Rabbi Levi in the name of Rabbi Hama ben Haninah thus explained that Rebekah was remembered with the blessing of children only after Isaac prayed for her, so that the heathens in Rebekah's family might not say that their prayer in caused that result. Rather, God answered Isaac's prayer, as reports, "And Isaac entreated the Lord for his wife . . . and his wife Rebekah conceived." The Gemara interpreted the words, "If you shall afflict my daughters, and if you shall take wives beside my daughters," in to mean that Jacob forswore two kinds of affliction. The Gemara read "if you shall afflict" to mean by denying conjugal duty, and the Gemara read "if you shall take" to refer to marrying rival wives. Thus the Gemara deduced that abstention from marital intercourse is considered an affliction. Genesis chapter 32 Rav taught that Jacob's merit saved later Israelites. reports that after King David ordered a census of the Israelites, God punished the Israelites with a plague. then reports, "And as He was about to destroy, the Lord beheld, and He repented Him." The Gemara asked what God beheld that caused God to withhold destruction. Rav taught that God beheld (the merit of) Jacob, as says, "And Jacob said when he beheld them (the angels that would protect Israel): 'This is God's camp.'" In modern interpretation The parashah is discussed in these modern sources: Genesis chapters 25–33 Hermann Gunkel wrote that the legend cycle of Jacob-Esau-Laban divided clearly into the legends (1) of Jacob and Esau (; ; ; ; ), (2) of Jacob and Laban (; ), (3) of the origin of the twelve tribes (), and (4) of the origin of ritual observances (; , 22–32). Walter Brueggemann suggested a chiastic structure to the Jacob narrative (shown in the chart below), moving from conflict with Esau to reconciliation with Esau. Within that is conflict with Laban moving to covenant with Laban. And within that, at the center, is the narrative of births, in which the birth of Joseph (at ) marks the turning point in the entire narrative, after which Jacob looks toward the Land of Israel and his brother Esau. In the midst of the conflicts are the two major encounters with God, which occur at crucial times in the sequence of conflicts. Acknowledging that some interpreters view Jacob's two encounters with God in and as parallel, Terence