1 As Jacob went on his way, angels of God came to meet him.
2 On seeing them Jacob said, "This is the camp of God!" So he named that place Mahanaim.
3 Jacob sent messengers ahead of him to his brother Esau in the land of Seir, the territory of Edom.
4 He instructed them: "This is what you are to say to my lord Esau: 'Your servant Jacob says this: I have been living as a sojourner with Laban and have stayed on until now.
5 I own cattle and donkeys, flocks, and male and female servants, and I am sending word to my lord in the hope of finding favor in your sight.'"
6 The messengers came back to Jacob and said, "We went to your brother Esau, and he is already on his way to meet you, with four hundred men."
7 Jacob was terrified and in great distress. He split the people who were with him into two camps, along with the flocks, the herds, and the camels.
8 He thought, "If Esau comes to one camp and attacks it, the other camp can still get away."
9 Then Jacob prayed, "O God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, O LORD who told me, 'Go back to your land and your relatives, and I will deal well with you':
10 I am too small for all the steadfast love and all the faithfulness you have shown your servant. I crossed this Jordan with nothing but my staff, and now I have become two camps.
11 Save me, I pray, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I am afraid of him, afraid that he will come and attack me, mothers and children alike.
12 Yet you yourself said, 'I will most certainly deal well with you and make your seed like the sand of the sea, too many to be counted.'"
13 He spent that night there. Then he chose from what he had with him a present for his brother Esau:
14 two hundred female goats and twenty male goats, two hundred ewes and twenty rams,
15 thirty milking camels with their young, forty cows and ten bulls, twenty female donkeys and ten male donkeys.
16 He handed them over to his servants, each herd separately, and told his servants, "Go on ahead of me, and keep some distance between one herd and the next."
17 He gave the first one these instructions: "When my brother Esau meets you and asks you, 'Whose man are you? Where are you heading? And who owns these animals in front of you?'
18 you are to answer, 'They belong to your servant Jacob. They are a present sent to my lord Esau, and he himself is right behind us.'"
19 He gave the same instructions to the second, to the third, and to all the others who were following the herds: "Say the same thing to Esau when you meet him,
20 and be sure to add, 'Your servant Jacob is right behind us.'" For he reasoned, "I will win him over with the present that goes before me; afterward I will face him, and perhaps he will receive me kindly."
21 So the present went on ahead of him, while he himself stayed that night in the camp.
22 During that night he got up, took his two wives, his two servant women, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok.
23 After he had taken them and sent them over the stream, he sent across everything else he had.
24 Jacob was left by himself, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.
25 When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip, so that his hip was wrenched out of joint as he wrestled with him.
26 Then the man said, "Let me go, for dawn is breaking." But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go until you bless me."
27 He asked him, "What is your name?" "Jacob," he answered.
28 Then he said, "No longer will you be called Jacob, but Israel, because you have striven with God and with men, and you have overcome."
29 Jacob asked him, "Tell me your name, please." But he said, "Why do you ask my name?" And he blessed him there.
30 Jacob named the place Peniel, saying, "For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life was spared."
31 The sun rose on him as he went past Penuel, and he was limping because of his hip.
32 That is why to this day the children of Israel do not eat the sinew of the thigh that lies on the hip socket, because he touched Jacob's hip socket at the sinew of the thigh.