Jacob was the younger of the twin sons born to Isaac and Rebekah after years without children. When the children struggled within her, Rebekah asked God what was happening and was told that two peoples would come from her and that the older would serve the younger. Esau emerged first, red and covered with hair. His brother followed, gripping Esau’s heel, and was named Jacob. Scripture says little about their childhood. As adults, Esau became a hunter who lived in the open country, while Jacob stayed among the tents. Isaac loved the game Esau brought him, and Rebekah loved Jacob.
One day Esau returned exhausted from the country while Jacob was cooking stew. Esau asked for the red stew, and Jacob demanded his birthright in exchange. Esau swore it away, saying it was of no use if he was about to die, and Jacob gave him bread and lentil stew. Years later, when Isaac was old and nearly blind, he asked Esau to hunt game and prepare a meal before receiving his father’s blessing. Rebekah overheard and devised a plan. She prepared goats from the flock, dressed Jacob in Esau’s clothes, and covered his hands and neck with goatskins. Jacob worried about receiving a curse if he was discovered, but he followed her instructions.
Jacob repeatedly claimed to be Esau as he served the meal. Isaac recognized Jacob’s voice but felt the hairy hands and smelled Esau’s clothing, then gave Jacob the blessing intended for his older son. When Esau returned, the blessing had already been spoken. He wept and begged his father for another blessing, then resolved to kill Jacob after Isaac died. Rebekah sent Jacob to her brother Laban in Haran and said she would call him home when Esau’s anger passed. Scripture never records Rebekah and Jacob meeting again. Jacob left home carrying the blessing he had obtained, but separated from the family he had deceived.
On the way to Haran, Jacob slept with a stone beneath his head. In a dream he saw a stairway reaching from earth to heaven with God’s messengers moving on it. God repeated to Jacob the promises of land and descendants given to Abraham and Isaac and promised to remain with him and bring him back. When Jacob woke, he called the place the house of God and the gate of heaven. He set up the stone as a pillar, poured oil over it, and named the place Bethel. He vowed that if God guarded him and returned him safely to his father’s house, God would be his God and Jacob would give a tenth of what he received.
Near Haran, Jacob met Rachel, Laban’s daughter, at a well. He watered her flock, identified himself as Rebekah’s son, and wept. Laban welcomed him into the household. Jacob loved Rachel and agreed to work seven years to marry her, but after the wedding feast he discovered that Laban had given him her older sister Leah. Laban appealed to the custom of marrying the older daughter first and required another seven years of labor for Rachel. Jacob married Rachel as well and continued working for Laban. The man who had deceived his father and brother was himself deceived in Haran.
Children were born into Jacob’s household through Leah and Rachel and through their servants Bilhah and Zilpah. Leah bore Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah. When Rachel remained childless, she gave Bilhah to Jacob, and Dan and Naphtali were born. Leah gave Zilpah, who bore Gad and Asher, and Leah later bore Issachar, Zebulun, and a daughter, Dinah. At last Rachel gave birth to Joseph. Love, rivalry, waiting, and pain all shaped this family. Genesis says that Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah and that God enabled the unloved Leah to have children. After Joseph’s birth, Jacob asked Laban to let him return to his own land.
Laban knew that his wealth had increased through Jacob’s work and persuaded him to stay. They agreed that marked and spotted animals would become Jacob’s wages, but Laban repeatedly changed the terms. Even so, Jacob’s herds grew, and Laban’s sons complained that he had taken their father’s property. When God told Jacob to return to his ancestral land, he left secretly with his family and livestock. Rachel stole her father’s household gods without Jacob’s knowledge. When Laban caught up and searched for them, Jacob declared that whoever had taken them should not live, but Rachel kept them hidden. Jacob and Laban raised a heap of stones as a boundary, promised not to harm one another, and separated.
The nearer Jacob came to Canaan, the more he feared meeting Esau. When messengers reported that Esau was approaching with four hundred men, Jacob divided his household into two camps and sent large groups of animals ahead as gifts. He prayed that he had once crossed the Jordan with only a staff but had now become two camps, and he asked to be rescued from his brother. That night he sent his family and possessions across the Jabbok and remained alone. A man wrestled with him until daybreak and struck Jacob’s hip. Jacob refused to let go without a blessing. He received the new name Israel because he had struggled with God and with people. Jacob named the place Peniel and limped away as the sun rose.
When Jacob saw Esau, he moved ahead of his family and bowed to the ground seven times. Esau ran to him, embraced him, kissed him, and wept with him. Esau initially refused the gifts, but Jacob pressed him to accept them. The brothers did not settle together or continue on the same road. Esau returned to Seir, while Jacob went through Succoth and settled near Shechem. The meeting Jacob had feared for years ended in an embrace rather than an attack, though the two households continued toward different homes.
At Shechem, Jacob’s daughter Dinah was assaulted by Shechem, the son of the local ruler. Shechem and his father Hamor asked for a marriage. Jacob’s sons answered deceitfully, saying that intermarriage would be possible if every man in the city were circumcised. While the men were in pain, Simeon and Levi attacked the city, killed them, and brought Dinah home. The other sons plundered the city. Jacob rebuked them for making the surrounding peoples hostile and placing the household in danger. As the family moved to Bethel, Jacob made everyone surrender their foreign gods and earrings and buried them. At Bethel, God again called him Israel and reaffirmed the promises of descendants and land.
After the family left Bethel, Rachel died while giving birth to Benjamin and was buried on the road to Bethlehem. Jacob then learned that his oldest son Reuben had slept with Bilhah, Jacob’s concubine. He eventually returned to his father Isaac at Hebron, and when Isaac died at one hundred eighty, Jacob and Esau buried him together. Yet conflict was again growing inside Jacob’s household. He favored Joseph, Rachel’s son, and gave him a special robe. Joseph’s brothers hated him because of their father’s favoritism and his dreams. They sold him to traders bound for Egypt, stained his robe with goat’s blood, and showed it to Jacob. Believing that a wild animal had killed Joseph, Jacob mourned for years.
When famine later struck Canaan, Jacob sent his sons to Egypt to buy grain but kept Benjamin, Rachel’s remaining son, at home. Joseph, now Egypt’s governor, recognized his brothers, though they did not recognize him. After Joseph detained Simeon and demanded that they return with Benjamin, Jacob refused at first. Only when the grain was gone and Judah pledged responsibility for Benjamin did he allow him to go. When Joseph finally revealed himself and sent for his father, Jacob initially could not believe the report. After hearing Joseph’s words and seeing the wagons sent to carry him, Jacob revived and set out for Egypt, determined to see Joseph before he died.
At Beersheba, God told Jacob not to fear going down to Egypt and promised to make a great nation from him there and bring him up again. Jacob’s household traveled with its livestock and possessions. When Jacob met Joseph in Goshen, Joseph embraced him and wept for a long time. Jacob said he could now die because he had seen his son alive. Before Pharaoh, he gave his age as one hundred thirty and blessed the king. The family settled in the good land of Goshen and received food through Joseph during the famine. Jacob lived another seventeen years in Egypt.
As death approached, Jacob made Joseph swear to bury him with his ancestors rather than in Egypt. He accepted Joseph’s sons Manasseh and Ephraim as his own and blessed them. Joseph placed the older Manasseh at Jacob’s right hand, but Jacob crossed his hands and placed his right hand on the younger Ephraim. When Joseph tried to correct him, Jacob said he knew what he was doing. Jacob then gathered his twelve sons, spoke fitting words and blessings over them, and again directed them to bury him in the cave in the field of Machpelah. After finishing, he drew his feet into the bed and died at the age of one hundred forty-seven.
Joseph bent over his father, wept, and kissed him. The Egyptians embalmed Jacob and mourned him for seventy days. With Pharaoh’s permission, Joseph, his brothers, the household, and senior Egyptian officials traveled to Canaan in a large funeral procession. After another seven days of mourning beyond the Jordan, the sons buried Jacob in the cave of Machpelah near Hebron. Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and Leah had already been buried there. Jacob had been born gripping a heel, left home, and returned bearing the name Israel. His last journey brought him from Egypt to the ancestral burial place he had chosen.