Esau sells his birthright to Jacob – Genesis 25:29-34
The conflict between brothers is well-illustrated in the tale of Jacob and Esau. Their parents Isaac and Rebekah encouraged this conflict (Genesis 25:26) by giving Jacob a better name than his brother so that he would always be more favored.
Jacob seized the opportunity to make a lopsided deal with his brother, and it worked for both of them.
He planned the trade to happen in a moment of weakness and hunger, when Esau was least likely to be thinking about what it would cost him later on.
Esau was an outdoorsman, a skilled hunter, who was not concerned about the future; his mind was elsewhere, focused on what he wanted to eat at that very moment.
So, he gave away his birthright in exchange for a mess of pottage. It was a bargain that no one ever made worse.
Often, people make this same bargain when they decide to choose Christ over the world. They will trade in their souls for more pounds and pennies and trivia.
Sad to say, many prefer the fleeting to the permanent, the flesh to the Spirit, and the earthly to the holy. It is a choice to miss God’s best, to reject his spiritual blessings that come with salvation and the new life that comes through him.
