Bitter Enemies

Jacob breathed a sigh of relief, gathered the leftovers and slipped out of the room.

Esau rushed in. His food prepared to perfection, he awaited his father’s blessing. “Let my father arise and eat of his son’s game, that you may bless me.” Esau waited.

“Who are you?” Isaac questioned.

“I am your son, your firstborn,” Esau answered, carefully indicating that he had been born first, though only a few seconds before Jacob.

The news shocked Isaac. He trembled in his bed. “Who was he then that hunted game and brought it to me, so that I ate of all of it before you came, and blessed him? Yes, and he will be blessed.”

The words pierced Esau like an arrow from his quiver. He cried out bitterly, “Bless me, even me also, O my father!”

Isaac’s trembling body lay still. All that could be heard was Esau’s groaning and Isaac’s weakening voice, “Your brother came deceitfully and has taken away your blessing.”

Esau, filled with rage, begged his father. “Is he not rightly named Jacob, for he has supplanted me these two times? He took away my birthright, and behold, now he has taken away my blessing. Have you not reserved a blessing for me?”

Isaac’s words stung like driving rain. “Behold, I have made him your master, and all his relatives I have given to him as servants; and with grain and new wine I have sustained him. Now as for you then, what can I do, my son?”

Dignity gone. Self-respect relinquished. Esau begged. “Do you have only one blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, O my father.” Esau’s weeping could be heard through the entire village.

Isaac’s feeble voice penetrated Esau’s sobbing cries. “Behold, away from the fertility of the earth shall be your dwelling. And away from the dew of heaven from above. By your sword you shall live, and your brother you shall serve; but it shall come about when you become restless that you will break his yoke from off your neck.”

A blessing? Esau hardly thought so. “Once dad has died,” he thought, “I’ll kill Jacob.” Anger gave way to revenge. Bitterness grew like a deep root in his heart, squeezing out his very life. He set his heart on killing his brother.