180 myths · Page 3 of 6
At the Jabbok ford a figure grips Jacob until dawn. Tradition names him precisely: Samael, Esau's angel, the prosecutor of Israel.
Abraham told God directly that he could see the problem in Esau. The bowl of lentil soup decades later was not a surprise to anyone who had been watching.
Sarah died at Hebron and Abraham owned no ground to bury her in. Ephron called the field a gift, then named a price: four hundred shekels of silver.
Twenty years after the theft, Jacob sent word ahead to Esau. The message listed his cattle, his servants, his donkeys. It never mentioned the blessing.
Esau had married Hittite women and their customs filled the house. Rebecca told Isaac that if Jacob married the same way she would rather die.
Rachel told Jacob to give her children or she would die. He shouted back that he was not God. Heaven heard the answer and did not forget it.
Jacob and Esau divide a world with swords and stone piles, while Rachel's grave holds open the wound that makes homecoming possible.
Laban ran out to embrace his nephew and found nothing on him worth taking. Twenty years later Jacob spent everything he had on his brother.
God carried Adam over the whole earth, pointing out where to plant and where to sow. He was still out there when the serpent got Eve alone.
He was naming his sons one at a time from the bed. At Dan he described a man who fights alone and wins, and then he broke off to pray.
Isaac shook so hard the bed frame moved. He told his son the blessing had already been given away and would stand. Esau begged for a leftover.
Jacob poured oil on a stone in the dark and promised God a house on that spot. Twenty years later he came back rich and stopped one city short of it.
Jacob split his herds into droves so his brother would be softened three times before he saw a face. Then he signed the message as a slave.
Michael and Gabriel served as witnesses when Esau sold the birthright, then Michael carried Levi to the Throne before Jacob sent him as tribute to his brother.
Jacob's skin and Esau's arms were more than a disguise. Two words sorted two brothers into two eternities before either one knew it.
An unlearned man told a rabbi that Jacob's tribute to Esau was never really given away. It was lent, and it comes due in the days of the Messiah.
Stripped of everything by Esau's son, Jacob ran for his life, slept on a stone, and woke to find heaven had bent the whole land beneath him.
For fifteen years no one could tell Esau from Jacob. Then the myrtle breathed out fragrance, the thorn showed its thorns, and the world finally saw them.
Jacob counted the warlords of Esau and went cold. God answered him with a single name, the boy who would burn them all to ash.
Rebekah begged Jacob to flee for his life, and he refused to take one step until his father blessed him out loud and aimed him at the road.
Esau brings a host to besiege the tower, deaf to every oath of peace, and Jacob looses twelve arrows that scatter the army and end the war.
Esau's grandson Zepho slays a half-goat beast in a mountain cave, is crowned king of Kittim, then begs the God of Abraham to save his idol army.
A princess of royal blood begged to join the covenant of Abraham, was turned from the door, and from that wound she bore Amalek.
No messenger told Rebecca. Her prophecy cut a furrow inside a furrow and read the murder Esau had sworn only in his own silent heart.
Robbed of everything by his nephew on the road to Haran, Jacob finds a dead man, a waiting horse, and a promise that never sleeps.
God carried the Torah first to Esau and Ishmael, who heard one command they could not bear and handed the fire back, until Israel said yes.
Edom crowns Hadad, Africa wars over a stolen bride, and Chittim hoists infants on its walls, all while Israel groans unseen in Egypt's brickyards.
Esau's sons goad him into war and he swears peace will come only when the lion plows beside the ox, but the war ends with Edom under a yoke.
After two brothers razed Shechem, an army from Nineveh cut off Jacob's road, and the old patriarch and his twelve sons fought it like a nation.
Jacob offered Esau the whole of this world for a share of the next, and Esau's friends counted the price in someone else's four hundred years.
