Isaac's Blessings, the Dream of the Ladder and Fourteen Years in the Academy of Shem and Ever
At Rebecca's urging Jacob receives the firstborn's blessings, flees Esau's anger, dreams of a ladder reaching heaven, and studies fourteen years with Shem and Ever.
Isaac is a hundred and twenty-three, his eyes are dim, and he asks Esau to bring him game so that he may bless him. Rebecca, who remembers the oracle that the elder shall serve the younger, sends Jacob in with two kids and covers his hands and neck with their skins. The scene is written with painful precision: "The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are Esau's hands." The blessing is given—the dew of heaven, the fat of the earth, mastery over nations. When Esau returns, Isaac trembles greatly but confirms it; Esau cries out bitterly and resolves to kill his brother. Rebecca sends Jacob to her brother Laban in Haran "for a few days" that will become thirty-six years. By the sages' reckoning Jacob leaves at sixty-three and spends fourteen years hidden in the academy of Shem and Ever. Then, sleeping at the site of the future Temple with stones under his head, he dreams of a ladder set on the earth reaching to heaven, with angels ascending and descending.
How we know
Sources
Tanakh
- Bereishit 27 — the blessings, “the voice of Yaakov, the hands of Esav”, Esav’s rage and the flight
- Bereishit 28:10–22 — the dream of the ladder, the vow and the stone at Beit El
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Vayikra Rabbah 29:2 — the ladder as the succession of empires: nations rise and fall
- Megillah 16b–17a — the reckoning of Yaakov’s years and the fourteen years in Ever’s house
- Chullin 91b — the angels of the Land of Israel and of abroad; the stones that argued beneath his head
Rishonim
- Rashi on Bereishit 28:11 — the sun that set early and the stones that became one
Basis: stated in the Tanakh.
People and places
Shem · Eber · Isaac · Rebecca · Esau · Jacob · Laban · Charan · Beit El · Beer Sheva