Alright, so Isaac, Abraham's son, and Rebekah, his wife, had twins named Jacob and Esau. Esau was born first and was thus given the birthright; as they grew older, Isaac favored Esau while Rebekah favored Jacob, due to their respective roles in helping the family. One day, Esau came in from working outside and asked Jacob to give him some food; Jacob said that he would as long as Esau gave him his birthright. Esau must have been remarkably hungry, because he readily agreed. And thus, Jacob bought his brother's birthright with a bowl of soup.
I'm the youngest of two in my family, but the only real advantages my brother has had are not nearly as significant as a birthright. The most prominent I can think of now are being allowed to see movies that I couldn't when we were younger and being able to drive before I was able to--basically, you know, being older than I was. Along with that, he was able to move out sooner, which I have come to envy an unreasonable amount in the past few years. Other than that, there's really not been much privilege given to him explicitly by our mom and dad or by society or anything like that--pretty fortunate for me that we live in the times that we do (though even if our birth order were switched, he'd still have the birthright because I'm a girl. Which, you know, will never stop making me mad. But I digress. In this time, we're equals and it's grand.).
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