Identity - Genesis 32-35

Genesis 32:29-32 (ESV)

Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.” The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. Therefore to this day the people of Israel do not eat the sinew of the thigh that is on the hip socket, because he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip on the sinew of the thigh.

In what may be one of the most difficult stories in the Old Testament to understand, there is an amazing truth we should not miss.  The story the above passage comes from is the wrestling match Jacob has with an unknown wrestler, in the middle of the night.  The story is a natural riddle and comes with much ambiguity.  We are not told who the person is, but are told, in the end that he blesses Jacob and changes his name to Israel.  Later, in this section, God actually repeats the name change Himself:

Genesis 35:9-11 (ESV)

God appeared to Jacob again, when he came from Paddan-aram, and blessed him. And God said to him, “Your name is Jacob; no longer shall your name be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name.” So he called his name Israel. And God said to him, “I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply. A nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall come from your own body.

This can certainly lead us to believe that the wrestler was God.  Although we could say this was a metaphorical story about Jacob wrestling in prayer with God, if it were not for the tangible evidence of Jacob’s him being knocked out of its socket during the wrestling match.  Because the author of the book, Moses, memorializes the hip and socket, it would be assumed this is a real wrestling encounter with God.  Hard to fathom, but we are lead to believe that.  

The great take a way, however, is not the wrestling match, but the name change.  In this incident with God Jacob walks away with three things:

1. A physical scar to note the encounter for the rest of his life.  That is how it is with God. Our encounters with Him seldom leave us the same.  Just ask Job, or Jonah, or Paul.  Job lost his children.  Jonah smelled like fish the rest of his life.   Paul lost his eyesight. 

2. A blessing was placed on him as the outcome of the battle.  The passage implies that Jacob was winning, up until he was injured on his hip.   The exchange from the injury brought blessing.   Job was double blessed from what he had.  Jonah lead an entire nation to God.  Paul became the main apostle to the church.   The struggle in prayer with God brings blessing from God. 

3. His name was changed.  This is where we get the twelve tribes of Israel vs the twelve tribes of Jacob.   God is about name changing.  He likes to call us something different than we were.  He is about identity.   Not what He tells the church in Philadelphia: 

Revelation 3:12 (ESV)

The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name.

Or the church at Pergamum He tells us He will give us a new name, no one knows but Him and us:

Revelation 2:17 (ESV)

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.’

God is about changing our identity.   Jacob, in the Hebrew, means, supplanter.  It means someone who takes over from another.  Jacob took is brother’s birthright.   He was deceptive.   God changed all that and gave him the name of Israel, which means: God prevails.   So, God won the wrestling match.  He prevailed.  But He gave that name to Jacob.  God changed Jacob from someone who deceives to prevail to someone who prevails for God.  That is what God does.  He changes our names.  He gives us our identity.