Jews will tell you that God cranked Jacob's hip by the river because he loves Jews so much but that's not the real reason.
In the Garden in Genesis 3, God told the Serpent, "You will strike his heel." When Jacob was born, his name meant, "He grasps the heel." I suggest that a better translation of God's curse on the serpent was, "You will be 'he who grasps the heel.'" You have to keep in mind that there were few words in the language back then, and there were a lot more synonyms due to the limited lexicon. I suggest "strike" and "grasp" were the same in the way I have suggested "struggles with" and "fights against" were the same.
After Jacob's name was changed to Fights Against God, the obvious name of the devil, "Isra El," Jacob's birth name became an idiom in Hebrew meaning "he deceives." "He grasps the heel" turned into an idiom meaning "he deceives" because Jacob is the Father of Lies. Jacob lied to his father about God giving him success in a hunt when he stole Esau's blessing, and he probably lied about God telling to go back home after Laban's family turned against him for his goat fraud after he had fled there to avoid getting murdered for defrauding his father. God not really telling him to return home is a good reason to understand why God cranked his hip on his way back when he was about to ford the river.
