Jacob, also called Israel, is one of the three great patriarchs of the Old Testament, venerated by the Orthodox Church as a righteous forefather and an ancestor of Christ according to the flesh. The son of Isaac and Rebecca and the younger twin of Esau, he is remembered as the father of the twelve sons whose descendants became the Twelve Tribes of Israel. His life, recorded in the book of Genesis, is marked by the renewal of the covenant promise first given to Abraham and by a series of encounters with God that shaped the identity of the people of Israel.
According to the scriptural narrative, Jacob fled toward Haran to escape his brother Esau, and on the way, at a place he named Bethel, he saw in a dream a ladder set upon the earth whose top reached into heaven, with the angels of God ascending and descending upon it. The Church reads this vision of the heavenly ladder as a prefiguration of the Theotokos, through whom God descended to earth, and of the union of heaven and earth accomplished in the Incarnation. In Haran Jacob served his uncle Laban over many years to marry Leah and Rachel, and with them and their handmaids Bilhah and Zilpah he fathered twelve sons and a daughter.
Returning toward the land of Canaan, Jacob wrestled through the night with a mysterious figure at the ford of the Jabbok and was given the new name Israel, meaning 'one who has prevailed with God.' He spent his final years in Egypt, reunited with his son Joseph, and at his death asked to be buried in the cave of Machpelah in Canaan, the burial place of Abraham and Isaac. The Orthodox Church commemorates him on December 14 and again among the Holy Forefathers and Fathers on the two Sundays before the Nativity of Christ.
