2. Esau, in virtue of being a few minutes older than Jacob, was Isaac's natural heir. He had the rights of primogeniture, and believed that no man could wrest them from him. If ever he parted with them, it could only be by an act of his own free will. Esau's birthright, moreover, meant more than an ordinary first-born son's privilege. He was in a unique position, which afforded him brilhant prospects and golden opportunities. He was born to an inheritance which all the world's wealth would not buy. To be in the patriarchal succession with Abraham and Isaac, to be the recipient of great and precious promises, to be the founder of a holy nation, to be the minister of a covenant by which all the families of the earth were to be blessed — this was within his reach. But Esau despised the birthright. If he had been a religious man, if he had been in the least like his fathers, Abraham and Isaac, he would have treasured up this promise as they did, and would have thought it more valuable than all his earthly possessions. But how different was his behaviour from theirs. "He sold his birthright unto Jacob. And Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentils ; and he did eat and drink, and went his way." Well may the holy writer go on to say, " Thus Esau despised his birthright." He could not hold it more
* J. G. Greenhoogh.
2o6 THE BARTERED BIRTHRIGHT
cheaply than to part with it, wilfully and knowingly, for a dish of broth.
H In Romola, in the picture of the crisis of Tito's life — Tito, you remember, the genial nature which was gradually led to crime by daily indulgence in little selfishnesses — George Eliot says : " He hardly knew how the words " — Tito had just denied his father, and the denial was useless as well as criminal — " he hardly knew how the words had come to his lips : there are moments when our passions speak and decide for us, and we seem to stand by and wonder. They carry in them an inspiration of crime, that in one instant does the work of long premeditation." So it happened with Esau.^
3. The lost birthright is the one thing that is irretrievable. Esau could never regain it, though he sought it with many tears, though in after life he cried with a great and exceeding bitter cry, when he found that it could not be recovered. In the history, the Will of God was against Esau's having back his birthright. The will of the dissembling mother was against it. The better and the worst parts of his brother's nature were against it. And so it is always. Neither good men nor bad men consent that a forfeited birthright should be restored. There is not one thing in favour of restoration ; nothing at least but the weak wish of decrepit Isaac and the passionate desire of Esau, to have back for nothing, as a gift, that which had once been his by right. He had said, " Where was the good of Knowledge as Knowledge ? What was the good of Eeligion as Religion ? " And neither God nor Man attempted to demonstrate to him the truth of what he had known by instinct, but what he hid his eyes from seeing.
Then she took up her burden of life again, Saying only, "It might have been."
Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,
For rich repiner and household drudge !
God pity them both! and pity us all. Who vainly the dreams of youth recall.
For of all sad words of tongue or pen.
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"*
» G. A. Smith. « J. G. Whittier, Maud Muller.
GENESIS XXV. 34 207
^ There is a very true sense in which what we lose, whether by misuse or by neglect, we cannot regain. How was it with Esau ? We cannot forget those verses in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which, often misunderstood, have given unnecessary pain to many, but which, nevertheless, convey a very clear and decided warning : " looking diligently . . . lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears" (Heb. xii. 15, 17). We must not suppose — it would be contrary to the teaching of all Scripture — that what Esau sought and could not find was repentance. Eepentance is always possible, ever open, to those who seek it aright. The words " for he found no place of repentance " should rather, as in the Kevised Version, be placed in a parenthesis, and then we see that "it" after "sought" refers not to repentance, but to the blessing, which, by his careless despising of the birthright, Esau had forfeited. He could not regain lost opportunities. He could not, even with those bitter tears of his, wipe out wholly the effects of past sin. He must abide by the consequences of his folly. And so always. Wasted time, misused opportunities, are gone, never to return. The boy, who at school idles away his time, learns too late, as a man, that he cannot make up for the precious hours of youth mis- spent. The poor slave to intemperance finds, even when most eager to cast the snare from him, that not all his efforts can bring back the fresh innocence and manly energy he had before he fell. It is one of the most awful consequences of sin that, even when the sin itself is repented of, its effects remain, dogging a man's footsteps, seemingly utterly unable to be wholly cast off. As the poet Longfellow puts it- Wounds of the soul, though healed, will ache, The reddening scars remain, and make