Genesis 32

1Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him.

2When Jacob saw them, he said, “This is God’s camp!” So he named that place Mahanaim.

3Jacob sent messengers ahead of him to his brother Esau in the land of Seir, the country of Edom.

4He instructed them, “This is what you are to say to my lord Esau: ‘This is what your servant Jacob says: I have been living as a foreigner with Laban and have stayed there until now.

5I have cattle and donkeys, flocks, and male and female servants. I have sent to tell my lord this, in the hope that I may find favor in your eyes.’ ”

6The messengers returned to Jacob and said, “We went to your brother Esau, and he is coming to meet you, and four hundred men are with him.”

7Jacob was terrified and distressed. So he divided the people who were with him, along with the flocks and herds and camels, into two camps.

8He thought, “If Esau comes to one camp and attacks it, the camp that is left will be able to escape.”

9Then Jacob said, “O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, Yahweh, who said to me, ‘Go back to your country and to your relatives, and I will make you prosper,’

10I am unworthy of all the steadfast love and all the faithfulness you have shown your servant. With only my staff I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two camps.

11Please save me from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I am afraid of him. He may come and attack me, the mothers along with the children.

12But you said, ‘I will surely make you prosper and make your offspring like the sand of the sea, which is too many to count.’ ”

13He spent the night there. Then from what he had with him he selected a gift for his brother Esau:

14two hundred female goats and twenty male goats, two hundred ewes and twenty rams,

15thirty female camels with their young, forty cows and ten bulls, twenty female donkeys and ten male donkeys.

16He put them in the care of his servants, each herd by itself, and said to his servants, “Go on ahead of me, and keep some space between one herd and the next.”

17He instructed the one in the lead, “When my brother Esau meets you and asks you, ‘To whom do you belong? Where are you going? And whose animals are these in front of you?’

18then you are to say, ‘They belong to your servant Jacob. They are a gift sent to my lord Esau, and he himself is behind us.’ ”

19He gave the same instructions to the second, the third, and all who followed the herds: “You are to say the same thing to Esau when you meet him.

20And you are to say, ‘Your servant Jacob is right behind us.’ ” For he thought, “I will appease him with the gift that is going ahead of me, and afterward I will see his face. Perhaps he will accept me.”

21So the gift went on ahead of him, while he himself spent that night in the camp.

22That same night he got up and took his two wives, his two female servants, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok.

23He took them and sent them across the stream, and he sent across everything he had.

24So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.

25When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip, so that Jacob’s hip was wrenched as he wrestled with him.

26Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”

27The man asked him, “What is your name?” He answered, “Jacob.”

28Then he said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with human beings, and you have prevailed.”

29Jacob said, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why do you ask my name?” And he blessed him there.

30So Jacob named the place Peniel, saying, “I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been spared.”

31The sun rose on him as he passed Penuel, and he was limping because of his hip.

32That is why to this day the people of Israel do not eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip, because he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip at the tendon.