Rav Yitzchak asked: what did David mean when he wrote, Grant not, O Lord, the desires of the wicked; further not his wicked device, lest they exalt themselves. Selah (Psalms 140:8)?
He answered: this was Jacob's prayer, offered to the Master of the Universe. "Do not grant Esau the desires of his heart" — this is the first line. "Further not his wicked device" — this, says the Talmud (Megillah 6a), refers to Germamia of Edom, the sages' code-name for imperial Rome. If the Romans were ever allowed to push their ambitions to the end, Jacob knew, they would destroy the whole world.
Rav Chama bar Chanina added a chilling detail. "There are three hundred crowned heads in Germamia of Edom, and three hundred and sixty-five dukes in Babylon. Every day they go out against one another. One of them commits murder. They strive to set up a king."
The number three hundred and sixty-five is not a coincidence — one for every day of the year. The Rabbis are saying: each day of the civil calendar is pocketed by a different warlord. The empires are built on endless palace intrigue. And yet even this, they insist, is held in check only by Jacob's old prayer, offered before there was a Rome to fear.
The teaching, preserved in the 1901 anthology Hebraic Literature, is a window into how Jewish tradition has always read empire. Esau, Edom, Rome — in the Rabbis' mouths they become one rolling name for unchecked power. Jacob, the trickster who learned to wrestle, prays not for Israel's victory but for the world's protection from what his brother would do if he ever got the reins. Sometimes the best prayer is simply: do not grant them what they want.