Genesis 32:22
And he rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two womenservants, and his eleven sons, and passed over the ford Jabbok. And he rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two womenservants, and his eleven sons, and passed over the ford Jabbok.
The verse belongs to the return from Padan-aram to Canaan, the homeland, after twenty years away at God's command, traveling south from Mount Gilead with wives and children and flocks and herds under God's care and accompanied by heavenly angels. It finds Jacob retracing the road he had once traveled as a fugitive, with memories of God's favor and promises of help and guidance coming to mind even as his earlier deception of his father weighed on his conscience. That night at the Jabbok he brought his household to the river ford and sent them across, remaining alone on the other side. He stayed behind to spend the night in prayer, to be alone with God, in hope that God by His power would soften Esau's heart and change his brother.
His return had brought fear and terror when news came of Esau's approach with warriors bent on revenge, while his own company was unarmed and defenseless. He feared Esau would seek revenge and use violence to protect the inheritance he had long regarded as his own. His fear was made heavier by self-reproach for his own sin in deceiving his father to secure the blessing intended for Esau, which had forced him to flee for his life from his brother's deadly threats. With God's mercy as his only hope and prayer as his only defense, he still left nothing undone to atone for the wrong to his brother and avert the threatened danger. Part of that preparation was the conciliatory message in which he addressed Esau as his lord and himself as Esau's servant.
In this chapter Jacob stands for believers and Esau for unbelievers. Jacob's fear and distress, and his journey with his family to this crisis, foreshadow the anguish of God's people in the time of Jacob's trouble and the final conflict with the image beast described in Revelation 13:11-18. That latter trouble is a time of anguish in which God's people cry out for deliverance and are delivered by God. As followers of Christ approach the time of trouble they must therefore make every exertion to place themselves in a proper light before the people, to disarm prejudice, and to avert the danger threatening liberty of conscience.