Jacob our Father

Jacob our Father, also called Israel, is the third of the three patriarchs, the son of Isaac and Rebecca, the twin brother of Esau and the father of the twelve tribes of Israel. The story of his life occupies a large part of the book of Genesis, and he is among the richest and most complex figures in the Torah. According to the biblical chronology he was born in 1653 BCE and died in 1506 BCE, at the age of a hundred and forty-seven. Jacob was born after twenty years of Rebecca's barrenness, and when the children struggled within her she was told, "two nations are in your womb, and the elder shall serve the younger". He came out after Esau with his hand holding his brother's heel, and so he was named Jacob. From their youth two brothers of different ways stood one against the other: "and Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field, and Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents", and Isaac loved Esau because the hunt was in his mouth, while Rebecca loved Jacob. One day Esau came back weary from his hunting and asked Jacob for some of the red pottage he had made, and Jacob gave it to him in exchange for the birthright. Esau despised it: "behold, I am about to die, and what profit shall the birthright do me?" In later years, when Isaac was old and his eyes were dim, the father asked to bless Esau; Rebecca and Jacob came first, and Jacob came in to his father in his brother's garments and with the skins of goats, and received the blessings, though Isaac wondered and said, "the voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau". When Esau returned from the field he cried "a great and exceeding bitter cry", and Jacob had to leave the land. Isaac blessed him again and sent him to Paddan-aram, to the house of Laban. On his way, on the night he spent at Bethel, Jacob dreamed of a ladder set on the earth whose top reached to heaven, with the angels of God ascending and descending on it; the Lord stood above it and promised him, "and behold, I am with you, and will keep you wherever you go". Jacob called the place Bethel, and vowed that if he returned in peace to his father's house the Lord would be his God. In Haran Jacob met Rachel at the well, and his love for her was great: "and Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days for the love he had for her". Laban deceived him and gave him Leah, and he served another seven years for Rachel. From Leah, from Rachel and from their handmaids were born to him twelve sons and a daughter: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar and Zebulun, Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher, Joseph and Benjamin, and their sister Dinah. Twenty years Jacob served in Laban's house, with the flocks and in the field, and at last he went out from there with his family and his wealth. On the way back, at the crossing of the Jabbok, Jacob wrestled with a man until the breaking of the day, and was told, "your name shall no more be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed". The next day he met Esau, bowed before him seven times and offered him a gift, and Esau ran to meet him and embraced him. Jacob returned to the land, bought a parcel of a field in Shechem and set up an altar there, and on his way to Bethel Rachel died on the road to Ephrath in the birth of Benjamin, and he set a pillar upon her grave. Later Joseph his son was sold down to Egypt, and Jacob mourned for him many days. When the famine was in all the land his sons went down to Egypt to buy corn, and there Joseph recognised them. When it was told him at last, "Joseph is yet alive", the spirit of Jacob their father revived. He went down to Egypt with all his house, seventy souls, and settled in the land of Goshen. There he lived another seventeen years, and at the end of his days he blessed his sons, the blessing of Judah "the sceptre shall not depart from Judah", the blessing of Joseph and the blessing of all the tribes, and made Joseph swear to bury him in the Cave of Machpela. Jacob died at the age of a hundred and forty-seven in Egypt, and Joseph and his sons carried him up to the land and buried him in the Cave of Machpela in Hebron. Jacob is the father of the nation: the twelve tribes that came from him are the beginning of the people of Israel, and the people is called Israel after his name. The sages dealt much with his figure, with his sufferings, his humility and his standing before Esau and Laban, and attributed the evening prayer to him. Alongside the tradition, current biblical scholarship debates whether the patriarchal period was a historical era, and the traditions of Jacob are associated with Bethel, Shechem and the region of the kingdom of Israel in the hill country; the various scholarly positions are gathered in the source article.

Jacob our Father, that is Israel, is the father of the twelve tribes, and from him the whole people is called by the name Israel. His blessings to the tribes at the end of his days set out the way of each tribe, and from them the sages learned of the destiny of each tribe within the people. The figure of the "plain man, dwelling in tents" who was given the name Israel after a struggle, "for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed", became a symbol of the standing of the people of Israel in exile and in redemption, and of the covenant with their fathers being kept even in suffering and wandering.