Genesis 32:10-13

32:10 I am not worthy of all the faithful love ¹  you have shown ²  your servant. With only my walking stick ³  I crossed the Jordan, ⁴  but now I have become two camps. 32:11 Rescue me, ⁵  I pray, from the hand ⁶  of my brother Esau, ⁷  for I am afraid he will come ⁸  and attack me, as well as the mothers with their children. ⁹  32:12 But you ¹⁰  said, ‘I will certainly make you prosper ¹¹  and will make ¹²  your descendants like the sand on the seashore, too numerous to count.’” ¹³ 

32:13 Jacob ¹⁴  stayed there that night. Then he sent ¹⁵  as a gift ¹⁶  to his brother Esau

[32:10]  ¹ tn Heb “the loving deeds and faithfulness” (see 24:27, 49).

[32:10]  ² tn Heb “you have done with.”

[32:10]  ³ tn Heb “for with my staff.” The Hebrew word מַקֵל (maqel), traditionally translated “staff,” has been rendered as “walking stick” because a “staff” in contemporary English refers typically to the support personnel in an organization.

[32:10]  ⁴ tn Heb “this Jordan.”

[32:11]  ⁵ tn The imperative has the force of a prayer here, not a command.

[32:11]  ⁶ tn The “hand” here is a metonymy for “power.”

[32:11]  ⁷ tn Heb “from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau.”

[32:11]  ⁸ tn Heb “for I am afraid of him, lest he come.”

[32:11]  ⁹ sn Heb “me, [the] mother upon [the] sons.” The first person pronoun “me” probably means here “me and mine,” as the following clause suggests.

[32:12]  ⁹ tn Heb “But you, you said.” One of the occurrences of the pronoun “you” has been left untranslated for stylistic reasons.

[32:12]  ¹⁰ tn Or “will certainly deal well with you.” The infinitive absolute appears before the imperfect, underscoring God’s promise to bless. The statement is more emphatic than in v. 9.

[32:12]  ¹¹ tn The form is the perfect tense with a vav (ו) consecutive, carrying the nuance of the preceding verb forward.

[32:12]  ¹² tn Heb “which cannot be counted because of abundance.” The imperfect verbal form indicates potential here.

[32:13]  ¹³ tn Heb “and he”; the referent (Jacob) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[32:13]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “and he took from that which was going into his hand,” meaning that he took some of what belonged to him.

[32:13]  ¹⁵ sn The Hebrew noun translated gift can in some contexts refer to the tribute paid by a subject to his lord. Such a nuance is possible here, because Jacob refers to Esau as his lord and to himself as Esau’s servant (v. 4).