What Does Genesis 32:29 Mean?

Therefore to this day the people of Israel do not eat the sinew of the thigh that is on the hip socket, because he touched the socket of Jacob's hip on the sinew of the thigh. The dietary practice of not eating the sciatic nerve is presented as the origin story of a specific Israelite food law. The location of the story's account of this practice places its origin in the physical reality of Jacob's injury: the divine being touched this specific location and dislocated it; therefore Israel does not eat the corresponding sinew of an animal.

This verse is the only explicit food law origin story in Genesis (the dietary laws will be given formally in Leviticus and Deuteronomy). Its presence here shows that the Jabbok encounter had lasting regulatory consequences for the community of people who would descend from Jacob-Israel. The practice they follow in not eating the sciatic nerve is a bodily re-enactment of the Jabbok encounter: every time an Israelite does not eat this part of an animal, they are embodying the memory of the night their ancestor was touched by God.

The phrase "to this day" is the narrator's sign that this practice was current at the time of writing. The Jabbok encounter was far enough in the past that the practice it generated had become established tradition. The narrator is connecting the present observance of the community with the original event that created it. The living body of the covenant community, observing its food practice, is the ongoing testimony to the Jabbok wrestling match that renamed their ancestor and dislocated his hip.