Mess of Pottage

Esau was hungry. Jacob was clever. So famished was the older brother that he promised to surrender his birthright to Jacob in exchange for some of the stew his younger-by-a-few-minutes brother was cooking.

“Look,” he said, “I am on the point of dying. What good is the right as firstborn to me?”As we know (from Genesis 25: 29-34), Jacob was happy to comply. “Thus did Esau treat his right as firstborn with disdain.”

From the standpoint of a purely economic transaction, it makes some sense, although Esau clearly let his hunger get the best of him. But the birthright (bekorah) was his to squander according to the law of primogeniture under which the firstborn son – and only he – had inheritance rights.

Back in 2000, as the Oval Office was about to change hands, “news” emerged that the Clintons had backed up a U-Haul to a White House entrance and were loading it up with stuff from the People’s House. There was some truth in this, although it had to do with private gifts given to the President and First Lady (they ended up repaying the government about $100,000), but there were no public, historical items involved. Those, by law, must stay put and pass on to the next POTUS – in perpetuity.

Point being: you cannot give away (or take away) what you do not personally and legally possess.

Click here to read the rest of Mr. Miner’s column at The Catholic Thing . . .