The Mekhilta completes its tracing of prayer through the three patriarchs by turning to Jacob. The Torah says that Jacob "vayifga in the place and he spent the night there, for the sun had set" (Genesis 28:11). The key word is "vayifga" — and the Mekhilta identifies it as prayer.
The Hebrew root "pegiyah" appears elsewhere in Scripture with the explicit meaning of intercession and supplication. The proof text comes from the prophet Jeremiah, where God tells him: "And you, do not pray for this people, and do not raise for them song and prayer, and do not tifga bi" (Jeremiah 7:16). The word "tifga" — from the same root as Jacob's "vayifga" — means "do not intercede with Me," "do not approach Me in prayer."
God was commanding Jeremiah to stop praying on behalf of Israel. The very fact that God had to issue this prohibition reveals how powerful Jeremiah's intercession was — and it confirms that "pegiyah" means the kind of prayer that breaks through, that confronts, that refuses to be turned away.
Jacob's contribution to the family tradition of prayer was this quality of confrontation. Where Abraham called out and Isaac poured out his heart in solitude, Jacob collided with the divine. He "struck against" the holy place — the future site of the Temple in Jerusalem — and the encounter was so intense that the Torah describes it with a word that means both prayer and impact. The Israelites at the Red Sea inherited all three modes: Abraham's public declaration, Isaac's intimate outpouring, and Jacob's fierce confrontation with God.