Dark Chronicles3 min read

The Birthright Bowl

He sold it for a bowl of soup. He ate. He went on his way. He despised what he had given up.

📖Based on Genesis 25:34

He came in from the field exhausted.

He said he was about to die.

Jacob had red stew.

Esau asked for some.

Jacob said: Sell me your birthright first.

Esau said: I am about to die. What use is a birthright to me?

Jacob said: Swear to me now.

So Esau swore.

He sold his birthright.

Jacob gave him bread and lentil stew.

He ate and drank and rose and went his way.

The text adds a line.

Thus Esau despised his birthright.

Not just sold it.

Despised it.

He did not think of it as precious.

He thought of it as less valuable than a bowl of stew.

In the moment of hunger.

In the urgency of now.

He made a permanent trade for a temporary thing.

Years later, when Isaac was old and nearly blind, Jacob and Rebekah deceived Isaac into giving Jacob the blessing.

The blessing that would have gone with the birthright.

Esau came in from hunting and found it already given.

He cried out with a great and very bitter cry.

He said: Bless me too, Father.

Isaac said there was nothing left.

Esau wept.

He asked if there was only one blessing.

He could not get it back.

The writer of Hebrews would later call him a godless person who sold his birthright for a single meal.

And who found no place of repentance even though he sought the blessing with tears.

The tears came.

But the stew was gone.

And the birthright with it.

Scripture — Genesis 25:34
"Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright."

Reflection

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He wasn't actually dying. He was hungry and tired. The exaggeration cost him everything.