Genesis 25:29

29. Sod pottage Jacob boiled a dish of lentiles, (Genesis 25:34,) a podded vegetable like the pea or bean, which is cooked by parching over the fire or boiling into a soup, making a favourite and highly nutritious dish all through the East . There is a small red variety of lentile which makes a reddish brown, or chocolate coloured pottage, much prized by the Arabs, which, when being cooked, exhales a savoury odour very grateful to a hungry man . Robinson, Thomson . Jacob’s household tastes made him skilful in the preparation of this favourite dish . In Eastern homes food is prepared only as it is wanted; and when Esau returned home from the unsuccessful hunt, fatigued and faint, and saw and smelled the red savoury pottage steaming in Jacob’s tent, impetuous, impatient, and hungry, he cried out, 30 . Feed me “Literally, Let me devour now that red, that red, for I am faint; therefore they called his name Red (Edom . ) It is the language of greedy, and perhaps imperious, impatience, which Jacob might have resented, whereas he craftily resolved to turn it to his own advantage . In this characteristic incident the sacred writer dramatically paints the two brothers before us . The man, the hungry hunter, led by the senses, is fascinated by the high colour and rich flavour of a mess of pottage, and the meditative schemer of the tents, the man of wits, cannot wait for Providence to bring him the predicted birthright, but must intermeddle with his selfish craft. Here is also an interesting illustration of the origin of names. Some characteristic incident gives rise to a name, and on the subsequent occurrence of a similar incident the appropriateness of the name, or its coincidence with events, is noted, and the name is renewed. Esau is first surnamed Red from his red hair, and then from the red pottage. Jacob is called heel-catcher, or tripper, first literally (Genesis 25:26) and then figuratively, (Genesis 27:36,) and the figurative name is first applied when he trips up Esau in the matter of the birthright, and then its appropriateness is noticed again when we arrive at the incident of Isaac’s blessing . We often thus meet in this history with various reasons for the application of the same name . ” Newhall .