Esau

The title of this article is ambiguous. Further meanings are listed under Esau (disambiguation) .

Esaw is a redirect to this article. For the Togolese politician of the same name, see Kofi Esaw .

Esau sells his birthright ( Gioacchino Assereto , ca.1645)

Isaac rejects Esau ( Giotto fresco in the Basilica of San Francesco above the tomb of St. Francis of Assisi in Assisi )

Esau ( Hebrew עֵשָׂו Esaw , also Edom Hebrew אדוםcalled) is a figure of the Torah of the Tanakh , or the Old Testament of the Bible and is considered the ancestor of the Edomites and Amalekites . He was the son of Isaac and Rebekah , his younger twin brother was Jacob and a later father-in-law was Ishmael the son of Abraham .

Esau in the Bible

When Esau grew up, his brother Jakob deprived him of the birthright ( Gen 25  EU ) in exchange for a lentil dish . A serious conflict does not arise between the two brothers, however, until Jacob deprives his father of his father's blessing , stimulated and actively supported by his mother Rebekah . Convinced by deception that the eldest son is kneeling in front of him, the elderly blind father gives Jacob his solemn blessing. There is only one saying left for Esau, who returns later, with the words: See, you will dwell without the fat of the earth and without the dew of the sky from above. Your sword will feed you and your brother you will serve. But it will happen that one day you will tear his yoke off your neck.

Reconciliation between Jacob and Esau, Rein Abbey , tribute hall, fresco by Joseph Amonte, 1740

A reconciliation scene between Jacob and Esau in later years is shown in Genesis chap. 33 described. According to the family table in chap. 36 Esau takes three local women and moves away to the Seir Mountains . Esau is equated with Edom and becomes the progenitor of the Edomites ( Gen 36.1 43  EU ). The reason given for leaving is that because of its wealth, the land was not big enough for Jacob's camp and Esau's camp.

According to Genesis 26:34, Esau took Judit, the daughter of Beeris, the Hittite , and Basemat, the daughter of Elon, the Hittite, as wives at the age of forty . ( Gen 26.34  EU ) Later he took Mahalat as his wife, the sister of Nebajot, the daughter of Ishmael , the son of Abraham . ( Gen 28.8f  EU )

The story of Esau as an art motif

The art also depicts Isaac's blessing to Jacob. You can see an older man lying in bed, blessing his son, behind him the mother can be seen.

A pen and brush drawing by Rembrandt van Rijn around 1648–50 shows Esau, who exchanged a lentil dish with Jakob for his birthright.

On one of the two front walls of the tribute hall in Rein Abbey , Styria , Joseph Amonte depicted Jacob's reconciliation with his brother Esau in a wall fresco in 1740.

literature

• Gabrielle Oberhänsli-Widmer : Esau: On the biography of an enemy image in Judaism. In: Thomas Jürgasch (Ed.): Presence of Unity: on the concept of religion; Festschrift on the occasion of Bernhard Uhde's 60th birthday. Rombach, Freiburg 2008, pp. 269–299 (FreiDok)
• Gerhard Langer (Ed.): Esau - Brother and Enemy. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-525-50113-9

Web links

Commons : Esau  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Genesis 27 and Genesis 28 at bibel-online.net.
• Wolfgang Oswald :  Esau. In: Michaela Bauks, Klaus Koenen, Stefan Alkier (Eds.): The Scientific Biblical Lexicon on the Internet (WiBiLex), Stuttgart 2006 ff.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Rembrandt drawing by Esau. In: Religious Images and Art in Class. M. Sander-Gaiser, accessed on July 13, 2013 .