This name is an invitation for us to cast all our cares upon the Lord, to have complete confidence in his sovereign oversight of our lives. What is there that can harm us if God Almighty is with us? That is not a presumptuous way to put it, for God has condescended to speak in these terms (Genesis 46:4). God speaks his promises quietly in the secrecy of our hearts, and all the clamour of the world cannot change them.
Lawson comments on ‘everlasting possession’ and asks whether Jacob added to the promise in using these words, since they are not found in chapter 28 or 35. But no, Jacob did not add to the promise. He would not have dared to do so, since all his assurance came from what God said. The exact same words are used in God’s promise to Abraham (Genesis 17:8), and Jacob saw what God had said to him was a repeat of this same promise. The land would indeed be given to Israel as long as the national covenant lasted, but the fact that Jacob expected the blessing to be is forever shows that, like Abraham before him, his eye was primarily on the heavenly blessing. The land of Canaan had been promised not only to his seed, but to Abraham himself as an everlasting possession. Obviously that was not literal, because Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob lived in the land as nomads – ‘These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off’ (Hebrews 11:13). Their hold on the physical land will be unstable: from time to time they will gain it and lose it and gain it back again. The parcel of land represented by Canaan is just a token; the eternal possession is the new heaven and earth.