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 that he was not God. Heaven heard the answer and did not forget it.
Isaac put a sword into Esau's hands and told him to keep it sheathed. Years later four hundred men waited on the road home.
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 walked Adam over the earth and showed him where to plant. At the tree, the serpent shoved Eve and waited for her not to die.
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's bed frame jumped under him. The son at the foot of it still held a bowl of meat. The blessing had already left the room.
Jacob poured oil on a stone and promised God a house. Twenty years later he bought a field at Shechem and stopped one city short.
The drovers were told to call Esau lord. God heard the word leave Jacob's mouth and said he had made something holy common.
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 had the road ready and the days counted. Jacob would not take a step until Isaac blessed him in the open and named the house he was bound for.
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.
The sons of Esau asked what was written in it. God named one command. They remembered Isaac's blessing and would not take the rest.
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.
His sons would not let the old quarrel sleep. Four thousand men came down from Seir. Esau named a lion yoked to an ox as the price of peace.
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.
