Genesis 32

32 ¹Jacob went on his way, and the angels of our Father met him. ²Jacob saw them and said, "This is our Father's camp!" He named that place Mahanaim. ^a a v2 Mahanaim means "two camps" — Jacob's name for the place where he met our Father's host of angels.

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

⁴He ordered them, "Tell my lord Esau: your servant Jacob says, I've lived with Laban and stayed until now. ⁵I own oxen, donkeys, flocks, and servants—male and female. I've sent to inform my lord, to find favor in your eyes." ⁶The messengers returned to Jacob: "We went to your brother Esau—he's coming to meet you, 400 men with him." ⁷Jacob was very afraid and distressed. He split the people with him, and the flocks, herds, and camels, into two camps, ⁸thinking, "If Esau reaches one camp and attacks it, the remaining camp will escape." ⁹Then Jacob said, "God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, my Father, who said to me, 'Return to your land and family, so I may treat you well,' ¹⁰I am too small for the least of all the covenant love and faithfulness you have shown your servant, for I crossed this Jordan with only my staff, and now I have become two camps. ¹¹Rescue me, please, from my brother's hand, from Esau's hand—I fear him: he may come and strike me down, mothers with children. ¹²But you said, 'I will surely be good to you and make your descendants like the sand of the sea, too many to count.'"

¹³He stayed there that night, then took a gift for his brother Esau from what he had: ¹⁴200 female goats and twenty male goats, 200 ewes and twenty rams, ¹⁵thirty nursing camels with their young, forty cows, ten bulls, twenty female donkeys, ten male donkeys. ¹⁶He gave them to his servants, drove by drove, separately, and told his servants, "Pass ahead of me, and leave space between drove and drove." ¹⁷He ordered the first, "When Esau my brother meets you and asks you, 'Whose are you? Where are you going? Whose are these ahead of you?' ¹⁸then say, 'They're your servant Jacob's, a gift sent to my lord Esau. Look, he himself is behind us.'" ¹⁹He also commanded the second, the third, and all who followed the herds, "Say the same to Esau when you find him, ²⁰and you will say, 'Also, your servant Jacob is behind us.'" For he thought, "I will appease him with the gift ahead of me, then see his face; perhaps he'll accept me."

²¹So the gift passed on ahead of him, and he himself stayed that night in the camp.

Crossing the Jabbok

²²That night he got up, took his two wives, two female servants, and eleven sons, and crossed the Jabbok ford. ²³He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise sent across everything he had. ²⁴And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. ²⁵Seeing he could not defeat Jacob, the man touched his hip socket, and Jacob's hip was wrenched as they wrestled.

²⁶He said, "Let me go; dawn is breaking." But Jacob said, "I won't let you go unless you bless me."

²⁷And he said to him, "What is your name?" And he said, "Jacob."

²⁸He said, "You will no longer be named Jacob, but Israel, for you have struggled with our Father and with men, and won." ^b b v28 Israel means "he strives with God" — the name our Father gives Jacob after the night of wrestling.

²⁹Jacob asked him, "Please tell me your name." He said, "Why do you ask my name?" And he blessed him there.

³⁰So Jacob named the place Peniel: "For I have seen our Father face to face, yet my life was saved." ^c c v30 Jacob's confession after the all-night wrestling: he has met our Father face to face — the relational Father in form he could see, touch, and contend with — and his life has been spared. ³¹The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. ³²This is why, even now, the Israelites won't eat the thigh muscle on the hip socket—because he struck Jacob's hip socket there, at the thigh muscle.