The rangy enmity of Jacob and Esau stretched back to the dark well of the womb. Always they were struggling against each other – one with raw strength, the other with fluid cunning.

Rebekah felt the relentless contest inside her. Esau came first, bathed in blood, a burly boy. Then Jacob with his white hand on his brother’s red heel. As though he was attempting to pull him back inside.

*

Isaac favoured Esau and Rebekah favoured Jacob. This was another plangency in the sunderance of the twins.

Esau grew to be rough and shaggy. A man of the fields and the margins, and the forests beyond. He was a hunter by nature and brought back game for the pot. Remember that the world was young in those days and wilder. Esau with his taught-strung bow was drawn to an older life, before the time of crops and herds.

Jacob, pale and tall, the younger twin, but a newer man; he used his wits. He had a reckoning of wealth and the binding abstraction of the law.

One evening Esau came back home hungry and tired. His bag was empty. Jacob sat by the fire stirring a pot of red lentils. Here was a farmed crop, grown from tilled earth, simmering in a pot thrown by a craftsman.

Esau asked for a sup of those lentils. Jacob said he would give him a bowl of the stew in return for Esau’s birthright. Esau was famished. He was a hunter. His birthright could not be eaten; could not be touched, nor seen. So, readily, he agreed. Rash and unsuited to the sophistry of settled life, Esau swore away a mere concept for the palpable. Jacob, the second born, took the ascendancy.

*

When Isaac was blind and nearing death he sent for Esau. He asked his favoured son to go into the wilderness to hunt venison and cook it in the fashion that he loved. When this was accomplished Isaac would bless his Esau.

Rebekah sat listening to this and she sent for Jacob. She told Jacob to kill two young goats and that she would cook them in as if they were venison. When this was done she fastened the skins of the goats on Jacob’s arms and in this guise he carried the dish into his father’s chamber.

‘Who is that comes?’ asked Isaac, reaching out in his darkness.

‘I am Esau,’ replied Jacob.

‘How have you come back so quickly from the forest?’

‘The Lord gave me this venison,’ said Jacob. ‘Now please arise and eat.’

‘Well, come nearer then’ said Isaac groping towards Jacob. ‘And let me feel you.’ He stroked the goat hair but confusion passed over his face. ‘Are you truly my son Esau?’

‘I am,’ replied Jacob.

So Isaac ate the dinner and drank the wine that Jacob had brought. Then he readied himself to make a blessing. ‘You wear the smell of the fields.’ He said. ‘Therefore, take the dew of heaven and the plenty of the earth.

People will be your servants. You will have mastery over your brother. Your mother’s sons will bow before you.’

Jacob departed with his new credentials. Yet just after he had gone Esau returned. He had cooked venison with fragrant herbs. Again, Isaac reached out. ‘Who goes there,’ he asked.

‘I am Esau, your firstborn son.’

This caused Isaac to tremble. ‘But I have already eaten. Your brother came in subtlety and received my greatest blessing. I cannot take it back.’

Standing before his father, with his hard-won venison, Esau began to weep. ‘Father, is there no blessing at all for me?’

Isaac summoned his thoughts. ‘Your dwelling shall we away from the plenty of the earth and the dew of heaven. You will live by the sword and serve your brother.’

Esau’s hatred of Jacob grew sharp as a jackal’s tooth, as hard as mountain scree and endless as the wind. He vowed that, when his father died, he would kill his brother with the strength of his hands.