¹ tn Heb “And what is this to me, a birthright?”

¹ tn Heb “the firstborn according to his birthright and the youngest according to his youth.”

² sn So Esau despised his birthright. This clause, which concludes the episode, is a summary statement which reveals the underlying significance of Esau’s actions. “To despise” means to treat something as worthless or with contempt. Esau’s willingness to sell his birthright was evidence that he considered it to be unimportant.

³ sn And sold his birthright. There is evidence from Hurrian culture that rights of inheritance were occasionally sold or transferred. Here Esau is portrayed as a profane person who would at the moment rather have a meal than the right to inherit. He will soon forget this trade and seek his father’s blessing in spite of it.

⁶ tn The verb בָּזָה (bazah, “despise”) means to treat things of value with contempt, as if they were worthless (BDB 102 s.v.). The classic example is Esau who despised his birthright and sold it for lentil stew (Gen 25:34). The perfect verb places the life that fools have lived in contrast with the beginning of moral knowledge. Here is the way of wisdom; fools have gone a different way. Now by implication—what is your choice? The translation of the perfect verb depends on whether the verb’s root is stative or dynamic. Stative verbs (verbs that describe a state) may be present time in the perfect and so can have gnomic force (cf. KJV, NASB, ESV, NIV). Dynamic verbs (verbs that describe actions) in the Hebrew perfect form are past or perfective. They may describe a past action which is prototypical of ongoing behavior. This type of root does not have a morphological test to distinguish if it is stative or dynamic. But the meaning “to treat with” despite suggests that it is dynamic, making the perfective translation “have despised” preferred.