The Birth of Jacob and Esau

The event

Isaac and Rebekah wait twenty years for a child, echoing his own parents' long wait for him. When Rebekah finally conceives, she conceives twins, and the pregnancy is unusually difficult — "the children struggled together within her." She takes the question straight to the LORD, and gets a startling answer: two nations are in her womb, two peoples will be divided, and "the older shall serve the younger" — a direct reversal of the ancient world's normal birth-order expectations.

The twins arrive looking like a preview of their whole future relationship: Esau first, red and hairy, and Jacob right behind him, gripping his brother's heel — which is exactly what his name means ("he grasps the heel," idiomatically "he deceives"). Esau grows up a skilled hunter, a man of the open field and his father's favorite; Jacob grows up a quieter man who stays among the tents, and his mother's favorite.

Genesis doesn't hide the favoritism that splits this household right down the middle from birth, and it will drive nearly every conflict in the chapters ahead. But underneath the family dysfunction runs God's own stated intention — the covenant line will run through Jacob, the younger son, continuing a pattern (Isaac over Ishmael, and later Judah and Joseph over their older brothers) in which God's choice, not human birth order or merit, determines who carries the promise.

Dating

Isaac was 60 at their birth (Genesis 25:26), against his birth year of c. 2066 BC.

Scripture references

• Genesis 25:19-28
• Romans 9:10-13
• Malachi 1:2-3