Esau

The first one came out red, covered with hair like a fur coat; so they named him Esau.

After this, his brother came out grasping Esau’s heel; so he was named Jacob. And Isaac was sixty years old when the twins were born.

When the boys grew up, Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet man who stayed at home.

Because Isaac had a taste for wild game, he loved Esau; but Rebekah loved Jacob.

One day, while Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau came in from the field and was famished.

He said to Jacob, “Let me eat some of that red stew, for I am famished.” (That is why he was also called Edom.)

“Look,” said Esau, “I am about to die, so what good is a birthright to me?”

Then Jacob gave some bread and lentil stew to Esau, who ate and drank and then got up and went away. Thus Esau despised his birthright.

When Esau was forty years old, he took as his wives Judith daughter of Beeri the Hittite and Basemath daughter of Elon the Hittite.

When Isaac was old and his eyes were so weak that he could no longer see, he called his older son Esau and said to him, “My son.” “Here I am,” Esau replied.

Now Rebekah was listening to what Isaac told his son Esau. So when Esau went into the field to hunt game and bring it back,

Rebekah said to her son Jacob, “Behold, I overheard your father saying to your brother Esau,

Jacob answered his mother Rebekah, “Look, my brother Esau is a hairy man, but I am smooth-skinned.

And Rebekah took the finest clothes in the house that belonged to her older son Esau, and she put them on her younger son Jacob.

Jacob said to his father, “I am Esau, your firstborn. I have done as you told me. Please sit up and eat some of my game, so that you may bless me.”

Then Isaac said to Jacob, “Please come closer so I can touch you, my son. Are you really my son Esau, or not?”

So Jacob came close to his father Isaac, who touched him and said, “The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau.”

Isaac did not recognize him, because his hands were hairy like those of his brother Esau; so he blessed him.

Again he asked, “Are you really my son Esau?” And he replied, “I am.”

As soon as Isaac had finished blessing him and Jacob had left his father’s presence, his brother Esau returned from the hunt.

But his father Isaac replied, “Who are you?” “I am Esau, your firstborn son,” he answered.

When Esau heard his father’s words, he let out a loud and bitter cry and said to his father, “Bless me too, O my father!”

But Isaac answered Esau: “Look, I have made him your master and given him all his relatives as servants; I have sustained him with grain and new wine. What is left that I can do for you, my son?”

Esau said to his father, “Do you have only one blessing, my father? Bless me too, O my father!” Then Esau wept aloud.

Esau held a grudge against Jacob because of the blessing his father had given him. And Esau said in his heart, “The days of mourning for my father are at hand; then I will kill my brother Jacob.”