On יעקב’s journey to חרן to the house of לבן, he stops and sleeps at what he would eventually realize was the holiest place in the world. Hashem orchestrates this so that he should see the angels in his dream and more importantly that he should get the promise of land and children from Hashem. יעקב wakes up, realizes where he is and immediately does his part to consecrate the place. He builds an altar, names the place בית אל, meaning House of God, and he makes a promise. The promise seems to be some sort of exchange between him and Hashem, if Hashem does what He told me He would, i.e. 1- if He will be with me, 2- He will guard me on the trip I am about to take, 3- if He will give me bread to eat and clothes to wear, 4- if He will return me to my father’s house in peace, and 5- if He will be a God to me, then I will take a tithe (maser) off of everything that he gives me.
If you go through the list of 5 items that יעקב asked for, it would seem that some of them were fulfilled and some were not. While יעקב lived in לבן’s house we do hear the Torah say that Hashem was with him and that is how he was so financially successful, and Hashem did guard him from potential dangers. But did he ever return to his father’s house to the land of כנען? Not in any true sense of the word. At the beginning of פרשת וישב, יעקב lives in כנען, but that was a short-lived dream since soon after he came there, he endured the sale of Yosef and never really lived in peace after that. As for having bread and clothes, yes technically he had food and clothes, but רש”י says that this request for food corresponds to what Hashem said כי לא אעזבך, and someone without food is considered “נעזב” as the Pasuk says נעא הייתי גם זקנתי ולא ראיתי צדיק נעזב. And יעקב in fact was נעזב in some way later in his life, also as a result of the sale of Yosef, when the brothers are trying to make sure that בנימין comes home from Egypt the words that the Torah uses are לא יוכל הנער לעזב את אביו ועזב את אביו ומת. And the last condition, that Hashem should be with him, רש”י says that he was asking for all of his children to be good people that go in the right path. Here as well, מכירת יוסף seems to mess it up. Whether or not יעקב thought that Yosef was a bad apple, the rest of his sons definitely thought so and they sold him out of the family. So overall it seems like these promises were originally starting to be kept in the house of לבן and then something goes off the rails which causes מכירת יוסף and the breakdown of these promises being fulfilled.
Before explaining what I think that was, I would like to contrast the words וידר יעקב נדר to the only other time in the entire Torah that we have that word combination of וידר so and so נדר. In פרשת חקת right after Aaron dies, עמלק attacks the nation and the Jews respond by making a נדר. The Pasuk says וידר ישראל נדר ליהוה, which is exactly what it says in our פרשה except that they say ליהוה while יעקב only said וידר יעקב נדר לאמר. The nation also tells Hashem they will give a tithe if he allows them to defeat the attacking nation, and the next Pasuk says וישמע יהוה בקול ישראל, so in no unclear terms we know that Hashem listened and in fact they defeat עמלק there and they dedicate the captured cities to Hashem as per their promise.
It is a pretty well-known theory that when יעקב got the name Yisrael he was taking over the mission that עשו had been tasked with in the world. his name יעקב denotes passively holding the ankle, or deceptively tricking his brother, whereas the name Yisrael was earned after openly and actively struggling with the angel. עשו was meant to be the “doer” but he failed, so יעקב adopted that persona as a second identity so to speak. Therefore, he married both Rachel and Leah, even though Leah was supposed to be עשו’s wife.
It seems like everything was going well for יעקב and the promises were all being fulfilled until מכירת יוסף, and we all know the רש”י in פרשת וישב, when explaining the first פסוק he says, בקש יעקב לשב בשלוה קפץ עליו רוגזו של יוסף, יעקב just wanted to dwell in tranquility and then the happenings of Yosef jumped on him. There was some level of abandoning the mission that יעקב did there and as a result he lost out on the fulfillment of those promises to some degree. But that was the נדר that יעקב made which got foiled, but when the exact same template is used many years later by his children who carry his name Yisrael (in reading the Pasuk this could have just as well been referring to יעקב himself making this promise), they stand up to the challenge of taking on the role of Yisrael in the world, of being the doers, and their request gets completely fulfilled. Remember, the people over there are the generation that is about to enter the land of כנען, which is the first time “Yisrael” will be in כנען since the promise that יעקב made in our פרשה, so in some ways this is the true fulfillment of his request as well. And this generation that was about to enter the land had to forgo the comforts that they had in the desert, they would begin having to do physical labor, work the land, fight wars, etc. they were the one to carry the name Yisrael.
We now carry the name Yisrael. All our commandments are linked to physical actions, we are the nation of doers. Let us all tap into that and know that our job is not to relax in this world and that to unlock our potential we need to toil and work.