The Birthright and the Blessing

Genesis gives Esau two losses rather than one, and treats them as different kinds of event. The first is a trade he makes with his eyes open: he comes in from hunting exhausted and asks Jacob for the red stew he is cooking, and Jacob will only give it in exchange for the birthright, the elder son's double share and standing as head of the family after their father. Esau agrees, reasoning to himself that a birthright is worth nothing to a man about to die of hunger, and the text notes flatly that he despised it. The second loss is not a trade at all.

Isaac, old and blind, sends Esau out to hunt game for a final blessing, and while he is gone Rebekah dresses Jacob in Esau's clothes and covers his arms with goatskins so that Isaac's hands will mistake him for his hairy brother. Isaac blesses Jacob believing him to be Esau, and when the real Esau returns with his father's meal there is no blessing left to give him, only a lesser one and the news of what has happened. Esau's grief at this second loss, wordless in the first case and open weeping in the second, is one of the more physically described reactions in the patriarchal narratives, and it sets him against Jacob until their reconciliation years later.