sharing not only the same mother, but the same single moment of conception. And yet God’s purpose, announced before they were born, was that the line of promise should run through Jacob rather than Esau—a word reaffirmed roughly a thousand years later, as the prophet Malachi reflected on what had happened to the descendants of the two brothers in the subsequent centuries. Many people feel uneasy reading these verses, and that uneasiness comes to boiling point at verse 13. Hasn’t Paul managed to rescue