From the Beginning: A Devotional Commentary on Genesis (XV)

In Genesis 33:20, it says that Jacob, after his wrestling match with God (chpt 32) and his meeting with Esau (chpt 33), travels down to Shechem in Canaan, and when he arrives he builds an altar to God and calls it: El Elohe Israel. In Hebrew, El Elohe Israel means "Mighty is the God of Israel" (or possibly: God, the God of Israel).

This strikes me as a big deal. Only a chapter earlier God had named Jacob "Israel," so this is a relatively new handle for him; and before he left Canaan, he promised that if God brought him back safely, then "the Lord shall be my God" (28:21). And if you read closely, you'll notice that up until now, he's never called God his God; it's always been "the Lord, the God of my father, Abraham and Isaac" (or some variation on that). But now, finally, as he arrives back home after years of running from and wrestling with God, Jacob-- now called Israel (the one who has striven with God)-- Jacob builds an altar to "the God of Israel." No longer is the Lord simply the God of Abraham and Isaac; now he is Jacob's God, too.

 It occurs to me that all of us, at some point or other, need to build an altar to El Elohe Israel, in a metaphorical sense; that is to say: we all need to come to this place in our lives where God stops being, simply the God of our "fathers"-- our parent's God, our family's God, our tradition's God-- and we "own" Him in a personal way, like Jacob, it seems, did that day.