17-18. Then he instructed the first one out: “When my brother Esau comes close and asks, ‘Who is your master? Where are you going? Who owns these?’—answer him like this, ‘Your servant Jacob. They are a gift to my master Esau. He’s on his way.’”
19-20. He gave the same instructions to the second servant and to the third—to each in turn as they set out with their herds: “Say ‘Your servant Jacob is on his way behind us.’” He thought, “I will soften him up with the succession of gifts. Then when he sees me face-to-face, maybe he’ll be glad to welcome me.”
21. So his gifts went before him while he settled down for the night in the camp.
22-23. But during the night he got up and took his two wives, his two maidservants, and his eleven children and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He got them safely across the brook along with all his possessions.
24-25. But Jacob stayed behind by himself, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he couldn’t get the best of Jacob as they wrestled, he deliberately threw Jacob’s hip out of joint.
26. The man said, “Let me go; it’s daybreak.”Jacob said, “I’m not letting you go ’til you bless me.”
27. The man said, “What’s your name?”He answered, “Jacob.”
28. The man said, “But no longer. Your name is no longer Jacob. From now on it’s Israel (God-Wrestler); you’ve wrestled with God and you’ve come through.”
29. Jacob asked, “And what’s your name?”The man said, “Why do you want to know my name?” And then, right then and there, he blessed him.
30. Jacob named the place Peniel (God’s Face) because, he said, “I saw God face-to-face and lived to tell the story!”