(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)
“Jacob boiled stew. Esau came in from the field, and he was famished. Esau said to Jacob, “Please feed me with some of that red stew, for I am famished.” Therefore his name was called Edom. Jacob said, “First, sell me your birthright.””
(Genesis 25:29-31)
Jacob was living at home, cooking, helping to run the house. He had food. Esau was living wild, hunting, and taking the chance that hunting always is. He had not gotten food. Jacob, the second son, was in a position of plenty. Esau, the firstborn, was in a position of lack. Jacob had the advantage. It might even have been a planned advantage – knowing how often hunters come back empty-handed. How many times was Jacob making stew when his brother was due to return from a hunting trip? How many times until it hit the perfect moment?
There is no evidence that their mother had ever shared with their father the word God spoke to her about the elder serving the younger, but it seems from this that she had spoken it to Jacob. Out of the blue, he is asking for the birthright privileges and responsibilities. It means he had been thinking about it. He had been wanting it. He was ready to take advantage of his advantage and take what had been promised to him. Much like with Abraham and Sarah with Hagar, Jacob was trying to make a promise of God happen in his own time and in his own way. He was not relying on God. He was moving in his own strength – which never ends without complications and strife.
The birthright was more than just a larger portion of possessions. In the ancient world the eldest son was also the spiritual leader of the home. He took up the role of priest for the family when the father died, making the sacrifices and providing the opportunities for interaction with God in a formal way. Esau had no interest in the spiritual pulse of the home. He had no interest in leading the family. Isaac was so rich that even a smaller portion would mean that he would get a LOT of inheritance. Esau didn’t think he was losing anything. Certainly the respect he might have gotten wasn’t important to him either. The physical lack he was experiencing in the moment was more precious to him than the social advantage later.
The stew Jacob was cooking was red lentils. From this day onward, Esau was also known as Edom, which means ‘red’ (‘edom’ sounds like ‘adam’, which means red dirt). He was forever tagged to this lack of foresight. How that must have rankled as time went on.
The sage Rav Hirsch writes: ‘V. 29. ויזד: the Hiphil of זוד (the basic root of סוד and צוד) to prepare something for some time and let it become quite ripe. Hence also the expression for intentional premeditated acts, in contrast to unintentional ones. נזיד: like מול and זול ,נמל and זור ,נזל and זוד ,נזר and נזיד would belong together, and נזיד would mean boiled until it was soft. V. 30. לעט ,הלעיטני (related to להט to glow) greedily to gulp down. It is not so much the dish itself as its colour that attracts him. It reminds him of the blood of a gasping dying animal that delights his eye when his arrow has found its mark. “Quickly give me some of that lovely red stuff!” And he still boasted later on of this characteristic phrase and called himself: Edom (the red one).’
The sage Radak writes: ‘ויזד, the formulation of vayazed which normally should have been vayizad with a dagesh in the letter ז, the middle letter of the root, is not as unusual as it appears, [the author discussing this in detail in his grammar known as shoroshim. Ed] The meaning of the expression is that “he cooked a dish ויבשל נזיד;” the Torah reports that on a certain day when Yaakov had cooked a dish Esau returned from the hunt tired and found the dish Yaakov had cooked ready for eating. He requested to be given some of it so that he could eat it. The purpose of this story being recorded in the Torah is in order to contrast Yaakov’s virtues with Esau’s irresponsible way of looking at life. Not only that, but Esau considered the gobbling up of food as an end in itself, he was what our sages call a גרגרן, glutton. Yaakov, on the other hand, was so little concerned with the physical gratifications available on earth that when cooking for himself, he cooked a dish of lentils, the simplest undistinguished vegetable. If, in spite of his general outlook, Yaakov refused to share this dish with Esau unless the latter sold him his birthright, even though Essau was his brother, this demonstrates Yaakov’s intelligence and his moral principles which made it difficult for him to give something for which he had toiled to someone who was self-centered and who did not make any contribution to civilisation at all, assuming that whenever he felt ravenous he could demand to be gratified by what belonged to others. It is concerning people like Esau that Solomon said in Proverbs 22,16:נותן לעשיר אך למחסור, “(He who oppresses the poor) is like giving gifts to the rich. The end result is loss.” מן האדם האדם הזה, a reference to the lentils, which when peeled, look reddish. The reason why he repeated the word האדם unnecessarily was that it reflects his intense desire for them. This is why he called his name Edom, to reflect the fact that he was always attracted, nay, fascinated by anything red.’
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