King James Version · The patriarchs
Genesis 32
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And went on his way, and the of met him. And when saw them, he said, This is ’s host: and he called the name of that place . And sent before him to his brother unto the land of , the country of . And he commanded them, saying, Thus shall ye speak unto my ; Thy servant saith thus, I have sojourned with , and stayed there until now: And I have oxen, and asses, flocks, and menservants, and womenservants: and I have sent to tell my , that I may find in thy sight. And the returned to , saying, We came to thy brother , and also he cometh to meet thee, and four hundred men with him. Then was greatly afraid and distressed: and he divided the people that was with him, and the flocks, and herds, and the camels, into two bands; And said, If come to the one company, and smite it, then the other company which is left shall escape. And said, O of , and of , which saidst unto me, Return unto thy country, and to thy kindred, and I will deal well with thee: I am not worthy of the least of all the , and of all the truth, which thou hast shewed unto thy servant; for with my I passed over this Jordan; and now I am become two bands. me, I thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of : for I fear him, lest he will come and smite me, and the mother with the children. And thou saidst, I will surely do thee good, and make thy as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude. And he lodged there that same night; and took of that which came to his hand a present for his brother; Two hundred she goats, and twenty he goats, two hundred ewes, and twenty rams, 15Thirty milch camels with their colts, forty kine, and ten bulls, twenty she asses, and ten foals. And he them into the hand of his servants, every drove by themselves; and said unto his servants, Pass over before me, and put a space betwixt drove and drove. And he commanded the foremost, saying, When my brother meeteth thee, and asketh thee, saying, Whose art thou? and whither goest thou? and whose are these before thee? Then thou shalt say, They be thy servant ’s; it is a present sent unto my : and, behold, also he is behind us. 19And so commanded he the second, and the third, and all that followed the droves, saying, On this manner shall ye speak unto , when ye find him. And say ye moreover, Behold, thy servant is behind us. For he said, I will appease him with the present that goeth before me, and afterward I will see ; peradventure he will accept of me. 21So went the present over before him: and himself lodged that night in the company. And he rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two womenservants, and his eleven sons, and passed over the ford . 23And he took them, and sent them over the brook, and sent over that he had. And was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of ’s thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him. And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou me. 27And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, . And he said, Thy name shall be called no more , but Israel: for as a prince hast thou with and with men, and hast prevailed. And asked him, and said, Tell me, I thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he him there. And called the name of the place : for I have seen to , and my life is preserved. And as he passed over the sun rose upon him, and he halted upon his thigh. Therefore the eat not of the sinew which shrank, which is upon the hollow of the thigh, unto this day: because he touched the hollow of ’s thigh in the sinew that shrank.
The 1611 translation, public domain. Its original printing included the Apocrypha, which is why the deuterocanonical books can be read here. Notes and cards are EKLI’s own.
The world at this moment · The patriarchs, 2000 BC to 1600 BC ›
Abraham's family as herdsmen among settled Canaanite city-states, in a world where Egypt and Mesopotamia are the great powers and Canaan is the corridor between them.
- Mesopotamia
- Abraham's own century is Hammurabi's. The great empire of Ur has already fallen, and Babylon rises under a king who published a law code on a stone pillar for everyone to see. Reading Genesis alongside Hammurabi's laws is illuminating in both directions: some provisions are strikingly similar, and the places where Israel's later law diverges are the places worth stopping at.
- Egypt
- The Middle Kingdom, wealthy, bureaucratic, and organised around the Nile flood. Egyptian tomb paintings from this period show Semitic traders arriving with donkeys and striped cloaks, which is more or less the picture Genesis gives of a family going down to Egypt in a famine. Toward the end of the era the Hyksos, rulers of Semitic origin, take the delta.
- Anatolia and the Aegean
- Assyrian merchants run a long-distance trading colony at Kanesh in Anatolia, leaving thousands of clay letters about copper, tin, and debt. On Crete the Minoan palaces are at their height, with plumbing, frescoes, and a script nobody has yet read.
- Further afield
- The Indus Valley cities are in decline after centuries of grid-planned streets and drains. In China the Erlitou culture is building the first palace complexes. Stonehenge is standing and already old.
All of Genesis