The LORD Almighty answers, "I will send my messenger to prepare the way for me. Then the Lord you are looking for will suddenly come to his Temple. The messenger you long to see will come and proclaim my covenant."

He sent messengers ahead of him, who went into a village in Samaria to get everything ready for him.

If a king goes out with ten thousand men to fight another king who comes against him with twenty thousand men, he will sit down first and decide if he is strong enough to face that other king.

If he isn't, he will send messengers to meet the other king to ask for terms of peace while he is still a long way off.

and the Horites in the mountains of Edom, pursuing them as far as Elparan on the edge of the desert.

Please go on ahead of me, and I will follow slowly, going as fast as I can with the livestock and the children until I catch up with you in Edom."

So that day Esau started on his way back to Edom.

Then Esau took his wives, his sons, his daughters, and all the people of his house, along with all his livestock and all the possessions he had gotten in the land of Canaan, and went away from his brother Jacob to another land.

So Esau lived in the hill country of Edom.

but you must not start a war with them, because I am not going to give you so much as a square foot of their land. I have given Edom to Esau's descendants.

The LORD had done the same thing for the Edomites, the descendants of Esau, who live in the hill country of Edom. He destroyed the Horites, so that the Edomites took over their land and settled there, where they still live.

and to Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. I gave Esau the hill country of Edom as his possession, but your ancestor Jacob and his children went down to Egypt.

and said to Jacob, "I'm starving; give me some of that red stuff." (That is why he was named Edom. )