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13  I thank you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; ♦︎
   marvellous are your works, my soul knows well.
14  My frame was not hidden from you, ♦︎
   when I was made in secret
      and woven in the depths of the earth.
15  Your eyes beheld my form, as yet unfinished; ♦︎
   already in your book were all my members written,
16  As day by day they were fashioned ♦︎
   when as yet there was none of them.
17  How deep are your counsels to me, O God! ♦︎
   How great is the sum of them!
18  If I count them, they are more in number than the sand, ♦︎
   and at the end, I am still in your presence.

Jacob and Esau Meet

33Now Jacob looked up and saw Esau coming, and four hundred men with him. So he divided the children among Leah and Rachel and the two maids. ²He put the maids with their children in front, then Leah with her children, and Rachel and Joseph last of all. ³He himself went on ahead of them, bowing himself to the ground seven times, until he came near his brother.

4 But Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept. ⁵When Esau looked up and saw the women and children, he said, ‘Who are these with you?’ Jacob said, ‘The children whom God has graciously given your servant.’ ⁶Then the maids drew near, they and their children, and bowed down; ⁷Leah likewise and her children drew near and bowed down; and finally Joseph and Rachel drew near, and they bowed down. ⁸Esau said, ‘What do you mean by all this company that I met?’ Jacob answered, ‘To find favour with my lord.’ ⁹But Esau said, ‘I have enough, my brother; keep what you have for yourself.’ ¹⁰Jacob said, ‘No, please; if I find favour with you, then accept my present from my hand; for truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God—since you have received me with such favour. ¹¹Please accept my gift that is brought to you, because God has dealt graciously with me, and because I have everything I want.’ So he urged him, and he took it.

12 Then Esau said, ‘Let us journey on our way, and I will go alongside you.’ ¹³But Jacob said to him, ‘My lord knows that the children are frail and that the flocks and herds, which are nursing, are a care to me; and if they are overdriven for one day, all the flocks will die. ¹⁴Let my lord pass on ahead of his servant, and I will lead on slowly, according to the pace of the cattle that are before me and according to the pace of the children, until I come to my lord in Seir.’

15 So Esau said, ‘Let me leave with you some of the people who are with me.’ But he said, ‘Why should my lord be so kind to me?’ ¹⁶So Esau returned that day on his way to Seir. ¹⁷But Jacob journeyed to Succoth,^* and built himself a house, and made booths for his cattle; therefore the place is called Succoth.

The Allegory of Hagar and Sarah

21 Tell me, you who desire to be subject to the law, will you not listen to the law? ²²For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and the other by a free woman. ²³One, the child of the slave, was born according to the flesh; the other, the child of the free woman, was born through the promise. ²⁴Now this is an allegory: these women are two covenants. One woman, in fact, is Hagar, from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery. ²⁵Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia^* and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. ²⁶But the other woman corresponds to the Jerusalem above; she is free, and she is our mother. ²⁷For it is written,
‘Rejoice, you childless one, you who bear no children,
   burst into song and shout, you who endure no birth pangs;
for the children of the desolate woman are more numerous
   than the children of the one who is married.’
²⁸Now you,^* my friends,^* are children of the promise, like Isaac. ²⁹But just as at that time the child who was born according to the flesh persecuted the child who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now also. ³⁰But what does the scripture say? ‘Drive out the slave and her child; for the child of the slave will not share the inheritance with the child of the free woman.’ ³¹So then, friends,^* we are children, not of the slave but of the free woman. 5¹For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.