“You wouldn’t!”
“I would.”
“You can’t be talking about the birthright?”
“That’s the only thing you have that I want.”
Esau sat up and stared at Jacob in astonishment. “I think you’re serious.”
“Of course I’m serious. You can have the whole pot in exchange for your birthright.”
Esau laughed. “That’s easy. As you said, what good is the birthright to a dead man.”
Jacob’s eyes flashed and he cracked his knuckles as he did at times of great excitement. “You’d really give your birthright for my stew?”
“Why not? I don’t even know what a blessing is and the birthright …” He shrugged. “That’s a long time off and I’m starving.”
Jacob squatted down beside him. “You’re serious? You won’t go back on your word?”
“No, no. You can have it. Now give me the stew.”
When Jacob went to his mother’s tent and told her of the bargain, she didn’t immediately congratulate him. Instead she stood, head tipped to one side, eyes narrowing, and her lips pursed as she evaluated the whole thing. “That sounds like him. He doesn’t really value such things. He just lives for the moment. He’ll more than likely forget he ever made such a deal,” she said. “You’ll have to keep reminding him.”
That’s easy, Jacob thought as he put the fire pot and the empty bowl back in its place. He promised and I won’t let him go back on his promise.
* * *
In the days that followed, everyone but Jacob forgot about Esau’s promise. They were all too preoccupied with the news he’d brought. “Everything’s drying up,” he said. “There are no animals like there used to be.”
Isaac’s shepherds began reporting the same thing and traders coming through with their caravans added ominous details. “If it weren’t for the wells dug by Abraham,” they said, “both men and their beasts would be dying.”
“There have always been famines,” Isaac reminded his family. “Some have been worse than others. One of the worst was in the time of Sargon the great. All of the northern reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates were laid waste. That’s when our ancestors fled to Ur in the south.”
“Does that mean we should go down to Egypt till the famine’s ended?” Esau asked.
“It’s difficult to be strangers among a strange people,” Isaac said. “Our ancestors never went back north until Elohim spoke to Terah, my grandfather. One must be careful in making such moves.”
Finally, Isaac decided to ride into Gerar and talk to the king. He needed to find out what plans he was making to last out the famine.
He found the king in his treasury overseeing the delivery of payment for bags of wheat he had just received from some Egyptian traders. After their greetings, the king led Isaac to his audience chamber and invited him to sit with him. “We have much to discuss,” he said. “I hear your herds of cattle and sheep have not been touched.” The king spoke with raised brows and a narrowing of his eyes that gave him a crafty, puzzled look. “What is your secret?”
“Wells,” Isaac said. “My father dug many wells.”
“I don’t understand,” the king said.
“With wells you can irrigate and grow crops without the rain.”
The king frowned. “That sounds dangerous to me.”
“What do you mean?” Isaac asked.
“Surely such a thing will bring down the wrath of the goddess Anat and all the other gods.”
“Then what is your plan?” Isaac asked, puzzled.
“We’ll continue to entreat Anat; she’s in charge of such things. Of course we’ll continue to get grain from Egypt as long as they’ll sell it to us.”
“When we finish digging the new irrigation ditches,” Isaac said, “we’ll be harvesting a lot of grain and can spare some to sell in your market.”
“It’s your wells, you say, that make this possible?”
“In Ur of the Chaldees there was very little rain. They had to irrigate. There are great rivers of fresh water underground that your people can learn to use.”
“No, no!” the king said almost in alarm. “We must not offend the goddess. However, we would not mind buying the grain from you.”
Isaac looked at him and saw that he could not understand. He would never be in favor of getting water from the ground when their goddess had not sent the rain. To him it would be blasphemy.
As the king rose, he turned to Isaac. “Come, move into our city,” he said. “Perhaps we can work together to fight this famine.”