took away and just now he has taken away my blessing” (27:36). Now, instead of Jacob, he is renamed Israel, “God fights” or “God rules,” “for you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome.” Names throughout Scripture are significant, but changes of name in midlife are specially so (cf. Abram/Abraham and Sarai/Sarah in 17:5, 15). Here Jacob’s new name was to become the nation’s name, and it is fraught with significance. As often in the Bible, the historical etymology of a name does not