Jacob Wrestling with the
Angel – Gustave Doré, 1855

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Jacob was born 20 years after Isaac and Rebekah were married, at which time his father was 60 (Gen. 25:26), and Abraham, 160 years old. He and his twin brother, Esau, were markedly different in appearance and behavior. Esau was a ruddy hunter, while Jacob was a gentle man who "dwelled in tents," interpreted by most biblical scholars as a mark of his studiousness in the "tents" of Torah.

During Rebekah's pregnancy, "the children struggled together within her" (Genesis 25:22).

According to Rashi, whenever Rebekah passed a house of learning, Jacob would struggle to get out; whenever she passed a house of idolatry, Esau would struggle to get out.

Rebecca by Johannes Takanen, 1877.
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They would always be in competition, and eventually, the elder would serve the younger. She did not tell her husband Isaac about this prophecy, but remembered it later when she told Jacob to go to his father in place of Esau to receive the paternal blessing.

Esau was born first. Right behind was his brother Jacob, who was grasping onto Esau's heel. Thus he was named Yaakov - יעקב, from the Hebrew root עקב, "heel." The commentators explain that Jacob was trying to hold Esau back from being the firstborn and claiming the Abrahamic legacy for himself.

According to the text, Jacob was favored by his mother, while Esau was favored by his father.

Until the age of 15, the twins were raised in the same environment and exposed to the same teachings of their father Isaac and grandfather Abraham. On the day Abraham died, however, Esau went out to the field (according to Rashi, he abandoned the Torah path that day and committed the three cardinal sins—murder, idol worship, and adultery), and returned famished. He saw Jacob preparing a pot of lentils (the traditional dish prepared for a mourner—in this case, Isaac, who was mourning the death of his father) and asked Jacob for some of that "red, red stuff." For this reason, Esau was also called Edom - אדום - "red." Jacob demanded that Esau sell him his birthright in exchange. Noting that the birthright was useless to him if he died, Esau agreed, and the exchange was made. In the words of the Bible, Esau "despised" his birthright.

Isaac Blessing Jacob.
Artist: Gioachino Assereto.
Date: 1640s.
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This birthright included not only the traditional Biblical birthright, which granted superior rank in the family (Gen. 49:3), a double portion of the paternal inheritance (Deut. 21:17), and the priestly office in the family (Num. 8:17–19), but the Abrahamic blessing as well, which promised the seed in which all the nations of the earth were to be blessed. However, Esau well knew the prophecy which Abraham had received from God (Genesis 15:13-14) that his seed would first be enslaved for 400 years before returning to their own land. This prophecy referred to the enslavement of the Jewish people in Egypt . Esau wanted none of that, so he agreed to forfeit the right to be God's chosen people.

Isaac Blessing Jacob,
Govert Flinck, 1638

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Rebekah overheard this exchange. As Esau went out to the hunt, she instructed Jacob to fetch her two goats so that she could prepare a tasty meal for his father, and commanded him to bring the meal to Isaac to receive the blessing in his brother's stead.

Jacob protested that his father might notice the substitution through touch, since Esau was hairy and he was smooth. Rebekah told him not to worry, and placed hairy goatskins over his neck and arms.

Thus disguised, Jacob went into his father's tent. Isaac was surprised that he had returned so soon from the "hunt." "Who are you, my son?" Isaac asked suspiciously. "I am Esau your firstborn," Jacob replied (the Hebrew words, however, can be divided into two statements: "I" and "Esau is your firstborn"). Isaac was still suspicious and asked to feel him, since Esau was hairy. The goatskins seemed to fool him, though he maintained, "The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau." Nevertheless, Isaac blessed him.

As soon as Jacob left the tent, Esau arrived and exposed the deception. Isaac was shaken, but affirmed that Jacob would indeed be blessed. To Esau's pathetic entreaties, he agreed to give Esau a lesser blessing. Esau exclaimed, "Is that why he is called Jacob (יעקב), because he has deceived me (ויעקבני) these two times?" (Genesis 27:35), another play on Jacob's name. Then Esau swore to himself that he would kill Jacob in revenge as soon as his father was dead.

Rebekah prophetically intuited Esau's murderous intentions, and commanded Jacob to flee to the house of her brother, Laban, until Esau's rage subsided. His trip would serve the double purpose of finding a wife, as Laban had two daughters, Leah and Rachel.

Jacob’s Ladder, Artist: Tintoretto.
Date: 1577-78, Oil on canvas,
660 x 265 cm.
Location: Scuola Grande di
San Rocco, Venice
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En route to Haran, Jacob experienced a dream in which he beheld a ladder reaching into heaven with angels going up and down it, a vision that is commonly referred to as Jacob's Ladder. From the top of the ladder he heard the voice of God, who repeated many of the blessings upon him. According to Rashi, this ladder signified the exiles which the Jewish people would suffer before the coming of the Messiah. The angels that represented the exiles of Babylonia, Persia, and Greece climbed "up" very high before falling "down," but the last exile, that of Rome/Edom (whose guardian angel was Esau himself) kept climbing higher and higher into the clouds. Jacob feared that his children would never be free of Esau's domination, but God assured him that at the End of Days, Edom too would come falling down.

Jacob awoke in the morning and continued on his way to Haran. He stopped by the well where the shepherds were gathering their flocks to water them and met Laban's younger daughter, his cousin Rachel. He loved her immediately, and after spending a month with his relatives, asked for her hand in marriage in return for working seven years for Laban.

These seven years seemed to Jacob "but a few days, for the love he had for her," but when they were complete, Laban deceived Jacob by switching his older daughter, Leah, as the veiled bride. Both Jacob and Rachel suspected that Laban would pull such a trick, for he was known as the "Aramean" (deceiver), and changed Jacob's wages hundreds of times during his employ. The couple devised a series of signs by which Jacob could identify the veiled bride, but when Rachel saw her sister being taken out to the wedding canopy, her heart went out to her and the public shame she would suffer if she was exposed. Therefore she gave Leah the signs so that Jacob would not realize the switch. In the morning, when the truth became known, Laban justified himself, saying that in their country it was unheard of to give the younger daughter before the older. However, he agreed to give Rachel in marriage as well if Jacob worked another seven years for him. After the week of wedding celebrations with Leah, Jacob married Rachel, and continued to work for Laban another seven years.

The twelve sons and one daughter of Jacob

The Bible states that Jacob loved Rachel more than anything in the world, and Leah felt hated. God opened Leah's womb and she gave birth to four sons in succession:

1. Reuben,
2. Simeon,
3. Levi, and
4. Judah.

Around the time that Joseph was born, Jacob desired to return home to his parents, but Laban was reluctant to release him. God had blessed his flock on account of Jacob. Now Laban offered to pay Jacob, and Jacob proposed an unusual deal. He suggested that Laban remove all the spotted, speckled and brown goats and sheep from the flock; whichever ones would be born after that would be Jacob's wages. Left alone, Jacob planted rods of poplar, hazel, and chestnut in front of the flocks' watering holes, and when the animals saw them, they gave birth to spotted, speckled and brown foals. Thus Jacob became quite wealthy.

As time passed, Laban's sons noticed that Jacob was taking the better part of their flocks, and Laban's friendly attitude towards Jacob began to change. God told Jacob he should now leave, and he and his wives and children did so without informing Laban. Before they left, Rachel stole all the religious icons from Laban's house.

Laban, in a rage, pursued Jacob for seven days. The night before he caught up to him, God spoke to him in a dream and warned him not to say anything good or bad to Jacob. When the two met, Laban played the part of the injured father-in-law and also demanded his religious icons back. Knowing nothing about Rachel's theft of the icons, Jacob told Laban that whoever stole them should die, and offered to let him search. When Laban reached Rachel's tent, she hid the icons by sitting on them. Jacob and Laban parted from each other in peace, Laban returning home and Jacob continuing on his way.

As Jacob neared the land of Canaan he sent messengers ahead to his brother Esau. They returned with the news that Esau was coming to meet Jacob with an army of 400 men. In great apprehension, Jacob prepared for the worst. He felt that he must now depend only on God, and he betook himself to Him in earnest prayer, then sent on before him a munificent present to Esau, "a present to my lord Esau from thy servant Jacob."

Jacob then transported his family and flocks back across the ford Jabbok, then crossed over towards the direction from which Esau would come, spending the night alone, in communion with God. There, a mysterious being ("a man", according to Genesis 32:24, or "the angel", according to Hosea 12:4) appeared and wrestled with Jacob until daybreak. When he saw he could not defeat Jacob, he touched him on the sinew of his thigh (the gid haneshe - גיד הנשה), after which God prohibits the consumption of that part of an animal's thigh in the laws of kashruth which devolved on Jacob's offspring (Genesis 32:33). Then Jacob demanded a blessing, and the mysterious being said that from now on, Jacob would be called Israel (Hebrew ישׂראל Yisra'el, meaning "one who has struggled with God"). Jacob then asked the being's name, but the being refused to answer. Afterwords Jacob named the place Pnei-el (Penuel, meaning "face of God"), saying "I have seen [either 'a god' or 'God'] face to face and lived."

Because of the ambiguous and varying terminology, and because the being refused to reveal its name, there are varying views as to whether this mysterious being was a man, an angel, or God Himself. According to Rashi, he was the guardian angel of Esau himself, sent to destroy Jacob before he could return to the land of Canaan. Trachtenberg theorizes that the being refused to identify itself for fear that if its secret name was known, it would have been conjurable by incantations (Trachtenberg 1939, p. 80). Some commentators, however, argue that the stranger was God Himself, citing Jacob's own words and the name he assumed thereafter ("One who has struggled with God"). They point out that although later holy scriptures maintain that God does not manifest as a mortal, several instances of it arguably occurs in Genesis, for example, in 18:1, with Abraham.

In the morning Jacob assembled his wives and 11 sons, placing Rachel and her children in the rear and Leah and her children in the front. Some commentators cite this placement as proof that Jacob continued to favor Rachel's children over Leah's, as presumably the rear position would be safer from a frontal assault by Esau, which Jacob feared. Jacob himself took the foremost position. Esau's spirit of revenge, however, had by this time been appeased by Jacob's bounteous gift of camels, goats and flocks. Their reunion was an emotional one. Esau offered to accompany them on their way back to Israel, but Jacob protested that his children were still young and tender; they would eventually catch up with Esau at Mount Seir. According to the Sages, this was a prophetic reference to the End of Days, when Jacob's descendants would come to Mount Seir, the home of Edom, to deliver judgment against Esau's descendants for persecuting them throughout the millennia (Obadiah 1:21).

Jacob arrived in Shechem ^[] , where he bought a parcel of land that would eventually house Joseph's Tomb. In Shechem, his daughter through Leah, Dinah, was raped by the prince's son, who desired to marry the girl. Dinah's brothers, Simeon and Levi, offered to go ahead with the match as long as all the men of Shechem first performed the mitzvah of circumcision upon themselves, ostensibly to unite the children of Jacob in familial harmony. On the third day after the circumcision, when all the men of Shechem were most weak, Simeon and Levi put all the residents to death by the sword and escaped with their sister, Dinah. Jacob remained silent about the episode, but later rebuked his two sons for their anger in his deathbed blessing (Genesis 49:5-7).

As Jacob and his entourage neared the border of Canaan, Rachel went into labor and died as she gave birth to her second—and Jacob's twelfth—son, Benjamin (see sons of Jacob). Jacob buried her and erected a monument over her grave, which is located just outside Bethlehem. Rachel's Tomb remains a popular site for pilgrimages and prayers to this day.

Jacob was finally reunited with his father Isaac in Mamre (outside Hebron). When Isaac passed away at the age of 180, Jacob and Esau buried him together in the Cave of Machpelah which Abraham had purchased as a family burial plot.

The Bible next relates the story of Joseph, who was separated from his father Jacob at the age of 17 and sent down to Egypt ^[] as a slave by his brothers, who were jealous of his dreams of kingship over them. Jacob was deeply grieved by the loss of his favorite son, and refused to be comforted.

Mattia Preti, Jacob blessing his
grandchildren, Ephraim and Manasseh,
in the presence Joseph and their
mother Asenath. Whitfield Fine Art
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When the famine struck, the sons of Jacob went down to Egypt to procure grain for their starving families in Canaan. Joseph recognized them, and demanded to see the twelfth brother of whom they spoke, his own full-brother, Benjamin. He took Simeon as a hostage until they returned with Benjamin.

Joseph Receives His Father Jacob
and Brothers in Egypt. Date: 1655.
Artist: Salomon de Bray
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Jacob's last seventeen years were spent in tranquility in Egypt, knowing that all his 12 sons were righteous people, and he passed away at the age of 147. Before he died, he made Joseph promise that Joseph would bury him in the Cave of Machpelah, even though Jacob had buried Joseph's mother, Rachel, by the side of the road and not in the Cave (Leah was buried there, instead). With Pharoah's permission, Joseph led a huge state funeral back to the land of Canaan, with the 12 sons carrying their father's coffin and many Egyptian officials accompanying them.

Before he died, Jacob also elevated Joseph's two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, to the status of full tribes. He also blessed each of his sons. According to the Midrash, he desired to tell them the exact date when the Messiah would arrive, but the prophecy failed him. He feared lest one of his sons was not righteous, but they responded, "Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad" - "Hear O Israel [Israel being another name of Jacob], the Lord Our God, the Lord is One!" Satisfied that his sons were united in the service of God, Jacob proclaimed, "Baruch Shem Kavod Malchuso Le'Olam Va'Ed" - "Blessed is the Name of His glorious Kingdom for ever and ever". Today these two verses are said together, the first one aloud and the second one quietly, in the morning and evening Jewish prayer services (see also Shema Yisrael).

²¹By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of Joseph's sons, and worshiped as he leaned on the top of his staff.
-Heb. 11:21

²"I have loved you," says the LORD. "But you ask, 'How have you loved us?' "Was not Esau Jacob's brother?" the LORD says. "Yet I have loved Jacob, ³ but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his mountains into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals."

Jacob and his sons

Bible References

• Gen 31:1 Now Jacob heard that the sons of Laban were saying, "Jacob has taken all that was our father's, and from what was our father's he has gained all this wealth."
• Gen 31:17 So Jacob arose and set his sons and his wives on camels.
• Gen 34:5 Now Jacob heard that he had defiled his daughter Dinah. But his sons were with his livestock in the field, so Jacob held his peace until they came.
• Gen 34:7 The sons of Jacob had come in from the field as soon as they heard of it, and the men were indignant and very angry, because he had done an outrageous thing in Israel by lying with Jacob's daughter, for such a thing must not be done.
• Gen 34:13 The sons of Jacob answered Shechem and his father Hamor deceitfully, because he had defiled their sister Dinah.
• Gen 34:25 On the third day, when they were sore, two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brothers, took their swords and came against the city while it felt secure and killed all the males.
• Gen 34:27 The sons of Jacob came upon the slain and plundered the city, because they had defiled their sister.
• Gen 35:5 And as they journeyed, a terror from God fell upon the cities that were around them, so that they did not pursue the sons of Jacob.
• Gen 35:22 While Israel lived in that land, Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his father's concubine. And Israel heard of it. Now the sons of Jacob were twelve.
• Gen 35:23 The sons of Leah: Reuben (Jacob's firstborn), Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun.
• Gen 35:26 The sons of Zilpah, Leah's servant: Gad and Asher. These were the sons of Jacob who were born to him in Paddan-aram.
• Gen 35:29 And Isaac breathed his last, and he died and was gathered to his people, old and full of days. And his sons Esau and Jacob buried him.
• Gen 36:6 Then Esau took his wives, his sons, his daughters, and all the members of his household, his livestock, all his beasts, and all his property that he had acquired in the land of Canaan. He went into a land away from his brother Jacob.
• Gen 37:2 These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was pasturing the flock with his brothers. He was a boy with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father's wives. And Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father.
• Gen 42:1 When Jacob learned that there was grain for sale in Egypt, he said to his sons, "Why do you look at one another?"
• Gen 46:5 Then Jacob set out from Beersheba. The sons of Israel carried Jacob their father, their little ones, and their wives, in the wagons that Pharaoh had sent to carry him.
• Gen 46:8 Now these are the names of the descendants of Israel, who came into Egypt, Jacob and his sons. Reuben, Jacob's firstborn,
• Gen 46:15 These are the sons of Leah, whom she bore to Jacob in Paddan-aram, together with his daughter Dinah; altogether his sons and his daughters numbered thirty-three.
• Gen 46:18 These are the sons of Zilpah, whom Laban gave to Leah his daughter; and these she bore to Jacob--sixteen persons.
• Gen 46:19 The sons of Rachel, Jacob's wife: Joseph and Benjamin.
• Gen 46:22 These are the sons of Rachel, who were born to Jacob--fourteen persons in all.
• Gen 46:25 These are the sons of Bilhah, whom Laban gave to Rachel his daughter, and these she bore to Jacob--seven persons in all.
• Gen 46:26 All the persons belonging to Jacob who came into Egypt, who were his own descendants, not including Jacob's sons' wives, were sixty-six persons in all.
• Gen 46:27 And the sons of Joseph, who were born to him in Egypt, were two. All the persons of the house of Jacob who came into Egypt were seventy.
• Gen 49:1 Then Jacob called his sons and said, "Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you what shall happen to you in days to come.

Reuben,
Simeon,
Levi,
Judah,
Dan,
Naphtali,
Gad,
Asher,
Issachar,
Zebulun,
Joseph, ¹,
Manasseh,
Eephraim,
Benjamin

The Tribe of Levi was set apart from the others in the sense that, the members of the Tribe of Levi were to be in charge of the tabernacle of the Testimony.
(see: Num. 1).

The Tribe of Joseph is not usually listed with the Hebrew tribes although Joseph is one of Jacobs twelve sons, the eldest of Rachel. It is sometimes referred to as the House of Joseph. Rather, the two tribes founded by his sons Ephraim and Manasseh are listed separately. (see Tribe of Joseph)

The sons of Jacob ordered left to right by birth (see also: Gen. 32: 27-29, Gen. 48:5)