Jacob

Inside a dream, Jacob sees his real life as a metaphor, and is convinced to accept the compassionate embrace of his returning brother Esau.

Context

• Reference: Genesis 35:29

• On Jacob's way to Laban's home, he had a vision of angels traveling up and down a ladder to heaven.

• When he left Laban's lands, he tricked Laban into giving him more sheep than he would otherwise have gotten by painting the sheep to appear mottled.

• On the way home, he had another vision in which he wrestled with an angel. The angel gave him a new name, Israel.

• Jacob passed through Esau's lands. Esau welcomed Jacob, but Jacob tricked him once again, saying that he would meet him again in one place but actually going in a different direction.

• Rachel, Jacob's most beloved wife, had two sons, Joseph and Benjamin. She died and was buried at Ramah after giving birth to Benjamin. (The prophet Jeremiah writes of the voice of Rachel being heard at Ramah, weeping for her children.)

• Joseph became known for his dreams and his ability to interpret them. Jacob later made a cloak of many colors for him.

• When Isaac died, Jacob traveled to Hebron to join Esau in burying him.

Aftermath

• Jacob apparently met Esau peacefully. They buried their father together.

• Esau then went off to the land of Seir. His descendants became the Edomites.

Notes

My friend and mentor Father Richard Mapplebeckpalmer once asked me, as I was describing problems in my life, "If your life were a dream that you were having, what would the dream mean?"

This story of Jacob is the most hallucinatory of the pieces in this book. Taking place entirely in the dream world, it inverts the usual structure of reality and views Jacob's real life as a dream that his dream self is having.

The elements in the dreamworld come from Jacob's real life. The ladder, the wrestlers, the caves, the mottled goats, Rachel's weeping, all figured in his Biblical events. And the skin that pursues him comes from the skins that he put on to impersonate Esau (as referenced in this book in the story of their father Isaac).

I get the sense that Esau must have been quite forgiving to be willing to encounter Jacob again after Jacob had repeatedly betrayed him. And Jacob, if he was sufficiently self-aware, must have faced a feeling of guilt in returning to face Esau again.

This story fits into that moment, when Jacob is about to meet his brother and bury his father, and thus faces, both in reality and in dreams, the emotions that will guide him into meeting, and perhaps truly reconciling, with his brother again.