This is the Baymont podcast with Marty Solomon. I'm his co-host, Brent Billings. Today, we begin our look at the life of Jacob starting with Genesis 25 and moving through chapter 31.

So we begin to wrestle with this question of who is Jacob and why just got to use him.

We have 3 out of 4 patriarchs. We have Abraham, we have Eatsok and then Eatsok's sons, Jacques Cobb and Eesah.

This is a big hand. The life of Jacob has always been really tough for me. I still wrestle with it today.

All the stuff that I've been studying, my Genesis material has been greatly influenced by Rabbi Damon Foreman. We've talked about that before. His work at Alif Beta, but long before he had Alif Beta, I was following some of his teaching online from the Hofberger Institute and different things there. It's no longer available.

I learned a ton of stuff through Genesis and I have continued to learn a ton of stuff about the life of Jacob through guys like Foreman and even others. But it's still a character I struggle with. I think a lot of people do.

You want to discount him, you want to write Jacob off because he was such a deceiver, such a usurper. People talk about his name meaning deceiver. His name more literally means heal holder, heal grasper.

His name is more what the name literally means and I think we too often flippantly write him off as his name means liar. I named my son Ezekiel as middle name after Jacob because there's most definitely a positive that I kind of want to pull out today in our discussion.

It'll be another day without a PDF for those you listeners that have written me and told me how much you appreciate that and hope that I do in every episode. Sorry about that. Another conversation I just want to kind of walk through and Brent, you can throw and fire questions off at me.

I just I don't have these big thunderous lessons on the life of Jacob because I'm still wrestling with the life of Jacob. I'm trying to figure out what to do with a guy who is who Jacob is and also because I'm not sure what to do with the guy who is who Jacob is.

And also becomes the father of God's people. I mean the Israelites, Israel can be named after this guy and we'll get to that in our next podcast. But I want to kind of walk through the first half of his life today. So we're going to pick up Genesis 25 what were you skipped last episode and towards the end there in verse.

Let's see here looks like verse 19. I'm going to pick up this is the account of the family line of overhum sun.

Neetsock. Overhum became the father of each suck and each suck was 40 years old when he married Rivka daughter of Betuel the Arabian from Padana Ram and the sister of Levan the Arabian.

Eetsock prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife because she was childless. The Lord answered his prayer and his wife Rivka became pregnant.

The babies jostled each other within her and she said why is this happening to me so she went to inquire of the Lord. The Lord said to her, two nations are in your womb.

Two peoples from within you will be separated. One people will be stronger than the other and the older will serve the younger.

When the time came for her to give birth there were twin boys in her womb. The first to come out was red and his whole body was like a hairy garment so they named him Esa.

After this his brother came out with his hand grasping Esa's heel so he was named Jacob.

Eetsock was 60 years old when Rivka gave birth to them. The boys grew up and Esa became a skillful hunter.

A man of the open country while Jaakov was content to stay at home among the tents.

Isaac who had a taste for wild game loved Esa but Rivka loved Jacob.

Once when Jacob was cooking some stew Esa came in from the open country famished. He said to Jaakov, quick let me have some of that red stew I'm famished.

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