The story of Jacob and Esau in their contention for the birthright and the blessing is one that is frequently misunderstood. The tendency to idealize the forefathers of the race has lead many teachers to attempt to justify the conduct of Jacob in his efforts to secure the birthright and the blessing, totally ignoring the fact that all the wretched consequences which followed naturally upon his attempt would seem to indicate that God did not approve. What these consequences were will be discussed in subsequent chapters. Other teachers sin in the opposite direction and make out Esau to be the innocent victim of Jacob's cunning and avarice. How they can reconcile this with the choice of Jacob to be the patriarch rather than Esau, how they can conceive that God's will could confirm the act of Jacob and the hand of Providence be, so to speak, forced into blessing Jacob though Esau was the more worthy of blessing, is difficult to understand. The mistake common to both these versions of the Biblical meaning of the story is that they look at it mainly as a character study of two contrasting types, whereas the moral of the story lies not so much in the characters as in the incidents, which, when given closer attention, reveal the fact that the motive underlying the whole story is not the personal contest between Jacob and Esau but the carrying out of God's plan, contained in his promise to Abraham, the plan of bringing into existence the people to whom He was to reveal Himself. And this idea is brought out, as in the story of Abraham's relation to Ishmael and Isaac, by contrasting the purposes of the human agents with God's purpose and showing how God's purpose is made to triumph by His so shaping the incidents of Jacob's life that they correct Jacob's original misconception of his mission. Let us see how the incidents in this chapter cast light on our theme. Note in the first instance the prophecy contained in Genesis 25.23 which indicates in advance that Jacob and not Esau was intended from the beginning to be the heir of the blessing of Abraham. Note also that the prophecy speaks of "two nations" and "two peoples", showing distinctly that the events of the narrative were shaped by God with a view to subsequent history not merely to the lives of Jacob and Esau as individuals. The very fact that "the elder shall serve the younger" is to give emphasis to the divine election of Jacob, for, according to the law and custom of those days, the elder was entitled to the obedience and service of the younger. Had Jacob been the older of the two brothers his subsequent preeminence and that of his descendants would have seemed but part of the natural course of events and would not have argued divine election, but with Esau the first born the subsequent elevation of Jacob does so argue.