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until Esau promised to hand him his birthright.
Reasoning that a birthright would be of no use if he died, Esau made the exchange. His
birthright for food. He would live to see another day.
And the story continued. Life went on for a while without incident. The transfer of the birthright
did not affect the order of the family. It did not result in the unraveling of the family.
Remarkably, it would take the theft of Isaac’s blessing before the family is splintered.
Jacob tricked Isaac into giving him the blessing that had been reserved for Esau, the first-born.
Only then, with the loss of the blessing did Esau wail.
The blessing was the wish for God’s goodwill. The blessing equaled hope. One who had a
blessing did not need a birthright. One who had a blessing was secure in the belief that God would
secure one’s life.
Esau lived with the promise of a blessing. Esau lived with the promise that he would receive
God’s goodwill. Esau believed God would secure his life – until Jacob stole the promise.
Esau could live without a birthright, but he could not envision his life without a blessing. Jacob
stole Esau’s hope. With the theft of his blessing, Esau was ready to kill his brother.
The distinction between birthright and blessing is of enormous significance.
We can live without a birthright. Men may want to blame women for prying away their
privileges of gender. Americans may want to punish other nations for the outsourcing of our jobs and
the wealth secured by our labor. Any of us who lose our birthright may be angered and discouraged by
loss, yet we need not waste time in grief.
Esau reminds us that our greatest loss would be the loss of our blessing, the loss of the promise
that God will secure our lives.
Esau never saw it coming – the theft of his blessing. For us, today, what would the loss of our
blessing look like?
Amen.
* “A Passage From India,” by Suketu Mehta, The New York Times, July 12, 2005, p. A21.
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