Genesis 25:19-34, 26:34-28:5

Part 1

While my ancestor was in his cocoon, God called him in and told him about a pair of twins. Which one did he want? When God described the older one , a hunter, my ancestor asked about the second one. God said that he wasn’t, so he said he would take that one. Let me tell you, since leaving the safety of my shell, several of us in his line have wondered about that decision.

Even before the two were born, they were fighting. Rebekah, feeling them struggling inside her, knew that something was going on. She went to to inquire of the Lord. (They didn’t have a temple yet, but there were holy places where a priest or a prophet would explain God to people.) There she was told that she was going to have two very different sons, and each would be the leader of a nation. In other words, two strong-willed sons, who were at it already.

But the prophet added something else, that the older would serve the younger. Now that’s not the way it usually was. The older received the birthright, which made him the head of the family, the one who gave the orders. For that order to be reversed, the younger one would have to be given the family blessing.

Now one thing you need to understand about butterflies is that we have no control over our charges. We can warn our people, give them advice, but if they don’t listen, we can’t force them to change their behavior.

Esau’s line of butterflies and mine spent a lot of time while our children were in the womb trying to advise them of the dangers of their fighting with each other. They figured that was the best time, before they were born, when they didn’t have anything else to do, to get through to them. They thought there were actually making some progress, but then came the birth time.

As luck or fate or whatever would have it, Esau was the closest to the birth canal at the time, so he was born first. When Jacob saw what was happening, he reached out and grabbed Esau’s foot, in an attempt to pull him back. But, of course, by then it was too late, so Jacob became the younger son.

Esau was the doer. He was the first to roll over and the first to crawl. But he struggled in the process. He spent hours twisting his body and waving his arms and legs before he accidentally hit the right position and rolled over. Then he had to go through it again and again until he was able to figure out exactly what to do to move his body.

In the meantime, Jacob just lay there, watching and thinking. And then, one day, while Esau was wearing himself out trying to roll over again, Jacob simply flipped himself over. It was the same with crawling. Esau struggled, Jacob watched. Esau finally succeeded, but had to struggle to master it. Jacob just lifted up onto his all fours and took off.

As they grew up, Esau loved to spend his time observing the wild animals. He wasn’t very old when he killed his first rabbit. Isaac showed him how to prepare it, and the whole family dined on Esau’s rabbit. (Fortunately, they had other things to eat as well.)

Jacob, on the other hand, spent his time with the sheep. Esau would be gone for days at a time, sleeping out in the open. Jacob always brought the flock back to the fold at night. The sheep were safer in the fold, because bears and lions¹ and wild dogs were a threat to the sheep out in the open. And Jacob got to sleep in the tent.

It didn’t help at all that each parent favored one of the twins. It’s probably better, if there is to be favoritism, that each twin was favored by a parent, but it would have helped them learn to work together if their parents could have loved them both. But Esau was Isaac’s favorite. The boy loved to hunt, and Isaac encouraged him.

Rebekah and Jacob were dreamers and schemers. They often sat and pondered what it meant that the older would serve the younger. Would Isaac actually bless Jacob instead of Esau? But the way he felt about the “older” son, the twin who was born first, that didn’t seem likely.

One day, when they were in their middle teens, Jacob saw his chance to at least lay a claim to the birthright. Jacob was cooking a stew for supper, when he saw Esau coming back. Esau had been out hunting for several days, without any success. That wasn’t normal. His butterfly communicated he had several near misses, and only once was he nearly attacked by a bear. Fortunately, the butterfly was able to encourage a deer to run in between them, and the bear went after the deer instead.

As soon as Jacob saw Esau, his then butterfly knew what he was thinking. Like I said before, our job is not to make people behave, but to encourage them to do the right thing. And to my then ancestor, it looked doing the right thing meant staying out of trouble with Esau. But, as usual, Jacob ignored his suggestion that sharing and being brotherly would be better than bargaining for the birthright. His butterfly tried to make him see that God is capable of working out the details. But Jacob, like a lot of human beings, had his own plan.

So when Esau saw the boiling pot, he came over and asked for something to eat. “Just give it to him,” the butterfly thought/whispered. “Share with him! There’s enough for both of you!” Of course, Jacob never paid attention. It seemed that their communication system was broken.

But Jacob sat there stirring the pot. He looked up at Esau and replied, “First, sell me your birthright.”

Now remember that Esau hadn’t had anything to eat for except for a few berries he was picking when the bear showed up. He was hungry. Besides, the birthright wasn’t his to sell. He knew his father. Isaac wouldn’t bless Jacob over him. So what did it matter if Jacob thought he could “buy” the birthright?

So Esau agreed. He even swore to Jacob that he was trading his birthright for a pot of boiled meat. Then Jacob gave him some bread and the stew. When Esau finished, he just got up and left. No conversation, he just rose and went his way.

And my ancestor thought to Jacob, “OK, now what? This little trade won’t mean anything if Isaac blesses Esau before he dies, and Esau will just be all the madder at you for trying to cheat him.”

Then he nearly forgot to flap his wings to stay in the air, because he heard Jacob say to himself, “OK, now what? This little trade won’t mean anything if Father blesses Esau before he dies, and Esau will just be all the madder at me for trying to cheat him.” My ancestor couldn’t believe it! Esau actually heard him! It may have been the first time!!!

Now you need to understand what this power struggle looks like. On the one hand, they had Isaac, the head of the family, the ruler, so to speak, and Esau, the older son, who would be the head of the family, kind of like the crown prince. They make the decisions, how many sheep to sell, when to pack up the camp and move on to other pastures. On the other hand, they had Rebekah, a woman, with very little authority. She could make some decisions about the household, but they were always subject to Isaac. And Jacob, the younger son, who had the responsibility, but not the authority. He was the one who carried out the decisions, who sorted out the sheep, who folded up the tents and loaded the camels.

And to complicate the struggle, they had the prophecy Rebekah was given before the twins were born. She was told that she had two babies in her, each would be the leader of a nation. It started right; she had twin boys. But she was also told that the older would serve the younger. How could that happen, unless the younger received the birthright and the blessing by Isaac? And they knew that Isaac would never give the blessing to Jacob.

You see, we butterflies don’t have any power over our people. In that, we’re kind of like Jacob himself, we can advise, but we don’t control. Jacob’s line of butterflies had been trying to advise Jacob all his life, but any time it involved Esau, Jacob always took the path of most resistance. If it would anger Esau or Isaac, he did it. Cooperation was not a word he understood. So now my ancestor counseled patience, letting God work out the blessing. He had made a little progress, but he wanted more.

Jacob went running to Rebekah and told her what he had done. At first, she was horrified! Trading food for the birthright? But a birthright is not a thing, an object, to be bought or sold! The birthright goes along with the blessing, given by the father to the son. Esau didn’t own it, so he couldn’t sell it.

But then the two began to look at the possibilities. Rebekah’s butterfly and Jacob’s just sat in the corner, shaking their heads. Now and again, while mother and son were discussing their options, one of the butterflies would suggest, “You know, God can figure this out. Why don’t you just let God work on this?” But they didn’t expect to be heard.

For obvious reasons, nobody said anything about the birthright exchange to Isaac. Time passed.By the time I came along, Isaac was blind and bedridden. One day, when Isaac was feeling particularly old, he asked Esau to go hunting and fix him some venison. Off Esau went, with his then butterfly following close behind. And I had the feeling that my winged partner had the easier job, only worrying about lions and bears!

To be fair to Rebekah, she didn’t feel that she had much choice. The prophecy was the older serving the younger, meaning Jacob had to receive the blessing. With Isaac about to bless Esau instead, God wasn’t moving fast enough for her.

She sent Jacob out to kill a couple of kids. She would fix the meat the way Isaac liked it, and Jacob would take it to him. Jacob raised a very practical objection—his skin was smooth, not hairy like Esau’s. You may wonder just how hairy Esau was, that the skin of a baby goat made a good substitute, but it did work! I have to admit, I didn’t think it would, either. It helped that Jacob wore Esau’s clothes, that smelled of open meadows rather than of sheep.

The other problem came when Jacob spoke. He tried to talk in a deep voice and to pronounce words the way Esau did. He started with just two words.

“My father.”*

Isaac turned his head to acknowledge the speaker. “Yes, my son. Who is it?”*

Trying to disguise his voice, the younger son answered, “I am Esau, your first born.”* Was that enough? Or should he explain why he had come? “I have done as you told me. Please sit up and eat some of my game, so that you may give me your blessing.”*

Probably his little speech was too long. He couldn’t keep his voice low enough.

“How did you find it so quickly, my son?”*

“The Lord your God gave me success.”* Would Esau have answered that way?

“Come near so I can touch you, my son, to know whether you really are my son Esau or not.”*

Jacob leaned over his father, holding his breath as the old man reached for his hands.

“The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau.”*

The younger son breathed softly, trying not to give himself away.

“Are you really my son Esau?”*

“I am.”*

At this point, I knew there was nothing I could do. He had committed himself to this fraud and would carry it through. Isaac ate the meat and bread, and then he blessed Jacob, the younger son.

Well, as you would expect, Esau arrived shortly thereafter, and he was more than a little angry to discover that he had not only sold his birthright, but he had lost his father’s only blessing. What Isaac offered him was closer to a curse.

As he left his father, his butterfly told me his thought. “The days of mourning for my father are near; then I will kill my brother Jacob.”

We butterflies do work together in emergencies. This was one, so the word quickly made it back to Rebekah.

She didn’t have the authority to send Jacob away, so she went to Isaac and reminded him about Esau’s Canaanite wives. “I’m disgusted with living because of these Hittite women. If Jacob takes a wife from among the women of this land, from Hittite women like these, my life will not be worth living.”*

Now I’ll give Isaac credit, once he had given Jacob the blessing, he didn’t get angry at being tricked. Instead, he called Jacob back in and repeated the blessing. He passed on to Jacob the blessing that God had given to Abraham and that Abraham had passed on to him, the blessing that promised him possession of the land given to Abraham, where their descendants would become uncountable.

As Rebekah filled a bag with food and handed Jacob a skin of water, I thought about Ishmael and Hagar being sent off into the wilderness. We had some wilderness ahead of us, but we had a destination with relatives, Rebekah’s family, beyond it.

(to be continued)

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1 Bears and lions did exist in Israel in biblical times (1 Samuel 17:34-35). Also https://armstronginstitute.org/156-the-animals-of-the-bible, referenced 2/23/2026.