Drafted by Grok 4.7 on 8 October 2026. First draft. Not independently reviewed. Leningrad Codex, through the Open Scriptures Westminster Leningrad Codex. The written consonants are printed. A Masoretic reading is footnoted when it differs. No Dead Sea reading was substituted unless it was read from a fragment. The Samaritan Pentateuch and the Greek, Syriac, and Latin versions are witnesses, not the default.
1Laban rose early in the morning, kissed his sons and his daughters, and blessed them. Then Laban left and returned to his place.
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Many later chapter divisions place this verse at the end of chapter 31. The Leningrad copy starts chapter 32 here. The English follows that break. The words are not moved.
2Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him.
3Jacob said when he saw them, “This is God’s camp.” So he named that place Mahanaim.
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Mahanaim means “two camps.”
4Jacob sent messengers ahead of him to Esau his brother, in the land of Seir, the country of Edom.
5He instructed them, “This is what you shall say to my lord, to Esau: ‘Your servant Jacob says, I have sojourned with Laban and stayed until now.
6I have oxen, donkeys, flocks, male servants, and female servants. I have sent to tell my lord, so that I may find favor in your eyes.’”
7The messengers returned to Jacob and said, “We came to your brother Esau, and he is coming to meet you, and four hundred men are with him.”
8Jacob was greatly afraid, and he was distressed. He divided the people who were with him, the flocks, the herds, and the camels, into two camps.
9He said, “If Esau comes to the one camp and strikes it, then the camp that is left will escape.”
10Jacob said, “God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, Yahweh, you who said to me, ‘Return to your land and to your kindred, and I will do you good,’
11I am too small for all the loyalties and for all the faithfulness you have shown your servant. With my staff I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two camps.
12Save me, please, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I am afraid of him, that he will come and strike me down, mothers with children.
13You yourself said, ‘I will surely do you good, and I will make your offspring like the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted for number.’”
14He spent that night there, and he took from what he had with him a gift for Esau his brother:
15two hundred female goats and twenty male goats, two hundred ewes and twenty rams,
16thirty nursing camels with their young, forty cows and ten bulls, twenty female donkeys and ten male donkeys.
17He put them in the care of his servants, drove by drove, and he said to his servants, “Cross over ahead of me, and leave a space between drove and drove.”
18He commanded the first, “When Esau my brother meets you and asks you, ‘To whom do you belong? Where are you going? And whose are these ahead of you?’
19then you shall say, ‘They belong to your servant Jacob. It is a gift sent to my lord Esau, and look, he himself is behind us.’”
20He commanded the second, and the third, and all who followed the droves, “In this way you shall speak to Esau when you find him.
21And you shall say, ‘Look, your servant Jacob is behind us.’” For he said, “Let me cover his face with the gift that goes ahead of me, and after that I will see his face. Perhaps he will lift up my face.”
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Covering the face is how the Hebrew speaks of appeasing someone. Lifting the face is how it speaks of receiving someone. The idioms are kept.
22So the gift crossed over ahead of him, and he himself spent that night in the camp.
23That night he got up, took his two wives, his two female servants, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok.
24He took them and sent them across the stream, and he sent across everything that belonged to him.
25Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until dawn came up.
26When he saw that he had not prevailed against him, he struck the socket of his hip, and Jacob’s hip was dislocated as he wrestled with him.
27He said, “Let me go, for dawn has come up.” He said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
28He said to him, “What is your name?” He said, “Jacob.”
29He said, “Your name will no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have struggled with God and with men and have prevailed.”
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Israel is explained here by “you have struggled with God.” The verb’s range is struggle or persist. The figure in verse 25 is called a man. This verse calls the struggle a struggle with God. Both wordings are printed.
30Jacob asked and said, “Please tell me your name.” He said, “Why do you ask my name?” And he blessed him there.
31Jacob named the place Peniel, “For I have seen God face to face, and my life has been spared.”
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Peniel means “face of God.”
32The sun rose on him as he crossed by Penuel, and he was limping because of his hip.
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Verse 31 writes Peniel. This verse writes Penuel. Both spellings are in the codex, and both are printed.
33That is why the children of Israel do not eat the sinew of the hip that is on the socket of the thigh, to this day, because he struck Jacob’s hip socket, at the sinew of the hip.