Israel and the Limp That Refuses to Heal
From Jacob’s Night Fight to a Modern Nation Haunted by Its Name
INTRODUCTION
The Craig Bushon Show Media Team is not made up of theologians, pastors, priests, or ordained scholars. We do not claim religious authority. But what we do claim, unapologetically, is our commitment to truth. And as our audience knows, the truth is not hate speech.
Everything you are about to read is the product of careful research, multiple sources, deep reflection, and a sincere effort to understand one of the most consequential stories in human history. We approached this subject the same way we approach every subject on this show: with open eyes, open texts, and an open willingness to go wherever the evidence leads.
This is not a theological decree.
It is not an attempt to convert, provoke, or diminish any faith tradition.
It is a good faith effort to articulate the historical, biblical, and existential reality of Israel as best we can, using the tools we have, with respect for those who have dedicated their lives to this study.
Our mission here is simple and consistent with the ethos of this show: to present the truth as clearly as we can, without distortion, without fear, and without the political muzzle that so often suffocates honest conversation.
What follows is our effort to illuminate the story of Israel, ancient and modern, in a way that honors the weight of its history and the complexity of its name.
THE OP-ED
Long before Israel was a state, a flag, a controversy, or a headline, it was a limp.
The name was not selected by diplomats. It was not crafted in a constitution. It was not chosen in a parliament. The word Israel was born on a riverbank in the early morning hours, in dust, sweat, desperation, and a wound that never healed.
Jacob stood alone on the far side of the Jabbok, preparing to face Esau, the brother he had deceived, and a past he could no longer outrun. Scripture gives us no speeches, no symbolism, no commentary. It gives only the raw image of a man wrestling a mysterious opponent through the night.
The Hebrew word for wrestle appears nowhere else in the Bible, and it shares roots with the word for dust. This is physical, gritty, exhausting combat. Only at dawn does the stranger reveal himself, dislocating Jacob’s hip with a single touch.
Jacob loses the ability to fight. But then he does something unexpected. He clings. Broken, he holds on. Wounded and defeated, he refuses to release the one who wounded him.
“I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
That is the turning point not just of a life, but of a destiny.
He is asked his name. Not because God does not know it, but because Jacob must confess it.
“Jacob.”
The heel-grabber.
The supplanter.
The deceiver.
Only then does the stranger rename him.
“No longer Jacob, but Israel, for you have contended with God and with men and have prevailed.”
Prevailing did not mean victory by strength. It meant refusing to let go, even after being broken. The blessing and the wound came from the same hand.
Jacob limps into the sunrise. Israel is born.
And the limp has never left.
Everything that follows in Jewish history echoes that moment. Egypt. Sinai. Exile. Return. Rome. Diaspora. Pogroms. The Holocaust. Revival. Survival. Israel has never walked smoothly through history. It walks with Jacob’s limp, marked by struggle and by an unexplainable endurance.
Christianity sees further paradox in this. The people renamed for wrestling with God have spent two thousand years wrestling with the Christian claim that God walked among them in Jesus. Paul’s anguish in Romans is another night at the Jabbok: “I would give myself up for the sake of my kinsmen.” The wrestling moved from riverbank to theology.
Centuries later, Hosea retells Jacob’s story and adds a crucial detail: tears. “He wept and sought favor.” Genesis showed the wound. Hosea revealed the weeping. The battle was not just physical. It was spiritual, repentant, pleading.
Jacob’s limp became Israel’s warning. Israel’s tears became Israel’s path back.
Then something astonishing happened three and a half thousand years later.
The State of Israel was reborn. Not by prophets or priests or angels, but by journalists, lawyers, farmers, and soldiers. Theodor Herzl was a secular thinker. David Ben-Gurion believed in history, not miracles. They drafted charters, held congresses, built farms, and stockpiled weapons. They believed they were solving a political problem with political tools.
But the moment they named it Israel, the old story returned.
And that raises a question the modern world rarely asks: why, after thirty-seven centuries, did human beings consciously choose to resurrect the name Israel at all? The founders had other options. Herzl proposed “The Jewish State.” Others suggested “Judea,” “Zion,” or purely modern titles like “The Hebrew Republic.” Yet when the Jewish people stood on the edge of sovereignty for the first time since the Roman Empire, they reached back past exile, past empire, past dispersion, all the way to that moment when a man limped into sunrise with a new name.
They chose Israel.
They chose the wound.
They chose the struggle.
They chose the name God Himself had spoken over their ancestor.
It was not a political calculation. It was an instinct older than memory, a recognition—conscious or not—that the story they were stepping into could not be any other story. Once that name returned to the map, the ancient narrative reawakened. History moved back onto its original track. A secular state found itself living inside a sacred script simply because it chose the name written in that dislocated joint.
A secular state cannot escape a sacred name. A modern nation cannot outrun ancient prophecy. Herzl wrote with Enlightenment ink, but the parchment turned out to be the same biblical scroll.
And here, a vital truth must be stated: whether understood through Jewish covenantal faith or through Christian theology, the survival of Israel itself stands as a sacred and stubborn miracle, one that demands reverence before it invites interpretation.
Israel soon discovered that the wrestling had not ended. It had only moved onto a larger stage.
A wounded patriarch limping at dawn became the image of:
An air-raid siren in Tel Aviv.
A Supreme Court debate in Jerusalem.
A soldier at the Western Wall.
A rabbi arguing with a secular activist.
A debate over land, borders, faith, identity, exile, return, and survival.
Belgium does not provoke global prophecy debates.
Peru is not treated as a cosmic hinge.
Only Israel is.
Because only Israel carries a birth certificate written in a dislocated joint.
Every settlement dispute, every Gaza incursion, every rocket interception, every peace agreement, every UN condemnation, and every Passover table from Buenos Aires to Brooklyn echoes one ancient question:
“Will You bless me, or will You break me?”
And the divine answer remains unchanged:
Yes.
The blessing and the wound are indivisible.
The limp and the promise cannot be separated.
The cost and the covenant speak with one voice.
Israel is not ordinary. It never was. It never will be.
A people renamed by God at daybreak cannot be treated like any other nation.
They do not walk through history. They wrestle through it.
The limp is not a flaw.
It is the covenant.
It is the evidence.
It is the price and the promise bound up in one.
Israel walks crooked because it once clung to God in the dark and refused to let go.
Israel survives because God refused to let go in return.
Israel wrestles because that is its task, its identity, its calling.
The limp is the legacy.
The limp is the identity.
And the limp is the sign that the covenant still stands.
SHOW CLOSING MESSAGE
At the end of the day, our goal on this program has never been to flatter anyone’s politics or feed anyone’s pre-approved narrative. The Craig Bushon Show is committed to something far more difficult, far more dangerous, and far more necessary: the truth. And the truth is almost never polite, never comfortable, and never perfectly aligned with anyone’s expectations.
This writing is not pro-Zionist or anti-Zionist. It is not triumphalist for Christians or accusatory toward Jews. It is simply an honest attempt to describe what history itself keeps insisting upon: that Israel cannot be reduced to a slogan, erased by an argument, or explained away by a theory.
The wound and the blessing have always traveled together. The limp Jacob carried into the sunrise still echoes in the way Israel walks through the world. Some want to pretend the limp can be cured. Some want to pretend the limp proves illegitimacy. Some want the story to be over, or rewritten, or reassigned.
But the truth is simpler and harder:
the limp is the covenant, and the covenant refuses to die.
If some readers find this perspective challenging, that is understandable. The truth often invites us to look at familiar stories with fresh eyes. And if these reflections encourage Christians, Jews, skeptics, or anyone else to think a little more deeply about history, faith, and the world we share, then this conversation will have been worthwhile.
Our goal was not to offer the final word on this ancient story, but to remind you that the story is not finished — that history is still limping forward, carrying a name born in a midnight struggle, a name that continues to shape headlines, destinies, and lives.
Whether you believe that meaning comes from covenant, prophecy, chance, or human endurance, one thing is undeniable: Israel walks with a wound that has outlived empires. And wounds that endure that long are not political accidents. They are signals.
Here at The Craig Bushon Show,
we don’t just follow the headlines,
we read between the lines to get to the bottom line of what’s really going on.
And the bottom line today is this:
the story of Israel is still being written, and the world is watching because the Author has not put down His pen.
SOURCES CONSULTED
Biblical Texts
Genesis 32:22–32
Hosea 12:3–6
Romans 9–11
Classical Jewish Commentaries
Rashi on Genesis 32
Nachmanides (Ramban) on Genesis 32
Talmud Bavli, Hullin 91a
Christian Theological Sources
Augustine, City of God
John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis
N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God
Historical Sources on Zionism and the Modern State of Israel
Theodor Herzl, Der Judenstaat
Theodor Herzl, Altneuland
David Ben-Gurion, Rebirth and Destiny of Israel
Benny Morris, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War
Anita Shapira, Israel: A History
Sociopolitical and Cultural Contexts
Michael Oren, Power, Faith, and Fantasy
Daniel Gordis, Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn
Yossi Klein Halevi, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor
DISCLAIMER
This editorial is a research-based interpretive work. It is not a doctrinal statement, nor does it represent the official belief system of any religious or governmental institution. It is offered for educational and journalistic purposes, with respect for the Jewish and Christian traditions referenced. All theological interpretations are presented thoughtfully, without intent to diminish or elevate one tradition over another.
