Rebekah's instruction to Jacob is urgent, and the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan adds a Genesis-deep lament to the end of it. "Why should I be bereaved of you both in one day: thou being slain, and he driven forth, as Hava was bereaved of Habel, whom Kain slew, and both were removed from before Adam and Hava all the days of the life of Adam and Hava?" (Genesis 27:45).
She is comparing herself to Eve. She is comparing Jacob and Esau to Abel and Cain. And she is saying — with a mother's precision — that she will not survive watching the tragedy repeat.
The first mother's grief
The rabbis taught that Eve's grief at Abel's death was incalculable. The Midrash in Bereshit Rabbah 23:5 describes her as sitting in silence for long stretches of years, bereft not only of the son Cain killed but of the son who killed him, because Cain was banished. Two sons gone in one day. Adam and Eve would father Seth, but the specific loss — Abel and Cain, side by side — was never undone.
Rebekah sees the pattern before it closes on her. If Esau kills Jacob, Jacob is dead; and Esau, as a murderer, will be driven forth from the family and the covenant. Both sons, gone. And she — the mother who felt them wrestling in her womb — will be Eve all over again.
The takeaway
This is the mother's calculation, and Pseudo-Jonathan makes it explicit. Rebekah is not only protecting Jacob from Esau. She is protecting Esau from himself, and protecting her own heart from becoming a second Eve. The plan — send Jacob to Laban in Padan Aram — is a rescue of three people at once. The takeaway: a wise mother thinks about everyone in the room, even the one holding the knife.