"Esau" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Do you remember Esau's pathetic story? He sold his birthright for one mess of lentils. Nor was he at all displeased with his bargain. At least that was true for a little while, but there came a time when he was sorry. There came a time when his foolish bartering broke his heart. And the story says that he ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... and they hed twa sons, Jacob and Esau," and the girl takes a shy glance at the honest elder, and begins ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... manner, they thought all was safe, and the son bowed to and acquiesced in the admonition of his father. The appearance deceived Abel also, who, if he had feared anything like murder from his brother, would doubtless have fled from him, as Jacob fled from Esau when he feared his brother's wrath. What, therefore, could possibly have come into the mind of Jerome when he believed the rabbins, who say Cain was expostulating ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... hopeful old father die with his hope deferred? We read that Abraham died in a good old age, an old man, full of years, and Isaac and Ishmael buried him, and farther on in the same chapter we find that the twin boys are born, Jacob and Esau. But their old grandfather was dead. He knew now how true God is to his promises, because he was in Heaven, but we can't help wishing he had seen those two strong boys from one of whom the Saviour of the whole world was to descend. But if ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... said: "I could not recognize him for my tears—but beside this he seemed to have grown in stature and was as brown as a Malay. Was he really my brother? Ah, the hand was the hand of Esau, but when he spoke, it was the same kind, gentle, loving voice—the voice of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... given a genealogy of the sons and descendants of Esau, who are called Edomites, and also a list by name of the kings of Edom; in enumerating of which, it is said, verse 31, "And these are the kings that reigned in Edom, before there reigned any king over the ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... saved—but what could now save him from his marriage? He had made the same mistake that he had made in wedding himself to the Church, but with a hundred times worse results. He had learnt nothing by experience: he was an Esau—one of those wretches whose hearts the Lord had hardened, who, having ears, heard not, having eyes saw not, and who should find no place for repentance though they ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... reason of which infirmity he was not able so distinctly and clearly to discern the points and blots of the dice as formerly he had been accustomed to do; whence it might very well have happened, said he, as old dim-sighted Isaac took Jacob for Esau, that I after the same manner, at the decision of causes and controversies in law, should have been mistaken in taking a quatre for a cinque, or a trey for a deuce. This I beseech your worships, quoth ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... children they 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 too much ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... 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
... cam o' Esau, sir?" asked a pale faced maiden with blue eyes. "He wasna an ill kin' o' a chield—was ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... Jacob flees from Esau's face, And he meeteth Rachel fair; Joseph in a foreign place Serves, and winneth Asnath there; Moses did with Jethro stay, ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... 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
... her since early morning? 'We have had a grand day, Jerry; we have tramped I do not know how many miles—Dr. Ross says fifteen; we have been arguing about it all the way home. I am as hungry as a hunter. I feel like Esau—a bowl of red lentils would not have a chance with me. I always had a sneaking sort of liking for Esau. What have you got ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... like a hero again when he forgot Addie, and only remembered how he was risking his grandfather's displeasure for his love's sake. He fully thought, as he had said, that he was Esau, and that smooth Jacob would win a large share of the inheritance; but when he stood with his back to the fireplace at Brackenhill, and knew that he was master of all, Percival's parting sneer awoke his old doubts as to his heroism once more. He had succeeded too well, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... advantage over them by laying snares for them and making secret conspiracies against them. Judas made perpetual expeditions against these men, and endeavored to restrain them from those incursions and to prevent the mischiefs they did to the Jews. So he fell upon the Idumeans, the posterity of Esau, at Acra-battene, and slew a great many of them and took their spoils. He also shut up the sons of Bean, that laid wait for the Jews; and he sat down about them, and besieged them, and burned their towers and destroyed the men [that were in them]. After this he went thence in haste against ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... the double desk, peeping between some books to see if Esau Dean, my fellow boy-clerk, was watching me; but as usual he was asleep with his head hanging down over his blotting-paper, and the sun shining through his pale-coloured knotty curls, which gave his head the appearance of a black man's bleached to a whitey brown; and as I ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... originality was a trumpet blown abroad proclaiming her the prize of the man who 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 on ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... triangles of "Solomon's Seal," the six-pointed star, the two Old Men of the Kabbalah, the white Jehovah and the black Jehovah; Eros and Anteros, the serpents of Mercury's caduceus, the two Sphinxes of the car of Osiris, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, the Chinese "Yang" and "Yin," the goblet and staff of Tarot, man and woman. All these ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... 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.
... defects. [Footnote: Three of the principal provisions were copied from the Propositions of Lord North in 1781—in allusion to which Mr. Powys said of the measure, that "it was the voice of Jacob, but the hand of Esau."] The two important points in which it differed from the measure of Mr. Fox were, in leaving the management of their commercial concerns still in the hands of the Company, and in making the Crown ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... the Bible does not remember the pathetic picture of Esau falling on Jacob's neck and weeping, in a paroxysm of brotherly love and forgiveness? But the rabbis daub it over with their pious puerilities. They solemnly inform us that Esau was a trickster, as though Jacob's qualities were catching? and that he tried to bite his brother's ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... my child, so carefully brought up in the great and glorious school of philosophy, should behave this way—should be so violent— forget your sublime philosophy, and all—just like Esau, selling your birthright for a mess of pottage. Oh, Jack, you'll kill me! and yet I love you, Jack—whom else have I to love in this world? Never mind, we'll argue the point, my boy—I'll convince you—in a week all ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... 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 boy ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... of all there was 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
... at one time the fashion to hold up pastoral tribes and the patriarchs with their long flowing beards, as subjects of admiration. Long-bearded patriarchs were objects of veneration. Despite the quarrels of Esau and Jacob, and the story of Joseph sold by his brethren, pastoral life was pictured to us as mild as milk, as innocent as that of sheep in the fold, until Renan pointed out its qualities and defects. At the same time we were told of the Bedouins "with saddle, bridle, and life on the Islam," always ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... 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
... general:—on poor rough Esau, who sails Jacob's ships, digs Jacob's mines, founds Jacob's colonies, pours out his blood for him in those wars which Jacob himself has stirred up— while his sleek brother sits at home in his counting-house, enjoying at once 'the means of grace' and the produce of Esau's labour—on him Jacob's ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... an affection for Nettie, since that affection is rich with the seeds of desire, since to see her yours and wholly yours is not to be endured by me—I must turn about and go from you; you must avoid me and I you. . . . We must divide the world like Jacob and Esau. . . . I must direct myself with all the will I have to other things. After all—this passion is not life! It is perhaps for brutes and savages, but for men. No! We must part and I must forget. What ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... of—that, had such a measure been proposed by a political speculator previously to Queen Anne's reign, he would have been scouted as a dreamer and a visionary, who calculated upon men being generally somewhat worse than Esau, viz., giving up their birthrights, and without the mess of pottage." However, on this memorable day, thus it was the union was ratified; the bill received the royal assent without a muttering, or a whispering, or the protesting echo of a sigh. ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... two Akabas. Having entered these plains, Moses received the divine command, "You have compassed this mountain long enough, turn you northward."—"Ye are to pass through the coast of your brethren the children of Esau, which dwell in Seir, and they shall be afraid of you." [Deuter, c.ii.] The same people who had successfully repelled the approach of the Israelites from the strong western frontier, was alarmed now that they had come round upon the weak side of the country. But Israel was ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... Captain Brooke, then ruling at Sarawak. They 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 would there have been any doubt in my mind ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... for Esau, went to false Jacob, in spite of the imposition; and the writer of Genesis seems to intend to give the notion that Isaac had no power to pronounce it null and void. And "Jacob's policy, whereby he became ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... with their tears all the night" at the sight of sick persons, they will get answers to their prayers. To such God will say, "Behold, I will heal him." If tears will not reach God, the case is hopeless. Esau sought for a place of repentance and sought it with tears, but could not find it. The mentioning of tears here implies that the addition of tears to earnest heart-seeking has influence with God. Jeremiah, in his lamentations for fallen Israel, said, "Oh, ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr
... 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
... 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
... 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 later was strictly prohibited by the Torah. God will then turn to Moses: ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... these Israelites," said Pilate, for want of something better to say. "I am also of Israel," answered Herod somewhat curtly, "for I am an Edomite, of Esau's race, and my mother was a Samaritan, belonging to the ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... of Polynesian kings and the amorous posturing of their voluptuaries. We must make a just distinction, however, between the gestures and bodily contortions presented by the men and women, the actors in the hula, and their uttered words. "The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau." In truth, the actors in the hula no longer suit the action to the word. The utterance harks back to the golden age; the gesture is trumped up by the passion of the hour, or dictated by the master of the hula, to whom the real meaning of the old bards ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... is, it will be eagerly purchased; and the American Government, as it only paid the Indians at the rate of one cent and a fraction per acre, will make an enormous profit by the speculation. Well may the Indians be said, like Esau, to part with their birthright for a mess of pottage; but, in truth, they are compelled to sell—the purchase-money being a mere subterfuge, by which it may appear as if their lands were not wrested from them, although, in ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... earth, waste and desolate places; to inherit the seed of the Gentiles, and cause their desolate cities to be filled. They were to possess and rule over the heathen. In the latter days they were to possess Edom and Esau—that is, Turkey—and so come in possession of their own land, Palestine. Now I call you to witness, and ask you if these things are so? Before your eyes, before mine, before the eyes of all the world, God is fulfilling His promises ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... for the noble life Israel was to develop, has been the stock argument of kings and soldiers for their bloody trade. Thus poor human consciences have been sorely hurt and troubled as men have read, in stories such as those of Jael and Sisera and Jacob and Esau, of acts which their better nature instinctively condemned. They have felt themselves arraigning the ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... identified with the Canaanites, and especially the agriculturists among them, for the Palestinian Hittites are also referred to as Canaanites in the Bible, and in one particular connection under circumstances which afford an interesting glimpse of domestic life in those far-off times. When Esau, Isaac's eldest son, was forty years of age, "he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite"[287]. Apparently the Hittite ladies considered themselves to be of higher caste than the indigenous peoples and the settlers from other ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... fiction, dramatising the situation, playing an adopted part, with confidence and assurance. One sees traces of the same thing in the Bible. The story of Jacob deceiving Isaac, and pretending to be Esau in order to secure a blessing is not related with disapprobation. Jacob does not forfeit his blessing when his deceit is discovered. The whole incident is regarded rather as a master-stroke of cunning and inventiveness. Esau is angry not because ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to be tied to a stake, and flogged for theft. The "Supper," as old as the 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 ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... regarded 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 are inventions, ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... up and learn; but first swear by Moses, Esau, and the Prophet, that you will not suppose, for all you have imagined has proved as true as if it had been engraven on the ruby ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the boys grew: and Esau was a cunning hunter, a man of the field; and Jacob was a ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... James Babel Jeremiah Babell Jean Babier Abel Baboard Vascilla Babtreause Francis Bachelier Jonathan Bachelor Antonio Backalong Francis Backay Benjamin Bacon Esau Bacon Judah Bacon Stephen Badante Laurence Badeno William Badick Jonathan Baddock John Baggar Barnett Bagges Adam Bagley Joseph Bahamony John Bailey (2) William Bailey Moses Baird Joseph Baisolus William ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... xxxi. 19, 30). But what is much more significant than these traces of polytheism and idolatry is the hesitating tone in which some of the early patriarchs speak of their God. When Jacob flees before Esau into Padan-Aram and awakes from his vision at Bethel, he does not profess his faith in the One God, but he bargains, and says, 'If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... your encyclopedia, and your other books, are the recipients of many a silent confession of nescience which you would never dream of making auricular. You go to these "golden pots in which manna is stored," and extract food exactly to your passing taste, without needing to admit, as Esau did to Jacob, that you are hungry unto death. This comparison of books to food is of itself solacing, for there is always something attractive in metaphors drawn from the delights of the table. The metaphor ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... "In business, Joe—it's Esau's fable of the lion and the mouse every time!" Ortelsburg continued. "The mouse scratches the lion's back and the lion scratches ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... of a range, And when water was scarce he wanted a change; Old Isaac owned cattle in charge of Esau, And Jacob ...
— Cowboy Songs - and Other Frontier Ballads • Various
... too, clapped and cheered, borne away by music and spectacle, gazing with fond eyes upon some nursling, or playmate, or young, imperious, well-liked master in those gleaming ranks. Isaac, son of Abraham, or Esau and Jacob, sons of Isaac, marching with banners against Canaan or Moab, may have heard some such acclaim from the servants left behind. Several were going with the company. Captain and lieutenants, and more than one sergeant and corporal had their body-servants—these were the proudest ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... of the "Odyssey," 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 and herds. For the sake of Boaz she would accept Yahveh. ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... cold nights, when the Southern Cross freezes in a cloudless sky of icy blue. The phantasmagoria of that wild dream-land 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 bountiful ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... avoided as 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 mess ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... a righteous Judge we leave him, who, for the wealth that perisheth,—who, for worldly honor and selfish gratification, could barter his honesty and integrity, as "Esau, who sold his birth-right ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... "Look at the people; travel the country north and south, and converse with them as you go. What do you find? Unity of feeling, aims, agreement of opinion on all possible subjects? Just the opposite! You find Jacob and Esau on every side struggling in the womb of their mother. The quarrel between Sassenach and Gael still goes on. What two figures can be found more antagonistic than the Orangeman of Ulster and the Milesian of Connaught? Yet they are both ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... ultimate truth, he might have assented. But in that dim chamber, with burning faces around him and the shadow of death overhead, he discovered in himself a new scrupulousness. It was the case of Esau; he was bidden sell his birthright for pottage, and affection could not gloze ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... for the hundred good ones. That is, each action is judged entirely on its own merits. Neither is God a respecter of persons. On the one hand, He punished Moses for his anger at the waters of Meribah, and, on the other, He rewarded Esau for honoring his parents, and Nebuchadnezzar for ...
— Pirke Avot - Sayings of the Jewish Fathers • Traditional Text
... 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
... flies on the wall Raymond Esk, for sticking pins in the desk Julian State, for drawing pictures on his slate Gerald Astor, for being impudent to the master Augustus Roff, for not taking his hat off Rupert Keats, for fixing pens in boys' seats Maurice Took, for having a dirty copybook Esau Klaster, for drawing caricatures of the master Paul Bhool, for letting a bird loose in school Jabez Breeding, for not knowing the place at reading Levi Stout, for stopping too long when let out Guy M'Gill, sharpening a knife on ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... that Scripture 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 ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... another child. Now this was a little girl of some six years old, as fair and as smooth of skin, dear madam, as your own darling cherubs. She wandered about the great cabin quite melancholy. No one seemed to care for her. All the family affections were centred on Master Esau yonder. His little beard was beginning to be a little fortune already, whereas Miss Rosalba was of no good to the family. No one would pay a cent to see HER little fair face. No wonder the poor little maid was melancholy. As I looked at her, I seemed to walk more and more in a fairy tale, and more ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the Bible 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 bore his name. As a matter of ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... 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 and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... massa alteri quidem donat fidem in Christum, qua iustificetur et salvetur, alterum autem relinquit in sua incredulitate, ut pereat." (Frank 4, 256.) Again: It was God's will to elect Jacob and to leave Esau in his sin. What is said of these two must be understood of the election and rejection of all men in general. "Potuisset Deus optimo iure ambos abiicere;... sed sic proposuerat Deus, sic visum est Deo, sic erat voluntas Dei, sic erat bene placitum Dei, ut Iacobum eligeret, Esau autem ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... is a by-way to hell, a way that hypocrites go in at; namely, such as sell their birthright, with Esau; such as sell their Master, as Judas; such as blaspheme the Gospel, with Alexander; and that lie and dissemble, with Ananias and Sapphira his wife. Then said Hopeful to the shepherds, I perceive that these had on them, even every ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... filled with reading, copying, gardening and the recitation of offices. All these the novice took with gusto, safe hidden from the flash of emerald eyes and the witchery of hypergeometrical noses. But temptation is not to be kept out by the diet of Adam and of Esau, by locked doors, spades, and inkpots. The key had hardly turned upon the poor refugee when he found he had locked in his enemies with him. His austerities redoubled, but as he says he "only beat ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... shalt perish everlastingly unless thou take the Lord's Supper," they end by staying away from it, and utterly neglecting it, they and their children after them; preferring their own selfishness, to God's Spirit of love, and saying, like Esau of old, "I am hungry, and I must live. I must get on in this selfish world by following its selfish ways; what is the use of a spirit of love and brotherhood to me? If I were to obey the Gospel, and sacrifice my own ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... they also were under command and the names of their captains were, Captain Cain, Captain Nimrod, Captain Ishmael, Captain Esau, Captain Saul, Captain Absalom, Captain Judas, ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... another he who, flying through the air, lost his son. The revolving nature, which is the seal of the mortal wax, performs its art well, but does not distinguish one inn from another.[12] Hence it happens that Esau differs in seed from Jacob, and Quirinus comes from so mean a father that he is ascribed to Mars. The generated nature would always make its path like its progenitors, if the divine foresight did not conquer. Now that which was behind ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... followed the sins of Ham and Esau: But these more properly rank under the head of communities: But instances of families which have suffered, yea perished, by judgments sent to punish the sins ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... brethren bowing to Joseph's sheaf, like these aged heads around the youthful aspirant of to-day. There was Jacob going on his mysterious way, met by, conversing with, wrestling with, the Angels of God—rescuing the promise of his race from the "profane" Esau. There was the mother of Samuel, and, in long white ephod, the much- desired, early-consecrated child, who had inherited her religious capacity; and David, with something of his extraordinary genius for divine things written on his countenance; onward, to the sacred persons ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... whole time, though he neither gave it, nor can restore it, nor is able to pay any considerable value for the least part of it. This birthright of mankind above all other creatures some are forced by hunger to sell, like Esau, for bread and broth; but the greatest part of men make such a bargain for the delivery up of themselves, as Thamar did with Judah; instead of a kid, the necessary provisions for human life, they are contented to do it for rings and ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... matters equine Who still preferred some slim four-year-old To the big-boned stock of mighty Berold And, for strong Cotnar, drank French weak wine, He also must be such a lady's scorner! Smooth Jacob still robs homely Esau: Now up, now down, the world's one see-saw. —So, I shall find out some snug corner Under a hedge, like Orson the wood-knight, 910 Turn myself round and bid the world good night; And sleep a sound sleep till the trumpet blowing Wakes ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... were the people of Jerusalem in general, over the report that a Child of Prophecy—one destined to become King of the Jews—had been born. Herod was professedly an adherent of the religion of Judah, though by birth an Idumean, by descent an Edomite or one of the posterity of Esau, all of whom the Jews hated; and of all Edomites not one was more bitterly detested than was Herod the king. He was tyrannical and merciless, sparing neither foe nor friend who came under suspicion of being a possible hindrance to his ambitious designs. He had his wife and several of his ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... moments!—the scrap of the book that we have read in 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 burning paper lighted ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... the old baby book rhyme we all used to say; p'raps you'll remember, fellows. It's been a long time since I repeated it, but I think it runs about like this: 'I Saw Esau kissing Kate; and the fact is, we all three saw. I saw Esau, he saw me; and Kate saw I ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... the deep pollution of a practical apostasy from holiness? Is there here and there a personal example of spiritual infidelity ([Greek: pornos]) to the Lord, of that radically "secular" ([Greek: bebelos]) spirit (ver. 16) of which Esau is the type, to which some "mess of meat," some material advantage, proves overwhelmingly more momentous than the unworldly "birthright" given by the promise of God? Let them all watch as for their life against such symptoms. It is a matter of eternal ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... place our parents pawned a glorious inheritance for a taste of forbidden fruit, and Esau exchanged a legitimate birth-right for a mere mess ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... his novel entitled Yeast Kingsley pictures the 'condition of England' question as it appeared to one who knew it from the seamy side. Especially did he blame the Church, which, he said, offered a religion for "Jacob, the smooth man," and was not suited for "poor Esau." This was indeed most true as regards the agricultural classes, where the want was felt of a real religion which should gain a hold upon a population which year by year was fast drifting loose from all ties of ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... right to will away the estate from you," vehemently rejoined Lady Verner. "Was it not enough that he usurped your father's birth-right, as Jacob usurped Esau's, keeping you out of it for years and years, but he must now deprive you of it for ever? Had you been dead—had there been any urgent reason why you should not succeed—Jan should have come in. Jan is the lawful heir, failing you. Mark me, Lionel, it will bring no good to Frederick ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... industry with her, an ambition; Christmas was her career. It had long ago lost its religious significance for her, as for nearly everybody else in Carthage. Even Mr. Frankenstein (the Pantatorium magnate) is one of the most ardent advertisers of Christmas bargains, while Isidore Strouther and Esau Streckfuss are "almost persuaded" every December. They might be entirely persuaded if it were not for the scenes they witness in their aisles during the last weeks of Yuletide and the aftermath of trying to collect from the Gentile husbands ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes
... to a 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 ...
— Child's Story of the Bible • Mary A. Lathbury
... thousands. Silk and jewels and laces and ornaments and the perfume and music 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 ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... ("tent of the highest") was daughter of Anah (a Hivite clan-name), the daughter of Zibeon, Esau's wife, Gen. xxxvi. 14. Irad was the son of Enoch, and grandson of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... mother had ended her long clasping embrace of Edward, who was subdued enough this morning; and then, with something like Esau's craving for a blessing, she came to bid her mother good-bye, and received the warm caress she had longed for for years. In another moment the coach was away; and before half an hour had elapsed, Combehurst church-spire had been lost in a ...
— The Moorland Cottage • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... unknown), s. Abraham and Sarah.(5) Spent his childhood like all little Isaacs and later married Rebecca, claimed by historians to have been a Jewess. Had two famous sons, Esau and Jake (see both, but especially the latter). Died at the tender ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... It was at this time that the utterly unjustifiable and brutal murder of the coloured man, Esau, took place in the invasion of the Calvinia district of the Cape Colony. His sole offence was his known loyalty to the British Government. "He was flogged on January 15th, 1901, and kept in gaol till February 5th, when he was flogged through the streets and shot outside the village by a Boer named ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... thee? Separate thyself, I pray thee, from me: if thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if thou depart to the right hand, then I will go to the left."[Y] So also it is said of Esau that he "went into the country from the face of his brother Jacob: for their riches were more than they might dwell together, and the land wherein they were strangers could not bear them because of their cattle."[Z] This was a facility ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... and, in the mean time decline this your judgment 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 ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... are far more so; it is of these last that Michael Angelo declared, "They are worthy to be the gates of Paradise!" These are divided into ten compartments, representing: 1, Creation of Adam and Eve; 2, History of Cain and Abel; 3, Noah; 4, Abraham and Isaac; 5, Jacob and Esau; 6, History of Joseph; 7, Moses on Mount Sinai; 8, Joshua before Jericho; 9, David and Goliath; 10, Solomon and the ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... mastered languages and sciences as easy as "rolling off a log." I saw him last summer, a wreck—wine and bad women did it. The idolized son of pious parents, whose youth was surrounded at home with the halo of Bible and prayer; but like Esau, he "sold his birthright for a mess of pottage" and afterwards "found no space for repentance, though he sought it ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... lazy professors, that it is to be wondered men do not take more notice of it. How was Lot's wife served for running lazily, and for giving but one look behind her, after the things she left in Sodom? How was Esau served for staying too long before he came for the blessing? And how were they served that are mentioned in the 13th of Luke, for staying till the door was shut? Also the foolish virgins. A heavy after-groan will they give that have thus stayed too long! It turned ...
— The Heavenly Footman • John Bunyan
... in those 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 blessing from Stewart ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... man of science may earn great distinction, but not bread. He will get invitations to all sorts of dinners and conversaziones, but not enough income to pay his cab fare. A man of science in these times is like an Esau who sells his birthright for a mess of pottage. Again, if one turns to practice, it is still the old story—wait; and only after years of working like a galley-slave and intriguing like a courtier is there any ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... dreamed he could possess, asserted his priority. It 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 aptest symbol ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... brother was quieter, and buried himself entirely in his books. When he read about Jacob dressing himself in sheep-skins to personify Esau, and so to usurp his brother's birthright, he would clench his little fist in anger against the deceiver; when he read of tyrants and of the injustice and wickedness of the world, tears would come into his eyes, and he was quite filled with the thought ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... full of 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 ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... 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 ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... 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 ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... upon themselves as creatures at mercy, and that all impositions laid on them by a stronger hand, are, in the phrase of the Report, legal and obligatory. Hence proceeds that poverty and lowness of spirit, to which a kingdom may be subject as well as a particular person. And when Esau came fainting from the field at the point to die, it is no wonder that he sold his birthright for a ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... expecting that with the morning light the punishment of his past sins would come on him; and not only on him, but on all his family, and his innocent children; when he stood there alone by the dark river, not knowing whether Esau and his wild Arabs would not sweep off the earth all he had and all he loved; and knowing, too, that it was his own fault, that he had brought it all upon them by his own deceit and treachery. Then, when his sins stared him in the face, and God ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... Jabiyah, therefore a Syrian of the Hauran near Damascus and grandson to Isu (Esau). Arab mystics (unlike the vulgar who see only his patience) recognise that inflexible integrity which refuses to utter "words of wind" and which would not, against his conscience, confess to wrong-doing merely to pacify the Lord who was stronger than himself. The Classics taught this noble ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... subsequent sins.—Ananias and Sapphira sinned in keeping back part of the price, and then they lied in endeavouring to cover that (Acts v.). Cain sinned in murdering his brother, and then lied in the attempt to hide it (Gen. iv. 9). Jacob did wrong in appearing before his father as Esau, and sustained his wrong by a lie. The brethren of Joseph transgressed in dealing unkindly with him and selling him into the hands of the Ishmaelites, and then to conceal the matter they deceived their father by lying (Gen. xxxvii. 31, 32). Samson committed sin ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... and evil politics have striven with one another in New York from the beginning of her history as Jacob and Esau strove together in the womb. In general the former has prevailed in western New York and along the lakes. In the city of New York sometimes one has carried the day, and sometimes the other. When the bad element was in power, the noble State has reminded me of Tennyson's eagle caught by the talons ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... which has assumed its appropriate garments, either of words or 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 True. Hence it is, that the world so often lifts ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... 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 truly. For Thou, O Lord, most righteous Ruler of the Universe, ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... fell asleep, the history of the creation of the world, which he could never hear sufficiently often, because it showed so clearly the gradual development of everything on earth and in heaven until man came to possess and enjoy all, the story of Abraham and Isaac, of Jacob, Esau, and his own ancestor, Joseph—how gladly he had listened to these tales as they fell from the lips of the gentle woman who had given him life, and from those of his nurse, and his grandfather Elishama. Yet he imagined that they had faded ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of the Leviathan, but unlike most other fish, breeds indifferently at all seasons; after a gestation which may probably be set down at nine months, producing but one at a time; though in some few known instances giving birth to an Esau and Jacob:—a contingency provided for in suckling by two teats, curiously situated, one on each side of the anus; but the breasts themselves extend upwards from that. When by chance these precious parts in a nursing whale are ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... might be as unpoetical as Blackstone who wrote the Commentaries, or Bradshaw who compiled the Railway Guide, was forced to produce a weekly tale of Latin and Greek verses which would have made Horace laugh and Sophocles cry. The Rev. Esau Hittall's "Longs and Shorts about the Calydonian Boar," commemorated in Friendship's Garland, may stand for a sample of the absurdities which I have in mind; and the supporters of this amazing abuse assured the world that Greek and Latin versification was an essential ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... paintings have no secret meaning assigned to them. The inhabitants of Eden, the hero of the Deluge, the Hebrew patriarchs, Samson and Satan—all these are the familiar figures of the evangelical's Bible. "Eve Repentant" is the woman Eve, the mother of the race; "Jacob and Esau" are the brothers come to reconciliation; "Jonah" is the prophet denouncing the Nineveh of his day and the Babylon of this. The teaching—and there is teaching in every one of them—is plain and ethical. So also, with the Greek myths; they teach plainly—they hold no esoteric interpretations. Watts ...
— Watts (1817-1904) • William Loftus Hare
... Thirsting for information, Dante inquires of him "how bitter can spring when sweet is sown?" In a lengthy disquisition in reply, this spirit mentions how children often differ from their parents, quotes Esau and Jacob as marked examples thereof, and adds that nature, guided by Providence, produces at will a Solon, Xerxes, Melchisedec, or Daedalus. Canto IX. The next spirit with whom Beatrice converses is the fair Cunizza, who like the Magdalen ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... with no hereditary advantage beyond an honorary 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
... hideous cut-throat deed, but it had been done altogether for him. No thought of her own aggrandisement had touched her mind when she resolved upon that forgery. As Rebekah had deceived her lord and robbed Esau, the first-born, of his birthright, so had she robbed him who was as Esau to her. How often had she thought of that, while her conscience was pleading hard against her! Had it been imputed as a crime to Rebekah that she had loved her own son well, and loving him had put ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... when he 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. ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray
... sir,' I acknowledged. 'First, I am a man; next, a down-trodden American citizen. I am cursed with neither profession, trade, nor expectations. Like Esau, I am pottageless. My residence is everywhere; the sky is my coverlet. I am one of the dispossessed, a sansculotte, a proletarian, or, in simpler phraseology addressed to ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... this onscripterl plan come up o' books by double entry; We go the patriarkle here out o' all sight an' hearin', For Jacob warn't a suckemstance to Jeff at financierin'; 190 He never'd thought o' borryin' from Esau like all nater An' then cornfiscatin' all debts to sech a small pertater; There's p'litickle econ'my, now, combined 'ith morril beauty Thet saycrifices privit eends (your in'my's, tu) to dooty! Wy, Jeff 'd ha' gin him five an' won his eye-teeth 'fore he knowed it, An', stid ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... omnipotence, and, in this one adversary, all others who might oppose him,—as he is expressly assured in ver. 29: "Thou hast wrestled with God and with men, and hast prevailed." Can God invest a creature with omnipotence? Jacob would certainly not have gone so cheerfully to meet Esau, if in Him over whom he prevailed with weeping and supplication, he himself had recognised only an angel, and not Jehovah the God of hosts, as Hosea, in ver. 6, calls the very same, of whom in ver. 5 he had spoken as the angel. ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... tenderness wanting, yet rough are the rhymes of our poet; Though it be Jacob's voice, Esau's, alas! are the hands. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... shout with Achilles in the trenches. The silence of the unpeopled Syrian plains, the out-comings and in-goings of the patriarchs, Abraham and Ishmael, Isaac in the fields at eventide, Rebekah at the well, Jacob's guile, Esau's face reddened by desert sun-heat, Joseph's splendid funeral procession,—all these things I find within the boards of my Old Testament. What a silence in those old books as of a half-peopled world; what bleating of flocks; ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... conceive such a plot, and the wit to carry it out. If Mountjoy had run only decently straight, or not more than indecently crooked, I should have been a younger brother, practising law in the Temple to the end of my days. The story of Esau and of Jacob is as nothing to it. But that is not the most remarkable circumstance. My father, for purposes of his own, which includes the absolute throwing over of Mountjoy's creditors, changes his plan, and is pleased to restore ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... 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 Armenian hills, ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... Tusser frequently speaks of the "dairy-maid Cisley," and in April Husbandry tells Ciss she must carefully keep these ten guests from her cheeses: Gehazi, Lot's wife, Argus, Tom Piper, Crispin, Lazarus, Esau, Mary Maudlin, Gentiles and bishops. (1)Gehazi, because a cheese should never be a dead white, like Gehazi the leper. (2) Lot's wife, because a cheese should not be too salt, like Lot's wife. (3) Argus, because a cheese ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... 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 we once were fairly out, and when From Saint Bartholomew we have saved our skin, To-morrow 'd see us in some other den, And worse off than we hitherto have been; Besides, I 'm hungry, and just now would take, Like Esau, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... "balsam" or "sweet," was no doubt a common woman's name. It occurs as the name of Ishmael's daughter whom Esau married (Gen. xxxvi. 3, 4, 13), and as that of one of Solomon's daughters (1 Kings iv. 15). She may have been the wife of Milcilu, King of Gezer, and pleads for her sons after her husband's death. He had apparently been seized ...
— Egyptian Literature
... 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
... sons, two are the Northern and Southern Bushels; the latter, dressed in red, rules birth; the former, in white, rules death. "A young Esau once found them on the South Mountain, under a tree, playing chess, and by an offer of venison his lease of life was extended from ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... definite knowledge of sex came in this way: I was attending Sabbath school and had become ambitious to read the Bible through. I had gotten as far as the account of the birth of Esau and Jacob, which aroused my curiosity. So I asked my mother the meaning of some word in the passage. She seemed embarrassed and evaded my question. This attitude stimulated my curiosity further, and I re-read the chapter until I understood it pretty well. Later I was further ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... have fought for it; but as I said in the outset, while I deeply deplore the condition of the country, it has been caused by no act of mine. And with this remark, I part with him, who, in imitation of Esau, seeks to sell his birthright. I would, if there was time, give a little advice to all sides, to every Senator on this floor. I would say: Senators come up to the great importance of this question; meet it; adopt, by a two-thirds ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... Youth Lusty Juventus Jack Juggler A Pretty Interlude, called Nice Wanton The History of Jacob and Esau The Disobedient Child The Marriage of ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... plesance. And whan he felle in poverte, he was 78 zeer of age. And aftre, whan God had preved his pacyence, and that it was so gret, he broughte him azen to richesse, and to hiere estate than he was before. And aftre that he was kyng of Ydumye, aftre Kyng Esau. And whan he was kyng, he was clept Jobab. And in that kyngdom, he lyvede aftre 170 zere: and so he was of age, whan he dyede, 248 zeer. In that lond of Job, there nys no defaute of no thing, that is nedefulle to mannes body. There ben hilles, where men getten gret plentee of manna, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation. v. 8 - Asia, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... Esau, probably written as early as 1557, and printed in 1568, is of very regular construction, having five Acts, which are duly subdivided into scenes. Besides the Scripture characters, are Ragau, Esau's servant; Mido, a boy who leads blind Isaac; Hanan and Zethar, two of his neighbours; Abra, a girl who assists Rebecca; and Debora, an old nurse. Esau and his servant Ragau set forth together on a hunt. While they are gone, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... soul of Esau. He suffered from the disease of Bellerophon; and his mother, the woman who sold perfumes, surrendered herself to Pantherus, a Roman soldier, under ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... faculty, at first he reflects 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, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... 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
... laws in this land. I take off my hat to his ghost, and salute him as greater than he who has taken a city, for the Puritan divine conquered himself. He was an Isaac, not an Ishmael; he was a Jacob, not an Esau; a God-born man who knew what his soul did wear. Great man he was, hard, stern, and intolerant. Yes, but what would you have, gentlemen? The Puritan was not a pretty head carved on a cherry-stone, but a Colossus cut from the rock, huge, grim, but awe-inspiring, fortifying to the soul ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... 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 ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... days it will be realized. All of a sudden, when you think you are most secure, I shall go forth like Jacob or Esau, or any other patriarch, and take me a wife: perhaps of these which are of the ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... pleasure" is a lost soul. To 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
... impossible for him to acquire, by purchase, a right to be a different person from what he really was; for that the right of Chieftainship attached to the blood of primogeniture, and, therefore, was incapable of being transferred. I added, that though Esau sold his birth-right, or the advantages belonging to it, he still remained the first-born of his parents; and that whatever agreement a Chief might make with any of the clan, the Herald's Office could not admit of the metamorphosis, or with any decency attest ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... chief reprobate, and the rest of us would hunt out what we considered to be nasty texts of Scripture. The chapter concerning the whoredoms of Aholah and Aholibah gave me an especial pleasure. T. mentioned the giggling that occurred at prayers in the lower dormitory when the details of Esau's birth were read out. A few days before G. was expelled—for exactly what cause I do not know—he told me of how greatly he enjoyed coitus on his grandmother's sofa with a girl of fifteen. When I went home on the boat for holidays I noted the large, black-haired penis of the strong boy of our school. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... army, as you call it!—and lead the life of a country squire: hunting! Well, it's not only the army, it's over Great Britain, with this infernal wealth of ours!—and all for pleasure—eh?—or Paradise lost for a sugar plum! Eh, Dartrey? Upon my word, it appears to me, Esau's the Englishman, Jacob the German, of these times. I wonder old Colney hasn't said it. If we're not plucked, as your regiments are of the officers who have learnt their work, we're emasculated:—the nation's half ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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, ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... striven from the first to awaken thoughts of higher things, and turn remorse into repentance; but every attempt resulted in strange, sad wanderings about Esau, the birthright, and the blessing. Indeed, these might not have been entirely wanderings, for once he said, 'It is better this way, Bill. You don't know what you wish in trying to bring me round. Don't be hard on me. She drove me to it. It is all right ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... public saw Esau. Next came Consul,—in about three or four separate editions! In 1909 we had Peter. Then came I know not how many more, including the giant Casey and Mr. Garner's Susie; and finally in 1918 our own Suzette. The theatre-going public has been well supplied ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... never let me rest since, no matter where I was, 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
... The country lay torpid and apathetic under the blow. Blood had been let in Antrim and Down, in Wexford and Wicklow. The society of United Irishmen was broken. The Protestant gentry were frightened or bribed. They, or the greater part of them, surrendered their birthright without even Esau's hunger for excuse. Roman Catholic ecclesiastics, deluded by the promise of emancipation, which was not kept for many a long year afterwards, offered a dubious welcome to the English power. The people, cowed, helpless, expectant of little ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... thee when we are absent one from another." Then they parted, Laban going back to Mesopotamia and Jacob pressing on with anxious heart toward the near Jabbok and the farther lands of his estranged brother Esau. ...
— My Three Days in Gilead • Elmer Ulysses Hoenshal
... slaves, kings and beggars.' But of course, according to astrological principles, it would be necessary that two persons, whose fortunes were to be alike, should be born, not only in the same hour, but in the same place. The fortunes and character of Jacob and Esau, however, should manifestly have been similar, which was certainly not the case, if their history has been correctly handed down to us. An astrologer of the time of Julius Caesar, named Publius Nigidius Figulus, used ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee." The minister had something such a night of it as Jacob had before his meeting with Esau; with the difference that there was no lameness left the next morning. Before the dawn came up, when the stars were fading, Basil threw himself on the lounge in his study, and went into a sleep as deep and peaceful as his sleeps were wont to be. And when ...
— Diana • Susan Warner |
