14 ESAU AND JACOB

But Jacob was quiet and cautious, living at home in the tents with his parents
Isaac and Rebekah, taking care of the flocks and herds, always on the look-out for
what he could get for himself, and not very particular how he got it. Yet, as we shall see
by and by, there was good in this lad whom his mother was so fond of.

Twice in his life he showed this selfish spirit and readiness to take advantage even
of his own brother.

The first time was when they were both young lads. Esau had come back
from the fields faint and tired after a long hot day’s hunting. He had had no
food all day, and coming into the tent he saw some pottage or lentil soup which
Jacob had been making. And he said to his brother, “Feed me, I pray thee, with
that same red pottage, for I am faint.” But Jacob, instead of giving the soup to Esau who
was so tired and hungry, would only sell it to him. And the price he asked for it was the
birthright which belonged to his brother, who was born just before him.

This birthright was a very precious thing and gave the owner of it most of his
father’s property, the headship of the tribe, and other blessings. And Esau sold
his birthright to Jacob. ;

They were both of them wrong. Esau was wrong to think so little of his birth-

“tight and to sell it for a mess of pottage when he might have waited patiently for a
little while for what he wanted. But he cared more for eating and drinking than for the
blessings God had given to him. And Jacob was wrong, very wrong, to take advantage of
his brother’s need to get away from him what by right belonged to him. He was selfish,
caring and thinking only of himself, and obtaining what he wanted by cunning, underhand
ways.

But that was not the’ worst ,we are told about him. Some years after Jacob for the
second time got the better of his brother and by deceit stole away his father’s blessing
from him. © -

Do you remember the story? Isaac was now an old man, and thought he was
going to die, although he really got better and lived forty-three years longer. So
he called his elder son Esau to him and told him that he wanted “to bless him
before the Lord” ere he died. But first he bade him take his quiver and bow and go
into the fields and bring him some of the venison he was so fond of. And Esau
immediately did so, for he was very fond of his old father, and hurried away to
get him what he wanted.  —

~ But Rebekah overheard what Isaac had. said, and she wanted the blessing for
Jacob, who was her favourite son. So she called him to her and told him to go and fetch
two tender kids from the flock of goats and she would make of them savoury meat
for his father such as he loved, and: then he would get Esau’s blessing just as years
before he had got Esau’s birthright.

At first Jacob was afraid to do it, not because it was wrong but because he thought
his father would find out who he was. “Behold,” he said to his mother, “ Esau my
brother is a hairy man and I am a smooth man. My father peradventure will feel
me, and I shall seem to him as a deceiver; and I shall bring a curse upon me, and not a
blessing.” But his mother soon over-persuaded him: “ My son, only obey my voice.”

And when he brought the kids to her, she cooked: them in the way she knew Isaac
liked, and she made Jacob put on some of Esau’s' clothes, and then she placed the skin
of the kids on his hands and neck and sent him with the meat into Isaac’s tent. At
first when he came saying “I am Esau thy firstborn,” his father suspected that there
‘was something wrong. Very likely he knew how deceitful Jacob was, and though he
was nearly blind and could not see him, his voice did not sound like his elder son’s voice.
So he made him come nearer to him, that he might feel him, and when he felt his hands
covered with hair like Esau’s hands he thought it must be Esau, and he gave him the
blessing.