34 And Esau was forty years old when he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite:

35 Which were a grief of mind unto Isaac and to Rebekah.

Esau’s choice to marry the Hittite wives is another example of how he sought his immediate desires over the blessings of God. His family was living in Gerar, many miles away from the covenant bloodline. But rather than take a trip to the home of his forefathers to find a wife who knew and followed Jehovah, he sought immediate gratification from the idolatrous wives who lived next door.

As with his birthright and the mess of pottage, Esau showed an aloofness for the things of God, a failure to see the weight and significance in anything that did not immediately feed his physical, carnal appetites. When we first met him in Genesis 25:27 he was called a “man of the field,” and that is an incredibly astute description. Esau was a man of the earth, a man of the physical realm, whose thoughts extended no higher than the dirt of the plain.