Genesis 27:41

Hebrew Bible

40 You will live by your sword but you will serve your brother. When you grow restless, you will tear off his yoke from your neck.” 41 So Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing his father had given to his brother. Esau said privately, “The time of mourning for my father is near; then I will kill my brother Jacob!” 42 When Rebekah heard what her older son Esau had said, she quickly summoned her younger son Jacob and told him, “Look, your brother Esau is planning to get revenge by killing you.

Amos 1:11

Hebrew Bible

10 So I will set fire to Tyre’s city wall; fire will consume her fortresses.” 11 This is what the Lord says: “Because Edom has committed three crimes—make that four—I will not revoke my decree of judgment. He chased his brother with a sword; he wiped out his allies. In his anger he tore them apart without stopping to rest; in his fury he relentlessly attacked them. 12 So I will set Teman on fire; fire will consume Bozrah’s fortresses.”

Jubilees 37:1

Pseudepigrapha

3 And he said unto them 'Because I sold my birthright to Jacob for a small mess of lentils, and on the day my father sent me to hunt and catch and bring him something that he should eat and bless me, he came with guile and brought my father food and drink, and my father blessed him and put me under his hand. 4 And now our father has caused us to swear, me and him, that we shall not mutually devise evil, either against his brother, and that we shall continue in love and in peace each with his brother and not make our ways corrupt.' 5 And they said unto him, 'We shall not hearken unto thee to make peace with him; for our strength is greater than his strength, and we are more powerful than he; we shall go against him and slay him, and destroy him and his sons. And if thou wilt not go with us, we shall do hurt to thee also.

 Notes and References

"... In blessing his son Esau (Genesis 27:39-40), Isaac had said to him, “By your sword you shall live, and you shall serve your brother; but when you grow restive, you shall break his yoke from your neck.” Isaac may have been foretelling events in the distant future, but for Jubilees and other interpreters, this prophecy concerned not some later generation, but that of Esau and his sons. The account of Esau’s war with his brother Jacob (Jubilees 37:1-38:12) appears as well as in Midrash Vayyissau chapter 3, and was incorporated as well into Yalqut Shimoni 1:138 and elsewhere. A considerably shorter account of this war appears in the Greek “Testament of Judah” section of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. The many common elements suggest that they stem from a common source and/or that the later versions borrowed from earlier ones. The events leading up to the war start on the day that Isaac ... died. This is no coincidence: in Genesis 27:41, Esau said specifically, “When the days of mourning my father arrive, I will kill my brother Jacob.” Indeed, these words, along with Amos 1:11 (“Because he [Esau] chased after his brother with a sword and had no pity”), provided a firm biblical basis for the idea that there had been a war between Jacob and Esau, even though the book of Genesis itself had not bothered to narrate those events ..."

Kugel, James L. A Walk through Jubilees: Studies in the Book of Jubilees and the World of Its Creation (p. 173) Brill, 2012

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