) marks the turning point in the entire narrative, after which Jacob looks toward the Land of Israel and his brother Esau. In the midst of the conflicts are the two major encounters with God, which occur at crucial times in the sequence of conflicts. Acknowledging that some interpreters view Jacob's two encounters with God in and as parallel, Terence Fretheim argued that one may see more significant levels of correspondence between the two Bethel stories in and , and one may view the oracle to Rebekah in regarding "struggling" as parallel to Jacob's struggle at the Jabbok in . Fretheim concluded that these four instances of Divine speaking link to each other in complex ways. Nahum Sarna reported that modern scholars deduce from the Genesis listings of Jacob's sons the evolution of the league of Israelite tribes. These scholars deduce from the listing of Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah as Leah tribes that they were politically related. As their tribal territories were not contiguous, their organizing principle could not have been geographical, and their association must therefore reflect a presettlement reality. These scholars conclude that the six Leah tribes must have originated as a separate fraternity in Mesopotamia that evolved in two distinct stages. The account of the birth of Jacob's sons in preserves the earliest traditions. The position of Judah as the fourth son reflects the situation prior to Judah's ascendancy, reflected in . The handmaid tribes had a subordinate status. And the tribe of Benjamin was the last to join the Israelite league and came into being in Canaan. Genesis chapter 32 John Kselman noted that Jacob's prayer in contained the essential features of (1) the address to God in ;, (2) the petition in ;, and (3) the motivation for God to grant the petition in ;. Kselman noted that Jacob's dividing his gifts to Esau into droves in served both to appease Esau and to act as a buffer between Esau and Jacob. Everett Fox translated : "For [Jacob] said to himself: I will wipe [the anger from] his face with the gift that goes ahead of my face; afterward, when I see his face, perhaps he will lift up my face!" Karen Armstrong wrote that Fox's translation preserved the "insistent diction" of the Hebrew, directing the reader to Jacob's imminent wrestling match, when Jacob would see God "face to face" (in the words of