After wrestling with an angel all night, the angel finally touches his inner thigh and causes him to walk with a limp from that day forward. After this, Jacob is renamed to Israel by God. Israel means “one who wrestles.”
Now, Israel represents the 12 sons of Jacob/Israel. His favorite son, Joseph’s tribe is split into two “half tribes” after his sons Ephram and Manasseh. This is why there is no “tribe of Joseph.”
The name also represents the land of which those 12 tribes ultimately settled. The land was partitioned into 11 regions with the tribe of Levi owning no land but, rather, living amongst the other 11 tribes as their teachers, advocates before God, doctors, and legal structure.
At the time of Rehaboam and Jeroboam, Israel came to mean “the northern tribes” while “Judah” (later “Jew”) came to mean “the other two tribes,” that is Benjamin and Judah. In Hosea, we see this separation clearly in Hos 8:14 and Jer 3
Hos 8:14 ESV - For Israel has forgotten his Maker and built palaces, and Judah has multiplied fortified cities; so I will send a fire upon his cities, and it shall devour her strongholds.
Jer 3:6-8 ESV - The LORD said to me in the days of King Josiah: “Have you seen what she did, that faithless one, Israel, how she went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and there played the whore? And I thought, ‘After she has done all this she will return to me,’ but she did not return, and her treacherous sister Judah saw it. She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce. Yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but she too went and played the whore.
God’s ultimate plan is to reunite the tribes into one Israel. This “tree of Israel” will include all who call upon the name of the LORD, including gentiles, as Paul calls out.
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