The Three Names Jacob Called

How to read this study

Each citation carries the source text together with a literal rendering. A transliteration is added only where the argument turns on the sound of a word. The parentheses inside the literal rendering are placed only on words that actually carry the argument in that chapter; where a form has to be analysed, the tense and voice are named in the body and the ground for it is set out in the word-breakdown table.

Part Three, "What Was Jacob Waiting For," treated the single verse Genesis 49:18. This fourth part treats the two verses on either side of it — Gen 48:16 and 49:10 — and the New Testament that takes them up. Old Testament counts are over all 23,213 verses of OSHB v2.2; New Testament counts are a full survey of RP2018. Verse numbers follow the common English versification, with the Masoretic numbers given alongside for Genesis 32 and Hosea 12.

1Jacob's last three verses

Genesis 48~49 is Jacob blessing his grandsons and his sons. Within it there are three places where he addresses not a man but God, and all three use a different word.

2Goel — the first redeemer in Scripture

Word breakdown · GEN 48:16

Goel (הַגֹּאֵל) is not a title but a participle. Not the noun "redeemer" as a standing, but "the One who is redeeming me" — an act in progress. The object is nailed down as well: "me." This is not a general statement but something that happened to Jacob himself.

Where this word begins

The second occurrence comes far later, at Exodus 6:6; it becomes law in Leviticus 25, and runs on through the kinsman-redeemer of Ruth, Job 19:25 ("my goel lives"), and Isaiah 41:14. The starting point of that line is Jacob's mouth.

He calls three and one predicate answers

In the verse just before, verse 15, Jacob calls on "the Elohim" twice. In verse 16 he calls "the malakh." The titles are three but the predicate that follows is one. Yevarekh (יְבָרֵךְ) is third person masculine singular imperfect.

3To be a goel he must be flesh of the same flesh

Word breakdown · LEV 25:49

Hebrews takes up the same two conditions

Word breakdown · HEB 2:14

The two verbs differ in tense. On the children's side it is perfect (kekoinoneken): having shared in flesh and blood, that state holds still. On His side it is aorist (meteschen): His entering that state happened at one point. The statement is that He shared in an abiding condition by a single entry into it.

Opheilen (ὤφειλεν) is a verb of debt, and here it is imperfect. Not a choice but a requirement to be discharged, and one that kept standing. What the law required as sheer basar, flesh of the same flesh, Hebrews writes over as sarx kai haima, flesh and blood.

4Who is that malakh

Jacob had already heard that self-introduction

Word breakdown · GEN 31:13

The speaker in verse 11 is malakh ha-Elohim, the messenger of God. In verse 13 that messenger uses the first-person pronoun anokhi and says, "I am the God of Bethel." Jacob had heard this before he ever came to the Jabbok. The same usage recurs within Genesis — Hagar calls the one who spoke to her by the malakh of YHWH "YHWH" (Gen 16:13), and in Gen 22:11~16 the malakh of YHWH says, "you have not withheld your son from Me."

The Jabbok

Word breakdown · GEN 32:31

The text calls the one he wrestled an ish (אִישׁ, a man) (Gen 32:24). That is, He stood in the form of a man. Yet Jacob named the place the face of God. And Hosea identifies that opponent.

What remained was a limp

Tsolea is a participle. Not a report that he limped once, but a state that continued afterward. The mark left on the man who held on all night was not a trophy but a sign that nothing had been achieved by his own strength.

5The Lion and the goel are two different lines

Word breakdown · GEN 49:10

Shevet (sceptre) and mehoqeq (ruler's staff) are instruments of rule. The lion image in the preceding verse belongs to the same line (Gen 49:9). What comes out of this passage is kingship, not the standing of a kinsman.

Revelation sets the two lines one verse apart

In Rev 5:5 the elder says, "the Lion of the tribe of Judah has overcome." Yet when John looked, what stood there was a Lamb as though slaughtered (Rev 5:6). And the next verse writes what that Lamb did in the language of the goel.

Word breakdown · REV 5:9

Agorazo (ἀγοράζω) is the verb for buying in a market at a price. This is what the Hebrew gaal looks like carried out in Greek, and the price was paid not as the Lion but as the Lamb.

Hebrews separates line from qualification in the same way. It says that our Lord sprang from Judah (Heb 7:14), and then divides at once: His priesthood belongs not to the line of Judah but to the order of Melchizedek (Heb 7:15~17).

6The order of taking hold

(1) The new birth comes first

Word breakdown · JOH 3:3

What the text says is not "cannot enter" but "cannot even see." And gennethe is passive. In being born there is nothing active on the part of the one born. Forcing is a later question. What one is born of, Peter specifies.

Word breakdown · 1PE 1:23

Two decisive words stand together in this one verse. Spora (seed) — the word that takes up the seed of Genesis 3:15 directly. Menontos (remaining) — the same meno of item (4) below. The word remains first, and then we remain. The order is already fixed here. That anagegennemenoi is a perfect passive participle points the same way: something that happened once and holds still, and the one who brought it about is not the one born.

(2) Forcing

Word breakdown · MAT 11:12

That the usage is this scarce means it is a scene thrown out once, not a lesson given repeatedly. What Jacob did at the Jabbok is exactly this action — he would not let go (Gen 32:26).

(3) The door

The door is not something to be broken down but a way already open, and it is not a thing but a Person. How one enters, the Psalm specifies — enter His gates with todah (thanksgiving) (Psa 100:4). What is asked at the door is not force but thanks.

And Jacob's last confession is exactly that.

Word breakdown · GEN 49:18

As Part Three established, this one verse is where Yeshuah (H3444) and qawah (H6960) first appear in Scripture, and the verb is Piel perfect. He waited intensively, and that waiting is written as already complete.

(4) Remaining

Word breakdown · JOH 15:10

The weight is in the second half. Tetereka is perfect: He Himself has already kept the Father's commands and the result of that holds still; and the meno that follows is present. He carried out the manner of remaining first, and handed it over from within that state. That the verb on our side is future (meneite) follows the same order.

Keeping the commands and remaining in Him are bound into one sentence in only two places in the New Testament. The second of them states mutual dwelling outright — "the one who keeps His commands remains in Him, and He in him" (1Jo 3:24). And the text nails down that those commands are not heavy (1Jo 5:3 · Mat 11:30).

7Taken together

As Part Three treated, Jacob knew that his own name (Yaaqov) shares a root with the word of Genesis 3:15 (aqev, heel), and confessed that he waited for salvation on the ground of the promise that the heel would be bruised.

How the whole closes

To become the flesh-of-one-flesh that the law required, the Logos became flesh and pitched His tent. The malakh Jacob called goel in Gen 48:16 is the Logos of Joh 1:14.

Appendix A — material that tells against this argument

Presenting only what favours a case is not study, so the material on the other side is gathered here.

A malakh is usually a created messenger. The word occurs 213 times in the Old Testament and the overwhelming majority refer to created messengers or to human envoys. The men Jacob sent to Esau in Gen 32:3 are malakhim too. Nor is the singular predicate of Gen 48:16 decisive: in Hebrew, when several subjects are listed, the predicate commonly agrees with the nearest one. — Yet Genesis itself treats this malakh apart (Gen 16:13 · 22:11~16 · 31:13). Within Genesis this usage is not an exception but a consistent group.

The textual problem in Shiloh. The manuscript tradition divides at שִׁילוֹ in Gen 49:10. The Septuagint reads it as "the things laid up for him" (שֶׁלּוֹ), which makes it not a name. This study takes the Masoretic text as its source and does not hang its argument on this one word. The argument of chapter 5 rests on the fact that the shevet and the mehoqeq are with Judah, and that part is unaffected by the variant.

The voice of Mat 11:12. Biazetai reads either as middle ("presses forward with force") or as passive ("suffers violence"), and the RP2018 parsing tags it passive. A good many commentators read biastes as "violent men" as well. The argument about order in this study does not depend on how the voice of this verse is settled. The conclusion that forcing comes after the new birth comes from Joh 3:3.

A first occurrence is only a lexical fact. That the first occurrence of gaal is Gen 48:16 is a fact of canonical order; it is not evidence that Jacob knew the later goel provision. What this study speaks to is not the extent of Jacob's knowledge but where the text placed this word. The text placed it in Jacob's mouth.

Appendix B — word index

This study is the fourth part, following Part One "The Secret of the Name Yeshua," Part Two "The Divine Heh," and Part Three "What Was Jacob Waiting For." Old Testament counts are over all 23,213 verses of OSHB v2.2; New Testament counts come from a full survey of RP2018.