p
over his brethren. Esau plainly distinguishes the two things: "Is not he
rightly named Jacob? For he hath supplanted me these two times: he took
away my birthright, and behold, now he hath taken away my
blessing."[358] When he found that Jacob had supplanted him a second
time, he cried with a great and exceeding bitter cry, and sought
diligently, not the birthright, which was of a religious nature, but the
dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and
wine, and the homage of his mother's sons. But he had sold the greater
good and, by doing so, forfeited the lesser. The Apostle recognises,
beyond the subtilty of Jacob and behind the blessing of Isaac, the
Divine retribution. His selling the birthright was not the merely rash
act of a sorely tempted youth. He continued to despise the covenant.
When he was forty years old, he took wives of the daughters of the
Canaanites. Abraham had made his servant swear that he would go to the
city of Nahor to take a wife unto Isaac; and Rebekah, true to the
instinct of faith, was weary of her life because of the daughters of
Heth. But Esau cared for none of these things. The day on which Jacob
took away the blessing marks the crisis in Esau's life. He still
despised the covenant and sought only worldly lordship and plenty. For
this profane scorn of the spiritual promise made to Abraham and Isaac,
Esau not only lost the blessing which he sought, but was himself
rejected. The Apostle reminds his readers that they know it to have been
so from Esau's subsequent history. They would not fail to see in him an
example of the terrible doom described by the Apostle himself in a
previous chapter. Esau was like the earth that brings forth thorns and
thistles and is "rejected."[359] The grace of repentance was denied
him.[360]

FOOTNOTES:

[329] =hypomone= (x. 36).

[330] Chap. xii. 14.

[331] Chap. xiii. 13.

[332] Chap. iv. 3.

[333] Chap. ix. 15.

[334] Chap. x. 19.

[335] =onkon= (xii. 1).

[336] =euperistaton=.

[337] =agona=.

[338] Chap. xii. 2.

[339] =archegon= (ii. 10).

[340] =teteleioken= (x. 14).

[341] =prodromos= (vi. 20).

[342] =teteleiomenon= (vii. 28).

[343] Reading =eis heautous= (xii. 3).

[344] =analogisasthe= (xii. 3).

[345] Chap. ii. 13.

[346] Chap. iii. 2.

[347] =eis paideian hypomenete= (xii. 7, where the verb is indicative,
not imperative).

[348] Num. xvi. 22.

[349] Prov. xvi. 7.

[350] =to cholon= (xii.