10. I don’t deserve how loyal and truthful you’ve been to your servant. I went away across the Jordan with just my staff, but now I’ve become two camps.
11. Save me from my brother Esau! I’m afraid he will come and kill me, the mothers, and their children.
12. You were the one who told me, ‘I will make sure things go well for you, and I will make your descendants like the sand of the sea, so many you won’t be able to count them.’"
13. Jacob spent that night there. From what he had acquired, he set aside a gift for his brother Esau:
14. two hundred female goats and twenty male goats, two hundred ewes and twenty rams,
15. thirty nursing camels with their young, forty cows and ten bulls, and twenty female donkeys and ten male donkeys.
16. He separated these herds and gave them to his servants. He said to them, "Go ahead of me and put some distance between each of the herds."
17. He ordered the first group, "When my brother Esau meets you and asks you, ‘Who are you with? Where are you going? And whose herds are these in front of you?’
18. say, ‘They are your servant Jacob’s, a gift sent to my master Esau. And Jacob is actually right behind us.’"
19. He also ordered the second group, the third group, and everybody following the herds, "Say exactly the same thing to Esau when you find him.
20. Say also, ‘Your servant Jacob is right behind us.’" Jacob thought, I may be able to pacify Esau with the gift I’m sending ahead. When I meet him, perhaps he will be kind to me.
21. So Jacob sent the gift ahead of him, but he spent that night in the camp.
22. Jacob got up during the night, took his two wives, his two women servants, and his eleven sons, and crossed the Jabbok River’s shallow water.
23. He took them and everything that belonged to him, and he helped them cross the river.
24. But Jacob stayed apart by himself, and a man wrestled with him until dawn broke.