And what did Jacob win by his birthright--his rights of the firstborn? Simply the power to become God's pilgrim, the power to win a lofty height of honour and renown by life-long patience, by heroic struggle, by wearing, wasting toils. What good shall this birthright do to me, said the hungry hunter, mad for the mess of pottage which the thrifty Jacob sold. But what good did the birthright do to the supplanter who bought it, and filched the blessing with it? None, absolutely none, in the sense in which they talk of "good" who are reckoning gains. It drove him forth from the very hour when he stole his father's blessing, an exile to a distant land. It made him for long years, his best years, a hireling in his kinsman's house. It exposed him to precisely the kind of trick which he himself had practised, in a matter of yet deeper moment to his affection; for it imperilled the winning of the woman whom he tenderly loved. After he had served for long years as a hireling for a hireling's wage, it brought him back at length to the threshold of the promised Canaan. Rich in the wealth of the East, he drew near the borders. His soul was filled with perturbation when he heard that Esau was coming to meet him. The wrong which his brother had suffered rose up freshly before him in all its disgraceful features, and he could hardly believe in the hunter's generous forgiveness as he cowered a suppliant at his feet. Entered at length on the land of his inheritance, discord breaks out in his home and embitters his life. He is struck to the heart through his dearest affections. "There I buried Rachel" is the epitaph of a great agony; and when Joseph was not, he felt that he should go down mourning to the grave. At length the land of his inheritance refused to sustain him; and the weary old pilgrim, with one foot in the grave, goes forth once more an exile--the second and final exile--into a land where the sons for whom he won and held the birthright were destined for centuries to writhe and moan as slaves. What good did the birthright do to him?
If you look at the things which are seen, which are mostly in view when birthrights are in question, Esau, the hardly used man, the victim, had most unquestionably the preferable lot. The time came when he stood as a prince before Jacob, and Jacob bowed himself at his feet. There was no malignant spirit at work here, as we are sometimes tempted to conceive of it, making Esau's life wretched and broken, while Jacob's was heaped high with all which could gladden a grasping and sensual heart; on the contrary, the chosen son won only that which Esau would not have cared to lift if it had been laid at his very feet. Esau lost only that which would have been life-long a torment to his easy, jovial, sensual nature, which he would have prayed to get rid of, which he would in some way have got rid of, if it had clung to him, no matter at what cost. There were some, remember, who, finding their herds of swine in peril, prayed even the merciful Saviour "to depart out of their coasts." Jacob seized a bitter inheritance as far as this world was concerned, by his clever impersonation; while Rebekah, who prompted and managed it, paid a yet heavier price for it; in this world she never saw her darling more.