Annotatio CXII

”Thy name shall not be called Jacob, but Israel.” — Genesis 32:28

Philo (in the book on Abraham), and — in the book On the Interpretation of Hebrew Names — Eusebius, Chrysostom, and Hilary, wrongly interpreting the name “Israel” imposed on the patriarch Jacob, Jerome censures in the book of Hebrew Questions in these words:¹ “But that which in the book of Names is interpreted ‘Israel, a man seeing God,’ worn threadbare by the speech of almost all, seems to be interpreted not so much truly as forcibly. For here ‘Israel’ is written by these letters ישראל, which is interpreted ‘Prince of God’ or ‘Upright of God’; but ‘a man seeing God’ is written by these letters אישראל, of which איש signifies ‘man,’ ראה ‘seeing,’ אל ‘God.’ Although, therefore, they be of great authority and eloquence, and their shadow oppress us — [they] who translated Israel ‘a man’ or ‘a mind seeing God’ — we are led rather by the authority of Scripture, and of the Angel (or of God) who called him Israel, than by any secular eloquence whatever.”