Esau said to his father, “Do you have only that one blessing, my father? Bless me too!” Then Esau wept loudly.

Complete my older daughter’s bridal week. Then we will give you the younger one too, in exchange for seven more years of work.”

She replied, “Here is my servant Bilhah! Have sexual relations with her so that she can bear children for me and I can have a family through her.”

Then Rachel said, “God has vindicated me. He has responded to my prayer and given me a son.” That is why she named him Dan.

Indeed, you had little before I arrived, but now your possessions have increased many times over. The Lord has blessed you wherever I worked. But now, how long must it be before I do something for my own family too?”

The messengers returned to Jacob and said, “We went to your brother Esau. He is coming to meet you and has four hundred men with him.”

then you must say, ‘They belong to your servant Jacob. They have been sent as a gift to my lord Esau. In fact Jacob himself is behind us.’”

When her labor was at its hardest, the midwife said to her, “Don’t be afraid, for you are having another son.”

There we were, binding sheaves of grain in the middle of the field. Suddenly my sheaf rose up and stood upright and your sheaves surrounded my sheaf and bowed down to it!”

So he returned to Judah and said, “I couldn’t find her. Moreover, the men of the place said, ‘There has been no cult prostitute here.’”

After three months Judah was told, “Your daughter-in-law Tamar has turned to prostitution, and as a result she has become pregnant.” Judah said, “Bring her out and let her be burned!”

for I really was kidnapped from the land of the Hebrews and I have done nothing wrong here for which they should put me in a dungeon.”

Reuben said to them, “Didn’t I say to you, ‘Don’t sin against the boy,’ but you wouldn’t listen? So now we must pay for shedding his blood!”

He replied, “You have suggested your own punishment! The one who has it will become my slave, but the rest of you will go free.”

If you take this one from me too and an accident happens to him, then you will bring down my gray hair in tragedy to the grave.’

I will go down with you to Egypt and I myself will certainly bring you back from there. Joseph will close your eyes.”

Israel said to Joseph, “I never expected to see you again, but now God has allowed me to see your children too.”

Joseph saw the descendants of Ephraim to the third generation. He also saw the children of Makir the son of Manasseh; they were given special inheritance rights by Joseph.

They said, “An Egyptian man rescued us from the shepherds, and he actually drew water for us and watered the flock!”

And now indeed the cry of the Israelites has come to me, and I have also seen how severely the Egyptians oppress them.