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 meeting between Jacob and Joseph (xlvi.), the ultimate settlement of the family of Jacob in Egypt,[2] and the consequent transference of interest to that country for several generations. The book closes with scenes illustrating the wisdom and authority of Joseph in the time of famine (xlvii.), the dying Jacob blessing Joseph's sons (xlviii.), his parting words (in verse) to all his sons (xlix.), his death and funeral honours, l. 1-14, Joseph's magnanimous forgiveness of his brothers, and his death, in the sure hope that God would one day bring the Israelites back again to the land of Canaan, l. 15-26. [Footnote 1: xxxvi. deals with the Edomite clans, and xxxviii. with the clans of Judah.] [Footnote 2: In one version they are not exactly in Egypt, but near it, in Goshen (xlvii. 6).]