Wrestling Until Dawn: Genesis 32:22-32

That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok.

The Jabbok—a river whose name sounds like the Hebrew for "wrestle." Jacob was returning home after twenty years of exile, and ahead of him waited Esau with four hundred men. The brother he had cheated was coming.

After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. So Jacob was left alone.

Alone. Everything he had—wives, children, servants, flocks—sent ahead. Jacob stripped down to nothing, alone in the darkness on the wrong side of the river.