Pottage

Pottage (Hebrew nazid, "boiled food") refers to a thick stew or soup, most famously the red lentil pottage for which Esau sold his birthright to Jacob (Gen. 25:29–34). The narrative pointedly calls it "red pottage" — explaining the name Edom ("red") applied to Esau's descendants — and the author's comment that Esau "thus despised his birthright" (Gen. 25:34) signals the spiritual gravity of the transaction. A second notable incident involves Elisha, who purified a poisonous pot of pottage for the sons of the prophets at Gilgal during a famine by having meal cast into it (2 Kgs. 4:38–41).