“They do not eat the tendon of the hip”
Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon which is at the socket of the hip, because the socket of Jacob's hip was struck near that tendon. (Genesis 32:32 BSB)
What it sounds like today
A strange aside about not eating a particular tendon.
The cultural key
This verse is an etiology, a story explaining the origin of a custom the first readers already knew and kept. At the Jabbok, Jacob wrestles through the night with God, who wrenches his hip socket, leaving him limping (and renamed Israel). The narrator then steps out of the story to note its lasting mark: 'therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon at the socket of the hip.' This is the origin of a Jewish dietary practice still observed, the removal of the gid hanasheh (the sciatic nerve and associated tendon) from the hindquarters of kosher animals, which is why much of the hindquarter is not sold as kosher meat in observant communities. Every time an Israelite sat down to a meal and this cut was absent, the custom retold Jacob's night of wrestling. A modern reader finds the tendon note random; the first hearers recognized their own dinner table in it.
Recovered meaning
The verse explains a dietary custom Jews still keep: because God wrenched Jacob's hip in the night-long wrestling, the hip tendon (the gid hanasheh) is removed from kosher animals. The practice is a standing memorial of that struggle.