480 myths · Page 16 of 16
Laban's riders still smelled of the chase. Jacob killed animals on the mountain and told the men who had hunted him to sit and eat.
Jacob's stalls at Succoth stood open. His daughter wanted faces that were not her brothers'. A prince's eyes got there first.
Joseph leaned closer, waiting for a date from his father. Jacob's eyes were clear. The hour of the End sat on his tongue and would not move.
Before dark on the day they shook hands, every spotted goat was walking north with Laban's sons. Jacob was left a flock the color of dust.
Judah drove the first post into Goshen dirt while the famine carts still stood packed. The beds could wait. The verses could not.
Wherever the patriarchs walked, harvests and houses bloated with blessing. Isaac's hundredfold in Gerar and Laban's confession prove the spill of the righteous.
Jacob only seemed to leave Isaac's tent. He clung to the hinged door as Esau returned from a hunt the midrash hears as a hunt for his brother's life.
The cup was in the youngest sack. Their father was waiting in Canaan for Rachel's last son. Judah moved closer to the chair.
Ishmael left Abraham's house. Esau left Isaac's. Jacob sat among the flocks with no rival altar rising from his sons.
Reuven came back to the pit and found an empty hole and a coat that would lie to Jacob. Years later Moses gave him six words. Live and do not die.
Judah told Jacob the Egyptian face was locked, then pledged guilt for all days. In the court he offered his body so Rachel's last son could walk free.
Joseph told of sun, moon, and stars bowing. Jacob rebuked him because Rachel was dead. Heaven answered that soft prophecy breeds later mouths that silence…
Jacob finally wants quiet after Esau, Laban, and Dina. The heavenly Accuser objects, Joseph vanishes, and only late Egypt gives him seventeen shielded years.
Joseph still sat at the table when the Accuser stood up in heaven. Eight quiet years, he said, was already more than a pious man should keep.
Asenath washed Jacob's mouth and counted the pauses between words. She would not wait for a public deathbed. The boys had to reach him now.
Michael found him among the oxen, still offering a beast for the road. The blessing stayed in his mouth. Heaven spoke it after he died.
While Jacob studied Torah, Dinah walked toward Shechem's music. The prince seized her, and heaven answered Jacob's old caution with a terrible measure.
Isaac feared he had blessed the wrong son. Then Esau stood in the doorway wailing that Jacob had once bought his birthright with a bowl of lentils.
On his deathbed Jacob forced his body upright for Joseph the viceroy, begged the holy spirit for the blessing, and bound his bones to Machpelah.
The ropes bit his wrists and the packs smelled of perfume. He threw himself on Rachel's grave. Gad later told his sons he had wanted the boy dead.
Before Jacob, a sneeze emptied a soul on the spot. He begged for time to charge his house, and sickness entered the world as a warning.
Jacob buried Rachel by the road and pitched his tent at a shepherds tower. Dying, he was shown Gideon and Samson, and he asked for someone else.
Rebecca knew she would be buried before the year turned. She sent for Esau and asked that he never raise his hand against Jacob. He gave her his word.
Feeling death draw near, Jacob binds Joseph by oath to carry him home to Canaan, and armed kings who came to raid his funeral leave their crowns on his coffin.
At a hundred forty-seven, a day was the shadow of a bird. Jacob would not lie in Egyptian ground. He made Joseph swear before he would close his eyes.
For twenty years heaven says nothing while Jacob toils for Laban, until his flocks swell to a hundred and twenty myriads and the snarling breaks it.
At the border of Canaan one host of angels climbs and another descends to take the watch, and word of Esau's four hundred men turns Jacob to wax.
With Jacob buried, his sons feared Joseph's mercy died with him, so they forged a dying father's plea for their lives.
When Joseph was born the Holy Spirit fell on Jacob and showed him a flame to burn Esau, and that same fire drove his frightened house down to Egypt.
Judah stood in the tent with a goat-stained coat. Jacob named an evil beast, then looked at the son he would later bless as a lion.
