I.
THE TWO BROTHERS, JACOB AND ESAU.
South of the Dead Sea, bounded by the rocky desert on the east and the hot barren Arabah on the west, extends the wild picturesque range of Mount Seir. It is a land of lofty heights and deep, almost inaccessible valleys, the home of the hunter and the nomad. From a few copious springs there issue clear, refreshing brooks, which run rippling through the deep ravines, but soon lose themselves in their hot, gravelly beds. A few miles further on they emerge and again disappear, as they approach the borders of the hot, thirsty wilderness that surrounds Mount Seir on every side. Here in early times lived the Edomites, a nomadic people who established themselves in this borderland of Palestine long before the Hebrews gained a permanent foothold in the land of Canaan. The name, Edom, is found in an inscription of a king of the eighth Egyptian Dynasty,
In the Biblical narrative, Esau evidently is the traditional ancestor of the Edomites, even as Jacob figures as the father of the twelve tribes. One of the aims of these narratives, it seems to many scholars, is to explain why the Israelites, the younger people, who settled latest in Palestine, ultimately possessed the land and conquered the Edomites.
The portraits of Esau and Jacob are remarkably true to the characteristics of these two rival nations. They are also faithful to human nature as we find it to-day. Of these two brothers which, on the whole, is the more attractive? Which resembles his father and which his mother? (Read the accounts of their lives, Gen. 24-27.) What noble virtues does Esau possess? What was his great fault? Reckless men or drifters with generous impulses but with no definite purpose, of whom gypsies and hoboes are extreme types, are found in every age and society. Why is it that men of the type of Esau so often in time become criminals?