Shared Word Translation
Genesis 32
Jacob Prepares to Meet Esau
Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him. When Jacob saw them, he said, “This is God’s camp.” So he called that place Mahanaim.
Jacob sent messengers before him to his brother Esau in the land of Seir, the country of Edom, instructing them, “Thus you shall say to my lord Esau: ‘Thus says your servant Jacob: I have sojourned with Laban and stayed until now; and I have oxen, donkeys, flocks, male servants, and female servants. I send to tell my lord, in order that I may find favor in your sight.’”
The messengers returned to Jacob, saying, “We came to your brother Esau, and he is coming to meet you, and four hundred men are with him.” Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed; and he divided the people who were with him, and the flocks and herds and camels, into two camps, thinking, “If Esau comes to the one camp and strikes it, then the camp that is left will escape.”
Jacob's Prayer
And Jacob said, “O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O LORD who said to me, ‘Return to your country and to your kindred, and I will do you good,’ I am not worthy of all the steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant; for with only my staff I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two camps. Deliver me, I pray, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him, that he may come and strike me, the mothers with the children. Yet you said, ‘I will surely do you good, and make your offspring as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude.’”
Jacob Sends Gifts to Esau
So he spent that night there. And from what he had with him he took a gift for his brother Esau: two hundred female goats and twenty male goats, two hundred ewes and twenty rams, thirty milking camels and their calves, forty cows and ten bulls, twenty female donkeys and ten male donkeys. These he handed over to his servants, every drove by itself, and said to his servants, “Pass on ahead of me, and put a space between drove and drove.”
He instructed the foremost, “When Esau my brother meets you and asks you, ‘To whom do you belong? Where are you going? And whose are these ahead of you?’ then you shall say, ‘They belong to your servant Jacob; they are a gift sent to my lord Esau, and moreover he is behind us.’”
He likewise instructed the second and the third, and all who followed the droves, “You shall say the same thing to Esau when you meet him, and you shall say, ‘Moreover your servant Jacob is behind us.’” For he thought, “I may appease him with the gift that goes ahead of me, and afterward I shall see his face; perhaps he will accept me.” So the gift passed on ahead of him, and he himself spent that night in the camp.
Jacob Wrestls at the Jabbok
That same night he rose and took his two wives, his two female servants, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise sent across what was his.
And Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When he saw that he did not prevail against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and Jacob’s thigh was put out of joint as he wrestled with him.
Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But he said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” And he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.”
Then he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.”
The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his thigh. Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the sinew of the thigh that is on the hollow of the thigh, because he touched the hollow of Jacob’s thigh at the sinew.