thy name: and he called his name Israel. And God said unto him, I am God Almighty: be fruitful and mul tiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins; and the land which I gave Abraham and Isaac, to thee I will give it, and to thy seed after thee will I give the land. And God went up from him in the place where he talked with him. And Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he talked with him, even a pil lar of stone: and he poured a drink offering thereon; and he poured oil thereon. And Jacob called the name of the place where God spake with him, Beth-el” (Genesis 35:9-15). God does not eliminate any of the children of Jacob from the blessing to be received. He accepts all of the sons of Jacob (now called Israel) and their seed to be His chosen peo ple. The name “children of Israel” sig nifies the covenant relationship with the wonderful covenant-keeping God. As one looks through the past cen turies, you have a real description of the Jewish people. The prophet Ezekiel goes a bit further when he prophesies, “Moreover I will make thee waste, and a reproach among the nations that are round about thee, in the sight of all that pass by. So it shall be a reproach and a taunt, an instruction and an astonishment unto the nations that are round about thee, when I shall execute judgments in thee in anger and in fury and in furious rebukes. I the Lord have spoken it” (Ezek. 5:14-15). Have any people ever suffered like the Jewish people? The intensity and the duration of their persecutions have been most marked through his tory’s pages. Their sin against the Lord, as His specially chosen people, has caused them to bear a sore bur den in the world. And these are just a few of the many prophecies con cerning the relationship of Israel and the promises of blessing and rebuke.
goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of” (Genesis 28:10- 15). These verses reveal to us that God promised to Jacob a special blessing which He had confirmed by covenant with Abraham and with Isaac. The blessings God gave to the chil dren of Israel by the covenant made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in cluded the title to the land of prom ise. Many other interesting Bible verses prove conclusively that God’s chosen people were to be from the seed of Isaac, the one son of Abraham by faith ; and to be continued further to the seed of Jacob. We read of God’s visitation to Jacob near the brook Jabbok, “Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast pre vailed” (Genesis 32:28). “Jacob” is the Hebrew word for “supplanter,” and Israel means, “prince with God.” Jacob had desired the special bless ing of the Lord. He had tried to gain it by trickery until he came to see that God already had promised it to the seed of Abraham. Since this blessing was to be his anyway, he should have left it to God to bring it about. Therefore, the blessing came to him, not because he tried to de ceive and take the place of his broth er, but in spite of it. God’s changing of his name from Jacob to Israel meant that Jacob had changed char acter before the Lord. He was no more “supplanter” of his brother but was in a covenant relationship with the Lord. After a particular episode in the life of Jacob, God confirmed his spe cial covenant with Jacob as the Bible reveals, “And God appeared unto Jacob again, when he came out of Padan-aram, and blessed him. And God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob: thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be 32
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