Study Desk

So Jacob approached Isaac, and his father touched him and said, "The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau."

He could not recognize him [as Jacob], because his hands were hairy like his brother Esau's hands; so he blessed him.

Then his father Isaac said to him, "Please come, my son, and kiss me."

So he came and kissed him; and Isaac smelled his clothing and blessed him and said, "The scent of my son [Esau] Is like the aroma of a field which the LORD has blessed;

Now as soon as Isaac had finished blessing Jacob, and Jacob had scarcely left the presence of Isaac his father, Esau his brother came in from his hunting.

Esau also made a delicious dish [of meat] and brought it to his father and said to him, "Let my father get up and eat some of his son's game, so that you may bless me."

Isaac his father said to him, "Who are you?" And he replied, "I am your son, your firstborn, Esau."

When Esau heard the words of his father, he cried out with a great and extremely bitter cry and said to his father, "Bless me, even me also, O my father!"

But Isaac replied to Esau, "Listen carefully: I have made Jacob your lord and master; I have given him all his brothers and relatives as servants; and I have sustained him with grain and new wine. What then, can I do for you, my son?"

Esau said to his father, "Have you only one blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, O my father." Then Esau [no longer able to restrain himself] raised his voice and wept [loudly].

Then Isaac his father answered and [prophesied and] said to him, "Your dwelling shall be away from the fertility of the earth And away from the dew of heaven above;

But you shall live by your sword, And serve your brother; However it shall come to pass when you break loose [from your anger and hatred], That you will tear his yoke off your neck [and you will be free of him]."

So Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father blessed him; and Esau said in his heart, "The days of mourning for my father are very near; then I will kill my brother Jacob."

and that Jacob obeyed his father and his mother and had gone to Paddan-aram.

So Esau realized that [his two wives] the daughters of Canaan displeased Isaac his father;

and [to appease his parents] Esau went to [the family of] Ishmael and took as his wife, in addition to the wives he [already] had, Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham's son, the sister of Nebaioth [Ishmael's firstborn son].

Now Jacob left Beersheba [never to see his mother again] and traveled toward Haran.

And he came to a certain place and stayed overnight there because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down there [to sleep].

Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and he said, "Without any doubt the LORD is in this place, and I did not realize it."

So Jacob got up early in the morning, and took the stone he had put under his head and he set it up as a pillar [that is, a monument to the vision in his dream], and he poured [olive] oil on the top of it [to consecrate it].