From Peniel to Bethel: Why Jacob was Renamed Twice

Perhaps the most drastic change in the landscape of Scripture is the transformation of Jacob into Israel. A close reading of the Book of Genesis reveals an intriguing, little-noticed detail. God changed Jacob’s name to Israel in a decisive act at Peniel (Gen 32:22–32), then publicly ratified that name change years later at Bethel (Gen 35:10). What appears as two renamings is actually one new identity, first given in a private struggle, then sealed in a public covenant ceremony.

The First Renaming: Peniel, Identity through Struggle

The Peniel scene is one of the most memorable in the Old Testament. Jacob is alone and terrified, and his past is catching up with him. His brother Esau, whom he had cheated out of his birthright, is approaching with four hundred men. After sending his family and possessions across the Jabbok, Jacob remains behind. Then someone wrestles with him until daybreak.

Radak, a distinguished medieval Jewish commentator, argues that this special divine wrestler was sent by the LORD to prevent Jacob from making another terrible mistake (Jacob was rethinking his plan to return to the promised land, which would have required facing Esau). They wrestle in the dark; the “man” touches Jacob’s hip socket, dislocating it with a single touch. From that day on, Jacob limped. Yet though wounded, he refuses to let go, crying, “I will not let you go unless you bless me” (Gen 32:26).

Then the divine wrestler asks, “What is your name?” This is not a request for information. God already knows Jacob’s name. It is a call to be aware of his identity. Jacob answers, “Jacob” (יַעֲקֹב), which means “he supplants” or “he grasps the heel,” a reference to his lifelong pattern of deception and self-reliance. Then the divine being declares:

“Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel (יִשְׂרָאֵל), because you have contended with God and with men and have prevailed.” (Gen 32:28)

The name Yisra’el is most naturally translated as “someone who wrestles with God” or “someone with whom God wrestles” (from שָׂרָה sarah, “to strive/exert,” and אֵל El, “God”). It is a name of honor but also a name marked by pain. Jacob does not secure his blessings by strength. Just the opposite is true. He does so by clinging to God in utter weakness. The big takeaway was simple: Jacob should not be afraid of facing Esau, because he had a face-to-face meeting with someone far more powerful and dangerous.

The Years Between: Living Like Jacob, Not Israel

When the family tragedy strikes in Genesis 34, his daughter Dinah is violated, and his sons Simeon and Levi respond with deceit and mass slaughter. They trick the men of Shechem into being circumcised, then kill them while they are still in pain, an act of cunning that mirrors Jacob’s own youthful deception of Isaac.

Jacob’s reaction is telling. He does not say, “You have defamed the name of the God who renamed me Israel.” Instead, he cries out:

“You have brought trouble on me by making me stink to the inhabitants of the land” (Gen 34:30).

On the surface, this sounds like fear of reprisal and self-preservation. But a closer reading reveals something deeper. Jacob’s sons acted exactly as he once acted: they used a sacred sign (circumcision) as a weapon of deceit. The Hebrew text makes the connection explicit: when Jacob deceived Isaac, he acted with mirmah (מִרְמָה), meaning guile or cunning. In Genesis 34:13, the very same word appears: Jacob’s sons answer Shechem “with guile” (בְּמִרְמָה). The narrator is signaling that the old “Jacob” nature, the supplanter, has reproduced itself in the next generation. Jacob recognizes the mirror. His own pattern of deception, never fully purged, has returned to haunt him in the blood-soaked fields of Shechem.

That is precisely why Genesis 35 does not begin with God saying, “Well done.” Instead, God commands, “Arise, go up to Bethel… put away the foreign gods… purify yourselves.” The horror of Genesis 34 exposes that the man named Israel at Peniel is still functionally living as Jacob. And until the household is cleansed, until the idols are buried, the name cannot be publicly ratified.

The Second Renaming: Bethel, Identity Enacted in Community

Jacob obeys. We read:

So Jacob said to his household and all who were with him, “Put away the foreign gods among you, purify yourselves, and change your garments. Then let us arise and go up to Bethel so that I may make there an altar to the God who answers me in the day of my distress.” So they gave to Jacob all the foreign gods that they had and the rings that were in their ears, and Jacob buried them under the terebinth tree that was near Shechem. (Gen 35:2-4)

Then God appears to him again, not as a wrestler in the night, but as El Shaddai (אֵל שַׁדַּי), in a public covenantal ceremony. In Genesis 35:11, God says to Jacob:

“A nation and an assembly of nations will come from you.”

There is a crucial addition here that Peniel lacked. At Peniel, the name Israel was given as a mark of personal transformation, Jacob’s own identity remade through struggle. At Bethel, that same name expands to carry the weight of a people. What was private becomes public; what was individual becomes corporate. The name “Israel” now belongs not only to the man who limps but to the nation that will descend from him.

Then the second renaming takes place. Verse 10 reads:

“God said to him, ‘Your name is Jacob; your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name.’ So He called him Israel.” (Gen 35:10)

A caveat is in order: Genesis 35:10 does not explicitly prohibit anyone from ever calling him “Jacob” again. The prohibition is against his primary, official name continuing to be Jacob. The narrator’s continued use of “Jacob” thereafter is not a contradiction but a deliberate literary choice, showing that his identity has been changed, but his behavior has not yet caught up.

Conclusion

Bethel is not a meaningless copy of Peniel. It’s a public ratification and communal completion. Before the name “Israel” can be sealed, the foreign gods must be buried, the garments changed, and the household purified. What God began in the dark at Peniel, He finishes in the light at Bethel. This is not an instantaneous breakthrough but a gradual process of sanctification and embodiment.

For Jacob, completion meant returning to the place of the first promise, but this time not as a deceiver fleeing his brother. He arrives as a man who limps, who has buried his household’s idols, and who finally bears the name not as a private blessing but as a public identity. Peniel was the wrestling match that dislocated his hip and earned him a new name. Bethel was the altar where that identity was sealed before God and family and where the man named Jacob fully became the father of a nation called Israel. Without Peniel, nothing would change. But without Bethel, the transformation would have remained incomplete, a blessing that never fully came to pass.