Ma’avar Yabbok is a guide to sickness, death, and mourning, with prayers to be recited by and on behalf of one who is very ill or deceased. Its prayers are largely comprised of biblical texts and include kabbalistic imagery. The work also contains perspectives on topics such as suffering, God’s mercy, and the afterlife. The title references Jacob’s crossing of the Yabbok river in Genesis 32:23. The author’s introduction suggests parallels between that narrative and the book’s subject and attaches meaning to the Hebrew letters that spell Yabbok. This influential work has been printed many times, sometimes abridged or revised by later authors.