_Midrash Rabbah_, Gen. chap. 1.
In the Selichoth for the Day of Atonement the above reversal of
the usual order of the names of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is
thus referred to: "The first covenant Thou didst exalt, and the
order of the contracting parties to it Thou hast reversed."
Abraham deserved to have been created before Adam, but the Holy
One--blessed be He!--said, "Should he pervert things as I make them,
then there will be no one to rectify them; so behold I will create Adam
first, and if he should make things crooked, then Abraham following him
will make them straight again."
Ibid., chap. 14.
Abram was called Abraham, and Isaac was also called Abraham; as it is
written (Gen. xxv. 19), "Isaac, Abraham's son, Abraham."
Ibid., chap. 63.
"And he lay down in that place" (Gen. xxviii. 11). Rabbi Yuda said,
"There he lay down, but he did not lie down during all the fourteen
years he was hid in the house of Eber." Rabbi Nehemiah said, "There he
lay down, but he did not lie down all the twenty years in which he stood
in the house of Laban."
Ibid., chap. 68.
Vayash Kihu, "And kissed him" (Gen. xxxiii. 4), Rabbi Yanai asks, "Why
is this word (in the original Hebrew) so pointed?" "It is to teach that
Esau did not come to kiss him, but to bite him; only the neck of Jacob
our father became as hard as marble, and this blunted the teeth of the
wicked one.
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