Israel

Israel is the personal name given to the patriarch Jacob, and through him the name of the people descended from him, and it is also bound into the titles by which that people addresses its God.

Scripture says the name was conferred at the Jabbok, where Jacob's night of wrestling ended with a blessing and a new name (Genesis 32:28). The prophets keep the two names as one person, set in parallel: “Yahweh who created you, Jacob, and he who formed you, Israel” (Isaiah 43:1); “Don’t be afraid, you worm Jacob, and you men of Israel” (Isaiah 41:14). The gentilic “Israelite” and the rarer feminine “Israelitess” simply identify a descendant, and the poetic name Jeshurun (etymologically something like “upright one”) is used of the same people in passages such as Deuteronomy 32:15 and Isaiah 44:2.

As a collective, Israel is addressed by God as a covenant partner: “if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall be my own possession from among all peoples” (Exodus 19:5), and “Now, Israel, what does Yahweh your God require of you, but to fear Yahweh your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him…” (Deuteronomy 10:12); the wilderness feeding with manna is recalled as a lesson that “man does not live by bread only” (Deuteronomy 8:3). Historically, after the death of Solomon the united kingdom split, and in many prophetic texts “Israel” names the northern kingdom specifically over against Judah, while elsewhere it names the whole people — Jeremiah looks to the day when “Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell safely” (Jeremiah 23:6) and speaks of a new covenant made “with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah” (Jeremiah 31:31), a promise whose wording is taken up again in Hebrews 8:10. The name also attaches itself to God himself in worship: “Yahweh of Armies is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge” (Psalms 46:7, 11); “Your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel” (Isaiah 41:14).

Christian traditions read the term differently. In one common reading, “Israel” in the New Testament can denote ethnic Israel, can be applied to the Church gathered around the Messiah, and can be a title whose promises the Church now inherits — Hebrews 8:10 quotes the new-covenant promise to the house of Israel directly to a Christian congregation, and some read this as the Church replacing Israel. Other traditions, including most Jewish reading and a substantial body of Christian scholarship, hold that the covenant promises to Israel remain with the Jewish people, and that the Church is joined to Israel rather than substituted for it; a further reading takes prophetic references to Israel as referring to the modern state, while others read them as figures for the Church or for the people of God generally. The texts themselves are read differently, and no single reading is the plainly obvious one.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.