Legends of Old Testament characters, from the Talmud and other sourcesBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Religion
Legends of Old Testament characters, from the Talmud and other sources
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Bible. Old Testament -- Legends; Jewish legends
And Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell upon his neck and
bit him, but by the mercy of God the neck of Jacob became marble, and
Esau broke his teeth upon it; therefore it is said in the Book of
Genesis that he _fell on his neck, and kissed him; and they wept_.[391]
But the Targumim apparently do not acknowledge that the neck of Jacob
became marble, for the Targum of Palestine explains their weeping thus:
“Esau wept on account of the pain of his teeth, which were shaken; but
Jacob wept because of the pain of his neck;” and the Targum of
Jerusalem, “Esau wept for the crushing of his teeth, and Jacob wept for
the tenderness of his neck.”
“The Lord God prospered Jacob,” and he had one hundred and two times ten
thousand and seven thousand (_i.e._ a thousand times a thousand, seven
thousand and two hundred) sheep, and six hundred thousand dogs; but some
Rabbis say the sheep were quite innumerable, but when Jacob counted his
sheep-dogs he found that he had twelve hundred thousand of them; others,
however, reduce the number one-half. They say, one dog went with each
flock, but those who say that there were twelve hundred thousand dogs,
count two to each flock.[392]
Jacob, says the Rabbi Samuel, could recite the whole of the
Psalter.[393] Of course this must have been in the spirit of prophecy,
as the Psalms were not written, with the exception of Psalm civ., which
had been composed by Adam.
Adam, after his fall, had been given by God six commandments, but Noah
was given a seventh—to this effect, that he was not to eat a limb or
portion of any living animal. Abraham was given an eighth, the
commandment of circumcision; and Jacob was communicated a ninth, through
the mouth of an adder, that he was not to eat the serpent.[394]
If we may trust the Book of Jasher, the affair of Shechem, the son of
Hamor, was as follows:—The men of the city were not all circumcised,
only some of them, so as to blind the eyes of the sons of Jacob, and
throw them off their guard; and Shechem and Hamor had privately
concerted to fall upon Jacob and his sons and butcher them; but Simeon
and Levi were warned of their intention by a servant of Dinah, and took
the initiative.[395] But this is a clumsy attempt to throw the blame off
the shoulders of the ancestors of the Jewish nation upon those of their
Gentile enemies.
Jacob, say the Rabbis, would have had no daughters at all in his family,
but only sons, had he not called himself El-elohe-Israel (Israel is
God).[396] Therefore God was angry with him, for making himself equal
with God, and in punishment he afflicted him with a giddy daughter.[397]
Esau, say the Mussulmans, had no prophets in his family except Job. All
the prophets rose from the family of Jacob; and when Esau saw that the
gift of prophecy was not in his family, he went out of the land, for he
would not live near his brother.[398]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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