Keeping it Together (Likrat Shabbat-Vayishlach) 2020 12 03

(8) Jacob was greatly frightened; in his anxiety, he divided the people with him, and the flocks and herds and camels, into two camps, (9) thinking, “If Esau comes to the one camp and attacks it, the other camp may yet escape.” (10) Then Jacob said, “O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O LORD, who said to me, ‘Return to your native land and I will deal bountifully with you’! (11) I am unworthy of all the kindness that You have so steadfastly shown Your servant: with my staff alone I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two camps. (12) Deliver me, I pray, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau; else, I fear, he may come and strike me down, mothers and children alike.

(23) That same night he arose, and taking his two wives, his two maidservants, and his eleven children, he crossed the ford of the Jabbok. (24) After taking them across the stream, he sent across all his possessions. (25) Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn. (26) When he saw that he had not prevailed against him, he wrenched Jacob’s hip at its socket, so that the socket of his hip was strained as he wrestled with him.

(33) That is why the children of Israel to this day do not eat the thigh muscle that is on the socket of the hip, since Jacob’s hip socket was wrenched at the thigh muscle.

(18) Jacob arrived safe (shalem) in the city of Shechem which is in the land of Canaan—having come thus from Paddan-aram—and he encamped before the city.

(7) Meanwhile Jacob’s sons, having heard the news, came in from the field. The men were distressed and very angry, because he had committed an outrage in Israel by lying with Jacob’s daughter—a thing not to be done.

(21) “These people are our friends (sheleimim); let them settle in the land and move about in it, for the land is large enough for them; we will take their daughters to ourselves as wives and give our daughters to them. (22) But only on this condition will the men agree with us to dwell among us and be as one kindred (am echad): that all our males become circumcised as they are circumcised.

(6) Thus Jacob came to Luz—that is, Bethel—in the land of Canaan, he and all the people (ha'am) who were with him.

(14) and Jacob set up a pillar at the site where He had spoken to him, a pillar of stone, and he offered a libation on it and poured oil upon it. (15) Jacob gave the site, where God had spoken to him, the name of Bethel.