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Jacob
(16th century BC)
Other names: Israel
Biographical
Jacob, the third patriarch of the Israelites,
was the second-born of the twin sons
of Isaac by Rebekah. He was born when his father was fifty- nine and his
grandfather one hundied and fifty-nine years old. He bought the birth-right
from his brother Esau, and afterward, at his mother's instigation, acquired
the blessing intended for Esau by practising a well-known deceit on Isaac.
Hitherto, the two sons had shared the wanderings of their father in the
south country, but now Jacob, in his seventy-eighth year, was sent from
the family home to avoid his brother and to seek a wife among his kindred
in Padan-Aram. As he passed through Bethel, God appeared to him. After
the lapse of twety-one years he returned from Padan-Aram with two principal
wives, two subordinate wives, eleven sons and a daughter, and a very large
property. By the interposition of God he escaped from the angry pursuit
of Laban, from a hostile meeting with Esau and from the vengeance of the
Canaanites provoked by the murder of Shechem; and in sign of God's grace,
won in a night of wrestling prayer, his name was changed at Jabbok into
Israel. At Hebron, in the one hundred and twenty-second year of his age,
he and Esau buried their father Isaac. Joseph, his favourite son, had
been sold into Egypt eleven years before the death of Isaac, and had passed
in Egypt the long interval of twenty years before Jacob, in the one hundred
and thirtieth year of his age, was summoned to the banks of the Nile.
In the land of Goshen he led a prosperous and peaceful life for seventeen
years; and then, after pronouncing on Joseph's children a remarkable prophetic
blessing, died in his one hundred and forty-seventh year. His body was
embalmed, carried with great pomp into the land of Canaan and buried at
Machpelah with the remains of his fathers. In natural gifts Jacob seems
to have been less richly endowed than his brother Esau, but in his later
years he was converted by the grace of God into a fine specimen of the
disciplined, enlightened, conscientious, prayerful, trusting man. lie
who in early life had been known as a practicer of subtle devices, as
a timid and treacherous 'supplanter', confronted death at last as a 'princely
prevailer with God' and as a prophet commissioned to utter the messages
of God.
The twelve Israelite tribes traced their
descent and names from Jacob's sons.
Place of death: Egypt
Place of burial: Cave of Machpelah, Hebron
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