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Esau   /ˈisˌɔ/   Listen
Esau

noun
1.
(Old Testament) the eldest son of Isaac who would have inherited the covenant that God made with Abraham and that Abraham passed on to Isaac; he traded his birthright to his twin brother Jacob for a mess of pottage.






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"Esau" Quotes from Famous Books



... sky which, after a few threatening showers, promised once more to be a sky of intense heat. He had with him all the tackle necessary for spooning pike, a sport the novelty and success of which had hugely commended it the year before to those Esau-like instincts Murewell had so much developed ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... as a proof of his intimacy with the barrack-room, the engine-room, the racecourse, and the lives of generals, Hindus, artists, and East-enders. That was Mr. Kipling's trick. He assumed the realistic manner as Jacob assumed the hairy hands of Esau. He compelled us to believe him by describing with elaborate detail the setting of his story. And, having once got us in the mood of belief, he proceeded to spin a yarn that as often as not was as unlike life as A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur. His characters ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... nature of things folk may pretend it to have) cannot be noted by human observation, or be at all expressed in those figures which the astrologer is to inspect, that he may pronounce truly. Yet they cannot be true: for looking into the same figures, he must have predicted the same of Esau and Jacob, whereas the same happened not to them. Therefore he must speak falsely; or if truly, then, looking into the same figures, he must not give the same answer. Not by art, then, but by chance, would he speak ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine

... children are a heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward." Psa. 127:3. It may be that you were unmindful of this "fruit of the womb" being a gracious heritage from God: but such it was. In the creation of man and woman they were formed to bear offspring. When Esau and Jacob met after their long separation and enmity, Esau inquired, "Who are those with thee?" Jacob replied, "The children which God hath graciously given thy servant." Gen. 33:5. Blessed and happy is the man that can look into the face of the newly-born and feel in his ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr

... I have had given me as the original recipe for "Esau's pottage," but I think it must be more elaborate than that set before ...
— Reform Cookery Book (4th edition) - Up-To-Date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century. • Mrs. Mill

... (15)looking diligently, lest any one come short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and the many be thereby defiled; (16)lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one meal sold his birthright. (17)For ye know that he also afterward, when he wished to inherit the blessing, was rejected; for he found no place of repentance, though he sought after it ...
— The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. • Various

... of the fine world of good-breeding and taste—these were made for woman; they are her equitable portion. Let her keep near them if they are a part of life to her, and if she will. She is no traitor to herself, as Esau was; for she keeps he birthright and the pottage she earns is often ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry

... in mockery lifted him into it, and away he was hurried like lightning. After a short time the angel caused me to look, and I could see the wretched knight suffering a terrible steeping in a frightful boiling furnace, in company with Cain, Nimrod, Esau, Tarquin, Nero, Caligula, and the others who were the founders of genealogies, and were the first to set ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... she fetched Esau instead, who wouldn't remind her, and whose hysterical joy she hushed ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay

... but little, and reasons inaccurately; then, benefiting by his mistakes, he rectifies his ideas, and perfects his reason. In the first place, it is the savage sacrificing all his possessions for a trinket, and then repenting and weeping; it is Esau selling his birthright for a mess of pottage, and afterwards wishing to cancel the bargain; it is the civilized workman laboring in insecurity, and continually demanding that his wages be increased, neither he nor his employer understanding that, in the absence of equality, any salary, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... know that Adam was a son of God? Luke calls him so. But he, like Esau after him, sold his birthright, lost the divine image in which God had created him, and fell from his sonship. But now we read: "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not, with him also, freely give us all things?" The phrase, ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline

... shall be holinesse, and the house of Jacob shall possesse their possessions," that is, the possessions of the Heathen, which possessions he expresseth more particularly in the following verses, by the Mount of Esau, the Land of the Philistines, the Fields of Ephraim, of Samaria, Gilead, and the Cities of the South, and concludes with these words, "the Kingdom shall be the Lords." All these places are for Salvation, and the Kingdome of God (after the ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... races remain distinct, the same traits reappearing after many centuries exactly as at first. We find the same difference of character between the Jews and Arabs, who are merely different families of the same Semitic race, as existed between their ancestors, Jacob and Esau, as described in the Book of Genesis. Jacob and the Jews are prudent, loving trade, money-making, tenacious of their ideas, living in cities; Esau and the Arabs, careless, wild, hating cities, ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... at Adullam, how appropriate the thought becomes that his little encampment has such a guard. It reminds one of the incident in Jacob's life, when his timid and pacific nature was trembling at the prospect of meeting Esau, and when, as he travelled along, encumbered with his pastoral wealth, and scantily provided with means of defence, 'the angels of God met him, and he named the place Mahanaim,' that is, two camps—his own feeble company, mostly ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... did seize upon my soul: 'Or profane person, as Esau, who, for one morsel of meat, sold his birthright; for ye know, how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected; for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it carefully ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... their own women. Look now, from the beginning it has been like to like. Thou may see in the Holy Scriptures that, after Esau married the Hittite woman, he sold his birthright, and became a wanderer and a vagabond. And it is said that it was a 'grief of mind unto Isaac and Rebekah.' I am sorry this day for Isaac and Rebekah. The heart of the father is ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr

... landing in the very midst of the Bible; for there it was, walking about him: Abraham and Isaac, the old man willing to sacrifice his son to please some implacable God hidden behind a cloud; Jacob selling his birthright to Esau, the birthright of camels, sheep, and goats. And down his mind floated the story of Joseph sold by his brethren, and that of Ruth and Boaz: "Thy people shall be my people, thy God shall be my God," a story of corn rather than of flocks ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore

... very great age, and had two sons, Jacob and Esau. He was a gentle, quiet man, fond of his family, his flocks, and herds, and at the place where his father and mother were buried, he lived among the fields and oak groves of Hebron until ...
— Child's Story of the Bible • Mary A. Lathbury

... Rebecca, and they hed twa sons, Jacob and Esau," and the girl takes a shy glance at the honest elder, and begins to ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren

... for thousands!" At length, worn out by this long agony, he suffered the fatal words to escape him, "Let him go, if he will." Then his misery became more fearful than ever. He had done what could not be forgiven. He had forfeited his part of the great sacrifice. Like Esau, he had sold his birthright, and there was no longer any place for repentance. "None," he afterward wrote, "knows the terrors of those days but myself." He has described his sufferings with singular energy, simplicity, and pathos. He envied the ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... in search of a range, And when water was scarce he wanted a change; Old Isaac owned cattle in charge of Esau, And Jacob punched cows for ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various

... Argus his eyes, Tom Piper, poor Cobler, and Lazarus's thighs: Rough Esau, with Maudlin, and gentles that scrawl, With Bishop that burneth—ye thus know ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett

... you may not live to wish those words unsaid, miss," the woman answered primly. "You have as good as sold your birthright, as Esau ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton

... his poet's soul,—through love, or color, or music, or keen healthy pain. Very many openings for him to know God through the mask of matter. He had shut them; being a Calvinist, and a dyspeptic, (Dyspepsia is twin-tempter with Satan, you know,) sold his God-given birthright, like Esau, for a hungry, bitter mess of man's doctrine. He came to loathe the world, the abode of sin; loathed himself, the chief of sinners; mapped out a heaven in some corner of the universe, where he and the souls of his persuasion, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... simpliciter now as before, and appeal to the ordinary assembly of the church, for reasons before produced in write. Pity yourselves for the Lord's sake; lose not your own dear souls, I beseech you for Esau's pottage: Remember Balaam, who was cast away by the deceit of the wages of unrighteousness; forget not how miserable Judas was, who lost himself for a trifle of money, that never did him good. Better be pined to death by hunger, than for ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... Abraham's lie? for which a miraculous barrenness was sent on all the females of Abimelech's tribe, and was bought off only by splendid presents to the favoured deceiver.—Or was it at all credible that the lying and fraudulent Jacob should have been so specially loved by God, more than the rude animal Esau?—Or could I any longer overlook the gross imagination of antiquity, which made Abraham and Jehovah dine on the same carnal food, like Tantalus with the gods;—which fed Elijah by ravens, and set angels to ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman

... desire for absolute security in enforcing his subject, and a painful remembrance of the disturbance in a south country church when he landed a Bible—with clasps—on the head of the precentor in the heat of a discourse defending the rejection of Esau. Our best and simplest actions—and Jeremiah was as simple as a babe—can be misconstrued, and the only dissentient from Saunderson's election insisted that the Bible had been deposited on the floor, and asserted that the object ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren

... think of disobeying? No, sir. My fault hath been, and I own it, that my love was centred upon you, perhaps to the neglect of your elder brother.' (Indeed, brother, there was some truth in what Madam said.) 'I turned from Esau, and I clung to Jacob. And now I have my reward, I have my reward! I fixed my vain thoughts on this world, and its distinctions. To see my son advanced in worldly rank was my ambition. I toiled, and spared, that I might bring him worldly wealth. I took unjustly ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... only angered Odhainat, and to such a conflict of opinion did it lead that at last Hairan drove his younger brother from the home of his fathers, and the lad, "an Esau among the Jacobs of Tadmor," so the record tells us, spent his youth amid the roving Bedaween of the Arabian deserts and the mountaineers of the ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks

... Gomorrha, Esau, Hus or uz, Nubes, Ragau, Joshua, where ([V] [v]) is the first letter in the four first, middlemost in fist, a in the last all wrong. That no wonder if the Bible Translators took up the blanket, and left the Child behind 'em, when St. Hierom says, the Hebrew Letters ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.

... was found impossible that day to get a photograph of Moipu alone; for whenever he stood up before the camera his successor placed himself unbidden by his side, and gently but firmly held to his position. The portraits of the pair, Jacob and Esau, standing shoulder to shoulder, one in his careful European dress, one in his barbaric trappings, figure the past and present of their island. A graveyard with its humble crosses would be the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... nights, when the Southern Cross freezes in a cloudless sky of icy blue. The phantasmagoria of that wild dreamland termed the Bush interprets itself, and the Poet of our desolation begins to comprehend why free Esau loved his heritage of desert sand better than all the ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon

... actions; while Falsehood is thought, which, disguised in words or actions not its own, comes before the blind old world, as Jacob came before the patriarch Isaac, clothed in the goodly raiment of his brother Esau. And the world, like the patriarch, is often deceived; for, though the voice is Jacob's voice, yet the hands are the hands of Esau, and the False takes away the birth-right and the blessing from the ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... Latin slang for hirsuta, and always used of nasty places or nasty people; it shall not stay. The species shall be our Viola Seclusa,—Monk's violet—meaning the kind of monk who leads a rough life like Elijah's, or the Baptist's, or Esau's—in another kind. This violet is one of the ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... ever by the body-state, have, as it were, deliberately surrendered their rights of volition, of movement, and higher liberties generally, and transformed themselves into masses of inorganic material by soaking every thread of their tissues in lime-salts and burying themselves in a marble tomb. Like Esau, they have sold their birthright for a mess of "potash," or rather lime; and if such a class or caste could be invented in the external industrial community, the labor problem and the ever-occurring puzzle of the unemployed would be much simplified. And yet, petrified ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... Scriptures themselves letters do not come early, and the "token" period probably lasted long. Isaac does not even send a token with Jacob to validate his suit for a daughter of Laban. But one would have enjoyed a letter from Ishmael to his half-brother, when his daughter was married to Esau, who was so much more like a son of Ishmael himself than of the amiable husband of Rebekah. She, by the way, had herself been fetched in an equally unlettered transaction. It would of course be impossible, and might be regarded as improper, ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury

... were, unknown in the art of lying, and yet they repeat stories of bygone battles and slaughter, which they have heard and believed, as gospel truth. Like Esau, with the smell of the field upon them, they love to listen, too, to stories of unknown lands, where the houses are even larger and finer than those of Cetinje or Podgorica, which towns many even have not seen; but ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... came to pass, that when Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim, so that he could not see, he called Esau, his eldest son, and said unto him, My son: and he said unto him, Behold, here am I. And he said, Behold now, I am old, I know not the day of my death: Now therefore take, I pray thee, thy weapons, thy quiver and thy bow, and go out to the field, and take me some ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous

... inferior. He cursed him. He cursed him because he left him unblessed. The withholding of the father's blessing, in the Bible, was curse. Hence Abraham prayed God, when Isaac was blessed, that Ishmael might not be passed by. Hence Esau prayed his father, when Jacob was blessed, that he might not be left untouched by his holy hands. Ham was cursed to render service, forever, to Shem and Japheth. The special curse on Canaan made the general curse ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.

... thee! Ay . . . mine ancient lyre . . . Nay, guide my wandering fingers. . . There They love to dally with the wire As Isaac played with Esau's hair. Hush! ye shall hear the famous tune That Marian called the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... and when I was re-appointed to Mountain City, before I preached my first sermon there, I came out here. You are going to have the Word of God preached to you to-day if you shoot me for it. And beware lest you come to Esau's fate for ye know how afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it carefully, ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie

... conshinsh, I axes y'r pardin, sorr. Sure, an' I didn't mane no harrm," said my friend, apologising in the most handsome way for the unintentional insult; and, putting out a brawny hairy paw like that of Esau's, he gave a grip to my poor little mite of a hand that made each knuckle crack, as he introduced himself in rough and hearty sailor fashion. "Me name's Tim Rooney, as I tould you afore, Misther Gray- ham—sure, ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... The Good would not trust them because they were bad, the Bad would not trust them because they were good, viz. The good would not trust them because they were bad in their Lives, and the bad would not trust them because they were good in their Words: So they were forced with Esau to joyn in affinity with Ishmael; to wit, to look out a people that were Hypocrites like themselves, and with them they matcht, and lived ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan

... her two sisters, Herse, the cloud dew, who is the beloved of the shepherd Mercury; and Pandrosos, the diffused dew, or dew of heaven. Literally, you have in this myth the words of the blessing of Esau: "Thy dwelling shall be of the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above." Aglauros is for her envy turned into a black stone; and hers is one of the voices —the other being that of Cain—which haunts the circle of envy ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... hae thocht wi' her bringing up she could hae swithered for a moment—but it's the auld, auld story; where the deil canna go by himsel' he sends a woman. And David Lockerby will tyne his inheritance for a pair o' blue e'en and a handfu' o' gowden curls. Waly! waly! but the children o' Esau live for ever." ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... much as possible even the appearance of laying him under pecuniary obligation. When his first pause of joy and astonishment was over, his thoughts turned to the unworthy heir-male, who, he pronounced, had sold his birthright, like Esau, for a ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... a sort of exuberance which here at any rate is beauty. The ten panels which Ghiberti thus made in his own way are subjects from the Old Testament: the Creation of Adam and Eve, the story of Cain and Abel, of Noah, of Abraham and Isaac, of Jacob and Esau, of Joseph, of Moses on Sinai, of Joshua before Jericho, of David and Goliath, of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. At his death in 1455 they were unfinished, and a host of sculptors, including Brunellesco and Paolo Uccello, are said to have handled the work, Antonio del Pollajuolo being credited ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... barkeeper a stiff little military bow; the two old men rose; one of them said, "Moses and Esau welcome thee!" and then all the four vanished, and the thrones ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... this Boston, have godly fugitives from oppression, men whose faces are set as steel against all evil, set up their habitations, to be an enduring city unto the Lord; and, within our borders, may no scoffer or profane person, as was Esau, nor riotous liver, abide. But the necessities of our position do in some wise constrain us, for trade and other useful purposes, to allow communication with them who are not of our way of thinking. Therefore do we grant unto ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... forfeiture of the covenant promises; failure in family government, above all things, may frustrate every good influence which would otherwise have had a powerful effect in the conversion of the child. The sons of Eli were not well governed; Esau was evidently of an undisciplined spirit. With regard to the children of several good men, in the Bible, it may be inferred, that the public engagements of the fathers hindered them from bestowing needful attention upon their sons. The only thing derogatory ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams

... came from Sarebas, and one of them had been wounded by a spear, though he was only a tiny boy of four years old. Captain Brooke wrote to me to know if I would take this family of children into the school—two girls, Limo and Ambat, and two boys, Esau and Nigo. If I could not take them, he said, they must be sent back to their own country immediately, as there was a boat departing the next day. The Bishop was away from Sarawak, so I had to decide; nor ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... there is a legend about two rivers, the beginning of which has evidently been taken from the story of Jacob and Esau:— ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston

... Esau's face, And he meeteth Rachel fair; Joseph in a foreign place Serves, and winneth Asnath there; Moses did with Jethro stay, And bore ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt

... guilt on my soul, and woe in my heart," answered Sweyn, moodily. "Shall Esau lose his birthright, and Cain retain it?" So saying, he withdrew, and, reclining against the stern of the vessel, leant his face upon the ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... scarcely anything in the room definitely Jewish, except, perhaps, a big picture of the meeting of Jacob and Esau. The lieutenant looked round about him, and, shrugging his shoulders, thought of his strange, new acquaintance, of her free-and-easy manners, and her way of talking. But then the door opened, and in the doorway appeared the lady herself, in a long black ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... against academia. His opus 10 is a piano suite published at the age of twenty-two, and opus 14 is another; both contain such obsolescences as a presto, fugue, scherzino, and the like. But for all the classic garb, the hands are the hands of Esau. In one of the pieces there is even a motto tucked, "All hope leave ye behind who enter here!" Can he have referred to the limbo ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... his son Ishmael another stock of barbarians—the Arabs,—a name which according to some signifies Westerners. One generation later, and another ferocious race springs from the family of Isaac—the descendants of Esau, or the Edomites. Then coming down to the time of the Judges we find that violence prevailed, that the roads were destroyed, and that the arts had perished: there was not even a smith left in the land; and they were obliged to go down to the Philistines to get an ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies

... evinced for animals has been ridiculed by heretics. Nevertheless, the Holy Ghost tells us, by the mouth of Wisdom, that "the just man regardeth the lives of his beasts." The Patriarch Jacob excused himself from following his brother Esau, because his ewes and cows were heavy, and he was fearful he should kill them if he hurried them. When St. Paul said, "Doth God take care of oxen?" he only wished to insinuate that God is far more interested in ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

... not something of this kind that Isaac fell into when he sent Esau to hunt venison, and make him savory meat, such as his ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury

... a philosophic and reflecting mind, death itself would scarcely be considered as a greater calamity than slavery; but the poor Negro, when fainting with hunger, thinks, like Esau of old, "Behold, I am at the point to die, and what profit shall this birth-right do to me?" There are many instances of free men voluntarily surrendering up their liberty to save their lives. During a great scarcity, which lasted for three ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... 5:29 The servants of the temple: the sons of Esau, the sons of Asipha, the sons of Tabaoth, the sons of Ceras, the sons of Sud, the sons of Phaleas, the sons of Labana, the ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous

... when he fell in poverty he was seventy-eight year of age. And after, when God had proved his patience and that it was so great, he brought him again to riches and to higher estate than he was before. And after that he was King of Idumea after King Esau, and when he was king he was clept Jobab. And in that kingdom he lived after 170 year. And so he was of age, ...
— The Travels of Sir John Mandeville • Author Unknown

... narrative of Jacob and Esau with a new and very poignant sympathy for Esau. I wondered what would become of my Jacob. Jacob, I mean the original, prospered exceedingly as a result of his deal in porridge, and, as thought I, probably would his artful descendant who so appropriately ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard

... the father also of the Ishmaelites, who kindle God's wrath." God will then turn to Isaac: "Say the blessing, for thou wert bound upon the altar as a sacrifice." "I am not worthy," he will reply, "for the children of my son Esau destroyed the Temple." Then to Jacob: "Do thou speak the blessing, thou whose children were blameless." Jacob also will decline the honor on the ground that he was married to two sisters at the same time, which ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... too. So'm I! If I left Monty in this pinch she'd never look at me, and I'd not ask her to! Inherited notions about merit and all that kind of thing, don't you know, by gosh! No, sir! She and I both sat into this game. She and I both stay! Wish Esau would open the ball, though. I'm tired ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... inserted parenthetically in the text of Deuteronomy, with a view to its fuller explanation, we have already given, in speaking of Aben Ezra's opinion. (107) Many others are found in the course of the work: for instance, in chap. ii:12: "The Horims dwelt also in Seir beforetime; but the children of Esau succeeded them, when they had destroyed them from before them, and dwelt in their stead; as Israel did unto the land of his possession, which the Lord gave unto them." (108) This explains verses 3 and 4 of the ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza

... a great grief—the taste of that last dish that we have eaten before a duel or some such supreme meeting or parting. On the Dutch tiles at the bagnio was a rude picture representing Jacob in hairy gloves, cheating Isaac of Esau's birthright. The ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... days when young Stewart was short-handed for a sheep herder, and had to take up with a sullen, hairy vagrant, called by the other boys "Esau." Esau hadn't been on the ranch a week before he made trouble with the proprietor and got the red-hot ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... states in the Bible that God loved Jacob, and hated Esau. Esau was a man, and against him the Bible does not chronicle one bad act. But God ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford

... brotherhood, resisting unto blood, and striving against sin. Meanwhile, possess thyself in patience. Keep thy sword girded, and thy lamp burning, as one that wakes in the night; for He who shall judge the Mount of Esau, and shall make false professors as straw, and malignants as stubble, will come in the fourth watch with garments dyed in blood, and the house of Jacob shall be for spoil, and the house of Joseph for fire. I am he that hath written it, whose hand hath been on the mighty ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... of the Lord would direct us by this visitation?" he said to the white-faced group. "We were met together in council because some of our number wish to go away from Plymouth to find broader pastures for their cattle, even as Jacob separated from Esau with all his flocks and herds. In this I see a sign of God's displeasure at our removals one ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... with proper names, without intending any particular honour, we begin them with a small letter: as, "the emperor Augustus;"—"our mighty sovereign, Abbas Carascan;"—"David the king;"—"Tidal king of nations;"—"Bonner, bishop of London;"—"The sons of Eliphaz, the first-born you of Esau; duke Teman, duke Omar, duke Zepho, duke Kenaz, duke Korah, duke Gatam, and duke Amalek."—Gen., xxxvi, 15. So, sometimes, in addresses in which even the greatest respect is intended to be shown: as, "O sir, we came indeed down at the first time to buy food."—Gen., ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... I look so Esau-like, perdu, My hair hangs rough and unkempt. Hu! Gentle Summer, where are you? Ah, were the world no more so dhu! Rather than bide in this purlieu, Longer to stay I'll say, Adieu! And go as monk ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... Juventus Jack Juggler A Pretty Interlude, called Nice Wanton The History of Jacob and Esau The Disobedient Child The Marriage of Wit ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley

... a week elapsed before a boat appeared; but at length they were awakened very early one morning by the high-pressure snorting of the 'Esau Slodge;' named after one of the most remarkable men in the country, who had been very eminent somewhere. Hurrying down to the landing-place, they got it safe on board; and waiting anxiously to see the boat depart, stopped up the gangway; an instance of neglect which ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... back to the point to measure the tracks, and to estimate how big the bear was, and to console myself with the thought of how I would certainly have had him, if something had not interfered—which is the philosophy of all hunters since Esau. ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long

... precedence. A less obvious inference from the Scriptural accounts is that they seem to plant us on the traces of the breach which is first effected in the empire of the parent. The families of Jacob and Esau separate and form two nations; but the families of Jacob's children hold together and become a people. This looks like the immature germ of a state or commonwealth, and of an order of rights superior to ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... married his half-sister by the same father. In 2 Sam. xiii. 13 it is shown that such a marriage was allowable in David's time, but Ezek. xxii. 11 refers to such a marriage as an abomination. Nahor's wife was his niece by his brother. Jacob married two sisters at the same time, both his cousins. Esau married his cousin. Judah took to wife his son's widow, but disapproval of that is expressed. Amram, the father of Moses, married his paternal aunt. These unions were all in contravention of the Levitical law. There are statements of the law which differ: Levit. xviii and xx; Deut. xxi. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... acknowledged the greatest, and who, claiming, like all great men, individual attention, came forward to exchange another "Yambo!" on his own behalf, and to shake hands. This personage with a long trailing turban, was Jemadar Esau, commander of the Zanzibar force of soldiers, police, or Baluch gendarmes stationed at Bagamoyo. He had accompanied Speke and Grant a good distance into the interior, and they had rewarded him liberally. He took upon himself the responsibility of assisting ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... then, which pressed so heavily upon this man's mind? It was the remembrance of an old sin. He feared that God would leave him now to Esau's wrath, because he knew that Esau's wrath was God's punishment of his sin. He feared that Esau's hand would slay his children, as God's chastisement for the sins of his childhood. He remembered that he had lied to Isaac his ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce

... House, The Lost Silver of Briffault, The Love for an Hour is Love Forever Master of His Fate Paul and Christina Remember the Alamo Rose of a Hundred Leaves, A Scottish Sketches She Loved a Sailor Singer from the Sea, A Sister to Esau, ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church

... sounded as loudly his esteem for the quality—in a fair young woman of good breeding. Each had evoked the other. Their common anticipations differed in this, that he had expected comeliness, she the reverse—an Esau of the cities; and seeing superb manly beauty in the place of the thick-featured sodden satyr of her miscreating fancy, the irresistible was revealed to her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... marriage of the son. The story also shows the overruling influence of deity in his marriage. The whole experience was calculated to show his sincere relation to God who was leading. (3) The birth of his twin sons Esau and Jacob. They were so different in type that their descendants for centuries showed a like difference and even became antagonistic. Jacob was ambitious and persevering. Esau was frank and generous but shallow and unappreciative of the best things. The birthright ...
— The Bible Period by Period - A Manual for the Study of the Bible by Periods • Josiah Blake Tidwell

... gentlemen of invisible ways and means have a very decent notion of employing four out of the twenty four hours in supplying their internal economy with such creature comforts as, in days of yore, disinherited Esau, and procured a somewhat gastronomic celebrity for the far-famed Heliogabalus. But a gentleman who could treat his stomach like a postponed bill in the House of Commons—that is, adjourn it sine die, or take it into ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 27, 1841 • Various

... preserved for me and served later, not cold and stale, but fresh and hot. If I deny myself now, for any cause, I can ask no more than that my meal shall be served, perfectly, later. This was all that Jacob could in justice demand of Esau. ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott

... their father's room Nathanael met him, a new and more righteous Jacob dealing with a more desolate Esau. And like Esau's was the cry that broke from Frederick Harper as he went in and flung himself on his ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)

... be a mere pleasure-seeker is not the chief end of man. Nothing grows more wearying than continuous amusement, and no one needs amusement so much as he who is always at it. He loses the power of real enjoyment. He has, like Esau, bartered his birthright for a mess of pottage. He is useless to man ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees

... and independent, with which he reproves some ingenuous satirist of what may appear indecent in our fashions of amusement, or unbecoming in the relations of the sexes or the habits of the young. "The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau." He is two and more, as we all are, while he is one, and must not be blamed on his own score alone. The London "Times," already mentioned, is called the Thunderer; but, like the man behind the scenes at the theatre with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various

... intensely cold, and the going heavy, with here and there the rivers bursting up through the broken ice and creating very difficult trails. But they were all used to that, and did not mind it. Over a portage at a certain point they secured the services of an Indian, named Esau, to break trail and guide them to a certain point from which Carter was sure he knew the way. There the Indian was discharged and returned to his camp, Fitzgerald probably feeling that extra expenditure of Government funds for a guide was not ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... feared to meet Esau. The angel of the Lord met him in the dark, and wrestled with him. And when the angel saw that he prevailed not, he said, "Let me go." And Jacob said, "I will not let thee go." And he blessed him there. And that boldness that said, "I will not," ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray

... I speak of Gemini? Surely you cannot but remember ESAU and JACOB! Genesis xxv. 24. "And when her days to be delivered were fulfilled, behold there ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe

... theory of things which has yet been stated. And, what is still more remarkable, men who speak the language of modern philosophy, nevertheless think the thoughts of the schoolmen. "The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau." Every day I hear "Cause," "Law," "Force," "Vitality," spoken of as entities, by people who can enjoy Swift's joke about the meat-roasting quality of the smoke-jack, and comfort themselves with the reflection that they are not ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... that deed I had verified the meaning of my first name, Jacques, which, he said, meant, in Hebrew, "supplanter," and that God had changed for that reason the name of the ancient patriarch into that of Israel, which meant "knowing." He had deceived his brother Esau. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... The Rabbis doubtless meant by this legend that the power of Rome was created to be a scourge for Israel's backslidings. They identified Rome with the Edom of the Bible, representing thus that the struggle between Esau and Jacob was carried on by their descendants, the Romans and the Jews, and would continue throughout history.[1] Yet the earliest relations of the two peoples were friendly and peaceful. They arose out of the war of ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich

... essential conditions of real and lasting peace, before it is subjected to the sentimental delusions of the inevitable era of good feeling, in which the stronger brother is so apt to play the part of Esau. If we are to try the experiment of democracy fairly, it must be tried in its fullest extent, and not half-way. The theory which grants political power to the ignorant white foreigner need not be squeamish about ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... Kuratchka had the toothache, Nachman gave him a lotion. When Kuratchka's wife was brought to bed of a child, Nachman's wife nursed her. But for some time, the devil knows why, Kuratchka had been reading the anti-Semitic papers, and he was an altered man. "Esau began to speak in him." He was always bringing home news of new governors, new circulars from the minister, and new edicts against Jews. Each time, Nachman's heart was torn. But, he did not let the Gentile know ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich

... weight came before me, not to consider (as some gentlemen are so fond of doing) whether the bill originated from a Secretary of State for the Home Department or from a Secretary for the Foreign, from a minister of influence or a minister of the people, from Jacob or from Esau.[52] I asked myself, and I asked myself nothing else, what part it was fit for a member of Parliament, who has supplied a mediocrity of talents by the extreme of diligence, and who has thought himself obliged by the research of years to wind himself into the inmost recesses ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... a Judith, daughter of Beer the Hittite, one of the wives of Esau (Gen. xxxvi. 34). Hugo may or may not have had this personage in ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo

... of Jupiter in conquest and civilisation, would appeal to a Roman rather than to a modern, and it was reserved for the modern critic to complain of a lack of individual interest in him. So, too, it is in Jewish history; we feel with Esau more than with Jacob, and with David more than with Moses, who is none the less the grandest typical Israelite in the Old Testament. And, indeed, Virgil's theme here is less the development of a character or the portraiture of a hero than the idealisation ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... of their former raptures over 'Illusion,' or had transferred them to a newer object, and they could not be revived in cold blood, even for the person legitimately entitled. Jacob had intercepted the birthright, and for this Esau there was not even ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey

... slay his own brother; and the experience of the first mother has been repeated, though in different forms, in all lands and in all ages. Isaac's heart was rent by the deceit of Jacob, and by the self-will of Esau. Jacob lived to see his own sin repeated in his sons, and he who deceived his father when he was old and blind, suffered for years an agony of grief because he had been falsely told that Joseph, his favourite ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.

... Shanty, but they were obleeged to jump off only a few miles from here. So you must keep on the lookout—they are around—leastwise a boy and grown man have been seen, although most of the others seem to have gotten away. One of my sons—Esau—caught sight of this man and boy on the edge of the river late this afternoon. He says the ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins

... tenth century, is another humorous description. A grave assembly of scriptural characters, from Adam and Eve downwards, are invited, Cain sits on a plough, Abel on a milk-pail &c.; two, Paul and Esau, are obliged to stand for want of room, and Job complains of having nothing to sit on but a dunghill. Jonah is here the butler. Samson brings honey to the dessert, and ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... observes that Homer does not speak of boiled meat anywhere in his poems. The Jews had made much greater progress in consequence of their captivity in Egypt. They had kettles. Esau's mess of potage must have been made thus. For ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin

... the voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau. Seward was the political juggler, or Mephistopheles, as some called him, and the result was regarded as his triumph."—James F. Rhodes, History of the United States, Vol. 1, p. 262. "Some of the prominent Whig newspapers of Georgia declined to ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... sharpen my suspicion of those fork-bearded professors who derived our prose from the stucco of Anglo-Saxon prose, it would have been their foolish deliberate practice of composing whole pages of English prose without using one word derivative from Latin or Greek. Esau, when he sold his birthright, had the excuse of being famished. These pedants, with a full board, sought frenetically to give it away— board and birthright. 'So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality' ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... I would die," said she. He laugh'd, and swore by Peter and by Paul; Then fillip'd at the diamond in her ear; "O ay, ay, ay, you talk!"—"Alas!" she said, "But prove me what it is I would not do." And from a heart as rough as Esau's hand, He answer'd, "Ride you naked thro' the town, And I repeal it"; and nodding as in scorn, He parted, with great strides among his dogs. So left alone, the passions of her mind, As winds from all the compass shift and blow, Made war upon each other for an hour, Till pity ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... now, my girl! There are no chiefs, and no clans any more! The chiefs that need not, yet sell their land like Esau for a mess of pottage—and their brothers with it! And the Sasunnach who buys it, claims rights over them that never grew on the land or were hid in its caves! Thank God, the poor man is not their slave, but he is the worse off, for they will not let ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... to have a dark Africa put forward as light for a Bible scene; namely, that where Jacob, instructed by Rebekah, obtains the blessing which the blind Isaac thinks himself to be conferring on his eldest son Esau. ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne

... although in the time of Moses the tribe of Manasseh had become more numerous. We cannot penetrate the reason why Ephraim the younger son was preferred to the older, any more than why Jacob was preferred to Esau. After Jacob had blessed the sons of Joseph, he called his other sons around his dying bed to predict the future of their descendants. Reuben the oldest was told that he would not excel, because he had loved his father's ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord



Words linked to "Esau" :   boy, son, Old Testament



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