Parashat HaShavua Toldot / Generations
This Week's Reading List:
BeReshit / Genesis 25:19-28:9
Mal'achi / Malachi 1:1-2:7
Romim / Romans 9:6-13
Bereshit {25:27} The boys grew. Esav (Easu) was a skilful hunter, an ish (man) of the field. Ya'akov (Jacob) was a quiet man, living in tents. {25:28} Now Yitzchak (Issac) loved Esav, because he ate his venison. Rivkah (Rebekah) loved Ya'akov. {25:29} Ya'akov boiled stew. Esav came in from the field, and he was famished. {25:30} Esav said to Ya'akov, "Please feed me with that same red stew, for I am famished." Therefore his name was called Edom (Red) {25:31} Ya'akov said, "First, sell me your birthright." {25:32} Esav said, "Behold, I am about to die. What good is the birthright to me?" {25:33} Ya'akov said, "Swear to me first." He swore to him. He sold his birthright to Ya'akov. {25:34} Ya'akov gave Esav bread and stew of lentils. He ate and drank, rose up, and went his way. So Esav despised his birthright.
How hungry could Esav have been so as to be at the point of death? We are not told that he was brought in from his hunting trip on a stretcher by the paramedics. Rather we are told that he walked in from hunting under his own power. So how close to death could he have been? Yet Esav says to Ya'acov that he is so hungry that he was about to die.
Now, I do not know how long Esav went without food while out on his hunting trip, but I have been on a forty day fast and my wife, I have gone on many one, two and three week fasts and we have never come anywhere near the point of death. I could understand if Esav had gone without water for an extended period of time, because three days without water could have serious consequences, under normal circumstances, but food, Esav could have made it forty days with no problem.
There is no mistaking it, the passage I quoted above tells us that by exchanging his birthright for food in order to satisfy his hunger Esav despised his birthright; however, after he realized what he had done, after the reality of what it is that he sold hit him, he accuses his brother Ya'acov of scamming him.
Bereshit {27:34} When Esav heard the words of his abba (father), he cried with an exceeding great and bitter cry, and said to his abba, "Bless me, even me also, my abba." {27:35} He said, "Your brother came with deceit, and has taken away your blessing." {27:36} He said, "Is not he rightly named Ya'akov? For he has supplanted me these two times. He took away my birthright. See, now he has taken away my blessing." He said, "Have you not reserved a blessing for me?"
But the question still is, “how hungry could Esav have been?” I think that Esav's statement of being at the point of death was a hyperbole. I am sure, like me, you have said these words in your life time, “I am starving to death.” You were not really at the point of death, but you used the words to express that you were extremely hungry. Esav, I believe, was expressing the same thing. It is amazing what one will do for food, what one will do so as to satisfy their hunger, if they are not disciplined. I know that when I fast it takes a lot of discipline, self control and an amazing amount of faith in G-d for me to make it through. Why faith in G-d; because I am always fasting for a specific purpose, either for a personal need, a prayer request or as intercession on behalf of someone else. Without the faith that what I am doing will move G-d to respond I would never be able to succeed in my fast, my appetite and flesh would always have the better of me.
Today when we think of a birthright we think of an inheritance, perhaps of cash or property, but G-d, although He cares for our financial wellbeing, is more interested and concerned with our spiritual wellbeing and our relationship with Him. Therefore, when the Bible speaks about a birthright, as it does in this week's Parasha, it is speaking about Esav's spiritual condition and his personal relationship with G-d. What Esav sold was his spiritual relationship with G-d. Ya'acov may have been a schemer, but at least he was spiritual and had a relationship with G-d, which is what Scripture means when it says that, “Ya'akov was a quiet man, living in tents.” Esav was G-dless and that was his problem.
A believer's inheritance is G-d, He is our birthright. When Esav rejected his birthright he rejected G-d, something that is very evident even to us today as we experience his descendants worshipping a false god. The writer of Ivrim (Hebrews) puts it well when he says:
Ivrim {12:15} See to it that no one comes short of the grace of G-d; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled; {12:16} that there be no immoral or godless person like Esav, who sold his own birthright for a single meal.
Ask yourself today, “how important is G-d to you, and what price it would take for you to sell Him out of your life!”
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Baruch HaShem
Rabbi Ya'acov Farber
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