This is the third occasion on which Jacob memorializes a site by giving it his own name; cf. “Bethel” (28:19) and “Mahanaim” (32:2). All of them involved Jacob and a malʾāḵ or malʾāḵîm, “angel(s).” When Jacob adds now my life has been preserved, he does not mean that he is happily surprised that he has seen God and is still alive. Jacob is not saying: “By all logical considerations, I should be dead by now.” It is true that God says that “a man shall not see me and live” (Exod. 33:20) (a concept