Jacob realizes he MUST go; the Elohist version of the speckled livestock story appears here. Rachel and Leah see the deception as a way of returning to them the “bride-price” Jacob paid for them, which Laban has “wasted.”  When they leave, Rachel takes the household idols and hides them in her things.  Laban catches up with Jacob and tries to make him feel guilty, telling him he would have sent him off royally, had he only known they were leaving; but his anger is tapped over the household…

The heart of the Jacob-Esau story begins in chapter 27. Isaac [Yitzak] is an old man, unable to see at all well any more.  He wants some of the stew Esau cooks, so he sends him off, planning to reward him with his “innermost” [Tanakh] blessing when he returns.  But Rebecca, Isaac’s wife, has a different plan. She calls her younger son Jacob and concocts a plan that will permit him to get the blessing he needs to be carrier of the promise God made to both Abraham and Isaac.…

The matter of finding a wife for Isaac occupies chapter 24.  Abraham sends his steward back to his family’s kinsmen at Haran in Upper Mesopotamia.  Here he finds Abraham’s nephew’s daughter, Rebecca (Rivka) at a well. She and her whole family show the servant of Abraham great hospitality, and the family agrees to the marriage of Rebecca to Isaac; they only ask that she remain with them for ten days. At the end of the ten days, she goes with a “nurse” back to Abraham’s territory with the…