Gripla - 20.12.2005, Page 253

Genesis 25:29-34 provides us with a unique episode wherein the first-born
Esau sells his birthright to his younger brother Jacob for some bread and a
pottage of lentils:
Coxit autem Iacob pulmentum; ad quem cum, venisset Esau de agro
lassus, ait: Da mihi de coctione hac rufa, quia oppido lassus sum.
Quam ob causam vocatum est nomen eius Edom. Cui dixit Iacob:
Vende mihi primogenita tua. Ille respondit: En morior, quid mihi pro-
derunt primogenita? Ait Iacob: Iura ergo mihi. Iuravit ei Esau et ven-
didit primogenita. Et sic, accepto pane et lentis edulio, comedit et bibit,
et abiit, parvipendens quod primogenita vendidisset.
[And Jacob boiled pottage: to whom Esau, coming faint out of the
field, Said: give me of this red pottage, for I am exceeding faint. For
which reason his name was called Edom. And Jacob said to him: Sell
me thy first birthright. He answered: Lo I die, what wil the first birth-
right avail me. Jacob said: Swear therefore to me. Esau swore to him,
and sold his first birthright. And so taking bread and the pottage of
lentils, he ate, and drank, and went his way; making little account of
having sold his first birthright].
The Old Norse-Icelandic version of this story is found in Stjórn I (1862:1-
299), a history Bible written at the request of King Hákon Magnússon in the
early part of the fourteenth century. It deals with the contents of Genesis-
Exodus 18 and is based on the Vulgate, Peter Comestor’s Historia Scholastica,
Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum Historiale, Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae,
the works of Augustine, William Durand’s Rationale Officiorum Divinorum,
and other sources.1 The passage reads as follows:
KIRSTEN WOLF
REFLECTIONS ON THE COLOR OF ESAU’S
POTTAGE OF LENTILS (STJÓRN 160.26-161.9)
1 For a discussion of the sources of Stjórn I, see Astås (1991:68-84) and Jakob Benediktsson
(2004:28-32).