Genesis 32:28

32:28 “No longer will your name be Jacob,” the man told him, ¹  “but Israel, ²  because you have fought ³  with God and with men and have prevailed.”

Genesis 33:20

33:20 There he set up an altar and called it “The God of Israel is God.” ⁴ 

Genesis 35:10

35:10 God said to him, “Your name is Jacob, but your name will no longer be called Jacob; Israel will be your name.” So God named him Israel. ⁵ 

Genesis 35:1

The Return to Bethel

35:1 Then God said to Jacob, “Go up at once ⁶  to Bethel ⁷  and live there. Make an altar there to God, who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.” ⁸ 

Genesis 11:31

11:31 Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot (the son of Haran), and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram’s wife, and with them he set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. When they came to Haran, they settled there.

Genesis 18:11

18:11 Abraham and Sarah were old and advancing in years; ⁹  Sarah had long since passed menopause.) ¹⁰ 

Isaiah 48:1

The Lord Appeals to the Exiles

48:1 Listen to this, O family of Jacob, ¹¹ 

you who are called by the name ‘Israel,’

and are descended from Judah, ¹² 

who take oaths in the name of the Lord,

and invoke ¹³  the God of Israel –

but not in an honest and just manner. ¹⁴ 

[32:28]  ¹ tn Heb “and he said.” The referent of the pronoun “he” (the man who wrestled with Jacob) has been specified for clarity, and the order of the introductory clause and the direct discourse has been rearranged in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[32:28]  ² sn The name Israel is a common construction, using a verb with a theophoric element (אֵל, ’el) that usually indicates the subject of the verb. Here it means “God fights.” This name will replace the name Jacob; it will be both a promise and a call for faith. In essence, the Lord was saying that Jacob would have victory and receive the promises because God would fight for him.

[32:28]  ³ sn You have fought. The explanation of the name Israel includes a sound play. In Hebrew the verb translated “you have fought” (שָׂרִיתָ, sarita) sounds like the name “Israel” (יִשְׂרָאֵל, yisra’el ), meaning “God fights” (although some interpret the meaning as “he fights [with] God”). The name would evoke the memory of the fight and what it meant. A. Dillmann says that ever after this the name would tell the Israelites that, when Jacob contended successfully with God, he won the battle with man (Genesis, 2:279). To be successful with God meant that he had to be crippled in his own self-sufficiency (A. P. Ross, “Jacob at the Jabboq, Israel at Peniel,” BSac 142 [1985]: 51-62).

[33:20]  ⁴ tn Heb “God, the God of Israel.” Rather than translating the name, a number of modern translations merely transliterate it from the Hebrew as “El Elohe Israel” (cf. NIV, NRSV, REB). It is not entirely clear how the name should be interpreted grammatically. One option is to supply an equative verb, as in the translation: “The God of Israel [is] God.” Another interpretive option is “the God of Israel [is] strong [or “mighty”].” Buying the land and settling down for a while was a momentous step for the patriarch, so the commemorative naming of the altar is significant.

[35:10]  ⁵ tn Heb “and he called his name Israel.” The referent of the pronoun “he” (God) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[35:1]  ⁶ tn Heb “arise, go up.” The first imperative gives the command a sense of urgency.

[35:1]  ⁷ map For location see Map4 G4; Map5 C1; Map6 E3; Map7 D1; Map8 G3.

[35:1]  ⁸ sn God is calling on Jacob to fulfill his vow he made when he fled from…Esau (see Gen 28:20-22).

[18:11]  ⁹ tn Heb “days.”

[18:11]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “it had ceased to be for Sarah [after] a way like women.”

[48:1]  ¹¹ tn Heb “house of Jacob”; TEV, CEV “people of Israel.”

[48:1]  ¹² tc The Hebrew text reads literally “and from the waters of Judah came out.” מִמֵּי (mimme) could be a corruption of מִמְּעֵי (mimmÿ’e, “from the inner parts of”; cf. NASB, NIV, NLT, NRSV) as suggested in the above translation. Some translations (ESV, NKJV) retain the MT reading because the Qumran scroll 1QIsa^a, which corrects a similar form to “from inner parts of” in 39:7, does not do it here.

[48:1]  ¹³ tn Heb “cause to remember”; KJV, ASV “make mention of.”

[48:1]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “not in truth and not in righteousness.”