biography
| biography:
| Biblical character, the son of Isaac, and patriarch of the nation Israel. He supplanted his elder brother Esau, obtaining his father Isaac's special blessing and thus being seen as the inheritor of God's promises. He was re-named Israel (perhaps meaning ‘God strives’ or ‘he who strives with God’) after his struggle with a divine being. By his wives Leah and Rachel and their maids he fathered 12 sons, to whom Jewish tradition traced the 12 tribes of Israel. |
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