Esau (Bible Study)
The father of Esau was Isaac the man of the Covenant and his wife was Rebekah. (Genesis 25)
REBEKAH HAD TWIN SONS. ESAU CAME OUT FIRST AND IT IS RECORDED THAT HE WAS RED ALL OVER AND MUCH HAIR ALL OVER HIM, and they called him Esau. The second child came out holding on to Esau’s heel, and they called him Jacob. (Meaning contender)
Now, according to the Companion Bible the word RED in this case means simply a figure of speech, to attract your attention to something that will explained better later on. Esau was the first born and thus would be expected that he should inherit the birthright which included the father’s blessing and the supremacy of the inheritance within the covenant. Jacob, however, was well schooled in this meaning by his mother. Whereas Isaac loved the fresh meat that his son Esau brought in from the hunting and had prepared for his father. But the love of the flesh, the red meat, is just that of the flesh and had nothing to do with the spiritual or inheritance side of the story.
Thus the son grew. And later one day, Esau came in from hunting and he had no luck in his endeavour. And he was hungry. And when he saw that Jacob was cooking meat in a pot, he wanted to eat. Jacob said to him: ‘Sell me your birthright.’ And Esau decided to do just that. He was not interested at the time in the inheritance. He was thinking only about being hungry.
In scripture, you are told that after that Esau’s name would be Edom meaning Red or ruddy. And now you understand a bit more about the description as he was born.
When Esau was 40 years of age, he took a wife, Judith the daughter of a Hittite. And this was a great grief to Isaac and Rebekah because, you see, their son was marrying outside of his race. Then Esau took another wife also from the Hittites who were also part Canaanites. This grieved his parents very much. But he was of age and they could not do much about it.