What Does Genesis 35:10 Mean?
And God said to him, Your name is Jacob, the heel-grasper. Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name. And he called his name Israel, the one who strives with God.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob: thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name: and he called his name Israel.THE KEY
Israel carries Jacob’s struggle with God into the nature spoken over him.
THE MEANING
The verse shows a life named beyond its first identity. Jacob carries the image of the heel; Israel carries the struggle with God named in the story. For the reader, a former name does not exhaust the nature God can call into view.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The name first given to you is the final truth of who you are.
THE ROOT
יִשְׂרָאֵל
Yisra'el
GROWS FROM
שׂרה
ś-r-h
To strive, contend, or persist; Genesis 32:28 uses this verb for Jacob’s striving with God and with people.
“Israel, the one who strives with God” in this verse is Yisra'el. Genesis links Israel’s name to the verb “you have striven,” joining the name to an encounter with God. The new name carries that encounter within it: a name is more than a label; it holds a nature.
ALSO GROWS
śārîtā: You have striven or contended.
שָׂרִיתָ
Genesis 32:28 uses this form to explain the name Israel through Jacob’s struggle with God and people.
yisra'el: Israel, the name linked in Genesis 32:28 to striving with God.
יִשְׂרָאֵל
This is the name God speaks over Jacob here, carrying the encounter into his identity.
יַעֲקֹב
Ya'aqov
GROWS FROM
עקב
ʿ-q-b
Heel; to follow at the heel or supplant.
“Jacob, the heel-grasper” in this verse is Ya'aqov. Jacob’s name opens a concrete image of grasping the heel, while its root also carries the sense of following at the heel or supplanting. The verse holds that name alongside Israel, whose meaning recalls a struggle with God.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāqēv: Heel.
עָקֵב
This is the bodily image carried in Jacob’s name.
ʿāqav: To follow at the heel or supplant.
עָקַב
This verb makes the name’s image active: the one at the heel can also overtake.
ʿiqqevot: Footprints or tracks.
עִקְּבוֹת
The tracks preserve the heel image as a path left behind.
THE PATTERN
A new name can carry a nature that an earlier name did not disclose.
No longer shall your name be called Abram, but Abraham, father of multitudes, for I have set you as a father of many nations.And the nations shall see your alignment, and all kings your weight; and you shall be called by a new name, which the mouth of the LORD shall name.The one who has an ear, let him hear and respond to what the breath says to the assemblies. To the one who overcomes I will give to eat from the hidden manna, and I will give him a white pebble, and upon the pebble a new name written, which no one knows except the one who takes it.THE THREAD
And he said, Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, the one who struggles with God, for you have struggled with God and with men, and you have prevailed.Genesis 32:28 opens the name Israel through the verb “you have striven,” linking it to Jacob’s struggle with God and with people. Genesis 35:10 speaks that name again as the nature now declared over him.
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