Summary of parashat Toldot
Isaac marries Rivka. After twenty years without children, their prayers are answered and Rivka conceives. The pregnancy is difficult, as “the children fight within her”; God tells her that she has “two nations in her womb,” and that her younger son will prevail over the older.
Esau comes out first. Jacob is born taking Esau's heel. Esau grows up to be a "hunter, a man of the field"; Jacob is a "complete man," a dweller of the study tents. Isaac prefers Esau, Rebecca prefers Jacob. Returning exhausted and hungry from the field after a day of hunting, Esau sells Jacob his birthright for a bowl of red lentil stew.
In Grar, in the land of the Philistines, Isaac presents Rebecca as his sister, fearing he will be killed by someone who desires her beauty. He works the land, uncovering the wells his father Abraham dug and digging a series of new ones: over the first two, there is a struggle with the Philistines, but the waters of the third are enjoyed peacefully.
Esau marries two Hittite women. Isaac grows old and blind, and expresses his desire to bless Esau before his death. While Esau goes hunting to prepare his father's favorite food, Rebecca dresses Jacob in Esau's clothes, covers his arms with goatskins to resemble his hairy brother, prepares a similar dish, and sends Jacob to his father. Jacob receives his father's blessing to have "the dew of heaven and the best of the earth" and to rule over his brother. When Esau returns and the deception is revealed, all Isaac can do for his son is predict that he will live by his sword and that when Jacob descends, Esau will ascend.
Jacob leaves his home for Haran to escape Esau's wrath and to find a wife in the family of his mother's brother, Laban. Esau marries a third woman, Mahlath, the daughter of Ishmael.
