duplicated in xxi. 8-21.]
[Footnote 3: xxvi. 1-11=xii. 10-20 (xx.); xxvi. 26-33=xxi. 22-34.]

The story of Isaac's son Jacob is as varied and romantic as his own
was uneventful. He begins by fraudulently winning a blessing from
his father, and has in consequence to flee the promised land,
xxvii.-xxviii. 9. On the threshold of his new experiences he was
taught in a dream the nearness of heaven to earth, and received
the assurance that the God who had visited him at Bethel would
be with him in the strange land and bring him back to his own,
xxviii. 10-22. In the land of his exile, his fortunes ran a very
checkered course (xxix.-xxxi.). In Laban, his Aramean kinsman, he
met his match, and almost his master, in craft; and the initial
fraud of his life was more than once punished in kind. In due time,
however, he left the land of his sojourn, a rich and prosperous man.
But his discipline is not over when he reaches the homeland. The past
rises up before him in the person of the brother whom he had wronged;
and besides reckoning with Esau, he has also to wrestle with God. He
is embroiled in strife with the natives of the land, and he loses his
beloved Rachel (xxxii.-xxxv.).

Into the later years of Jacob is woven the most romantic story of
all--that of his son Joseph (xxxvii.-l.)[1] the dreamer, who rose
through persecution and prison, slander and sorrow (xxxvii.-xl.) to
a seat beside the throne of Pharaoh (xli.). Nowhere is the providence
that governs life and the Nemesis that waits upon sin more dramatically
illustrated than in the story of Joseph. Again and again his guilty
brothers are compelled to confront the past which they imagined they
had buried out of sight for ever (xlii.-xliv.). But at last comes the
gracious reconciliation between Joseph and them (xlv.), the tender