Prophets and Patriarchs

Jacob Patriarch

Jacob, son of Isaac and Rebecca, had a twin brother Esau born first who, therefore, was the firstborn, the heir designated by his father Isaac; his mother Rebecca, however, preferred Jacob. One day Esau returned home hungry and tired and in order to eat immediately, he sold his birthright to his brother Jacob in exchange for a plate of lentils (Genesis 25, 29-34).

Isaac was old and his eyes had grown so weak that he could no longer see. He called his eldest son, Esau, and said to him, "My son." He replied: "Here I am." He resumed: "You see, I am old and I do not know the day of my death. Well, take your weapons, your quiver and your bow, go out into the country and hunt something for me. Then prepare me a dish of my taste and bring me. to eat, so that I bless you before I die".

Then he went to get them and brought them to her mother, so her mother made a dish according to her father's taste. Rebekah took her best clothes from her eldest son, Esau, which were in her house with her, and put them on her younger son, Jacob; [...] she Then she handed her son Jacob the dish and the bread she had prepared. So he came to his father and said, "My father." He replied: "Here I am; who are you, my son?". Jacob replied to his father, "I am Esau, your firstborn. I did as you commanded me. Get up, therefore, sit down and eat my game, so that you may bless me." Isaac said to his son: "How quickly you found her, my son!". He replied: "The Lord made it happen in front of me." But Isaac said to him: "Come near and let me touch you, my son, to know if you are really my son Esau or not." Jacob approached his father Isaac, who touched him and said, "The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the arms are the arms of Esau".

So he did not recognize him, because his arms were hairy like the arms of his brother Esau, and therefore he blessed him. He again said to him: "Are you really my son Esau?". He replied, "I am." Then he said: "Give me some game to eat my son, so that I may bless you." He served him and he ate, brought him wine, and he drank. Then his father Isaac said to him: "Come near and kiss me, my son!". (Genesis 27, 1-26)

Later, to avert and escape Esau's wrath, Jacob took refuge with his uncle Laban, where he worked and cunningly asked his uncle to receive as compensation for his work, the streaked and robust beasts that he selected, leaving those to his uncle. weak, and with this expedient he enriched himself.

The dream of the staircase

Jacob left Beersheba to go to Haran, and when he reached a place, he spent the night there. He took stones, put them as a bedside, then lay down to sleep. And he dreamed: a ladder appeared to him, resting on the ground, with the top reaching the sky; and through it the angels of God ascended and descended. Behold the Lord stood before him and said to him, "I am the Lord the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac! I will give you and your offspring the land where you rest; and your offspring will be like dust of the earth; you will extend to the west and east, to the north and to the south, and in you and in your offspring, all the nations of the earth will be blessed".

From his uncle Laban Jacob fell in love with her daughter Rachel and to have her as her wife he worked for seven years as a shepherd. At the end of the ransom, Laban with a deception sent in the evening to Jacob's tent not Rachel but the eldest daughter Leah. Only the next day Jacob noticed the deception, Laban justified himself by asserting that Leah was her eldest and unmarried, and therefore according to her custom it was her turn. Jacob did not give up and with the certainty that he could still marry Rachel he worked for Laban for another seven years, then he managed to have her in marriage.

Leah gave birth to Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judas. Rachel, seeing that she could not have children, was very sad. She then gave Jacob her servant Bilhah, and Bilhah had two sons: Dan and Naphtali. Then Leah also gave Jacob her servant Zilpah, and Zilpah gave birth to Gad and Asher. Finally Leah had two other children: Issachar and Zabulon and then Dina. But finally God remembered Rachel from whom Benjamin and Joseph were born. The twelve tribes of Israel originated from the sons of Jacob.

Meanwhile, relations with Uncle Laban had become difficult; then Jacob decided to leave: he got up, got his wives and children on the camels, and set out all the cattle and all the possessions he possessed, while Rachel secretly took of all the family idols of her father. Jacob deceived Laban because he did not tell him that he would flee, he crossed the river and headed for the mountains of Gilead.
Laban pursued him, God had appeared to him in a dream telling him to beware of speaking to Jacob neither in evil nor in good, and when he find Jacob he told him that he had acted a fool, he wanted his statuettes back, but he did not find them: Rachel had them, hidden under the saddle of the camel and sat on it.

Jacob returned to Palestine and sent messengers to his brother Esau in the land of Seir, hoping for his forgiveness. Jacob spent the night on the Jabboc, a tributary of the Jordan: this is where the fight with the angel of God took place. During the night, he took his two wives and his maids and eleven children and crossed the Jabboc stream. After making them cross Jacob was left alone: now, a man wrestled with him until dawn and, seeing that Jacob could not win over him, struck him in the joint of the thigh, so that he sprained himself in the struggle. Then that Angel said to him: "Let me go, the dawn is coming". But Jacob replied, "I will not leave you until you have blessed me." The other asked him: "What's your name?" He replied: "Jacob". And he: "You will no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, because you were strong against God and men and you won".

The two brothers reconcile.

Jacob stayed there to spend the night. Then he took as much as he could of what came into his hands to make a gift to his brother Esau: two hundred male goats and twenty goats, two hundred sheep and twenty rams, thirty suckling camels with their young, forty heifers and ten bulls, twenty donkeys and ten mules. He entrusted the individual flocks to his servants and told them: "Pass in front of me and leave a certain space between one flock and another." He gave this order to the first: "When will Esau, my brother, meet you and ask you: Whose are you? Where are you going? Whose are these animals walking in front of you? You will answer: Your brother Jacob; it is a gift sent to you? my lord Esau; behold he himself follows us. " He gave the same order to the second and also to the third and to those who followed the flocks: "These words you will address to Esau when you find him; you will say to him: your servant Jacob also follows us". In fact, he thought: "I will appease him with the gift that precedes me and later I will introduce myself to him; perhaps he will welcome me with kindness". So the gift passed before him, while he spent that night in the camp. (Genesis 32, 14-22)

Then Jacob looked up and saw Esau arriving, with four hundred men with him. Then he distributed the children between Leah, Rachel and the two slaves; he put the slaves in the head with their children, further back Lia with her children and further back Rachel and Joseph. He passed in front of them and bowed to the ground seven times as he approached his brother. But Esau ran to meet him, embraced him, threw himself on his neck, kissed him, and they wept. (Genesis 33, 1-4)

Dina outraged

Dina the daughter of Jacob, was kidnapped by Schem, son of Hemor Eveo, prince of that region. He raped her, but he fell in love with Dina with her, loved her with her and spoke to her to her heart. When the sons of Jacob came from the countryside, they heard the fact, they were amazed and grieved. Schem's father, Hemor, asked Jacob to forgive his son and offered him a covenant. The sons of Jacob with deceptive words asked that the new covenant be sealed with the circumcision of the Shechemites, then they took advantage of the physical weakness of the males due to the circumcision itself, killed them and plundered all their good. Jacob condemned this action, for fear of possible retaliation from the survivors and neighboring peoplee.

Jacob was able to be in Hebron next to his father just at the time of his death along with his brother Esau. From this moment on, Jacob settled in this place and the history of Israel continued with his sons and, in particular, with Joseph, the most beloved son who, sold by his brothers, will only re-embrace later, in Egypt, as Deputy Governor.

The son Joseph

Jacob's story is intertwined with that of his favorite son Joseph. When the latter, after being sold by his brothers, became Pharaoh's minister, he had the Tribes of Israel and Jacob himself transferred to Egypt, to save them from the long famine, prophesied in a dream to Pharaoh in the form of 7 lean cows, which only Joseph he knew how to correctly interpret. Jacob, before dying, gave each of his sons different blessings and was buried next to the other patriarchs, Abraham and Isaac, in the field of Macpela.

The lineage of Jacob

As Genesis tells (46, 26-27), all the people who entered with Jacob into Egypt, came out of his hips, without the wives of the sons of Jacob, were sixty-six. Two children were born to Joseph in Egypt. All the people of Jacob's family who entered Egypt were seventy.
The beginning of the book of Exodus (1, 5) confirms that all the people born to Jacob were seventy, and that Joseph was already in Egypt. The Acts of the Apostles (7, 14) state that Joseph then sent for Jacob his father and all his kinship and that the entire lineage was made up of seventy-five people in all.