RED POTTAGE. According to the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, Esau sold his birthright to Jacob for " one mess of meat " (xii. 16). The Old Testament narrative (Gen. xxv. 29-34) is interpreted by commenta tors on the Bible in the same way. It is supposed that Esau was simply ravenous with hunger. " He fancies himself dying! Anything for a good meal!" (Peake's Commentary an the Bible. 1919). But that he should have valued his birthright so lightly has long been a puzzle to readers of the Bible. Is it likely that he did so? It is not. The narrative has been misunderstood. Emu came -in from the field, not merely faint from hunger, but faint from exhaustion. " Behold," he says. " I am going to die. What good is the birthright to me?" Jacob had boiled some pottage. What the in gredients were is not certain. That It was a " lentil stew " (vs. 34) is probably -a later assumption. All that we know is that it was red. Esau sees the red stuff and exclaims (vs. 30), " Let me swallow the red, this red! " It is not food he wants, but medicine. The red
stuff which he caught sight of in his extremity was, or seemed to him to be an elixir of life. For this, that is to say, for a draught which would give him rebirth and new life, he was willing to barter his birthright. A kind of beer coloured red, red wine. and other red pota tions have served among various peoples as substitutes for blood, which was an elixir of life. If blood was life (" the blood that is the life thereof "), it would obviously seem a rational procedure to offer blood to persons whose vitality was defective. " It became an elixir to restore youth, to ward off danger to life (by adding to the vital substance), and to increase the supply of vitality to the dead, in whom life was not regarded as ended but simply reduced in volume " (Elliot Smith, "The Giver of Life," in Journ. of the Manch. Eg. cE Or. Soc., 1918, p. 53). Cp. ELIXIR OF LIFE.