Depiction of paradise where forefather Abraham with the souls of the righteous together with Isaac and Jacob sit. To the right is the wise thief, crucified together with Christ, who came to believe in Him. The composition represents Paradise as the place of rest of the righteous Abraham, Noah’s descendant and patriarch of the Jewish people, who God made a Covenant with, promising that his descendants would inherit the land of Canaan (Genesis 12-13:15). He and his wife Sarah were endowed a vision of God in a form of three angels which served as the basis of the iconography of the Trinity. Abraham’s son Isaac is an Old Testament prototype of the Saviour: God, testing Abraham’s faith, commanded him to sacrifice a lamb, his son (Genesis 22:1-19). Jacob or Israel, patriarch, son of Isaac and Rebecca, grandson of Abraham, the ancestor of “the twelve tribes of Israel”, called after his sons. He was the younger twin brother and with the help of his mother he got his blind father’s blessing for the birthright. Fearing the revenge of his brother Esau, he withdrew to Mesopotamia where he married daughters of his uncle Laban, Rachel and Leah, by whom he had twelve sons and one daughter Dinah. Upon his return from Mesopotamia he lived in Palestina. When Jacob moved to his son Joseph to Egypt, they lived in the rich province of Goshen. The fate of “the twelve tribes of Israel” descending from his sons was prophesied by Jacob in his dying blessing to each of them. Jacob died at 147 and his body was transferred to the land of promise.
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