Mess of pottage

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The phrase mess of pottage means something of little value. It is associated with the exchange by Esau of his birthright for a meal of lentil stew, as described in Genesis 25:29-34 in the Bible. (A pottage is a type of soup.)

Although this phrase is often used to describe Esau's bargain, the phrase itself is not actually biblical. It does not appear in the text of any English Bible. Rather, it first appeared in the heading of chapter 25 of the Book of Genesis in the Geneva Bible published by English Protestants in Geneva in 1560. Miles Smith used the same phrase in "The Translators to the Reader," the lengthy preface to the 1611 King James Bible. Although it can be found in older printings, few editions of the King James Bible include this lengthy preface today. The phrase, however, has remained in the language.

Smith's use of the phrase illustrates how the translators of the King James Bible went beyond their instructions, consulting the Geneva Bible along with other, approved, translations.

By a conventional spoonerism, an overly propagandistic writer is said to have "sold his birthright for a pot of message". Theodore Sturgeon had one of his characters say this about H. G. Wells in his 1948 short story Unite and Conquer; but Roger Lancelyn Green (in 1962) ascribed it to Professor Nevill Coghill, Merton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. With Green he was a member of the Inklings, a group of writers that flourished at Oxford in the decades just before, during, and after the Second World War and also included J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis.

Examples of usage

Henry David Thoreau: "Perhaps I am more than usually jealous with respect to my freedom. I feel that my connection with and obligation to society are still very slight and transient. Those slight labors which afford me a livelihood, and by which it is allowed that I am to some extent serviceable to my contemporaries, are as yet commonly a pleasure to me, and I am not often reminded that they are a necessity. So far I am successful. But I foresee that if my wants should be much increased, the labor required to supply them would become a drudgery. If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure that for me there would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of pottage. I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living."^[1]

Notes

External links

• Translators to the Reader