In the traits of personal character ascribed to the patriarchs they represent substantially the nature and the aspirations of the individual Israelite.  The historic-political relations of Israel are reflected with more life in the relations borne by the patriarchs to their brothers; cousins, and other relatives.  The background is never long concealed here, the temper of the period of the kings is everywhere discernible.  This is the case most clearly perhaps in the story about Jacob and Esau.  The twins are at variance, even in the womb; even in the matter of his birth the younger refuses precedence to the elder, and tries to hold him back by the heel.  This is interpreted to the anxious mother by the oracle at Beersheba as follows:  “Two nations are in thy womb, and two peoples are separated from thy bowels, and the one people shall be stronger than the other, and the elder shall serve the younger.”  The boys grow up very different.  Esau is a rough and sunburnt hunter, ranges about in the desert, and lives from day to day without care:  Jacob, a pious, smooth man, stays at home beside the tents, and understands the value of things which his unsophisticated brother disregards.  The former is the favourite of his father, the autochthonous Isaac, the latter is preferred by the mother, the Aramaean Rebecca; the former stays in his own land and takes his wives from the original population of south Canaan and the Sinaitic peninsula, the latter emigrates, and brings his wives from Mesopotamia.  Thus the contrast is distinctly prefigured, which at a later time appeared, between the rough Edom, sprung from the soil and having his roots in it, and smoother, more civilised Israel, which had more affinity with the great powers of the world.  By means of deceit and trickery the younger brother succeeds in depriving the elder of the paternal blessing and of the right of the first-born; the elder, in consequence of this, determines to kill him, and the situation becomes strained.  Edom was a people and a kingdom before Israel, but was then overshadowed by Israel, and even subjugated at last by David:  hence the fierce hatred between the brother nations, of which Amos speaks.  The words of the blessing of Jacob show this quite distinctly to be the historical basis of the legend, a basis of which the Jews were perfectly conscious:  we hear in the blessing of repeated attempts of the Edomites to cast off the yoke of Israel, and it is predicted that these efforts will be at last successful.  Thus the stories about Jacob and Esau cannot have taken form even in outline, before the time of David; in their present form (Genesis xxvii. 40) their outlook extends to times still later.  The roots of the legend being thus traceable in later history, a circumstance which the Jehovist does not attempt to conceal, it is no more than an apparent anachronism when he takes occasion to give a complete list of the Edomite kings down to David, interspersing it with historical notes, as, for example, that Hadad