Delegates in a stew — but of what? Pottage or porridge?

PHILADELPHIA — Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of… what?

Stew? Pottage? Porridge?

You wouldn’t think a raucous protest by delegates on the floor of the Democratic convention would raise such a question. But you’d be wrong.

I stood watching Monday night as California delegates who remained loyal to Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Socialist turned Democrat, greeted the end of his candidacy with tears and howls of fury.

One Bernie supporter in particular stood out. Luci Riley, an ICU nurse from Oakland, Calif., was a “lead organizer” for Sanders supporters in the Bay Area, according to the business card she handed me.

As Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., spoke in support of Hillary Clinton — even if it was a remarkably subdued endorsement — Riley covered her face with her hands, crossed her arms and cried, and screamed at Warren, “You turned on us!”

When Warren said that Clinton would “hold big banks accountable,” Riley and her compatriots chanted, “Tax Wall Street! Tax Wall Street!”

Then, as the chant died down, Riley gripped the railing in front of her with both hands, leaned over it, and yelled at the top of her lungs, “You sold your birthright for a bowl of porridge!”

Come again? Porridge? Wasn’t that from Goldilocks?

The mention of selling a birthright was familiar to me. I was raised on Bible stories. I know that in the book of Genesis, Abraham’s grandson, Esau, sold his birthright to his twin brother, Jacob.

But that was for a bowl of stew.

I posted the video to Twitter, and the responses fell into three categories. Some were clearly unfamiliar with the biblical story.

“What does this even mean?” wrote one woman.

The second group was like me, thinking Riley had mistakenly fused a fairy tale with the Old Testament.

“Jacob, Esau and the 3 bears,” wrote James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute.

But then there was a third type of response. These people kept mentioning the word “pottage.” I was mystified, having never heard of such a term.

“It’s ‘mess of pottage’—get it right…” wrote Nathan Whittaker.

Once I started to search for the term online, I was shocked to see that it, too, was related to the story of Jacob and Esau. Had I gotten it wrong when I quoted Riley saying “porridge”? Had she meant to say “pottage”? I watched the video again. It sure sounded like “porridge.”

As I looked into the history of the term, it became clear that if you were raised on the King James Version of the Bible, “pottage” was the term you were familiar with.

“And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentils; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright,” it says in the King James version of Genesis, Chapter 25, verses 33-34.

If you were raised on the more modern New International Version, however — as I was — you were told a story that involved stew.

“But Jacob said, ‘Swear to me first.’ So he swore an oath to him, selling his birthright to Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew. He ate and drank, and then got up and left. So Esau despised his birthright.”

As for “mess of pottage,” the phrase entered the English language more than a century before the King James Version of the Bible was published, in 1611. It does not appear in any version of the biblical text, but came into common usage thanks at first to 15th-century commentators on Genesis.

So even in the pious denunciations of Riley among those on the “mess of pottage” side, there was a bit of a blind spot.

As the clock approached midnight Monday, I walked out of the Wells Fargo Center and saw Riley making her way through the hall.

I ran her down and asked, a little sheepishly, “Did you say ‘porridge’ or ‘pottage’?”

“Porridge!” she said, laughing. “It’s in the Bible!”
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