Genesis 32:1-15 ▼

1 And Jacob has gone on his way, and messengers of God come on him;

2 and Jacob says, when he has seen them, “This [is] the camp of God”; and he calls the name of that place “Two Camps.”

3 And Jacob sends messengers before him to his brother Esau, toward the land of Seir, the field of Edom,

4 and commands them, saying, “Thus you say to my lord, to Esau, Thus said your servant Jacob: I have sojourned with Laban, and I linger until now;

5 and I have ox, and donkey, flock, and manservant, and maidservant, and I send to declare to my lord, to find grace in his eyes.”

6 And the messengers return to Jacob, saying, “We came to your brother, to Esau, and he is also coming to meet you, and four hundred men with him”;

7 and Jacob fears exceedingly, and is distressed, and he divides the people who [are] with him, and the flock, and the herd, and the camels, into two camps,

8 and says, “If Esau comes to one camp, and has struck it—then the camp which is left has been for an escape.”

9 And Jacob says, “God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, YHWH who says to me, Return to your land and to your family, and I do good with you:

10 I have been unworthy of all the kind acts and of all the truth which You have done with your servant—for with my staff I passed over this Jordan, and now I have become two camps.

11 Please deliver me from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau: for I am fearing him, lest he come and has struck me—mother beside sons;

12 and You have said, I certainly do good with you, and have set your seed as the sand of the sea, which is not numbered because of the multitude.”

13 And he lodges there during that night, and takes from that which is coming into his hand, a present for his brother Esau:

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

15 suckling camels and their young ones thirty, cows forty, and bullocks ten, female donkeys twenty, and foals ten;