Anonymous · 1400 BCE · overland

Genesis 27 to 49. Jacob cheats his brother out of a birthright and runs five hundred miles to an uncle who cheats him back - fourteen years for two wives, six for the flocks. He comes home expecting to be killed, wrestles somebody by a ford all night, and ends his life in Egypt.

1. 1
   Beersheba

   He buys the birthright with a bowl of stew and steals the blessing with a goatskin on his arms, and then leaves in a hurry with his brother promising to kill him as soon as their father is dead.

2. 2
   Bethel

   He sleeps in the open with a stone for a pillow and sees a ladder with angels going up and down it - and wakes saying that God was in this place and he did not know it, and gives the place its name.

3. 3
   Harran

   Twenty years with Laban: seven years for Rachel and Leah instead, seven more, and six for a flock built out of a bargain about speckled sheep - and then he leaves at speed with his wives, his herds and Laban's household gods.

4. 4
   Peniel

   On the night before he has to face Esau he is left alone at the ford of the Jabbok and wrestles a man until daybreak, and will not let go without a blessing - and walks away with a new name and a limp.

5. 5
   Shechem

   The reunion is not the killing he expected, but Shechem goes badly: his daughter is taken, and two of his sons answer it with a massacre that leaves the family unwelcome in the whole country.

6. 6
   Hebron

   The long middle of the life: Rachel dies on the road to Bethlehem, Joseph's coat comes back bloody, and Jacob spends years believing his favourite son is dead while the famine tightens around him.

7. 7
   Egypt

   At a hundred and thirty he goes down to Goshen to a son he had buried, and blesses Pharaoh - and makes Joseph swear to carry his body back to the cave at Machpelah, which is the last thing he arranges.