Jacob and Esau

Rebekah had long been barren, but at last, through her husband’s unceasing prayers to the Lord, she gave birth to twins about twenty years after her marriage. The children are said to have leaped often in their mother’s womb, and the Lord’s answer on this matter declared that two peoples were foretold in these children, and that the elder would rank below the younger. The first to be born, bristling all over with hair, was called Esau, and the younger was named Jacob. [a]

At that time a severe famine came. Pressed by this need, Isaac went to Gerar, to King Abimelech, since the Lord had warned him not to go down into Egypt. There he was promised possession of the whole land and was blessed; and when he had grown very rich in cattle and every kind of property, the people of the land, moved by envy, drove him out. Driven from that region, he settled by the well known as “the well of the oath.”

Later, when Isaac was old and had lost his sight, he prepared to bless his son Esau; but Jacob, on the advice of his mother Rebekah, presented himself to be blessed in his brother’s place. So Jacob was set above his brother as the one whom princes and peoples would honor. Esau, enraged at what had happened, plotted his brother’s death. Afraid of this, and on his mother’s advice, Jacob fled to Mesopotamia. His father had urged him to take a wife from the house of Laban, Rebekah’s brother, so careful were they, while living in a foreign country, that their children should marry within their own family.

So Jacob set out for Mesopotamia, and on the way, while he slept, he is said to have had a vision of the Lord. For that reason he regarded the place of his dream as holy and took a stone from it. He vowed that if he came back safely, the pillar would be called the house of the Lord, and that he would give God a tenth of all the possessions he gained. Then he went on to Laban, his mother’s brother, who received him kindly into his home as his sister’s acknowledged son.