Genesis 32: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Jacob travels on and the angels of God meet him, and he names the place Mahanaim. He sends messengers ahead to his brother Esau, and they come back word that Esau is coming to meet him with four hundred men; Jacob divides his people and animals into two groups, prays to the God of Abraham and Isaac, and sends herds of animals ahead as a gift. That night he sends his family across the ford of the Jabbok, is left alone, and wrestles with a man until daybreak; his hip is put out of joint, he is given the name Israel, and he names the place Peniel. The chapter ends with a custom of the Israelites about not eating a certain tendon of the hip.

Claim by Claim

1. 32:1
   • Jacob continued on his way.
   • The angels of God met Jacob.
2. 32:2
   • Jacob saw the angels.
   • Jacob said that this was God's camp.
   • Jacob named that place Mahanaim.
3. 32:3
   • Jacob sent messengers ahead of himself to his brother Esau.
   • Esau was in the land of Seir, the territory of Edom.
4. 32:4
   • Jacob instructed the messengers what to say.
   • Jacob told them to speak to Esau as his lord.
   • Jacob called himself Esau's servant in the message.
   • Jacob's message said he had lived as a foreigner with Laban.
   • Jacob's message said he had stayed there until now.
5. 32:5
   • Jacob's message said he had oxen, donkeys, flocks, menservants, and maidservants.
   • Jacob said he had sent word to his lord so that he might find favor in Esau's sight.
6. 32:6
   • The messengers returned to Jacob.
   • The messengers said they had gone to his brother Esau.
   • The messengers said Esau was coming to meet Jacob.
   • The messengers said four hundred men were with Esau.
7. 32:7
   • Jacob was greatly afraid.
   • Jacob was distressed.
   • Jacob divided the people with him, the flocks, the herds, and the camels into two companies.
8. 32:8
   • Jacob said that if Esau came to one company and struck it, the remaining company would escape.
9. 32:9
   • Jacob prayed, addressing the God of his father Abraham and the God of his father Isaac.
   • Jacob addressed the LORD as the one who had told him to return to his country and his kindred.
   • Jacob quoted God as promising to do good to him.
10. 32:10
    • Jacob said he was not worthy of the least of all the acts of covenant kindness shown to him.
    • Jacob said he was not worthy of all the faithfulness shown to his servant.
    • Jacob said he had crossed this Jordan with only his staff.
    • Jacob said he had now become two companies.
11. 32:11
    • Jacob asked God to deliver him from the hand of his brother, the hand of Esau.
    • Jacob said he feared Esau.
    • Jacob said he feared that Esau would come and strike him down, the mothers together with the children.
12. 32:12
    • Jacob said God had promised to surely do him good.
    • Jacob said God had promised to make his offspring like the sand of the sea.
    • Jacob said that offspring would be too numerous to count.
13. 32:13
    • Jacob spent that night there.
    • Jacob took from what he had with him a gift for his brother Esau.
14. 32:14
    • The gift included two hundred female goats.
    • The gift included twenty male goats.
    • The gift included two hundred ewes.
    • The gift included twenty rams.
15. 32:15
    • The gift included thirty nursing camels with their young.
    • The gift included forty cows.
    • The gift included ten bulls.
    • The gift included twenty female donkeys.
    • The gift included ten male donkeys.
16. 32:16
    • Jacob handed the animals over to his servants.
    • Each herd was kept separate from the others.
    • Jacob told his servants to go on ahead of him.
    • Jacob told his servants to put a gap between one herd and the next.
17. 32:17
    • Jacob instructed the servant in the lead.
    • Jacob said Esau his brother would meet him.
    • Jacob said Esau would ask whose servant he was.
    • Jacob said Esau would ask where he was going.
    • Jacob said Esau would ask whose animals were ahead of him.
18. 32:18
    • Jacob told the servant to answer that the animals belonged to his servant Jacob.
    • Jacob told the servant to say the animals were a gift sent to his lord Esau.
    • Jacob told the servant to say that Jacob himself was behind them.
19. 32:19
    • Jacob gave the same instruction to the second servant, the third, and all who followed the herds.
    • Jacob told them to speak to Esau in this same way when they found him.
20. 32:20
    • Jacob told them also to say that his servant Jacob was behind them.
    • Jacob said to himself that he would pacify Esau with the gift going ahead of him.
    • Jacob said that afterward he would see Esau's face.
    • Jacob said that perhaps Esau would receive him favorably.
21. 32:21
    • The gift went on ahead of Jacob.
    • Jacob himself spent that night in the camp.
22. 32:22
    • Jacob got up during that night.
    • Jacob took his two wives, his two maidservants, and his eleven sons.
    • Jacob crossed the ford of the Jabbok.
23. 32:23
    • Jacob took them and sent them across the stream.
    • Jacob sent across everything he had.
24. 32:24
    • Jacob was left alone.
    • A man wrestled with Jacob until daybreak.
25. 32:25
    • The man saw that he could not prevail against Jacob.
    • The man struck the socket of Jacob's hip.
    • The socket of Jacob's hip was dislocated while he wrestled with the man.
26. 32:26
    • The man said to let him go, because day was breaking.
    • Jacob said he would not let the man go unless the man blessed him.
27. 32:27
    • The man asked Jacob his name.
    • Jacob answered that his name was Jacob.
28. 32:28
    • The man said Jacob's name would no longer be Jacob but Israel.
    • The man said the reason was that Jacob had striven with God and with men.
    • The man said Jacob had prevailed.
29. 32:29
    • Jacob asked the man to tell him his name.
    • The man asked why Jacob asked about his name.
    • The man blessed Jacob there.
30. 32:30
    • Jacob named the place Peniel.
    • Jacob said he had seen God face to face.
    • Jacob said his life had been spared.
31. 32:31
    • The sun rose on Jacob as he passed by Penuel.
    • Jacob was limping because of his hip.
32. 32:32
    • For this reason the Israelites do not eat the sinew of the hip socket.
    • This practice continues to the present day.
    • The reason given is that the man struck the socket of Jacob's hip at that sinew.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

32:1

"Angels" translates a Hebrew word that simply means "messengers." It is the same word used two verses later for the human messengers Jacob sends to Esau; the echo is invisible in English.

32:2

Mahanaim means "two camps." The name looks ahead to verse 7, where Jacob splits his household in two, the Hebrew word for "camp" there is the one buried in the place name.

32:3

Seir was the rough hill country south-east of the Dead Sea, later called Edom, where Esau's descendants settled. Jacob sends word ahead because of what stands between them: about twenty years earlier he had bought Esau's birthright and then tricked their blind father into giving him the blessing meant for Esau, and had fled the country when Esau threatened to kill him (Genesis 25 and 27).

32:4

"My lord" and "your servant" were the standard polite forms used when addressing a social superior, a subject to a king, or a weaker man asking a favor. Jacob, the younger brother who had claimed the elder brother's position, is deliberately putting the ranks back the other way round.

32:5

Listing livestock and servants was the ordinary way of stating a man's wealth. The point of the list is that Jacob is coming home rich and is not returning to claim anything from their father's estate.

32:6

Four hundred men is a war party, not an escort; the same figure is used elsewhere for a raiding force. The messengers bring back no word at all about Esau's intentions, only about his strength.

32:7

The word rendered "groups" is the same Hebrew word as "camp" in verse 2. Jacob is literally turning himself into "two camps", Mahanaim.

32:9

Jacob is quoting back to God the instruction he says he was given when he decided to leave Laban (Genesis 31:3). Reminding a superior of his own words was a normal way of framing a petition.

32:10

"With my staff I crossed this Jordan": twenty years earlier Jacob had left home alone and on foot with nothing but a walking stick. He is setting that against the household and herds he now has.

32:11

"From the hand of" is a Hebrew idiom meaning out of someone's power. "The mother along with the children" was a set phrase for killing that leaves no survivors, wiping out a household in a single generation.

32:12

Jacob is repeating back the promise he says was made to him, in the words used to his grandfather Abraham and to him at Bethel (Genesis 22:17; 28:13-15).

32:13

The Hebrew word for "gift" here is also the ordinary word for tribute, what a lesser ruler sends a greater one to buy peace. The animals listed in the next two verses come to 550 head, an enormous outlay.

32:14

The animals in verses 14 and 15 total 550 head, an enormous transfer of wealth. The proportions matter too: many more females than males is exactly the makeup of a working breeding herd, so this is not just meat, it is livestock that will keep producing for years.

32:15

Nursing camels with their young were among the most valuable animals a man could own; camels were kept for milk and transport rather than meat, and a milking female with a calf was prime breeding stock.

32:16

Spacing the herds means Esau meets the gift over and over, in wave after wave, before he ever reaches Jacob himself.

32:17

"Whose servant are you?" was a normal question then. Servants belonged to a household, so naming your master told a stranger who you were.

32:20

"Calm him down" is literally "cover his face" in Hebrew, and the verse goes on to "see his face" and "accept me" (literally "lift up my face"). The word "face" runs four times through this one verse in Hebrew, and comes back in the place name Peniel, "face of God," in verse 30.

32:22

The Jabbok is a river running west into the Jordan, in what is now the country of Jordan; a ford is a shallow point where people and animals can wade across. The Hebrew name (yabboq) sounds like both "Jacob" (ya'aqob) and the verb "wrestled" (ye'abeq) in verse 24. "Eleven sons": Benjamin has not yet been born, and Jacob's daughter Dinah is not counted, as daughters usually were not in such lists.

32:24

The text calls the opponent simply "a man" and never says who he is. Jacob afterwards says he has seen God face to face (verse 30), but the story itself leaves the identification open.

32:25

"The socket of the hip" is literally "the hollow of the thigh." In Hebrew the thigh is also the part of the body a man's descendants are spoken of as coming from, solemn oaths were sworn with a hand placed under the thigh (Genesis 24:2).

32:26

A blessing was a formal spoken act, conferring prosperity and standing, and was thought to take effect once said and to be irreversible. The last blessing Jacob obtained he got by deceit.

32:27

The name Jacob (ya'aqob) sounds like the Hebrew words for "heel" and for "he supplants" or "he cheats." He was given it for grasping Esau's heel at birth (25:26), and Esau threw it back at him as an accusation (27:36).

32:28

Israel can be heard as "God strives," "he strives with God," or "God rules"; the text explains it by the struggle just described. Names in these stories are usually explained by what they sound like rather than by strict derivation.

32:29

Asking someone's name was asking for more than a label: a name was held to say what its bearer was, and to give power to the one who knew it. The refusal is left unexplained.

32:30

Peniel means "face of God." Behind Jacob's remark lies the common ancient assumption that seeing God directly meant death; his surprise is at still being alive.

32:31

Penuel is a variant spelling of Peniel, the same place, named in the verse before.

32:32

The tendon is traditionally identified with the sciatic nerve, which runs through the hip. Removing it from the hindquarters of an animal before eating is still required in Jewish dietary law, where it is called the gid hanasheh. "To this day" is the narrator speaking to his own readers, long after the events described.