“And he said to him, ‘I will not let you leave unless you bless me.’ ” (Genesis 32:27)
Let us try to understand why our father Jacob needed the blessing of the angel with whom he had struggled, after God had already blessed him, and also why the angel answered Jacob with the question “What is your name?” Could it be that he did not know Jacob’s name?
The stories of the lives of the patriarchs always convey a lesson for us. Jacob encountered the angel, struggled with him, and sustained damage when the angel touched upon his sciatic nerve. Then the angel made his preparations to leave, and Jacob said, “Is that it? Is this to be the fate of my children? After they have suffered all the pain and sustained all the damage inflicted on them, is this to be their whole victory—that they survived, that their enemies failed to finish them off? And will they then simply revert to the same state they were in before all their suffering? It must not be!” This is why Jacob said, “I will not let you leave unless you bless me.” He was trying to ensure that after the suffering, not only would their enemies leave them alone, but that there would also be salvation from God.
It is well known that the angel of Esau, with whom Jacob struggled, is called Sammael in Hebrew, and that in the future the Hebrew letter mem will be removed from his name, because the mem belongs to the Hebrew word mavet, or “death.” The mem will be removed because, in the future, “Death will be swallowed up for ever.” (Isaiah 25:8)
In the world to come, the angel’s name will be Sael, which in gematria (attributing numerical value to each of the Hebrew letters) adds up to the number 91, which is equivalent to the sum of the four letter name of God, YHVH, (26) and the name Adonai (65). And so when this angel is called Sael, it will become holy and take its place among all the other holy angels.
Our father Jacob struggled with the angel of Esau, in order to fix his part in that angel, so that the angel would be ready for the future redemption and the changing of his name to Sael. Therefore, after this struggle the angel had already become a holy angel, and wanted only to act for the good of Israel. When the angel asked Jacob, “What is your name?” and Jacob answered “Jacob,” the angel was making a profound statement.
The name “Jacob” was given to him because of the circumstances surrounding his birth. Jacob and Esau were twins. When Esau, the elder sibling was born, Jacob was grasping Esau’s heel. The word “Jacob” means “he that holds onto the heel of.” So it had been throughout the ages, whatever victories had come unto Jacob’s hands had come to him only after Esau had trodden on them with his heel. But now, after the struggle, Jacob is free of the heels that have been treading upon him, for now the angel of Esau has been fixed and desires only the good of the Jewish people. “Now,” says the angel to Jacob, “you don’t need to demand my blessing after your victory, or pray that in the future your children will come away with more than the mere victory of survival. There is no need for that, because from now on your name will be Israel, meaning ‘victory.’ The victories will be yours from the outset, and you will overpower the angel.”
The angel also hinted to Jacob another aspect of his new name. The name “Israel,” as the angel explained to Jacob, means “You struggled with angels and with men and you won.” The Hebrew word for “struggle” is sar, and stems from the Hebrew word for “lord.” The angel was saying, “First you were a lord, and then you were victorious. Even before the battle was decided you had already won, because even when you were in dire straits, you still ruled your spirit and never allowed it to fall. Even in those difficult times you were still, inside yourself, always a lord.”