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Daily Devotional • February 5
Jean McCurdy Meade
God's Mercy
A Reading from Genesis 25: 19-34
19 This is the account of the family line of Abraham’s son Isaac.
Abraham became the father of Isaac, 20 and Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebekah daughter of Bethuel the Aramean from Paddan Aram and sister of Laban the Aramean.
21 Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was childless. The Lord answered his prayer, and his wife Rebekah became pregnant. 22 The babies jostled each other within her, and she said, “Why is this happening to me?” So she went to inquire of the Lord.
23 The Lord said to her,
“Two nations are in your womb,
and two peoples from within you will be separated;
one people will be stronger than the other,
and the older will serve the younger.”
24 When the time came for her to give birth, there were twin boys in her womb. 25 The first to come out was red, and his whole body was like a hairy garment; so they named him Esau.26 After this, his brother came out, with his hand grasping Esau’s heel; so he was named Jacob. Isaac was sixty years oldwhen Rebekah gave birth to them.
27 The boys grew up, and Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the open country, while Jacob was content to stay at home among the tents. 28 Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob.
29 Once when Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau came in from the open country, famished. 30 He said to Jacob, “Quick, let me have some of that red stew! I’m famished!” (That is why he was also called Edom.)
31 Jacob replied, “First sell me your birthright.”
32 “Look, I am about to die,” Esau said. “What good is the birthright to me?”
33 But Jacob said, “Swear to me first.” So he swore an oath to him, selling his birthright to Jacob.
34 Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew. He ate and drank, and then got up and left.
So Esau despised his birthright.
Meditation
The story of two brothers who are quite different from each other is a constant theme in ancient and folk literature. God’s promise to Abraham that he will be the father of a great nation hangs on the one son of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac. Watch what you pray for, as the saying goes, because you may just get it — in spades. Isaac prays to the Lord for his wife Rebekah because she is barren. Then she conceives twins. She goes to inquire of the Lord, what that strife in her womb can mean. The answer foretells the fate of both her sons.
The first-born was always the heir to family leadership, but the Lord has a different way of choosing, just as later he will choose David to be king over all his older brothers. The story comes to a head when Esau comes back from hunting famished and asks Jacob for some of his red pottage. It is outrageous that Jacob refuses to give his starving brother something to eat unless he sells him his birthright, but Esau says,“I am about to die; of what use is a birthright to me?”
The story is being told by the descendants of Jacob, so it ends with a condemnation of Esau, “thus Esau despised his birthright” instead of emphasizing Jacob's lack of human kindness to his brother. Jacob is no hero, although he is the one chosen from the womb.
God’s ways are not our ways, but when the brothers finally reconcile it is Esau who is the “good” brother, forgiving his trickster twin for all the harm he has done to him. Together they will bury their father Isaac. God’s mercy extends to us all — the un-chosen, the trickster and liar, and the rest of us who hate and harm our brothers and sisters, if we only turn back and ask for forgiveness as Jacob finally does.
The Rev. Dr. Jean McCurdy Meade is a retired priest of the Diocese of Louisiana, formerly the rector of Mount Olivet Church, New Orleans.
Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer
Today we pray for:
The Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana
The Diocese of Cameroon – The Church of the Province of West Africa
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