Biblion Bible Commentary
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Two nations, and a birthright sold for stew
Genesis 25:19-34
19 This is the history of the generations of Isaac, Abraham’s son. Abraham became the father of Isaac. · WEB
The struggle starts in the womb and is explained by God before the twins are born, and the elder throws away what the younger schemes to get.
This is the history of the generations of Isaac. The seventh section of the book opens, and its subject is at once a familiar difficulty: Isaac entreated Yahweh for his wife, because she was barren.
The pattern is now three deep. Sarah was barren, Rebekah is, and Rachel will be. The line through which all the families of the earth are to be blessed does not propagate itself, and every generation of it has to be given.
The arithmetic is quiet and severe. Isaac married at forty and was sixty when the twins were born Genesis 25:20 Genesis 25:26, so the entreating covered twenty years. The verse reads as though the prayer were answered promptly, and it was answered after two decades.
The pregnancy is violent — The children struggled together within her — and Rebekah's response is a cry that any reader recognizes: If it is like this, why do I live? And then she does what nobody in the previous generation thought to do at the equivalent moment: She went to inquire of Yahweh.
The answer is the first oracle given to a woman in Scripture, and it is four lines of poetry. Two nations, two peoples, separated, one stronger — and then the line that governs the rest of Genesis: The elder will serve the younger.
What that sentence does and does not say is worth being exact about. It is spoken before either child has done anything, which is why the New Testament uses it as its example of a choice that does not rest on works Romans 9:11–12. And its subject is stated in the same oracle: two nations. It is a word about peoples and about which line carries the promise, and it says nothing here about the eternal standing of either boy. The narrative that follows takes considerable trouble to show both of them behaving badly and both of them being dealt with.
The twins are described in a way that fixes them: Esau red and hairy, a hunter, a man of the field; Jacob quiet and living in tents. And then a sentence that accounts for four chapters of misery: Isaac loved Esau, because he ate his venison. Rebekah loved Jacob. Each parent has a favorite, and the reason given for the father's is his stomach.
The birthright scene is short and both men come out of it badly. Esau arrives famished; Jacob has stew ready and names his price on the spot, which is the conduct of a man who has been waiting for an opening. Esau's reply is pure appetite: Behold, I am about to die. What good is the birthright to me? He was not about to die. He was hungry after a bad day's hunting, and he traded the double portion and the headship of the family for a bowl of lentils.
The narrator's verdict is four words at the end, and it falls on Esau alone: So Esau despised his birthright. The New Testament keeps that judgment and sharpens it, calling him profane, a man who sold his birthright for one meal Hebrews 12:16. Jacob's method is condemned throughout the following chapters by what it costs him; Esau is condemned here for not wanting the thing at all.
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