BIBLE STUDY FOR ATHEISTS: ESAU SELLS HIS BIRTHRIGHT
Since the election the story of Esau selling his birthright has been going through my mind.
Of all the Bible stories we learned in Hebrew School the story of Isaac’s sons, Esau and Jacob, spoke most directly to me. Like Esau I am the older brother. In my case, the oldest of three brothers. Puberty hit me early and so, like Esau, I was “an hairy man”. But also I was fascinated by the idea that the Torah gave the oldest son special status. One of the good things my parents did when my mother was pregnant with my younger brother was emphasize the important role I would play as a “big brother” and the story of Esau and Jacob reinforced my sense of that importance.
That the exalted position of my birth — my birthright — was part of an inheritance that would continue for the rest of my life was beyond my nine year old ken. I just knew it was something precious.
In case you’ve forgotten, the inciting incident, as they say on screenwriting courses, is this: Esau, a “cunning hunter”, the favorite of his father, Isaac, comes back to his family’s tents from chasing deer and other animals and he is famished. Jacob his younger twin brother, a farmer and his mother’s favorite, is making a stew from lentils he has sown and harvested. Gasping, Esau asks his brother for a bowl of stew, or pottage.
Genesis Chapter 25
31 And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright.
32 And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me?
33 And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob.
34 Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright.
The story goes on describing the craftiness by which Jacob with Rebekah’s help takes Isaac’s blessing by deception. This is followed by several chapters of practically hallucinogenic madness in which Jacob flees to Rebekah’s brother Laban in Syria. He immediately falls in love with Uncle Laban’s younger daughter Rachel, works for him seven years to earn the right to marry her but then is forced to marry her older sister Leah, and then has to work another seven to actually get to the woman he loves.
And then:
Barrenness strikes the house of Abraham once again as a way of explaining which woman gave birth to Jacob’s sons who will eventually form the Twelve Tribes of Israel (but the name Israel doesn’t exist yet, this is foreshadowing). Most of the boys are born to Leah, a few to serving wenches, and finally Rachel gives birth to Joseph. And that’s before Jacob sets forth to return to the land of his fathers, wrestles all night with a “man” who may be an angel (Jewish tradition) or who who may be God himself (Christian tradition) and who says at the end of the tussle, from henceforth you will be called Israel, which means “contends with God”.
The sequence ends after nine chapters with Esau and Jacob, now deep in middle age reconciling.
It was the first part of the story that burrowed deep in my mind. The idea of selling my precious birthright so cheaply was incomprehensible. I understood, even at nine or ten or however young I was when I first heard the story that this birthright was a tremendous gift.
In the story, after Jacob has deceived Isaac and received his brother’s birthright, Esau comes back and is told by the old man there is nothing that can be done. Before God all has been given to his younger brother. He weeps for some kind of blessing
Genesis chapter 27
38 And Esau said unto his father, Hast thou but one blessing, my father? bless me, even me also, O my father. And Esau lifted up his voice, and wept.
I did not understand inheritance of animals and servants but blessing I did understand. A father’s kiss on your head, the words “My son”. Blessing is love.
This story has been on my mind since the re-election of Donald Trump because of these phrases in particular: Esau “despised his birthright” and “Hast thou but one blessing my father?”
All Americans have a birthright and this inheritance is one of the stated purposes of the Constitution: “to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,”
Securing the blessings of liberty has been the work of generations. Those of us born in the numerical middle of the American century grew up in the glow of victory in World War 2, our liberty secure. It would seem we have failed to re-secure those blessings for those who will come after us.
The election of so manifestly unfit a person as Trump shows that a plurality of voters — as of now it seems like a majority may not be the result of the final count — were willing to sell that inheritance cheaply.
Why? My own experience sends me back thirty years.
In October 1992, the BBC World Service sent me over to the US to report on the state of the Nation during that year’s Presidential contest between Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush. I based most of the report around an evening in a cafe near Blue Hill, Maine. The summer folk were gone, it was just townies in the restaurant that night.
I listened to one story after another of disaster: a retired fellow who died before his time because he had no health insurance; a single mother from a blue-blood background living near the poverty line because her ex wouldn’t cough up child support and she couldn’t afford a lawyer; the waitress being hammered by a decline in tip revenue because of the recession.
I had left an America drunk on Reaganism and these stories were tales of the hang-over.
I concluded my World Service report by playing with two popular phrases that floated around New York in 1985 just before I exiled myself from the city of my birth. Forty years ago the city was going through the first flush of finance dominated capitalism. On Wall Street the ethos was, “Whatever it takes”.
If they wanted to succeed, people working in finance did whatever it took, regardless of regulations and the law. So when they were being sued — and they often were, legal malfeasance was baked into their way of doing business — the titans of Wall Street said to their lawyers, “Make it all go away.”
Whatever it takes, make it all go away.
In many subsequent presidential elections that formulation underlies the outcomes, not ideology or policy.
“Look,” some voters say. “I don’t care. Just make the bad stuff stop.” This thinking has in it an echo of the tired and hungry Esau saying to his younger twin, “Fine, I give you my birthright, now give me a damn bowl of lentils.”
Trump promises to make all the bad stuff go away with the bonus of attacking the Americans his voters don’t like.
But our birthright, the blessing of American liberty, is not a mere gift, a perpetual Christmas present. Our inheritance comes with obligations.
No matter how famished he was, Esau should never have sold what was his for a mess of pottage. No matter how difficult the economic circumstances — and despite inflation most Trump voters have been through much worse — or how much someone who didn’t go to college dislikes the preening, moralizing people who did; it is not a reason to give away our American inheritance to a man who tried unsuccessfully to overthrow the result of one election and whose gross behavior is unworthy of the leadership of the nation.
“Behold I am at the point to die, and what profit shall this birthright do to me?”
Unfortunately it’s not just Trump’s voters who are about to find out what has been sold so cheaply.
Utterly relevant. Thanks for this, Michael.
As with me, the oldest son.
At school in the 1950’s we use to have all these bible stories and although an atheist I am so glad we did, the Old Testament as Christian’s call it is full of such wonderful stories and morality tales. My husband is also the eldest son which makes him almost royalty to his younger siblings. It is a Tamil and Sri Lankan thing also.