Jacob and Esau

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Jacob and Esau

To me one of the greatest mistakes that we mortals make is giving up what we want most forever for what we think we have to have now, as illustrated by this story.

Even in the womb, these brothers were rivals, struggling and fighting against each other to the dismay and discomfort of their mother. And in birth they were still battling for place.

They couldn’t have been more different. The older brother, the birthright son, was a hairy man and a cunning hunter; a man of the outdoors, while the younger brother was smooth-skinned and simple; a plain and righteous man.

The older son was rebellious, impetuous, and headstrong. When it came time to marry, he married out of the faith against the wishes of his parents. It broke his mother’s heart. The younger son gave heed to the counsel of his parents and patiently waited for the opportunity to marry the right person in the right way.

One day the older son came in from the fields and he was hungry, very hungry. “Feed me,” he said to his brother, “with that same red pottage, for I am faint.” The younger brother said to him, “Sell me this day thy birthright.”

Now that may not seem all that significant to us now, but in the ancient east, being the birthright son meant the leadership of the family and the largest inheritance once the father was gone. In the case of these two brothers, it meant much more. It also meant title to the land of Canaan and all the other blessings of the Abrahamic covenant.

This was the older brother’s response. “I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me?” He despised his birthright and sold it to his brother for a bowl of red soup.

His name was Esau, but ever after that his peers called him Edom, which means “Red,” in remembrance of that soup for which he sold his future. His younger brother was Jacob. He too, would later receive another name, this one from God. The name was Israel.

By patience and determination, Jacob prevailed to become one of the most powerful men in all eternity and the father of an innumerable family—the House of Israel. Indeed, small dumb choices now can have big painful consequences later.