Discovery BoxGenesis 25:30 
Context25:30 So Esau said to Jacob, “Feed 1 me some of the red stuff – yes, this red stuff – because I’m starving!” (That is why he was also called 2 Edom.) 3
Genesis 27:19
Context27:19 Jacob said to his father, “I am Esau, your firstborn. I’ve done as you told me. Now sit up 4 and eat some of my wild game so that you can bless me.” 5
Genesis 27:31
Context27:31 He also prepared some tasty food and brought it to his father. Esau 6 said to him, “My father, get up 7 and eat some of your son’s wild game. Then you can bless me.” 8
Genesis 27:37
Context27:37 Isaac replied to Esau, “Look! I have made him lord over you. I have made all his relatives his servants and provided him with grain and new wine. What is left that I can do for you, my son?”
Genesis 28:5-6
Context28:5 So Isaac sent Jacob on his way, and he went to Paddan Aram, to Laban son of Bethuel the Aramean and brother of Rebekah, the mother of Jacob and Esau.
28:6 Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob and sent him off to Paddan Aram to find a wife there. 9 As he blessed him, 10 Isaac commanded him, “You must not marry a Canaanite woman.” 11
Genesis 32:11
Context32:11 Rescue me, 12 I pray, from the hand 13 of my brother Esau, 14 for I am afraid he will come 15 and attack me, as well as the mothers with their children. 16
Genesis 32:17
Context32:17 He instructed the servant leading the first herd, 17 “When my brother Esau meets you and asks, ‘To whom do you belong? 18 Where are you going? Whose herds are you driving?’ 19
Genesis 32:19
Context32:19 He also gave these instructions to the second and third servants, as well as all those who were following the herds, saying, “You must say the same thing to Esau when you meet him. 20
Genesis 33:5
Context33:5 When Esau 21 looked up 22 and saw the women and the children, he asked, “Who are these people with you?” Jacob 23 replied, “The children whom God has graciously given 24 your servant.”
Genesis 35:1
Context35:1 Then God said to Jacob, “Go up at once 25 to Bethel 26 and live there. Make an altar there to God, who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.” 27
1 tn The rare term לָעַט (la’at), translated “feed,” is used in later Hebrew for feeding animals (see Jastrow, 714). If this nuance was attached to the word in the biblical period, then it may depict Esau in a negative light, comparing him to a hungry animal. Famished Esau comes in from the hunt, only to enter the trap. He can only point at the red stew and ask Jacob to feed him.
2 tn The verb has no expressed subject and so is given a passive translation.
3 sn Esau’s descendants would eventually be called Edom. Edom was the place where they lived, so-named probably because of the reddish nature of the hills. The writer can use the word “red” to describe the stew that Esau gasped for to convey the nature of Esau and his descendants. They were a lusty, passionate, and profane people who lived for the moment. Again, the wordplay is meant to capture the “omen in the nomen.”
4 tn Heb “get up and sit.” This may mean simply “sit up,” or it may indicate that he was to get up from his couch and sit at a table.
5 tn Heb “so that your soul may bless me.” These words, though not reported by Rebekah to Jacob (see v. 7) accurately reflect what Isaac actually said to Esau (see v. 4). Perhaps Jacob knew more than Rebekah realized, but it is more likely that this was an idiom for sincere blessing with which Jacob was familiar. At any rate, his use of the precise wording was a nice, convincing touch.
6 tn Heb “and he said to his father”; the referent of “he” (Esau) has been specified in the translation for clarity, while the words “his father” have been replaced by the pronoun “him” for stylistic reasons.
7 tn Or “arise” (i.e., sit up).
8 tn Heb “so that your soul may bless me.”
9 tn Heb “to take for himself from there a wife.”
10 tn The infinitive construct with the preposition and the suffix form a temporal clause.
11 tn Heb “you must not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan.”
12 tn The imperative has the force of a prayer here, not a command.
13 tn The “hand” here is a metonymy for “power.”
14 tn Heb “from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau.”
15 tn Heb “for I am afraid of him, lest he come.”
16 sn Heb “me, [the] mother upon [the] sons.” The first person pronoun “me” probably means here “me and mine,” as the following clause suggests.
17 tn Heb “the first”; this has been specified as “the servant leading the first herd” in the translation for clarity.
18 tn Heb “to whom are you?”
19 tn Heb “and to whom are these before you?”
20 tn Heb “And he commanded also the second, also the third, also all the ones going after the herds, saying: ‘According to this word you will speak when you find him.’”
21 tn Heb “and he”; the referent (Esau) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
22 tn Heb “lifted up his eyes.”
23 tn Heb “and he”; the referent (Jacob) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
24 tn The Hebrew verb means “to be gracious; to show favor”; here it carries the nuance “to give graciously.”
25 tn Heb “arise, go up.” The first imperative gives the command a sense of urgency.
26 map For location see Map4 G4; Map5 C1; Map6 E3; Map7 D1; Map8 G3.
27 sn God is calling on Jacob to fulfill his vow he made when he fled from…Esau (see Gen 28:20-22).
