquer, and overcome. And God marked the fact that he had left his old nature behind by giving him a more appropriate name—Israel—Prince with God, Prevailer with God.
