name called Edom. And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright.
And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit
shall this birthright do to me? And Jacob said, Swear to me this
day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob.
Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat
and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his
birthright.

I have been telling you of late that the Bible is the revelation of
God. But how does the story of Jacob and Esau reveal God to us?
What further lesson concerning God do we learn therefrom?

I think that if we will take the story simply as it stands we shall
see easily enough. For it is all simple and natural enough. Jacob
and Esau, we shall see, were men of like passions with ourselves;
men as we are, mixed up of good and evil, sometimes right and
sometimes wrong: and God rewarded them when they did right, and
punished them when they did wrong, just as he does with us now.

They were men, though, of very different characters: we may see men
like them now every day round us. Esau, we read, was a hunter--a
man of the field; a bold, fierce, active man; generous, brave, and
kind-hearted, as the end of his story shows: but with just the
faults which such a man would have. He was hasty, reckless, and
fond of pleasure; passionate too, and violent. Have we not seen
just such men again and again, and liked them for what was good in
them, and been sorry too that they were not more sober and
reasonable, and true to themselves?

Jacob was the very opposite kind of man. He was a plain man--what