Save me, I pray, from the hand of my brother Esau, for I am afraid he will come and attack me, and also the mothers with their children.

Jacob Meets Esau

Jacob looked up and there was Esau, coming with his four hundred men; so he divided the children among Leah, Rachel and the two female servants.

He put the female servants and their children in front, Leah and her children next, and Rachel and Joseph in the rear.

Then Esau looked up and saw the women and children. “Who are these with you?” he asked. Jacob answered, “They are the children God has graciously given your servant.”

Then the female servants and their children approached and bowed down.

Next, Leah and her children came and bowed down. Last of all came Joseph and Rachel, and they too bowed down.

But Jacob said to him, “My lord knows that the children are tender and that I must care for the ewes and cows that are nursing their young. If they are driven hard just one day, all the animals will die.

So let my lord go on ahead of his servant, while I move along slowly at the pace of the flocks and herds before me and the pace of the children, until I come to my lord in Seir.”

They carried off all their wealth and all their women and children, taking as plunder everything in the houses.

So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, “Get rid of the foreign gods you have with you, and purify yourselves and change your clothes.

The children of Anah: Dishon and Oholibamah daughter of Anah.

So Pharaoh sent for Joseph, and he was quickly brought from the dungeon. When he had shaved and changed his clothes, he came before Pharaoh.

Their father Jacob said to them, “You have deprived me of my children. Joseph is no more and Simeon is no more, and now you want to take Benjamin. Everything is against me!”

So when they had eaten all the grain they had brought from Egypt, their father said to them, “Go back and buy us a little more food.”

Then Judah said to Israel his father, “Send the boy along with me and we will go at once, so that we and you and our children may live and not die.

Then their father Israel said to them, “If it must be, then do this: Put some of the best products of the land in your bags and take them down to the man as a gift—a little balm and a little honey, some spices and myrrh, some pistachio nuts and almonds.

“Then our father said, ‘Go back and buy a little more food.’

You shall live in the region of Goshen and be near me—you, your children and grandchildren, your flocks and herds, and all you have.

“You are also directed to tell them, ‘Do this: Take some carts from Egypt for your children and your wives, and get your father and come.

Then Jacob left Beersheba, and Israel’s sons took their father Jacob and their children and their wives in the carts that Pharaoh had sent to transport him.

These were the children born to Jacob by Zilpah, whom Laban had given to his daughter Leah—sixteen in all.

Joseph also provided his father and his brothers and all his father’s household with food, according to the number of their children.

But when the crop comes in, give a fifth of it to Pharaoh. The other four-fifths you may keep as seed for the fields and as food for yourselves and your households and your children.”

Any children born to you after them will be yours; in the territory they inherit they will be reckoned under the names of their brothers.

As I was returning from Paddan, to my sorrow Rachel died in the land of Canaan while we were still on the way, a little distance from Ephrath. So I buried her there beside the road to Ephrath” (that is, Bethlehem).