The problem with our perception of Esau is the problem of our perception with the older brother.

You know the one: the resentful, bitter, angry older brother in the story of the prodigal son. At least the one characterised as bitter and resentful in order to make the usual understanding of the father as God fit the traditional interpretation. Or rather, somewhat work—so long as it’s ok to only draw precise and exact parallels up to a point and then invoke the excuse: ‘Oh, but you can’t expect a parable to be congruent in every detail to what God is like.’

Hmm, that comes across as more than a little inconsistent when the teacher or preacher has been using the correspondence principle right up to that moment. All correlation suddenly becomes questionable, right across the board.

Let’s examine the critical moment in the story of the Prodigal Son (or The Running Father, as it’s known in the Middle East) when the fatal flaw appears. And let’s remember that Jesus did not interpret this parable for His disciples: so the idea the father represents God was never His. In fact, the story was the third in a series of four parables directed to a group of sneering Pharisees. Although it is usually grouped with the first two parables, The Lost Sheep and The Lost Coin, its form is not like them but very much like the last. Moreover, the theme is not about someone seeking something lost—because the father does not go out searching through foreign lands for his son. He simply waits and watches for his return.

The last two parables in the four-story sequence do indeed have something major in common. And that’s only revealed in the segment that features the older brother.

‘Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. “Your brother has come,” he replied, “and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.”’

Luke 15:25–27 NIV

What’s wrong in this picture? Well, as some commentators point out, the word for servant is that of a young boy or girl and very possibly refers the child of one of the local villagers. The whole town was invited to the party! It’s in full swing. There’s music. There’s dancing. The fattened calf has been killed and is roasting on the fire. A feast is underway.

Now, let me ask this: how long does it take to organise a celebration of this kind, even if it’s spontaneous? An hour? Two? Three? One thing’s for sure—it doesn’t happen with a few clicks of the fingers.

And everyone’s there. The villagers, the servants, the musicians, the dancers, the revellers—all of them are enjoying the hospitality of the father as he welcomes his younger son home.

But where’s the older son? Has a servant been sent out into the field where he’s working to tell him his brother has returned? Has a helpful neighbour been asked to head out, give him the news, and call him home?

No, he comes in, mystified. Baffled. Questioning.

It would take less than a minute for him to realise the subliminal message being sent by his father’s oversight: you’re not part of this family; you’re not even part of this community. You are unchosen.

After the initial shock, anger would quickly arise. That’s natural. Indeed Jesus said the older brother was angry. But He doesn’t say why. And, if we examine the story from the perspective of someone suddenly reassessing the fact that, in all his years of service, he’s never been honoured with the smallest sign of his father’s affection, we see not so much resentment as grief.

That’s not to say bitterness didn’t arise but, in the first instance, it’s the early stages of grief that we’re observing. It’s the stunned realisation by the older brother that he’s become so invisible to his father that he’s being treated as an outsider and a stranger. The lavish welcome for the prodigal contrasts with the subtle unwelcome message to the fieldworker.

The younger brother had planned to say to his father, ‘Treat me like one of your hired servants,’ but the father had swept even the possibility of these words aside in his joy at the reunion. However, the older brother is placed in the position of receiving even less than the servants: they are present at the party, he’s still out working in the field.

Is this a picture of the loving nature of God? Who do the father and the two sons in the story really represent? If the father is really meant to be God, why doesn’t the older brother symbolise Jesus? We instinctively recoil from that parallel—as if anger in itself is wrong. But in fact there’s nothing amiss with anger that rises up in the face of injustice. So long as we don’t let the sun go down on it and carry it into the next day.

The way this parable is all too often used in church circles is as a justification for rewarding repentance over faithfulness. The celebrity penitent is praised and elevated over the quiet, faithful worker.

Those who are in the position of the older brother in faith communities are expected to tend their wounds silently, without ever drawing attention to them. They’re already aware of the labels, resentful, bitter, angry, offended, just waiting to be slapped on them the moment they make even the mildest protest. They are expected to accept dishonour without a fuss.

Now maybe the older brother’s refusal to come in and consequent embarrassment of his father is disrespectful. Yet the father had already disrespected and humiliated him. His faithfulness had been rewarded with dishonour while his brother’s unfaithfulness had been rewarded with honour.

I think the message of Jesus to the Pharisees via this parable was: you reward faithfulness with dishonour and unfaithfulness with honour. Do you not recognise your own perversity?

Maybe it was a bit too subtle for them. It’s certainly too subtle for us today. However, Jesus backed up His message with the fourth parable in His line-up—the story of the dishonest manager who, on realising he’s about to be fired, sets about cheating his employer who then praises him for his shrewdness and double-dealing. In that story a remarkably similar theme is evident: the upfront commendation of unfaithfulness and honouring of disloyalty. The same sort of perversity is highlighted in both parables.

The terrifying thing is that the teachers and preachers of today do not see the inversion. Instead, in the story of the prodigal, they see love—divine love no less. And they do not recognise the defilement that contaminates their particular understanding of love.

The grief that comes with the sense of being unchosen is accompanied by a tangle of feelings: that of being inferior, of being removed in favour of someone more acceptable and more lovable, of respect lost, honour stolen,  worth hollowed out, rejection and rebuff.   

This is a violence against the soul. Being unchosen results in attachment pain—a savage wound where there should be love and cherishing. 

The perspective that allows us to marginalise the older brother in this parable and hold up his grief reaction as evidence of his hardness of heart is the same perspective that permits us to see Esau as the ‘evil twin’ in the Jacob-Esau saga without recognising Jacob’s perfidy and extortion.

Jacob is the chosen one, Esau is the unchosen one. Jacob is chosen in the sense that, through his bloodline, the Messiah will come. And Esau is unchosen in the sense that that special honour will not be his. (In some respects, the verses of Malachi 1:2–3 NKJV, ‘Jacob I have loved but Esau I have hated,’ reflect this chosenness and unchosenness rather than our modern understanding of love and hatred.) Still, all this doesn’t mean what Jacob did is right or that his actions are less sinful than Esau’s. The tendency to excuse Jacob simply because he is chosen reeks, more than a little, of narcissistic self-justification rather than impartial justice.

Esau is indeed like the older brother working out in the field, when a firstborn blessing is handed out to his younger brother. He’s so grief-stricken when he discovers what’s happened, he bursts into tears and then conceives a murderous hatred for his brother. This is sin, no two ways about it. But Jacob’s murderous hatred preceded his. That’s what we fail to recognise. The thought, ‘I want your birthright,’ says: I wish you were dead.

This is precisely what the younger brother, the prodigal, is thinking about his father when he asks for his share of the inheritance: I wish you were dead.

And, like the prodigal, Jacob heads off to a far and foreign country—though, unlike him, he gains a fortune rather than loses it. At this point, whatever echoes the parable has of the Jacob-Esau saga begin to fade. Or do they? The gifts given to the younger brother in Jesus’ parable on his return—the ring, the robe and the sandals—are not just symbols of sonship. They are royal grants. They are the apparel of a prince.

And so again, we might be reminded of Jacob who, at dawn on the day of his meeting with Esau after their two-decade estrangement, is given a new name—Israel, prince with God.

So if this is the case—if this parable was always meant by Jesus to contain genuine echoes of the saga of the struggling twins—what does it mean for the father to say to the older brother, ‘Everything I have is yours’?

Is this an explanation by Jesus to the vexed political and spiritual question of why the Herodian kings ruling Judea and Galilee in the first century were of Idumean descent—that is, Edomite, of the bloodline of Esau?

I certainly don’t pretend to know the answer to that. But what I do know is that, regardless of who the younger and older brothers represent, the traditional identity of the father as God is simply untenable.

God does not reward the faithless while marginalising the faithful. That’s human powerplay, not a divine one. God does not forget the faithful while keeping watch for the faithless. His mercy is not balanced with injustice, but with justice. His love is not so obsessive He almost loses one child in the process of regaining another.

Overall, the dysfunction at the heart of the parable is closer in nature to Isaac’s family than it is to God’s family. This dysfunction appears in churches where loyalty is taken for granted and faithfulness dishonoured; it also appears in a surprising number of farming families where the eldest son is expected to work to create opportunities for his younger siblings that are denied to him. When one of his younger siblings wants to cash out what would one day become his inheritance, the farm goes into debt to pay him out. Years go by, and the eldest brother’s efforts at clearing the debt are ultimately rewarded with a lesser inheritance because, in the family’s distorted thinking, his ability to work hard means he ‘doesn’t need it’.

Eerily similar to the older brother in the parable, he often finds out about family gatherings when they’re halfway through or even entirely over. In his pain, he withdraws quietly—thus further justifying the family’s stance of not inviting him to events. The family minimises their guilt feelings by excluding him, but they don’t repent. It’s become too costly in every way. As a consequence, a lifetime of exclusion is the eldest son’s reward for ‘keeping the peace’ by not making the family uncomfortable or by exposing their entitlement.

Having seen this scenario play out more than once, I’m inclined to think the older brother in the parable actually did the most appropriate thing by standing outside the party and refusing to come in. No, I’m not saying that what he did was right. Instead what I’m suggesting is that whatever he chose to do would have been wrong. He could have gone inside and thereby accepted the dishonour meted out to him. That would have been no less wrong than staying outside, forcing the issue of dishonour out into the open and putting his status as a son on the line.

The father is loving, no doubt about that. But it’s not divine love we see portrayed here. Divine love does not become so obsessed with watching for the return of one son that another is forgotten. It does not rejoice to regain a son while almost losing another through blind, casual contempt.

Honour everyone, says 1 Peter 2:17.

Don’t honour one person at the expense of another.

Don’t steal honour from the faithful in order to reward the repentant.

Don’t make someone unchosen in order to ensure another feels chosen.

When someone misses out on a blessing, make sure it’s not forever.

That’s ultimately where Jesus takes the story of Esau’s mantle. As we’ll see next session, His recapitulation of the twin story involves not just the healing of brother relationships, but also that of tribes.

This is Grace Drops and I’m Anne Hamilton. May Jesus of Nazareth fully restore all your honour.

Thank you to Lorna Skinner of www.riversofmusic.co.uk for the background music.

John’s gospel is an epic poem in the mirror-reflective style of Hebrew prophetic poetry. Many commentators have noticed this and shown how the matching pairs line up. However, they haven’t looked beyond the loveliness of the design to the clues offered by the clues embedded in the symmetry. John reveals the inheritance given to specific disciples—the mantles of the patriarchs, prophets and kings that were handed on by Jesus as specific legacies: Elijah’s, Joseph’s, Reuben’s, Jacob’s, David’s, Esau’s… and more! The Elijah Tapestry, The Summoning of Time, The Lustral Waters, The Inviolable Kingdom and Bathing in Bronze (coming late 2026) work verse by verse from the front, matching to various verses from the back to unveil the not-so-hidden secrets of the mantles.