And Esau was forty years old when he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite: which were a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah.
Esau’s wives
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. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Esau’s marriage
I. IT WAS IN ACCORDANCE WITH HIS CHARACTER. Prodigal, and careless of consequences.
II. IT WAS IRRELIGIOUS.
1. Against the interests of the Church of God.
2. A transgression of duty towards his parents. (T. H. Leale.)
Lessons
1. Wicked children usually increase sin with their age.
2. Reprobate spirits take all the wage of sin, to put away blessing and bring on the curse.
3. Idolatrous wives and multiplicity of them hasten ruin to them who take them. Lust loves idolatrous yoke-fellows.
4. Bigamy and unholy matches prove greatest griefs to gracious parents. (G. Hughes, B. D.)
Esau supplants himself
To marry thus was to drop out of the entail, to forfeit position, and to commit hereditary suicide. It was then that Esau sold his birthright. How we have felt for him as an injured man I How often we have sentimentally said we prefer Esau to Jacob, the child of the mountains to the plain man dwelling in tents, the rough shaggy hunter to the hairless man who stayed at home! It was too bad of Jacob to treat his brother so. Find out the roots and beginnings of things, and you will always discover that a man is his own supplanter: his own enemy. You will find far back--ten years ago, twenty, and more, yea, a quarter of a century--that a man did something which has been following him all the time. When the crises come that the public can look at, they pity him within the four corners of the visible crisis itself: they do not know how judgment has been tracking the man, watching him with pitiless, critical eye, waiting for its turn to come. We read over such little verses as these as though they were related to an ancient anecdote, and have really no immediate concern to the public of our own century. We come upon a second line, and say, “Poor Esau! that was too bad!” Let us be just! No man can injure you so much as you can injure yourself. If you have not injured yourself you may defy the world; the world will come round you in due time. Keep substantially right--that is, right in purpose, right in motive, right in the centre of the mind;and slips and misadventures notwithstanding, God will have regard to the uppermost meaning of your life, and if you have been true to Him in the intent of your heart, the world cannot take your birthright, cannot break your spiritual primogeniture. An awful thing is this searching into the past. Long ago, in some unsuspected way, we sold our birthright. When we omitted, in the first instance, our religious duty, the whole battle was lost; when we shortened the prayer by two minutes, the birthright was gone; when we haggled with the enemy, instead of smiting him in the face with the lightning of God, our birthright passed from us; when we first lost standing in our mother’s heart we slipped away from the hand of God. Verily, in such instances, the mother and the God are very close to one another. When the mother lets us go for moral reasons, I do not see how God can help us. (J. Parker, D. D.)
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