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prepared his father’s favorite dish and brings it to him.)
    Esau: “Here I am, Father, with the venison. Sit up and eat it so that you can give me your finest blessings!”
    32   Isaac: “Who is it?”
    Esau: “Why, it’s me, of course! Esau, your oldest son!”
         33  (Isaac begins to tremble noticeably.)
    Isaac: “Then who is it who was just here with venison, and I have already eaten it and blessed him with irrevocable blessing?”
         34  (Esau begins to sob with deep and bitter sobs.)
    Esau: “O my Father, bless me, bless me too!”
    35   Isaac: “Your brother was here and tricked me and has carried away your blessing.”
    36   Esau: (bitterly) “No wonder they call him ‘The Cheater.’ * For he took my birthright, and now he has stolen my blessing. Oh, haven’t you saved even one blessing for me?”
    37   Isaac: “I have made him your master, and have given him yourself and all of his relatives as his servants. I have guaranteed him abundance of grain and wine—what is there left to give?”
    38   Esau: “Not one blessing left for me? O my Father, bless me too.”
         (Isaac says nothing * as Esau weeps.)
    39-40   Isaac: “Yours will be no life of ease and luxury, but you shall hew your way with your sword. For a time you will serve your brother, but you will finally shake loose from him and be free.”
         41  So Esau hated Jacob because of what he had done to him. He said to himself, “My father will soon be gone, and then I will kill Jacob.” 42  But someone got wind of what he was planning and reported it to Rebekah. She sent for Jacob and told him that his life was being threatened by Esau.
         43  “This is what to do,” she said. “Flee to your Uncle Laban in Haran. 44  Stay there with him awhile until your brother’s fury is spent, 45  and he forgets what you have done. Then I will send for you. For why should I be bereaved of both of you in one day?”
         46  Then Rebekah said to Isaac, “I’m sick and tired of these local girls. I’d rather die than see Jacob marry one of them.”
    Genesis 28
    So Isaac called for Jacob and blessed him and said to him, “Don’t marry one of these Canaanite girls. 2  Instead, go at once to Paddan-aram, to the house of your grandfather * Bethuel, and marry one of your cousins—your Uncle * Laban’s daughters. 3  God Almighty bless you and give you many children; may you become a great nation of many tribes! 4  May God pass on to you and to your descendants the mighty blessings promised to Abraham. May you own this land where we now are foreigners, for God has given it to Abraham.”
         5  So Isaac sent Jacob away, and he went to Paddan-aram to visit his Uncle Laban, his mother’s brother—the son of Bethuel the Aramean.
         6-8  Esau realized that his father despised the local girls, and that his father and mother had sent Jacob to Paddan-aram, with his father’s blessing, to get a wife from there, and that they had strictly warned him against marrying a Canaanite girl, and that Jacob had agreed and had left for Paddan-aram. 9  So Esau went to his Uncle Ishmael’s family and married another wife from there, besides the wives he already had. Her name was Mahalath, the sister of Nebaioth, and daughter of Ishmael, Abraham’s son.
         10  So Jacob left Beer-sheba and journeyed toward Haran. 11  That night, when he stopped to camp at sundown, he found a rock for a headrest and lay down to sleep, 12  and dreamed that a staircase * reached from earth to heaven, and he saw the angels of God going up and down upon it.
         13  At the top of the stairs stood the Lord. “I am Jehovah,” he said, “the God of Abraham, and of your father, Isaac. The ground you are lying on is yours! I will give it to you and to your descendants. 14  For you will have descendants as many as dust! They will cover the land from east to west and from north to south; and all the nations of