I. Esau was forty years old when he married. A sin is aggravated, sometimes, by the age of the sinner. Some men learn nothing by age: they are forty years old on the books of the registrar; they are no age at all in the books of wisdom.
II. Esau's wives were a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah. Sin has consequences. Actions are not solitary and uninfluential; they have relations to other actions and to influences simply innumerable and incalculable.
III. A sin does not confine itself to one line of punishment. Esau went against the law of his country and his people in marrying Canaanitish women. What was the punishment? Endless, ubiquitous, complete: (1) Esau was alienated from his family; (2) he was a rebel against the laws of organised society; (3) he forfeited his hereditary rights.
The law of the land was: To marry a Canaanitish woman is to lose your primogeniture. Esau supplanted himself. Find out the roots and beginnings of things, and you will always discover that a man is his own supplanter, his own enemy.
Parker, vol. i., p. 261.
References: Genesis 27 Expositor,2nd series, vol. viii., p. 67; R. S. Candlish, Book of Genesis,vol. i., p. 456; F. W. Robertson, Notes on Genesis,p. 85; M. Dods, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph,p. 61; Parker, vol. i., p. 268. Genesis 27:1-4. F. W. Robertson, Sermons,4th series, p. 123.Genesis 27:1-41. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iv., p. 96. Genesis 27:13. E. Cooper, Fifty-two Family Sermons,p. 247. Genesis 27:28. New Manual of Sunday School Addresses, p. 16.