The story of Esau and Jacob involves sibling rivalry, favoritism, and deceit. The twin sons of Isaac and Rebekah have been fighting since they were in the womb. “Two nations are in your womb,” God tells the pregnant Rebekah, “and two peoples from within you will be separated, one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger.”

According to Genesis 25:25, Esau was the firstborn (“the first to come out was red, and his whole body was like a hairy garment”), but Jacob followed promptly, his hand clinging to his brother’s heel. The boys grow up to be different characters: Esau is a hunter; Jacob is quieter. Once, when Esau returns from hunting, he finds his brother cooking a stew. When Esau asks for some, Jacob agrees on condition that Esau surrenders his birthright—an elder son’s entitlement to a double portion of any inheritance. Too hungry to care, Esau agrees.

The favorite son

Esau is Isaac’s favorite son, Jacob his mother’s. When Isaac is old, almost blind, and near death, he tells Esau to go out and hunt some game. Esau must then cook the meat and take the dish to Isaac so that he may bless his favorite son, a deathbed ritual believed to confer God’s presence and protection on the recipient. Overhearing this exchange, Rebekah wants Jacob to receive the blessing. Her reasons are not stated, though some scholars suggest she is the instrument of God, whose plan for Jacob was revealed to her during her pregnancy. She tells Jacob to slaughter two kids from their flock, which she will cook. Jacob should then take the dish to his near-blind father, pretending to be Esau. Before he does this, she covers his hands and neck with goatskin to make him feel hairy like Esau. The deceit works: Jacob receives his father’s blessing.

Shortly after this, Esau returns and discovers he has been cheated, but the blessing has already been given, so cannot be revoked. In his fury, Esau vows to murder Jacob once their father is dead.

Jacob’s ladder

Warned by his mother, Jacob flees under the guise of finding a wife among their own people. He heads for Haran, where Rebekah’s brother Laban lives. One night on the journey, he has a dream in which he sees angels ascending and descending a stairway between Earth and heaven. God is present in this symbolic bond of the divine and the human. He assures Jacob of protection and promises that the covenant made with Jacob’s grandfather, Abraham, and father, Isaac, will extend to him and his offspring. They will be as numerous as the “dust of the earth,” a blessing to the whole world. Jacob, a younger son who has deceived his brother, receives God’s favor.

Laban tricks Jacob

However, Jacob’s behavior is punished, and also by a trick. When Jacob arrives at his uncle Laban’s house, he falls in love with his cousin Rachel. Laban promises him her hand in marriage after seven years. However, at the end of this time, Laban substitutes his eldest daughter Leah at the ceremony. Jacob must work another seven years to marry Rachel.

Esau sells his birthright to Jacob, an impetuous act depicted in one of a series of biblical paintings, c.1860–80, by Lady Waterford for Waterford Hall, near Berwick-upon-Tweed, England.

Women in Genesis

The four Jewish matriarchs in Genesis—Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah—are noted for their faith and dedication to God. Even though they struggle to conceive children, they keep faith in God’s plan and acknowledge His role in continuing Abraham’s lineage by granting them miraculous pregnancies, even well past normal childbearing age.

Yet the women of Genesis are not passive. They are catalysts. Eve sets the history of humankind in motion when she defies God’s command not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and women continually determine who will inherit God’s promise to Abraham: Sarah secures the succession of her son Isaac when she persuades Abraham to expel Hagar and her son Ishmael, and Rebekah engineers for Jacob to receive his father’s blessing instead of his older brother Esau.

See also: The Testing of Abraham • Jacob Wrestles with God • The Psalms • Sermon on the Mount • The Trinity