Jacob (Old Testament)

• Jacob (Old Testament)

126:1.2This hill, a lit­tle more than one hun­dred years pre­vi­ously, had been the “high place of Baal,” and now it was the site of the tomb of Sim­eon, a re­puted holy man of Is­rael. From the sum­mit of this hill of Sim­eon, Je­sus looked out over Naz­a­reth and the sur­round­ing coun­try. He would gaze upon Megiddo and re­call the story of the Egyp­tian army win­ning its first great vic­tory in Asia; and how, later on, an­other such army de­feated the Judean king Josiah. Not far away he could look upon Taanach, where Deb­o­rah and Barak de­feated Sis­era. In the dis­tance he could view the hills of Dothan, where he had been taught Joseph’s breth­ren sold him into Egyp­tian slav­ery. He then would shift his gaze over to Ebal and Ger­izim and re­count to him­self the tra­di­tions of Abra­ham, Ja­cob, and Abim­elech. And thus he re­called and turned over in his mind the his­toric and tra­di­tional events of his fa­ther Joseph’s peo­ple.

93:9.5It was hard for the next gen­er­a­tion to com­pre­hend the story of Mel­chiz­e­dek; within five hun­dred years many re­garded the whole nar­ra­tive as a myth. Isaac held fairly well to the teach­ings of his fa­ther and nour­ished the gospel of the Salem colony, but it was harder for Ja­cob to grasp the sig­nif­i­cance of these tra­di­tions. Joseph was a firm be­liever in Mel­chiz­e­dek and was, largely be­cause of this, re­garded by his broth­ers as a dreamer. Joseph’s honor in Egypt was chiefly due to the mem­ory of his great-grand­fa­ther Abra­ham. Joseph was of­fered mil­i­tary com­mand of the Egyp­tian armies, but be­ing such a firm be­liever in the tra­di­tions of Mel­chiz­e­dek and the later teach­ings of Abra­ham and Isaac, he elected to serve as a civil ad­min­is­tra­tor, be­liev­ing that he could thus bet­ter la­bor for the ad­vance­ment of the king­dom of heaven.

85:1.1The first ob­ject to be wor­shiped by evolv­ing man was a stone. To­day the Ka­teri peo­ple of south­ern In­dia still wor­ship a stone, as do nu­mer­ous tribes in north­ern In­dia. Ja­cob slept on a stone be­cause he ven­er­ated it; he even anointed it. Rachel con­cealed a num­ber of sa­cred stones in her tent.