And he said, Your name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince have you power with God and with men, and have prevailed.
All Commentaries on Genesis 32:28 Go To Genesis 32
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
Now, as I said just a little while ago, Jacob was also called Israel, which was the name generally borne by the people descended from him. This name was given him by the angel who wrestled with him when Jacob was on his way back from Mesopotamia. This angel obviously presents a type of Christ. For the fact that Jacob “prevailed over” him (the angel, of course, being a willing loser to symbolize the hidden meaning) represents the passion of Christ, in which the Jews seemed to prevail over him. And yet Jacob obtained a blessing from the very angel whom he had defeated; thus the giving of the name was the blessing. Now “Israel” means “seeing God,” and the vision of God will be the reward of all the saints at the end of the world. Moreover, the angel also touched the apparent victor on the broad part of his thigh and thus made him lame. And so the same man, Jacob, was the same time blessed and lame—blessed in those who among this same people of Israel have believed in Christ and crippled in respect of those who do not believe. For the broad part of the thigh represents the general mass of the race. For in fact it is to the majority of that stock that the prophetic statement applies, “They have limped away from their paths.”
