It is in connection with his favourite pursuit that Esau first attracts our notice. As the eldest son he had several important privileges. He held superior rank in the family (Gen. xlix. 3), and would succeed to a double portion of his father’s property (Gen. xlviii. 22; Deut. xxi. 17); his also was, in all probability, the priestly office (Num. viii. 17–19), and the Covenant-Blessing (Heb. xii. 16, 17; Gen. xxvii. 28, 29, 36). These were the privileges of his birthright, and by an Oriental patriarch were held as dear as life itself. On one occasion Esau returned faint and weary from the chase, and saw his brother Jacob preparing some dark red pottage of lentiles[34]. Famished and exhausted, he longed for the fragrant mess, and implored his brother to let him have it. Seeing his distress, Jacob determined to avail himself of it for his own ends, and agreed to give his brother the pottage on condition that he sold him his birthright. Unable to control the pangs of hunger, bent on the immediate gratification of his appetite, Esau was willing to barter all his privileges for a single meal. But words were not sufficient for his artful brother. He must have an oath solemnly attesting the exchange. _Swear unto me_, said he, and Esau swore, and sold his birthright _for one morsel of meat_ (Heb. xii. 16), and ate and drank, and rose up and went his way[35]. At a subsequent period, in consequence of a grievous famine, Isaac left Lahai-roi, and journeyed southward to Gerar, within the fertile coast-line of Philistia. While here he received a warning from the Almighty against going down into Egypt, and was assured of the continuance of the same blessing which his father had enjoyed (Gen. xxvi. 1–5). Thus encouraged he continued to dwell at Gerar, but, like his father, was not always proof against temptations to distrust his Almighty Protector. He persuaded Rebekah to represent herself as his sister, and subjected himself to a cutting rebuke from Abimelech for this unworthy equivocation. At Gerar his wealth increased exceedingly, and he made the first advance beyond the purely pastoral life. He _sowed in that land_, and reaped within the year an hundred fold (Gen. xxvi. 12). But his wealth and prosperity in time provoked the jealousy of the Philistines, and they stopped up the wells which his father had dug; nor did the patriarch feel himself secure till he had moved still further southward to Beersheba. Here, like Abraham before him, he built an altar unto Jehovah, and called upon His Name, and was rewarded by a second confirmation of the covenant Promise, while his contentions with the Philistines were brought to a close, and a mutual compact ratified between them (Gen. xxvi. 26–31). But his domestic happiness was not equally secured. To the great grief of both his parents, Esau, now 40 years of age, contracted an alliance with Judith the daughter of Beeri, and Bashemath, the daughter of Elon, both of the race of the