Confession ; Lost innocence returns no more; We are not what we were before Transgression.^
IL
Jacob and Esau.
The story of Esau and Jacob suggests a problem which many have found it hard to solve. Our instincts and sympathies all
> 6. Milligan.
2o8 THE BARTERED BIRTHRIGHT
go with the frank daring hunter, and against the timid crafty shepherd. God's sympathies go, or seem to go, the other way; He prefers the subtle shepherd to the bold hunter. That is to say, the Divine Kuler of men appears to place Himself on the side of cowardice, dissimulation, treachery ; and to oppose Himself to manliness, veracity, courage. And even if we are quite sure that He must be right, we can hardly make out where and how we are wrong : we cannot vindicate His ways to these two boys and men. The question will rise : " Must not morality suffer, must not our faith in goodness be put in jeopardy, if He who is the very Fountain of truth and righteousness favours the man whom in our conscience we condemn, and condemns the man whom in our conscience we approve ? "
^ I know at least one man of some culture and distinction, a perfectly sane and reasonable man, too, in all other respects, who in his earlier days was so disgusted by this apparent Divine preference for the meaner character of the two that he broke with religion altogether, and has never since been quite reconciled toit.i
1. Now the first thing to notice is that even in his selfishness and meanness, Jacob showed his sense of the superior value of things unseen and distant, and his willingness to make a sacrifice to secure them. He sinned ; but so did Esau sin in casting away the birthright for a momentary gratification. He sinned ; but he sinned, not for a sensual indulgence, but for what he conceived to be a future, and in some sense a spiritual, gain — the main value of the birthright being that it made a man an heir of the Covenant, This, indeed, is the point which we have to mark and to remember ; above all others, since our whole problem turns upon it, that, even /in his wrong-doing, Jacob showed that he could prefer the future ^ to the present, the spiritual to the sensual ; while Esau showed no less plainly that he was content to sacrifice the future to certain sensual indulgence, a large remote hope to a small immediate gratification. For here we have a true test of character, a test by which we are accustomed to try our fellows ; and a test which compels us to admit, whatever our prejudices may be, that in at least one great vital respect Jacob was by far the better man of the two.
' Samuel C«x.
GENESIS XXV. 34 209
^ This is the power of all appeal to passion, that it is present, with us now, to be had at once. It is clamant, imperious, insistent, demanding to be satiated with what is actually present. It has no use for a far-o£f good. It wants immediate profit. This is temptation, alluring to the eye, whispering in the ear, plucking by the elbow, ofifering satisfaction now. Here and now — not hereafter; this thing, that red pottage there — not an ethereal unsubstantial thing like a birthright. What is the good of it if we die ? and we are like to die if we do not get this gratification the senses demand. In the infatuation of appetite all else seems small in comparison ; the birthright is a poor thing compared with the red pottage.^
2. In the Epistle to the Hebrews we are told expressly why Esau was punished : it was for being a " profane person." " Take heed," it says, " lest there be among you any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright " (Heb. xii 16). Profaneness: that was Esau's sin. What is it that we properly mean by profaneness ? It is when people know in their hearts that a thing is holy, and ought to be treated with religious reverence, and yet they treat it as a cheap and ordinary thing. It is different from the sin of Sodom, and in one respect perhaps it is worse : as our Lord Himself seems to intimate, when He says to wicked Capernaum, " It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the Day of Judgment, than for you." The sin of Sodom was unbelief : they knew not God, and would not believe what He told them by His messengers. Esau could not say he knew not God. He had been brought up in Isaac's family, which was blessed as Abraham's had been. So far then he was worse than the Sodomites, as he had been better instructed and brought up, and knew more of Him against whom he was sinning.
T The profane person is ever the same at heart, but he varies outwardly according to the time and country he lives in. John Earle, Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, in his Micro-Cosmo- graphie (editio princeps, 1628) gives a description of "the prophane man " of his day : " A prophane man is one that denies God as farre as the Law giues him leaue, that is, onely does not say so in downeright Termes, for so farre he may goe. A man that does the greatest sinnes calmely, and as the ordinary actions of life, and sis calmely discourses of it againe. Hee will tell you his