Isaiah 44:5 RSV — This one will say, ‘I am the LORD’s,’ another will call himself by the name of Jacob, and another will write on his hand, ‘The LORD’s,’ and surname himself by the name of Israel.”
Isaiah 45:1 RSV — Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped, to subdue nations before him and ungird the loins of kings, to open doors before him that gates may not be closed:
To be clear: I do not think I’m anointed, comparable to a king like Cyrus, nor particularly led by the hand of God.
I aspire to serve God to the best of my ability and these passages are bolstering.
The Oxford Study Bible says that owners put their name on the hands of slaves.
When I got my first tattoo, the story of Jacob’s dream and the ladder stretching down from Heaven felt right. I forget why exactly we chose to use my right arm, but I think it was Kristen’s call from an artistic stand point. Her intuitions are strong.
The supplanter Jacob is renamed Israel after he wrestles with God (or God’s angel, I haven’t gone deep enough on that to say). Although I want to study more, I’m tempted to have Kristen depict that wrestling match on my left arm. Jacob and Israel represent two extremes of the human spirit, the conivining and the righteous. This is the struggle that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn framed so beautifully.
I feel this divide daily in temptations for good and ill. To look down and see that I have marked myself, voluntarily, with something akin to “I am the LORD’s” gives me a little more strength to see and choose the righteous path.
