Old/New Testament

Isaac blesses Jacob

27 Isaac became old. He could not see anything because his eyes were weak. He called for his older son, Esau. Isaac said, ‘My son.’ Esau replied, ‘Yes, I am here.’ ² Isaac said, ‘I am an old man. I may die very soon. ³ Get your bow and your arrows.^[a] Go out into the country and kill some wild animals for me. ⁴ Then prepare the food that I like to eat. Bring it to me so that I can eat it. Then I will give you my blessing before I die.’^[b]

⁵ Rebekah listened to what Isaac said to Esau. She waited until Esau went out to the country to kill an animal and bring back the meat. ⁶ Then she said to Jacob, ‘I heard your father say this to Esau: ⁷ “Bring me some meat and prepare the food that I like to eat. When I have eaten it, I will give you my blessing. I will bless you in front of the Lord before I die.”  ⁸ Now my son, listen carefully and do as I tell you. ⁹ Go out to the animals and bring two goats to me. They must be very good young goats. Then I will prepare some food that your father likes to eat. I will cook the meat in the way that he likes. ¹⁰ Then take the food to your father. When he has eaten it, he will give you his blessing before he dies.’

¹¹ Jacob said to his mother Rebekah, ‘That will be difficult. Hair covers my brother's skin. But my skin does not have any hair. ¹² My father may touch me. Then he will know that I am deceiving him. He will not bless me. He will curse me instead.’ ¹³ Jacob's mother said, ‘My son, the curse will happen to me, not you. Do what I say. Go and get the things that I told you.’

¹⁴ Jacob went and he got the goats. He brought them to his mother. She prepared some food in the way that Isaac liked to eat. ¹⁵ Then Rebekah took some of Esau's best clothes that were in her house. She put them on Jacob, her younger son. ¹⁶ She covered Jacob's hands with the skin from the goats. She also covered the part of his neck that had no hair. ¹⁷ Then she gave to Jacob the food that Isaac liked to eat. And she gave him some bread that she had made.

¹⁸ Jacob went to his father. He said, ‘My father.’ Isaac replied ‘Yes, my son. Who are you, Esau or Jacob?’ ¹⁹ Jacob said, ‘I am Esau. I am your firstborn son. I have done as you told me. Please sit up. Eat some of the meat from the wild animal that I killed. Then you can bless me.’ ²⁰ Isaac asked his son, ‘My son, how did you find it so quickly?’ Jacob replied, ‘The Lord your God helped me find it.’^[c]

²¹ Isaac said to Jacob, ‘Come near to me so that I can touch you, my son. Then I will know if you really are my son Esau.’

²² Jacob went near to his father. Isaac touched him and he said, ‘The voice is Jacob's voice. But the hands are Esau's hands.’ ²³ Isaac did not know that it was Jacob because he could feel the hair on Jacob's hands. They felt like Esau's hands. So Isaac blessed Jacob.

²⁴ Isaac asked again, ‘Are you really my son Esau?’ Jacob replied, ‘I am.’ ²⁵ Isaac said, ‘My son, bring me some of your meat. I will eat it. Then I will bless you.’ So Jacob brought the food to him and Isaac ate it. Jacob also brought some wine and Isaac drank it.

²⁶ Then Isaac said, ‘Come here my son and kiss me.’ ²⁷ So Jacob went to Isaac and kissed him. Isaac smelled the clothes that Jacob wore. Then Isaac blessed him. He said,

³⁰ When Isaac had blessed Jacob, Jacob left him. Just then, Esau came back from the country where he had killed an animal. ³¹ He prepared nice food that Isaac liked to eat. Then he took the food to his father, Isaac. Esau said, ‘My father, please sit up. Eat some of the meat from the wild animal that I have killed. Then you can bless me.’

³² His father Isaac asked, ‘Who are you?’ Esau replied, ‘I am your firstborn son, Esau.’ ³³ Isaac's body shook very much. He asked, ‘Who was it who killed an animal and brought the meat to me? Just before you came, I ate all of it. And then I blessed him. And God will certainly bless him!’^[f]

³⁴ Esau heard what his father had said and he cried aloud. He was very upset. He said, ‘My father, please bless me too!’ ³⁵ But Isaac said, ‘Your brother came to me. He deceived me and he took your blessing away from you.’ ³⁶ Esau said, ‘Yes, “Jacob” is the right name for him. He has cheated me twice. First he took my birthright. Now he has taken my blessing as well!’ Then Esau asked his father, ‘You must still have some blessing left for me, don't you?’^[g]

³⁷ Isaac replied, ‘I have made Jacob master over you. All his relatives will become his servants. I have given him crops and wine. So what can I still do to bless you, my son?’^[h]

³⁸ Esau said, ‘My father, you surely have one blessing left for me. Please bless me too!’ Then Esau wept loudly.

³⁹ Isaac replied,

⁴¹ Because Isaac had blessed Jacob, Esau hated his younger brother Jacob. Esau said quietly, ‘My father will die soon. When we have buried his body, I will kill my brother.’ ⁴² Someone told Rebekah what her older son, Esau, had said. So she told her younger son, Jacob, to come to her. She said to him, ‘Your brother Esau wants to kill you, because of what you did to him. ⁴³ Now my son, do what I tell you. Quickly go away from here. Go to my brother Laban who lives in Haran. ⁴⁴ Live with him for a time. Stay there until your brother is not angry with you any longer. ⁴⁵ He may forget what you did to him. Then I will send a message to you, so that you can come back from Haran. I do not want to lose both of my sons in one day.’^[j]

⁴⁶ Then Rebekah said to Isaac, ‘I do not like living in the same place as Esau's wives. It makes me very upset, because they are Hittites. If Jacob marries one of the Hittite women who live in this land, I will be very sad. I would rather die!’^[k]

Jacob and Esau

28 Isaac called Jacob to come to him. He blessed Jacob. He told him, ‘Do not marry a Canaanite woman. ² Go now to Paddan Aram. Go to the house of your mother's father, Bethuel. Find a wife for yourself from there. Choose one of the daughters of your mother's brother, Laban. ³ I pray that God Almighty will bless you. I pray that he will give you many children, so that your descendants become a large nation of people. ⁴ May God bless you and your descendants with the good things that he promised to Abraham. The land that he promised to give to Abraham will then belong to you. That is the land where you now live as a foreign person.’

⁵ Isaac sent Jacob away and Jacob went to Paddan Aram. He went to stay with Laban, who was the son of Bethuel, the Aramean. Laban was the brother of Rebekah. Rebekah was the mother of Jacob and Esau.

⁶ Esau heard that Isaac had blessed Jacob and then sent him away to Paddan Aram. Isaac had told Jacob to find a woman from Paddan Aram that he would marry. Isaac had said to Jacob, ‘Do not marry a Canaanite woman.’ ⁷ Esau saw that Jacob had obeyed his father and mother, and that he had gone to Paddan Aram. ⁸ So Esau then understood that his father, Isaac, did not like the Canaanite women. ⁹ So Esau went to visit Abraham's son, Ishmael. He married Ishmael's daughter, Mahalath, the sister of Nebaioth. When Esau married Mahalath, he kept his Canaanite wives as well.

Jacob's journey

¹⁰ Jacob left Beersheba and he went towards Haran. ¹¹ He came to a place where he stayed for the night, because the sun had gone down. He took a stone and he put it under his head. Then he lay down and he went to sleep. ¹² He had a dream. In the dream, he saw some steps. The steps went up from the earth into heaven. God's angels were going up and down the steps.

¹³ The Lord stood at the top of the steps. He said, ‘I am the Lord. I am the God of your grandfather Abraham, and the God of Isaac, your father. I will give the land that you are lying on to you and to your descendants. ¹⁴ Your descendants will be as many as the dust of the earth. They will go to the west and to the east. They will go to the north and to the south. Through you and your descendants I will bless all the families of people on the earth.^{[l] 15} I am with you. I will take care of you wherever you go. I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I promised to do for you.’

¹⁶ Jacob woke from his sleep. He thought, ‘The Lord is in this place and I did not know it.’ ¹⁷ Jacob was afraid. He said, ‘How great this place is! This must be the house of God. This is the gate of heaven.’

¹⁸ Early in the morning Jacob got up. He took the stone that he had put under his head. He made it stand up straight in the ground. He poured oil on top of it.^[m]

¹⁹ Jacob called that place Bethel.^[n] Before that, the name of the place had been Luz.

²⁰ Then Jacob made a promise to God. He said, ‘While I am on this journey, I want God to be with me and to take care of me. I want him to give me food to eat and clothes to wear. ²¹ Then I want to return to my father's house. If God keeps me safe, then the Lord will be my God. ²² This special stone that I have put here will be God's house. And from everything that God gives me, I will give God one tenth.’

¹⁸ One day, Jesus saw a large crowd of people around him. So he told his disciples, ‘We should go across the lake to the other side.’ ¹⁹ A teacher of God's Law came to Jesus and said to him, ‘Teacher, I will go with you everywhere that you go.’ ²⁰ Jesus replied, ‘Wild animals and birds have their own places to live. But I, the Son of Man, have no place of my own to lie down and rest.’

²¹ Another man who was one of Jesus' disciples said to him, ‘Sir, I want to come with you. But first, let me go home and bury my father. Then I will come with you.’ ²² Jesus said to him, ‘No! You must come with me now. Let those people who are dead themselves bury their own dead people.’^[a]

Jesus stops a storm

²³ Then Jesus got into a boat. His disciples also went with him. ²⁴ Immediately a great storm began to blow across the lake. Water began to go into the boat and fill it. Jesus was sleeping. ²⁵ The disciples went to him and they woke him. ‘Master, save us!’ they said. ‘We will die here in the water!’ ²⁶ Jesus said to them, ‘You should not be so afraid. You should trust me more than you do!’ Then he stood up and he spoke strongly to the wind and the water. ‘Stop!’ he said. Then the wind and the water became quiet again.

²⁷ The disciples were very surprised. They asked each other, ‘What kind of man is this? Even the wind and the water obey him!’

Jesus makes two men well again

²⁸ Jesus arrived at the other side of Lake Galilee. He came to a place where the Gadarene people lived.^[b] Two men who had bad spirits in them came to meet him. These men lived outside, among some graves. They were very strong and dangerous. People were too afraid to walk that way because of them. ²⁹ When the two men saw Jesus, they immediately shouted at him, ‘You are the Son of God! What are you doing here? Have you come to punish us before the right time comes?’^[c]

³⁰ A large group of pigs was eating there, not very far away. ³¹ The bad spirits said to Jesus, ‘If you make us leave these men, please send us to those pigs. Let us go into them.’ ³² Jesus said to the bad spirits, ‘Go!’ So the bad spirits came out of the men and they went into the pigs. All the pigs rushed together down the hill into the lake. They all died there in the water. ³³ When this happened, the men who took care of the pigs ran away. They went into the town. They told people there everything that had happened to the men with the bad spirits in them. ³⁴ So everybody came out of the town to meet Jesus. When they saw him, they said, ‘Please go away. Leave our part of the country.’