1Jacob went on his way, and the messengers of God met him.
2When Jacob saw them, he said, “This is the camp of God!” So he called the name of that place Mahanaim.
3Then Jacob sent messengers ahead of him to Esau his brother, to the land of Seir, the region of Edom.
4And he commanded them, saying, “Thus you shall say to my lord, to Esau: ‘Thus says your servant Jacob: I have sojourned with Laban and stayed until now.’”
5“And I have acquired oxen and donkeys, flocks, and male and female servants; and I have sent to tell my lord, in order to find favor in your eyes.”
6The messengers returned to Jacob, saying, “We came to your brother, to Esau, and he too is coming to meet you, and four hundred men are with him.”
7Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed, and he divided the people who were with him, and the flocks and the herds and the camels, into two camps.
8For he said, “If Esau comes to the one camp and strikes it, then the camp that is left will escape.”
9And Jacob said, “God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, Yahweh, who said to me, ‘Return to your land and to your kindred, and I will do good with you’—
10“I am too small for all the loyal love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant; for with my staff I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two camps.
11“Deliver me, please, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him, lest he come and strike me down—mother along with children.
12“But you yourself said, ‘I will surely do good with you, and I will make your offspring like the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted for abundance.’”
13And he spent that night there. Then he took from what had come into his hand a gift for Esau his brother:
14two hundred female goats and twenty male goats, two hundred ewes and twenty rams,
15thirty nursing camels with their young, forty cows and ten bulls, twenty female donkeys and ten male donkeys.
16He put them into the hand of his servants, each drove by itself, and he said to his servants, “Cross over ahead of me, and put a space between drove and drove.”
17And he commanded the first one, saying, “When Esau my brother meets you and asks you, saying, ‘To whom do you belong, and where are you going, and to whom do these ahead of you belong?’
18then you shall say, ‘They belong to your servant, to Jacob; it is a gift sent to my lord, to Esau; and look, he too is behind us.’”
19And he commanded also the second, also the third, also all who went behind the droves, saying, “According to this word you shall speak to Esau when you find him,
20and you shall say, ‘Look, your servant Jacob also is behind us.’” For he said, “I will appease his face with the gift that goes ahead of me, and afterward I will see his face; perhaps he will lift up my face.”
21So the gift passed on ahead of him, while he himself spent that night in the camp.
22He rose during that night 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 what he had.
24And Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until the breaking of dawn.
25When he saw that he could not prevail against him, he touched the socket of his hip, and the socket of Jacob’s hip was dislocated as he wrestled with him.
26Then he said, “Let me go, for the dawn has broken.” But he said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
27And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.”
28Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed.”
29Then Jacob asked and said, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And he blessed him there.
30So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life was delivered.”
31And the sun rose upon him as he passed by Penuel, and he was limping on his hip.
32That is why, to this day, the sons of Israel do not eat the sinew of the thigh, which is on the socket of the hip; because he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip at the sinew of the thigh.
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