the desert, out of the reach of the cultured Canaanites and the
domination of Babylonia. Isaac, too, the son of his Babylonian wife,
seemed bent upon following their example. He established himself on the
skirts of the southern wilderness, not far on the one hand from the
borders of Palestine, nor on the other from the block of mountains
within which was the desert sanctuary of Kadesh-barnea. His sons Esau
and Jacob shared the desert and the cultivated land between them. Esau
planted himself among the barren heights of Mount Seir, subjugating or
assimilating its Horite and Amalekite inhabitants, and securing the road
which carried the trade of Syria to the Red Sea; while Jacob sought his
wives among the settled Aramæans of Harran, and, like Abraham, pitched
his tent in Canaan. At Shechem, in the heart of Canaan, he purchased a
field, not, as in the case of Abraham, for the sake of burial, but in
order that he might live upon it in tent or house, and secure a spring
of water for his own possession.

In Jacob the Israelites saw their peculiar ancestor. His twelve sons
became the fathers and representatives of the twelve tribes of Israel,
and his own name was changed to that of Israel. The inscribed tablets of
early Babylonia have taught us that both Israel and Ishmael were the
names of individuals in the Patriarchal age, not the names of tribes or
peoples, and consequently the Israelites, like the Ishmaelites, of a
later day must have been the descendants of an individual Israel and
Ishmael as the Old Testament records assert. Already in the reign of the
Babylonian king Ammi-zadok, the fourth successor of Amraphel, the
contemporary of Abraham, a high-priest in the district of northern
Chaldasa assigned to "Amorite" settlers from Canaan, bore the name of
Sar-ilu or Israel.[1]

The fuller and older form of Jacob is Jacob-el. We find it in contracts