We don’t know whether or not Jacob saw this coming. And yet Esau accepted it:Īnd Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me? (Gen. The son with the birthright would be the ancestor of the Savior of the world. In the line of the patriarchs, the birthright was also wrapped up with the promise of the Messiah. It included the right to succeed one’s father as chieftain, the privilege of acting as priest for the family, the duty of caring for one’s parents in their old age, and an extra share in the family inheritance to provide the necessary funds for all of these responsibilities. The birthright, as the word suggests, normally went to the firstborn son. Esau asked for some of “that red… red… whatever-it-is.” (In the Hebrew text, the adjective is repeated without a noun.) an outrageous deal: “Sell me your birthright first.” He came into the kitchen tent where Jacob was cooking up a tasty red lentil stew. It had been a long day, and he had apparently caught nothing. He came in from the fields physically spent. The first account of these twins “come-to-manhood” is telling. Like his father and grandfather, he “dwelt in tents,” and basically took up the family business and followed the livestock. He spent his time far away from his family’s herds and flocks, looking for game. 25:25) His parents named him Esau meaning… hairy. The firstborn came out of his mother’s womb “red all over like a like a hairy garment.” (Gen. Genesis tells us that Isaac and Rebekah had twin boys. For those familiar with the Bible, all of this should sound oddly familiar. He’s burly and brawny, for what that’s worth, but every last inch of him is “covered with hair”-like a beast.
He is sensual, ruled by his eyes and his appetite. He abhors thinking and can’t understand a book without pictures. He is shallow, vain, arrogant, and treacherous. He is violent by nature and when force of personality fails him, he resorts quickly to his fists or weapons. Gaston is obviously a hunter, a pretty good one. He has just shot a passing duck out of the sky. When we meet Gaston, he is standing in shadows, a deliberate hint from the gang in animation. He’s bestial to the end-to his final fall into the abyss. While the Beast in the film’s title is a prince by right and eventually becomes one in character, Gaston never changes. These superficial young women-the credits call them “bimbettes”-think that Gaston is a prince in reality, he’s a brute, a beast. The lyrics on the sheet music have them say he’s a strong and handsome “brute.” But if you listen closely to the film’s soundtrack, the word sounds like “prince.” Certainly, “brute” rhymes with “cute” from the preceding line, but “prince” carries out the irony of the whole film with a keener touch. The three town beauties are singing about the manly Gaston. The words in the last line were actually “and laid him on the green.”Īn odd mondegreen seems to pop up in the opening song of Disney’s classic, Beauty and the Beast (1991). Writing for Harper’s Magazine (1954), she said, “When I was a child, my mother used to read aloud to me from Percy’s Reliques, and one of my favorite poems began, as I remember: Sylvia Wright calls these mistakes “mondegreens” from a mistake of her own. “Olive, the other reindeer” and “José, can you see?” come to mind. Once in a while we mishear the words of a song. He’s such a tall, dark, strong, and handsome brute.
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