In this last section we have just a short story about the boys. They are growing up and have become very different men, and yet they are both sinners. Both of them, in this passage, are painted as men who are after what they want, and neither is in the right. We know the story but what do we learn about these young men. a. A Materialist. This is Esau. We are told in verse 27 that he is a skillful hunter and that he spent time in the field. We’ll learn later that Isaac loved Esau because of the game that he caught. That’s nice of him. But Esau is a materialist. He is only concerned about the here and now. The story tells us that he was out in the field hunting and he came back starving and demands a bowl of soup. This is where the red part comes in because apparently, the lentil soup Jacob made was red. So Esau is named Edom because he’s red and because of this selling of his birthright for the red. But we see here what view of the birthright, the leadership of the family, Esau had. He traded it away for what he needed right then. b. A Conniver. Jacob was a different man but no less a sinner. Let me correct something here. The picture that Jacob was some effeminate Momma’s boy that only hung out in the tents with his milky smooth skin is not what the Bible describes. Jacob was a mild or quiet man who dwelt in tents, just like his father and Abraham. They were not men of the field but were men of means and conducted business to care for their household. To say that Esau was a manly man and Jacob was a sissy is not true. It’s more like Esau was a guy who rejected his family’s way of life and the leadership role while Jacob had selfish ambition and wanted to gain the leadership role through whatever means necessary, even, as we will see, allowing his mother to be cursed for him.