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 37:4

Pseudepigrapha

4 ‘Now our father has made us — me and him — swear that we will not aim at what is bad, the one against his brother, and that we will continue in a state of mutual love and peace, each with his brother, so that we should not corrupt our behavior.’ 5 They said to him: ‘We will not listen to you by making peace with him because our strength is greater than his strength, and we are stronger than he is. We will go against him, kill him, and destroy his sons. If you do not go with us, we will harm you, too.’ 6 ‘Now listen to us; let us send to Aram, Philistia, Moab, and Ammon; and let us choose for ourselves select men who are brave in battle. Then let us go against him, fight with him, and uproot him from the earth before he gains strength.’

 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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