1 “I would like, sirs,” I said, “to learn from you what the meaning of the name Israel is.” And as they were silent, I went on: “I will tell you what I know. For I do not think it right to know something and not say it, or, suspecting that you know it but deceive yourselves out of envy or willful ignorance, to keep worrying about it; I say everything simply and without guile, as my Lord said: ‘A sower went out to sow the seed; and some fell on the road, some among thorns, some on rocky ground, and some on good ground.’ 2 So I must speak in the hope that there is good ground somewhere, since that Lord of mine, being strong and mighty, will come and demand back His own from everyone, and will not condemn His steward if He finds that he, knowing that his Lord is mighty and will come and demand His own, gave it out to every bank and did not bury it for any reason whatever. 3 Now the name Israel means this: a man who overcomes power. For Isra is ‘a man overcoming,’ and El is ‘power.’ And that Christ would do this when He became man was foretold by the mystery of the wrestling match Jacob had with the One who appeared to him, who appeared because He served the will of the Father, yet is God because He is the firstborn of all creatures.⁠a 4 For when He became man, as I said before, the devil came to Him, that is, the power that is called the serpent and Satan, tempting Him and striving to bring Him down by asking Him to worship him. But He destroyed and overthrew him, exposing him as wicked for asking to be worshiped as God contrary to the Scripture, since he had become an apostate from the will of God. For He answers him, ‘It is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only.’ And defeated and exposed, the devil withdrew for the time. 5 But since our Christ was going to be numbed, that is, in pain and the experience of suffering, when He was to be crucified, He announced this beforehand too by touching Jacob’s thigh and making it go numb. And Israel was His name from the beginning, the name He gave the blessed Jacob when He blessed him with His own name, proclaiming by this too that all who through Him take refuge in the Father are the blessed Israel. But you, having understood none of this and not preparing yourselves to understand it, expect to be saved no matter what, because you are children of Jacob by physical descent. But I have proved at length that in this too you deceive yourselves.