[32:1] Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him.
[32:2] And when Jacob saw them he said, “This is God’s camp!” So he called the name of that place Mahanaim.
[32:3] And Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau his brother in the land of Seir, the country of Edom,
[32:4] instructing them, “Thus you shall say to my lord Esau: Thus says your servant Jacob, ‘I have sojourned with Laban and stayed until now.
[32:5] I have oxen, donkeys, flocks, male servants, and female servants. I have sent to tell my lord, in order that I may find favor in your sight.’”
[32:6] And the messengers returned to Jacob, saying, “We came to your brother Esau, and he is coming to meet you, and there are four hundred men with him.”
[32:7] Then Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed. He divided the people who were with him, and the flocks and herds and camels, into two camps,
[32:8] thinking, “If Esau comes to the one camp and attacks it, then the camp that is left will escape.”
[32:9] And Jacob said, “O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O Lord who said to me, ‘Return to your country and to your kindred, that I may do you good,’
[32:10] I am not worthy of the least of all the deeds of steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant, for with only my staff I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two camps.
[32:11] Please deliver me from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him, that he may come and attack me, the mothers with the children.
[32:12] But you said, ‘I will surely do you good, and make your offspring as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude.’”
[32:13] So he stayed there that night, and from what he had with him he took a present for his brother Esau,
[32:14] two hundred female goats and twenty male goats, two hundred ewes and twenty rams,
[32:15] thirty milking camels and their calves, forty cows and ten bulls, twenty female donkeys and ten male donkeys.
[32:16] These he handed over to his servants, every drove by itself, and said to his servants, “Pass on ahead of me and put a space between drove and drove.”
[32:17] He instructed 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?’
[32:18] then you shall say, ‘They belong to your servant Jacob. They are a present sent to my lord Esau. And moreover, he is behind us.’”
[32:19] He likewise instructed the second and the third and all who followed the droves, “You shall say the same thing to Esau when you find him,
[32:20] and you shall say, ‘Moreover, your servant Jacob is behind us.’” For he thought, “I may appease him with the present that goes ahead of me, and afterward I shall see his face. Perhaps he will accept me.”
[32:21] So the present passed on ahead of him, and he himself stayed that night in the camp.