Genesis 32

And 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.

Then Jacob sent messengers on ahead of him to his brother Esau in the land of Seir, the country of Edom.

He told them, “This is what you're to say to my master Esau. ‘This is what your servant Jacob says. I've been staying with Laban, and I've been there till now.

I've got cattle and donkeys, sheep and goats, and male and female servants. I'm sending this message to my master, hoping to find favour with you.’”

And the messengers came back to Jacob. “We went to your brother Esau,” they said, “and he's on his way to meet you now, with four hundred men.”

Jacob was terrified, and badly shaken. So he split the people with him into two camps, and the flocks and herds and camels as well.

He thought, “If Esau comes at the one camp and attacks it, the other one might get away.”

And Jacob said, “God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac — Lord, You told me, ‘Go back to your country and your relatives, and I'll make it go well for you.’

I'm not worth the least of all the kindness and faithfulness You've shown Your servant. I crossed this Jordan with nothing but my staff, and now I've become two camps.

Save me, please, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, because I'm afraid he'll come and attack me, and the mothers with the children.

But You said, ‘I'll surely make it go well for you, and I'll make your descendants like the sand of the sea, too many to count.’”

He spent the night there, and out of what he had with him he picked a present for his brother Esau:

two hundred female goats and twenty males, two hundred ewes and twenty rams,

thirty milking camels with their young, forty cows and ten bulls, twenty female donkeys and ten males.

He put them in the care of his servants, herd by herd, and said to them, “Go on ahead of me, and keep a space between the herds.”

He told the one in front, “When my brother Esau meets you and asks, ‘Whose man are you, and where are you going, and whose are these animals in front of you?’ —

then say, ‘They belong to your servant Jacob. It's a present sent to my master Esau, and he's coming along behind us.’”

He gave the same instructions to the second and the third and to everyone following the herds. “This is what you're to say to Esau when you meet him.

And be sure to say, ‘Your servant Jacob is coming along behind us.’” Because he thought, “I'll settle him with the present that's going on ahead, and then when I see him, maybe he'll take me back.”

So the present went on ahead of him, and he spent that night in the camp.

That night he got up and took his two wives and his two servants and his eleven sons, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok.

He took them and sent them across the stream, and everything he had.

And Jacob was left on his own, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.

When the man saw he couldn't beat him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip, and Jacob's hip was put out as he wrestled with him.

And the man said, “Let me go. It's daybreak.” “I won't let you go,” said Jacob, “unless you bless me.”

And the man said to him, “What's your name?” “Jacob,” he said.

And he said, “You won't be called Jacob any more. Your name is Israel, because you've struggled with God and with men, and you've come through.”

And Jacob said, “Tell me your name, please.” And he said, “Why do you ask my name?” And he blessed him there.

So Jacob called that place Peniel, because he said, “I've seen God face to face, and my life was spared.”

The sun rose over him as he went past Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip.

That's why to this day the Israelites don't eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip — because that's where the socket of Jacob's hip was touched.