Esau sees that the women of Canaan displease his father Isaac (Genesis 28:8). So what does he do? He goes and marries a daughter of Ishmael. Adding trouble upon trouble, the rabbis said. This is the fool's path — straight in his own eyes, impervious to wisdom, generating new problems in the process of trying to solve the first one. Proverbs had his number: "The path of a fool is straight in his own eyes, but he who listens to counsel is wise" (Proverbs 12:15).
Jacob's path was the opposite. When Rebekah heard Esau threatening to kill him, she brought Jacob to Isaac, who sent him to Paddan-Aram with a blessing and a command: marry a daughter of Laban, your mother's brother. Jacob listened. He went. He endured twenty years in a foreign land, working for a dishonest uncle, building a family from the wrong daughters in the wrong order, and still he kept the covenant at every stage. He listened to his parents. He listened to God. He listened to the dreams.
The rabbis loved the contrast because it was so clear. The same father, the same mother, the same blessings available to both sons — and two completely different responses to counsel. One son trusted his own instincts and compounded his errors. The other son trusted the voices around him and walked the harder path toward the covenant he had been born to carry. Jacob left Beer-sheba with nothing and came back with twelve sons and the name Israel. Esau acquired wives and stayed exactly where he was.