The Tears of Esau

“He found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears.”

Esau couldn’t turn back the clock and undo losing his birthright and blessing to Jacob. That’s really what the writer to Hebrews is talking about here. Genuine repentance for sin and reconciliation with God are always options unless your heart is so hard you would never do it or your mind so dull you don’t realize it’s necessary or desirable.

But a do-over that gives you back the thing you lost? That’s rarely possible, and it wasn’t for Esau. Blessing and birthright were gone forever. So Esau experienced all kinds of regret but no real repentance.

What we’re seeing in the mainstream American media for the last week or two is the tears of Esau. In some cases, they are the tears of a crocodile. But the clock will not roll back regardless.

Wanting It All

I just finished watching virulent lefty Bill Maher lecture his party for fifteen minutes on getting too greedy, wanting it all and failing to offer America a palatable compromise on November 5. Yes, yes and yes. But there’s no repentance there. Lots of regret, but no repentance. He still wants a world in which the right wing is vilified, persecuted, prosecuted, deplatformed and disemployed. He still wants a world in which pride parades itself down Main Street every June, July and August, and probably for the rest of the year. He still wants a world in which transgenderism is protected and indulged and paid for by tax dollars, he just wants it for consenting adults rather than grade schoolers with no clue their grotesque disfigurement is irreversible. He would still be okay with cheating at the polls provided the “right” candidate gets elected. He just doesn’t want his party to be so obvious about its endgame that it gets caught out as egregiously and devastatingly as it did on election day.

He dislikes losing, that’s all, and he belatedly realizes he’s aligned himself with people so determined to sabotage the governance of their country that they are even willing to sabotage themselves in the process.

Repentance vs. Regret

If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice even the far-leftist media is quickly pulling a swerve back toward the center. The editor-in-chief of Vox writes:

“There is little basis for confidence that Harris lost due to excessive moderation, or that Democrats would benefit electorally from becoming broadly more left-wing. The fact that many on the left nevertheless evince such certainty is therefore disconcerting.”

In other words, one of the most left-leaning rags in the online world is telling its party, “We are too far to the left. We cannot win with this message.” Yet there is nothing remotely repentant about Swati Sharma’s post-election op-ed. Earlier in the piece, she bluntly concedes:

“As someone who has spent the past decade advocating for more expansionary immigration policies, a larger social safety net, criminal justice reform, and decarbonization, it is difficult to see my country embrace a man who evinces contempt for all of those causes.”

So the causes continue, the goals remain the same and her conclusion is that messaging is the problem. Vox is telling its Democrat readers, “Carry on seeking the same things, just please do a better job of hiding our real intentions.” Regret, but no repentance. There will be no policy changes, but much better camouflage next time around. The Dems are headed back to the drawing board, but only to work on their technique.

Unholiness in Action

Modern readers of Genesis might say Esau had bad judgment, no foresight, or maybe high time preferences. We might say that, like Democrat voters earlier this month, he only saw the world from his own perspective. But his problem was way bigger than that. Esau’s real problem was that he was unholy. That’s what the writer to the Hebrews calls him. The Greek word he uses means profane or common. The birthright and blessing meant nothing more to Esau than greater status and doubling his inheritance at some nebulous point in the future. The Messianic line, the promises of God, the legacy of his grandfather Abraham, even the spiritual desires his parents had for him — these things were mere abstractions to Esau. He made his decisions in life without reference to God and his will.

Esau couldn’t repent because it was not in his nature to repent. He was not even equipped to understand the real reasons God had rejected him. You couldn’t discuss the subject with him intelligently because there was nothing about the spiritual world that interested him at all. Nothing could be less significant to him than being set apart for the purposes of God, which is why he sold his birthright for a bowl of lentils. He was too spiritually dull to realize what he was giving away. He was unholy.

Relative Unholiness

Please note, in comparing unhappy Democrats to profane Esau, I am not for a moment suggesting American Republicans and conservatives are anything remotely approaching devout, let alone set apart for the blessing of God. Not a chance, anymore than young Jacob behaved himself in a holy manner. The man was a snake, and so are many, perhaps most, Republican politicians and more than a few who voted for them. Making America “great” again is a non-starter, assuming the Republic has ever lived up to the potential for which its founding documents, size and resources initially equipped it. There are far too many dead babies for that, here and abroad. These things did not happen without Republican complicity.

All the same, no small number of men and women on the American right at least know a little bit about what’s at stake in the culture wars, just as Jacob knew the birthright and blessing had something more than a cash value to exploit. Even if he didn’t fully understand the legacy Esau rejected, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it mattered. Likewise, a few Republicans genuinely believe in the values that gave birth to the Constitution. They are convinced there are elements of America’s legacy worth preserving, like the concept of a nation under God. A small subset even vocally associate any hope of future greatness for their nation with obedience to his word. Perhaps four years of non-Democrat rule may at least delay the nation’s dissolution.

In short, nobody’s holy here. We will not make any pretense of that. But there are degrees of profanity, and depths of degradation. Many on the American right are cynical, greedy and pagan, but the American left has no brakes, no conscience, no shame and no bottom.

An Exceedingly Great and Bitter Cry

Sorry, back to Esau. Oh, the tears. Lots and lots of tears. He cried an exceedingly great and bitter cry, “Bless me also, O my father!” Undiscerning observers might imagine the man finally understood what was really important in life — or they would until the very next words issued from Esau’s foolish, profane mouth, full of vitriol and spite: “I’m going to kill my brother.” He couldn’t even keep the thought to himself. He had to blurt it out, and Jacob, warned, saved his own life by running away. There might be a lesson in that for the American right.

The craziest of the crazies on the left are unteachable. They will continue to riot, subvert, wail, hiss, threaten, break things, quit jobs, rant on Bluesky, stomp and act out like small children. Their women are already shaving their heads and calling for a four-year sex strike, oblivious that even the temporary refusal to reproduce their ideology in the next generation might be the biggest potential benefit to society of this entire election cycle. These are not the ones Republicans, conservatives and people who care about the nation need to worry about; they’re way too obvious, and they always will be. They’re also entirely unappealing to most Americans, and their tantrums are being greeted with nothing more threatening than grim amusement.

No, it’s the Democrats feigning a move back toward the political center — a strategy already underway — who will bear watching over the next four years. Their tears are the tears of Esau, and like Esau, they are just biding their time, waiting for the right opportunity to strike down their brothers.