Genesis 27:40-42

Amplified Bible, Classic Edition

⁴⁰By your sword you shall live and serve your brother. But [the time shall come] when you will grow restive and break loose, and you shall tear his yoke from off your neck.

⁴¹And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father blessed him; and Esau said in his heart, The days of mourning for my father are very near. When [he is gone] I will ^[a]kill my brother Jacob.

⁴²These words of Esau her elder son were repeated to Rebekah. She sent for Jacob her younger son and said to him, See here, your brother Esau comforts himself concerning you [by intending] to kill you.

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Footnotes

Genesis 27:41 Here began a feud that was to cost countless lives throughout succeeding centuries. Esau’s descendants, the Amalekites, were the first enemies to obstruct the flight of Jacob’s descendants from Egypt (Exod. 17:8); and the Edomites even refused to let their uncle Jacob’s children pass through their land (Num. 20:17-20). Doeg, an Edomite, all but caused the death of Christ’s chosen ancestor David (I Sam. 21, 22). Bloody battles were fought between the two nations in the centuries that followed. It was Herod, of Esau’s race (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 14:1, Section 3), who had the male infants of Bethlehem slain in an effort to destroy the Christ Child (Matt. 2:16). Satan needs no better medium for his evil plans than a family feud, a “mere quarrel” between two brothers.