Rebecca overheard this conversation. It is suggested that she realized prophetically that Isaac's blessings would go to Jacob, since she was told before the twins' birth that the older son would serve the younger. Jacob protested that his father would recognize their deception since Esau was hairy and he himself was smooth-skinned. He feared his father would curse him as soon as he felt him, but Rebecca offered to take the curse herself, then insisted that Jacob obey her. Before she sent Jacob to his father, she dressed him in Esau's garments and laid goatskins on his arms and neck to simulate hairy skin.
Disguised as Esau, Jacob entered Isaac's room. Surprised that Esau was back so soon, Isaac asked how it could be that the hunt went so quickly. Isaac demanded that Jacob come close so he could feel him, but the goatskins felt just like Esau's hairy skin. Confused, Isaac exclaimed, "The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau!
Still trying to get at the truth, Isaac asked him directly, "Art thou my very son Esau? As Jacob kissed his father, Isaac smelled the clothes which belonged to Esau and finally accepted that the person in front of him was Esau.
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Isaac then blessed Jacob with the blessing that was meant for Esau. Let people serve thee: Jacob had scarcely left the room when Esau returned from the hunt to prepare his game and receive the blessing. The realization that he had been deceived shocked Isaac, yet he acknowledged that Jacob had received the blessings by adding, "Indeed, he will be [or remain] blessed! Esau was heartbroken by the deception and begged for his own blessing.
Having made Jacob a ruler over his brothers, Isaac could only promise, "By your sword you shall live, but your brother you shall serve; yet it shall be that when you are aggrieved, you may cast off his yoke from upon your neck" Although Esau sold Jacob his own birthright, which was his blessing, for "red pottage," Esau still hated Jacob for receiving his blessing that their father Isaac unknowingly had given to him.
He vowed to kill Jacob as soon as Isaac died. When Rebecca heard about his murderous intentions, [11] she ordered Jacob to travel to her brother Laban 's house in Haran, until Esau's anger subsided. She convinced Isaac to send Jacob away by telling him that she despaired of his marrying a local girl from the idol-worshipping families of Canaan as Esau had done. After Isaac sent Jacob away to find a wife, Esau realized his own Canaanite wives were evil in his father's eyes and so he took a daughter of Isaac's half-brother, Ishmael , as another wife.
Near Luz en route to Haran , Jacob experienced a vision of a ladder, or staircase, reaching into heaven with angels going up and down it, commonly referred to as " Jacob's ladder. According to Midrash Genesis Rabbah , the ladder signified the exiles that the Jewish people would suffer before the coming of the Jewish Messiah: Jacob feared that his descendants would never be free of Esau's domination, but God assured him that at the End of Days, Edom too would come falling down.
In the morning, Jacob awakened and continued on his way to Haran, after naming the place where he had spent the night " Bethel ," "God's house. Arriving in Haran, Jacob saw a well where shepherds were gathering their flocks to water them and met Laban 's younger daughter, Rachel , Jacob's first cousin ; she was working as a shepherdess. 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 the Aramean. Laban agreed to the arrangement. These seven years seemed to Jacob "but a few days, for the love he had for her," but when they were complete and he asked for his wife, Laban deceived Jacob by switching Rachel for her older sister, Leah , as the veiled bride.
In the morning, when the truth became known, Laban justified his action, saying that in his country it was unheard of to give a younger daughter before the older. However, he agreed to give Rachel in marriage as well if Jacob would work another seven years. After the week of wedding celebrations with Leah, Jacob married Rachel, and he continued to work for Laban for another seven years.
Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah, and Leah felt hated. God opened Leah's womb and she gave birth to four sons rapidly: Reuben , Simeon , Levi , and Judah. Rachel, however, remained barren. Following the example of Sarah, who gave her handmaid to Abraham after years of infertility, Rachel gave Jacob her handmaid, Bilhah , in marriage so that Rachel could raise children through her.
Bilhah gave birth to Dan and Naphtali. Seeing that she had left off childbearing temporarily, Leah then gave her handmaid Zilpah to Jacob in marriage so that Leah could raise more children through her. Zilpah gave birth to Gad and Asher. Afterwards, Leah became fertile again and gave birth to Issachar , Zebulun , and Dinah , Jacob's first and only daughter. God remembered Rachel, who gave birth to Joseph and Benjamin.
If pregnancies of different marriages overlapped, the first twelve births all the sons except Benjamin, and the daughter Dinah could have occurred within seven years. That is one obvious, but not universally held, interpretation of Genesis After Joseph was born, Jacob decided to return home to his parents. Laban the Aramean was reluctant to release him, as God had blessed his flock on account of Jacob. Laban asked what he could pay Jacob. Jacob suggested that all the spotted, speckled, and brown goats and sheep of Laban's flock, at any given moment, would be his wages. Jacob placed rods of poplar, hazel, and chestnut, all of which he peeled "white streaks upon them," [14] within the flocks' watering holes or troughs in a performance of sympathetic magic , associating the stripes of the rods with the growth of stripes on the livestock.
The angel of the Lord , in a dream back during the breeding season, told Jacob "Now lift your eyes and see [that] all the he goats mounting the animals are ringed, speckled, and striped, for I have seen all that Laban is doing to you", [17] that he is the God whom Jacob met at Bethel, [18] and that Jacob should leave and go back to the land where he was born, [19] which he and his wives and children did without informing Laban.
Before they left, Rachel stole the teraphim , considered to be household idols, from Laban's house.
Laban pursued Jacob for seven days. The night before he caught up to him, God appeared to Laban in a dream and warned him not to say anything good or bad to Jacob.
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Knowing nothing about Rachel's theft, Jacob told Laban that whoever stole them should die and stood aside to let him search. When Laban reached Rachel's tent, she hid the teraphim by sitting on them and stating she could not get up because she was menstruating. Jacob and Laban then parted from each other with a pact to preserve the peace between them. Laban returned to his home and Jacob continued 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 men. With great apprehension, Jacob prepared for the worst. He engaged in earnest prayer to God, then sent on before him a tribute of flocks and herds to Esau, "A present to my lord Esau from thy servant Jacob.
Jacob then transported his family and flocks across the ford Jabbok by night, then recrossed back to send over his possessions, being left alone in communion with God. There, a mysterious being appeared "man," Genesis Because of this, "to this day the people of Israel do not eat the sinew of the thigh that is on the hip socket" Genesis This incident is the source of the mitzvah of porging.
Jacob then demanded a blessing, and the being declared in Genesis Jacob asked the being's name, but he refused to answer. Josephus uses only the terms "angel", "divine angel," and "angel of God," describing the struggle as no small victory. According to Rashi, the being was the guardian angel of Esau himself, sent to destroy Jacob before he could return to the land of Canaan.
Trachtenberg theorized that the being refused to identify itself for fear that, if its secret name was known, it would be conjurable by incantations. Morris say that the stranger was "God Himself and, therefore, Christ in His preincarnate state", citing Jacob's own evaluation and the name he assumed thereafter, "one who fights victoriously with God", and adding that God had appeared in the human form of the Angel of the Lord to eat a meal with Abraham in Genesis In the morning, Jacob assembled his four wives and 11 sons, placing the maidservants and their children in front, Leah and her children next, and Rachel and Joseph in the rear.
Some commentators cite this placement as proof that Jacob continued to favor Joseph over Leah's children, as presumably the rear position would have been safer from a frontal assault by Esau, which Jacob feared. Jacob himself took the foremost position. Esau's spirit of revenge, however, was apparently appeased by Jacob's bounteous gifts 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 born six to 13 years prior in the narrative ; Jacob suggested eventually catching up with Esau at Mount Seir. According to the Sages, this was a prophetic reference to the End of Days, when Jacob's descendants will come to Mount Seir, the home of Edom, to deliver judgment against Esau's descendants for persecuting them throughout the millennia see Obadiah 1: Jacob actually diverted himself to Succoth and was not recorded as rejoining Esau until, at Machpelah , the two bury their father Isaac, who lived to be , and was 60 years older than they were.
Jacob then arrived in Shechem , where he bought a parcel of land, now identified as Joseph's Tomb. In Shechem, Jacob's daughter Dinah was kidnapped and raped by the ruler's son, who desired to marry the girl. Dinah's brothers, Simeon and Levi, agreed in Jacob's name to permit the marriage as long as all the men of Shechem first circumcised themselves, ostensibly to unite the children of Jacob in Abraham's covenant of familial harmony.
On the third day after the circumcisions, when all the men of Shechem were still in pain, Simeon and Levi put them all to death by the sword and rescued their sister Dinah, and their brothers plundered the property, women, and children. Jacob condemned this act, saying: Jacob returned to Bethel, where he had another vision of blessing. According to the Midrash, [28] the plural form of the word "weeping" indicates the double sorrow that Rebecca also died at this time.
Jacob then made a further move while Rachel was pregnant; near Bethlehem , Rachel went into labor and died as she gave birth to her second son, Benjamin Jacob's twelfth son. Jacob buried her and erected a monument over her grave. Rachel's Tomb , just outside Bethlehem, remains a popular site for pilgrimages and prayers to this day. Jacob then settled in Migdal Eder , where his firstborn, Reuben, slept with Rachel's servant Bilhah; Jacob's response was not given at the time, but he did condemn Reuben for it later, in his deathbed blessing.
At the age of ten, Jacob was sold as a slave to a pasha , who educated him. He acquired knowledge of Eastern life, language, art, literature, philosophy, and occultism. After his master's death, Jacob performed the Hajj to Mecca at the age of 21, indicating that he was then a Muslim. Jacob moved to Bombay, where he worked as a clerk based on his knowledge of Arabic.
Later, he moved to Hyderabad , where he worked for Ami-ul-Kabir, father of Sir Kharsheedjah Bahadur; from there, he moved to Calcutta , where he worked for jewellers Charles Nephew and Co. He then worked for Nawab of Rampur and Dholpur for a short time. Jacob arrived in Simla in the s and founded a business trading precious gemstones and curios.
The success of the business allowed him to build and maintain a luxury home, known as Belvedere, in Simla. The quality of his work resulted in a clientele composed of some of the wealthiest and most influential people in India. The Pioneer found him 'endowed by nature with a wonderful handsome face and form' and there was about him a 'compelling magnetism, a power and mystery which led to his being sought for conversation and advice by Viceroy and princes'. Reports indicate he was celibate, a vegetarian, a teetotaller , and a non-smoker. The powerful assurance was there in a way I had never experienced before.
In that sense, I was indeed Jacob.
Jacob — I Am a Fraternity Man
I also thought of two of Paul's admonitions: Therefore I urge you to imitate me" 1 Corinthians 4: The apostle also writes, "Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ" If we were to say this, it would sound like boasting. Paul wanted the Corinthian believers to know that if they followed his example and his lifestyle they would see godliness that pointed toward the perfect godliness of Jesus Christ. What would it be like to imitate the example of Paul? Or the examples of other outstanding believers in the Bible?
What if I saw qualities in them that I yearned for in my own life? How could I embody those same qualities? I knew I was moving in the right direction. I began a series of further prayer exercises. For periods at a time -- often just a few days, but usually lasting several weeks -- I chose one individual in the Bible whom I admired. I created a mental image of that person. I tried not to ignore any of the person's shortcomings, because those made the character more human. I focused on a single, major quality I respected about that individual.
This may speak of my weakness, but I just couldn't -- then or now -- focus on Jesus as the role model for the qualities I wanted. I needed flesh-and-blood, sinful-but-saved creatures who embodied the attributes I sought to develop. In a novel, In His Steps , written more than a hundred years ago, a dozen people covenanted to ask, "What would Jesus do?
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That wouldn't work for me because I have no idea what Jesus would do. Jesus is perfect and without sin. I have an amazing ability for self-deception and too often my heart is so filled with my desires that I'm not open enough to hear the voice of the Savior.