Now Jacob cooked some stew, ¹  and when Esau came in from the open fields, he was famished.

Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and lentil stew; Esau ate and drank, then got up and went out. ¹  So Esau despised his birthright. ² 

The stew was poured out ¹  for the men to eat. When they ate some of the stew, they cried out, “Death is in the pot, O prophet!” They could not eat it.

Now Elisha went back to Gilgal, while there was famine in the land. Some of the prophets were visiting him ¹  and he told his servant, “Put the big pot on the fire ²  and boil some stew for the prophets.” ³ 

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 

If someone carries holy meat in a fold of his garment and that fold touches bread, a boiled dish, wine, olive oil, or any other food, will that item become holy?’” ¹  The priests answered, “It will not.”

Someone went out to the field to gather some herbs and found a wild vine. ¹  He picked some of its fruit, ²  enough to fill up the fold of his robe. He came back, cut it up, and threw the slices ³  into the stew pot, not knowing they were harmful. ⁴ 

But Jacob replied, “First ¹  sell me your birthright.”

He said, “Get some flour.” Then he threw it into the pot and said, “Now pour some out for the men so they may eat.” ¹  There was no longer anything harmful in the pot.

You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters. ¹ 

You crushed the heads of Leviathan; ¹  you fed ²  him to the people who live along the coast. ³ 

These people continually and blatantly offend me ¹  as they sacrifice in their sacred orchards ²  and burn incense on brick altars. ³ 

You ¹  devour my people’s flesh, strip off their skin, and crush their bones. You chop them up like flesh in a pot ²  – like meat in a kettle.

He will withhold from all of them his children’s flesh that he is eating (since there is nothing else left), because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict ¹  you in your villages.

Look, they are like straw, which the fire burns up; they cannot rescue themselves from the heat ¹  of the flames. There are no coals to warm them, no firelight to enjoy. ² 

No one invokes ¹  your name, or makes an effort ²  to take hold of you. For you have rejected us ³  and handed us over to our own sins. ⁴ 

The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died ¹  by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by ²  the pots of meat, when we ate bread to the full, ³  for you have brought us out into this desert to kill ⁴  this whole assembly with hunger!”