Jacob's name may mean heel-grabber, and his story lives up to it
The patriarch who gave his second name, Israel, to a whole people entered the world clutching his twin brother's heel. Genesis tells how Jacob later traded a bowl of stew for Esau's birthright and tricked their elderly father into blessing him, a trickster founding father unlike most heroes of scripture.
According to Genesis, Isaac and Rebecca waited 20 years for children, and Isaac was 60 when the twins arrived. The pregnancy was painful because the boys fought inside the womb, and Rebecca was told she carried two nations, with the elder destined to serve the younger. Esau emerged first, red and hairy; Jacob followed, gripping his heel. The Hebrew name is linked by folk etymology to the word for heel, with shades of meaning such as supplanter or one who follows close behind.
The brothers grew apart in temperament. Esau was a hunter and his father's favourite; Jacob stayed among the tents and was loved by his mother. One day Esau came in starving and asked for some red stew, earning the nickname Edom, meaning Red. Jacob named his price, the birthright, and Esau agreed. Later, with Rebecca's help, Jacob deceived the ageing Isaac into giving him the blessing meant for his brother.
Jacob fathered twelve sons and a daughter, Dinah, with four women: his wives Leah and Rachel, who were also his cousins, and the concubines Bilhah and Zilpah. Each son became ancestor of one of the Twelve Tribes. His open preference for Rachel's sons, Joseph and Benjamin, bred the resentment that led Joseph's brothers to sell him into slavery. After wrestling with a divine figure, Jacob received the name Israel, often explained as striving with God, though that reading rests on context rather than a clear definition.
Genesis says drought eventually drove the family to Egypt, where Joseph had become the pharaoh's confidant, and that Jacob died there aged 147. Historians are cautious. Archaeology has so far found no trace of him, and scholars such as Thomas L. Thompson and William Dever treat the stories as later literary works with ideological aims. Similar names do appear in cuneiform around 1800 BC, possibly meaning may El protect.
Source: Jacob
