“He commanded them, saying: So you shall say to my lord, to Esau: So says your servant Jacob: I have resided with Laban, and tarried until now” (Genesis 32:5). “He commanded them, saying: So you shall say to my lord, to Esau” – Rabbeinu [Yehuda HaNasi] said to Rabbi Appas: ‘Write one letter in my name to our master, Emperor Antoninus.’ He stood and wrote: From Yehuda the Prince to our master, Emperor Antoninus.
He took it, read it, and ripped it. He said to him: ‘Write: From your servant Yehuda to our master, Emperor Antoninus.’ He said to him: ‘My teacher, why are you demeaning your honor?’ He said to him: ‘In what way am I better than my ancestors?
Did he not say this: “So says your servant Jacob”?’ “I have resided with Laban” – Laban, who is the master of the deceivers, I placed him up my sleeve;14I succeeded in overcoming his deceitfulness. this man,15You, Esau. all the more so. Why did I reside with Laban and “I tarried until now”? It is because the adversary of that man [Esau] had not yet been born.
But now, the adversary of that man has been born, as Rabbi Pinḥas said in the name of Rabbi Shmuel bar Naḥman: There is a tradition that Esau will fall only into the hands of Rachel’s children. That is what is written: “Will the young of the flock not drag them?” (Jeremiah 49:20). Why does he call them “the young of the flock”? It is because they are the youngest of the tribes.